Aufsätze und kleine Schriften (1941-1946) 9783787314249, 9783787344734

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Ernst Cassirer Gesammelte Werke Hamburger Ausgabe Band 24 Aufsätze und kleine Schriften

Meiner

1941–1496

ERNST CASSIRER AUFSÄTZE UND KLEINE SCHRIFTEN (1941–1946)

ERNST CASSIRER GESAMMELTE WERKE HAMBURGER AUSGABE Herausgegeben von Birgit Recki Band 24

FELIX MEINER VERLAG HAMBURG

ERNST CASSIRER

AUFSÄTZE UND KLEINE SCHRIFTEN (1941–1946)

Text und Anmerkungen bearbeitet von Claus Rosenkranz

FELIX MEINER VERLAG HAMBURG

Diese Ausgabe ist das Ergebnis einer engen Zusammenarbeit des Felix Meiner Verlags mit der Universität Hamburg und der Wissenschaftlichen Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt. Sie wird gefördert von der ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius und der Aby-Warburg-Stiftung. Komplementär erscheint die Ausgabe »Ernst Cassirer, Nachgelassene Manuskripte und Texte« (Hamburg 1995 ff.).

Bibliographische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. ISBN 978-3-7873-1424-9

Zitiervorschlag: ECW 24

© Felix Meiner Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2007. Alle Rechte, auch die des auszugsweisen Nachdrucks, der fotomechanischen Wiedergabe und der Übersetzung, vorbehalten. Dies betrifft auch die Vervielfältigung und Übertragung einzelner Textabschnitte durch alle Verfahren wie Speicherung und Übertragung auf Papier, Transparente, Filme, Bänder, Platte und andere Medien, soweit es nicht §§ 53 und 54 URG ausdrücklich gestatten. – Satz: KCS GmbH, Buchholz. Druck und Bindung: Druckhaus »Thomas Müntzer«, Bad Langensalza. Werkdruckpapier: alterungsbeständig nach ANSI-Norm resp. DIN-ISO 9706, hergestellt aus 100-% chlorfrei gebleichtem Zellstoff. Printed in Germany. ∞

INHALT

AUFSÄTZE UND ABHANDLUNGEN

Logos, Dike, Kosmos in der Entwicklung der griechischen Philosophie (1941) .............................................

7

Thorild und Herder (1941) .............................................................

37

Galileo: a New Science and a New Spirit (1942) ..........................

53

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. A Study in the History of Renaissance Ideas (1942) .............

67

The Influence of Language upon the Development of Scientific Thought (1942) .......................................................... 115 Newton and Leibniz (1943) ............................................................ 135 Hermann Cohen, 1842–1918 (1943) ............................................... 161 Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance (1943)............................................................... 175 The Place of Vesalius in the Culture of the Renaissance (1943) .......................................................................................... 185 Judaism and the Modern Political Myths (1944) ........................... 197 The Concept of Group and the Theory of Perception (1944) .......................................................................................... 209 The Myth of the State (1944)........................................................... 251 Thomas Manns Goethe-Bild. Eine Studie über »Lotte in Weimar« (1945) ......................................................... 267 Structuralism in Modern Linguistics (1945) .................................. 299 Albert Schweitzer as Critic of Nineteenth-Century Ethics ......... 321 Galileo’s Platonism (1946) .............................................................. 335

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Inhalt

ZUR LOGIK DER KULTURWISSENSCHAFTEN. FÜNF STUDIEN (1942) Der Gegenstand der Kulturwissenschaft ....................................... 357 Dingwahrnehmung und Ausdruckswahrnehmung ...................... 391 Naturbegriffe und Kulturbegriffe................................................... 414 Formproblem und Kausalproblem ................................................. 446 Die »Tragödie der Kultur« .............................................................. 462

ROUSSEAU, KANT, GOETHE. TWO ESSAYS (1945) Kant and Rousseau........................................................................... 491 Goethe and the Kantian Philosophy .............................................. 542

REZENSIONEN UND KLEINE SCHRIFTEN Henry Bergsons etik och religionsfilosofi (1941) ......................... 579 William Stern. Zur Wiederkehr seines Todestages (1941)............. 585 Dear Edward Lasker (1942) ............................................................ 598 Force and Freedom: Remarks on the English Edition of Jacob Burckhardt’s »Reflections on History« (1944) ............. 601 Ficino’s Place in Intellectual History (1945) .................................. 613

NACHTRÄGE A. Silberstein, Leibnizens Apriorismus im Verhältnis zu seiner Metaphysik (1904) ......................................................... 639 [Grußadresse der Hamburgischen Universität zur Kant-Feier der Universität Königsberg April 1924] (1924) .......................................................................................... 643 Hermann Cohen und die Renaissance der Kantischen Philosophie (1924) ..................................................................... 645

Inhalt

VII

[Grußwort auf dem Vierten Kongreß für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft] (1931) .......................................... 650

ANHANG Editorischer Bericht ........................................................................ Abkürzungen ................................................................................... Schriftenregister ............................................................................... Personenregister .............................................................................. Die Hamburger Ausgabe ................................................................

655 659 663 705 717

Ernst Cassirer, 1944. Abbildung aus: Fortune 29, Nr. 6 (1944).

AUFSÄTZE UND ABHANDLUNGEN

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Logos, Dike, Kosmos in der Entwicklung der griechischen Philosophie1 (1941) I Je weiter eine Wissenschaft fortschreitet, um so stärker muß sich in ihr das Bestreben geltend machen, ihren Stoff nicht nur ständig zu vermehren, sondern ihn auch nach bestimmten gedanklichen Gesichtspunkten zu ordnen. Statt ins Unbestimmte weiterzugehen, will sie das Gesamtgebiet ihrer Probleme überblicken und es in seiner inneren Gliederung erfassen. Früher als in jeder anderen Wissenschaft mußte dieser Trieb in der Philosophie erwachen. Denn für sie ist eine solche Gliederung keine bloß äußerliche Aufgabe. Sie will damit nicht nur dem formalen Bedürfnis der »Klassifikation« dienen, und sie wird nicht lediglich durch die Forderungen der »Denkökonomie« bestimmt. Für Platon macht die Kunst der »Einteilung«, der διαρεσις das eigentliche Kennzeichen des Dialektikers aus. Die Gabe des τ μνειν κατ’ ε δη, des διαιρεσαι κατé γ νη zeichnet den Dialektiker aus; wer sie nicht besitzt oder nicht in der rechten Weise ausübt, der bleibt nach Platon ein Rhetor oder ein Sophist.2 Eine der ersten Aufgaben für den Philosophen wird darin bestehen müssen, diese Gabe der sachund sinngemäßen Einteilung in seinem eigenen Gebiet und an seinem eigenen Gegenstand zu erproben. Es muß gezeigt werden, wie dieser Gegenstand, ohne seine innere Einheit zu verlieren, sich selbst gliedert und differenziert. In einfachster und klarster Weise schien dieses Problem durch die klassische Dreiteilung der Philosophie in L og i k, P hys ik u n d Eth ik gelöst zu sein. Sie geht auf die Platonische Akademie zurück3 und ist seither dauernd in Kraft geblieben; auch Kant hat sie noch unverändert beibehalten.4 Aber so hoch man den sachlichen und systematischen Wert dieses Einteilungsprinzips auch anschlagen mag, so wird doch sein Wert als h is t o r is ch es Erkenntnis- und Beschrei1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht: Göteborg 1941 (Göteborgs Högskolas Årsskrift 47 [1941:6]).] 2 Vgl. Platon, Phaidros 273 D u. 277 B; Sophistes 264 C u. 267 D; Politeia 454 A; Politikos 285 A u. ö. 3 Als Urheber dieser Einteilung wird Xenokrates genannt; s. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos II, S. 6 1 M [verifiziert nach: Sextus Empiricus, hrsg. v. Immanuel Bekker, Berlin 1842, S. 597–761: S. 675]. 4 Vgl. Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Vorrede), in: Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, 11 Bde.,

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3–5

bungsmittel um so fragwürdiger, je mehr wir uns den eigentlichen | Anfängen der Philosophie nähern. Denn diese sind eben dadurch gekennzeichnet, daß für sie der Begriff der Philosophie selbst, wie die näheren Bestimmungen desselben, noch nicht feststehen, sondern daß dies alles erst gewonnen werden soll. Hier handelt es sich nicht um schon fixierte Unterschiede, sondern um werdende Unterschiede. Und die wichtigste Aufgabe der geschichtlichen Interpretation besteht eben darin, in dieses innere Werden einzudringen. Statt die Begriffe in ihrer fertigen und ausgereiften Gestalt zu sehen, wollen wir sie gewissermaßen in statu nascendi erfassen. Denn nur auf diese Weise können wir uns der stetigen und schwierigen Arbeit bewußt werden, die der Gedanke zu leisten hatte, um diese Begriffe ans Licht zu heben. Die Versenkung in diese Arbeit bietet für den Philosophiehistoriker einen besonderen, immer erneuten Reiz. Hier werden nicht nur die fundamentalen Resultate des griechischen Denkens sichtbar, sondern hier scheint uns ein Einblick verstattet in die Grundkräfte, aus denen dasselbe seinen Ursprung gezogen hat und die für seine spätere Entwicklung bestimmend geblieben sind. Statt die griechische Logik, die griechische Ethik, die griechische Naturphilosophie in ihrer fertigen, klassisch vollendeten Gestalt zu betrachten, wollen wir daher hier einen anderen Weg einschlagen. Wir streben nicht nach einer expliziten Beschreibung des Lehrgehalts dieser drei Disziplinen, sondern wir versuchen, jede von ihnen auf einen bestimmten ideellen Mittelpunkt zu beziehen und gewissermaßen in ihn zusammenzudrängen. Die Betrachtung soll von der Peripherie zum Zentrum, nicht vom Zentrum zur Peripherie gehen. Wenn es gelingt, für jedes der drei Gebiete eine solche Konzentration ihres Gehalts in einem Grund- und Hauptmotiv durchzuführen: dann rückt auch die Frage nach der wechselseitigen Beziehung, in der sie zueinander stehen, in ein neues Licht. Denn nun erhebt sich die Frage, ob alle diese Motive einfach nebeneinander stehen oder ob sie durch ein gemeinsames sachliches Band miteinander verknüpft sind. Je weiter wir in der Entwicklung des griechischen Denkens fortschreiten, um so schwerer fällt es uns, diese Verbindung zu erkennen und anzuerkennen. Denn diese Entwicklung ist auf eine immer klarere Herausarbeitung der Gegensätze gerichtet. Die Größe und die Kraft des griechischen Denkens beruht eben darauf, daß es diese Gegensätze in ihrer vollen Schärfe sichtbar macht. Das »Sein« und das »Werden«, die »Natur« und die »Idee« scheinen in der Form, in der sie uns bei Parmenides und He | raklit, bei Demokrit und Platon Berlin 1912–1921, Bd. IV, hrsg. v. Artur Buchenau u. Ernst Cassirer, S. 241–324: S. 243 ff. (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 387 ff.).

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entgegentreten, keinerlei Vermittlung zuzulassen. Zwischen beiden Gegenpolen hat das Denken zu wählen. In dieser Wahl besteht die große Entscheidung, vor die sich jeder gestellt sieht. Hier geht es um Sein oder Nichtsein. Die Unsicheren, die, einmal vor diese Grundfrage gestellt, noch schwanken können, sie sind, nach Parmenides, keine Denker, sondern sie sind »Doppelköpfe« (δκρανοι): »[…] urteilslose Gesellen, denen Sein und Nichtsein für dasselbe gilt und nicht für dasselbe, für die es bei allem einen Gegenweg gibt.«5 Darf der Geschichtsschreiber – so läßt sich mit Recht fragen – die Schranken überspringen, die hier von dem ersten großen Systematiker der griechischen Philosophie in unerbittlicher Strenge aufgerichtet worden sind? Jagen wir nicht einem Phantom nach, wenn wir dort nach historischen Zusammenhängen fragen, wo wir nichts als logische Antithesen sehen sollten? Die Berechtigung dieses Einwands verkenne ich durchaus nicht. Nichts liegt mir ferner, als die scharfen Grenzen, die hier bestehen, in irgendeiner Weise verwischen oder die dialektischen Gegensätze, durch die das griechische Denken beherrscht und vorwärtsgetrieben wird, abstumpfen zu wollen. Und doch gilt es, an diesem Punkte nicht nur Parmenides, sondern auch Heraklit zu hören. Nach Heraklit gibt es neben der »offenbaren« Harmonie auch eine »verborgene« Harmonie: Und diese ist besser und tiefer als jene.6 Diese »unsichtbare Harmonie«‚ die alle griechischen Denker auch dort verbindet, wo sie sich in ihren Grundsätzen und in ihren einzelnen Lehrsätzen fremd, ja feindlich gegenüberstehen, besteht darin, daß ihnen allen ein bestimmtes gemeinsames Ziel vor Augen steht, dem sie auf verschiedenen Wegen zustreben. Sie arbeiten sämtlich an demselben großen geistigen Befreiungsprozeß; sie wollen die Macht des My th o s brechen und an die Stelle des Mythos eine neue Kraft: die Kraft der »Vernunft«‚ der »Ideenschau«‚ der reinen »Theorie«, setzen. Nicht der besondere Inhalt der griechischen Philosopheme, sondern diese universelle Funktion, diese durchgreifende Form des griechischen Denkens ist es, die wir immer wieder und die wir gerade dort am stärksten spüren, wo die einzelnen Systeme in schärfstem Kampf und Widerstreit einander entgegentreten. Im Rahmen dieser kurzen Betrachtung kann es sich nicht darum handeln, diesen geistigen Prozeß in seinem ganzen Umfang und in | 5 Parmenides, περ fqeow, Fragm. 6, V. 7 ff., zit. nach: Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Griechisch und deutsch, Bd. I, Berlin 21906, S. 117 [»®κριta φ2la, nw t π leim te κα nκ ε6mai taôtm memμiqtai κnô taôtm, πmtvm d πalmtρnπς ïqti k λeυnς.«] 6 »ρμnmη !φανêw φαmeρ0w kρettvm.« Heraklit, Fragm. 54, a. a. O., S. 69.

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6–7

seiner ganzen Bedeutung sichtbar machen zu wollen. Wir greifen vielmehr nur einzelne Grund- und Hauptmotive heraus, in denen die Gesamtbewegung, die sich hier vollzieht, einen besonders charakteristischen und prägnanten Ausdruck gefunden hat. In ihnen handelt es sich nicht um bloße Gedankeninhalte, sondern um große Gedankensymbole, die das griechische Denken geschaffen und die es fortschreitend mit immer reicherem Gehalt erfüllt hat. Es hätte diese Symbole nicht ausbilden und es hätte sie nicht zu dieser Kraft und Bestimmtheit entwickeln können, wenn es sich hierbei nicht der Leitung der griechischen Sprache anvertraut hätte. Sprache und Denken wirken hier so innig zusammen, daß es uns auch heute noch schwer, ja fast unmöglich erscheint, das Band zu lösen, das beide miteinander verknüpft. So reich und vielfältig die einzelnen Erkenntnisse sind, die die griechische Logik, die griechische Ethik und die griechische Physik sich erarbeitet haben, so lassen sie sich doch, in jedem dieser Gebiete, gewissermaßen auf je einen »gemeinsamen Nenner« bringen. L og os , Dik e, Ko s m o s : in diese drei Ausdrücke drängt sich der gesamte Inhalt dieser Arbeit zusammen. Aber keiner derselben ist für uns unmittelbar übersetzbar. Immer wieder, wenn wir eine solche Übersetzung versuchen, fühlen wir dabei, daß uns Wichtiges entgeht und daß uns gerade das Wesentliche zu entgleiten droht. Hier bleibt uns kein anderer Weg übrig, als die drei Begriffe, inhaltlich und sprachlich, in ihrer Genese zu verfolgen. Die Sprachgeschichte darf und muß hierbei die Führung übernehmen. Aber zu dem, was sie uns bieten kann, muß ein anderer Gesichtspunkt hinzutreten. Die philologische Analyse und die systematische Analyse müssen ständig Hand in Hand gehen: Denn nur beide vereint können uns die ursprüngliche Bedeutung wie den stetigen Bedeutungswandel kennen lehren, dem diese drei Grund- und Hauptbegriffe unterworfen waren. Wie eine derartige Aufgabe mit den Mitteln der klassischen Philologie in Angriff zu nehmen ist, das hat uns Werner Jaegers »Paideia« gezeigt.7 Folgt man dem Gange von Jaegers Untersuchung, so kann man sich mit besonderer Eindringlichkeit das Moment vergegenwärtigen, das auch für die folgende Betrachtung maßgebend ist. Denn im Laufe dieser Untersuchung tritt deutlich hervor, daß das Verständnis dessen, was der griechische Begriff der Paideia in sich schließt, sich nicht einfach dem Inhalt | dessen entnehmen läßt, was hier an Bildungswerten und Bildungsgütern gewonnen wird. All das ist sicherlich auch um seiner selbst willen bedeutsam. Die Schätze, die hier durch den philoso7 Werner Jaeger, Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen, Bd. I, Berlin/Leipzig 1934.

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phischen Gedanken, durch die wissenschaftliche Forschung, durch Naturbetrachtung und Geschichtsschreibung, durch die Dichtung und die bildende Kunst, durch die ethische und politische Reflexion gehoben werden, haben nichts von ihrem Wert verloren. Und doch sind sie für uns nicht alles. Wir fühlen, daß hinter dieser Leistung eine Umkehr der Gesinnung, ein eigentliches μετανοε1ν liegt. Ich verfolge diese Wendung nur in den drei Richtungen, die durch die Begriffe Logos, Dike, Kosmos bezeichnet werden. Ich versuche zu zeigen, daß alle diese Begriffe nicht nur nebeneinander stehen und daß sie nicht nur Korrelate in dem Sinne sind, daß sie sich wechselseitig ergänzen. Sie gehören noch in einem anderen und tieferen Sinne zusammen; sie sind der Ausdruck ein und derselben geistigen Wandlung, durch welche die neue Form der griechischen Logik, der griechischen Ethik und der griechischen Physik bedingt ist und durch die sie erst möglich wurde. II Für die Entstehung des Logosbegriffs ist und bleibt H e r a kl i t unsere wichtigste Quelle. Aber freilich dürfen wir hierbei nicht von jenem Bilde der Herakliteischen Lehre ausgehen, das sich uns, auf Grund der Platonischen Darstellung, fest und fast unauslöschlich eingeprägt hat. Wir wissen, daß Platon seine erste Kenntnis der Philosophie Heraklits nichts diesem selbst, sondern dem Herakliteer Kratylos verdankt.8 Und was Kratylos ihm geben konnte, das war, wenn wir nach dem gleichnamigen Dialog Platons urteilen dürfen, nicht so sehr eine Interpretation der Herakliteischen Grundgedanken als vielmehr eine Karikatur derselben. Eine feste Schultradition, die diese Gedanken hätte vermitteln können, lag hier nicht vor. Die Herakliteer – so sagt Platon im »Theaetet« – bilden keine Schule; jeder verkündet seine Lehre auf seine eigene Weise, wie es ihm die Begeisterung des Augenblicks gerade eingibt.9 Platon durfte nichtsdestoweniger aus solchen Quellen schöpfen: Denn ihm kam es nicht auf historische Darstellung, sondern auf systematische | Kritik an. Diese Kritik galt der Gegenwart, nicht der Vergangenheit; sie richtete sich gegen die, die in seiner eigenen Epoche als Wortführer der Herakliteischen Lehre auftraten. Heraklit selbst erscheint hier nur als Glied in einer großen Kette, die, über ihn selbst 8 Über Kratylos als ersten philosophischen Lehrer Platons vgl. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Platon, Bd. I: Leben und Werk, Berlin 1919, S. 89 ff. u. 286 ff. 9 Platon, Theaitetos 180 C.

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hinaus, bis zu Homer und der ältesten griechischen Weisheit zurückreicht. Er ist der Anführer (!ρχηγς) aller jener, die davon überzeugt sind, daß nichts wahrhaften Bestand habe, sondern alles in ewigem Wechsel kreist. Damit werde nicht nur jede Festigkeit der Dinge, sondern auch die der Begriffe aufgehoben: »[…] sehr genau beobachten sie das, daß ja nichts fest bleibe weder in der Rede, noch auch in ihrer eigenen Seele (μ#τ$ %ν λγ&ω μ#τ’ %ν τα1ς α£τ3ν cyχα1ς), indem sie wohl meinen, das möchte dann jenes Beständige (στσιμον) sein, gegen das sie so gewaltig streiten, und das sie, soviel sie nur können, aus jedem Schlupfwinkel zu vertreiben suchen.«10 Daß dies nicht der wahre, der authentische Sinn der Lehre Heraklits ist – daran hätte niemals ein Zweifel entstehen sollen. Denn schon dasjenige unter den Fragmenten Heraklits, das, wie wir der Aristotelischen »Rhetorik« entnehmen können,11 den Eingang zu seiner Schrift bildete und das gleichsam das Losungswort für sie enthält, legt das stärkste Gewicht auf ebenjenen Begriff, der ihm nach Platons Darstellung gemangelt haben und den er abgestritten haben soll. »το2 […] λγου το2δ$ %ντος !εë !ξνετοι γγνονται ®νρωποι κα πρσεν ) !κο2σαι κα !κοσαντες τ πρ3τον.«12 Heraklit verkündet also einen »Logos« – und dieser Logos w ir d nicht, sondern er ist; er ist ein !ε %ν. Aber er lehrt zugleich, daß dieses Immerseiende in der Welt der Dinge, die uns umgeben und von der die Sinne uns Kunde geben, nicht anzutreffen ist. In dieser Welt gibt es keine Eigenschaft, die auch nur einen Moment lang sich selbst gleich bleibt. Hier findet ein steter »Umschlag«, ein Übergang von einer Bestimmung in die ihr entgegengesetzte statt. Alles ist nur in dem Sinne, daß es sich wechselweise ineinander wandelt. Gott ist Tag – Nacht, Winter – Sommer, Krieg – Friede, Überfluß – Hunger.13 All diese Bestimmungen sind nur als einander bedingende und aneinander gebundene Gegensätze verständlich. Jede von ihnen ist nur kraft der ande10 A. a. O., 180 A f. [»[…] ε7 πνυ φυλττουσι τ μηδν β βαιον %+ν ε6ναι μ#τ$ %ν λγ&ω μ#τ$ %ν τα1ς α-τ3ν cυχα1ς, ûγομενοι, ßς %μοë δοκε1, ατí στσιμον ε6ναι/ τοτ&ω δ πανυ πολεμο2σι, κα κα$ 4σον δνανται πα νταχεν %κβλλουσιν.« Cassirer zitiert Platon unter Angabe der StephanusPaginierung. Die Verifizierung des originalsprachlichen Textes erfolgt nach: Opera omnia uno volumine comprehensa, hrsg. v. Gottfried Stallbaum, Leipzig/London 1899.]. 11 Vgl. Aristoteles, Rhetorik 5, 1407 b [Cassirer zitiert Aristoteles unter Angabe der Bekker-Paginierung. Die Verifizierung erfolgt nach: Aristoteles, De arte rhetorica, in: Opera, durchges. v. Immanuel Bekker, hrsg. v. der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bd. II, Berlin 1831, S. 1354–1420.]. 12 Heraklit, Fragm. 1, zit. nach: Diels, Fragmente, Bd. I, S. 61. 13 Ders., Fragm. 67, a. a. O., S. 71.

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ren, und sie ist nur dadurch, daß sie die andere verneint. Aber | über dieser Welt der Negation, der einander ablösenden und sich gegenseitig vernichtenden Einzelbeschaffenheiten herrscht e i ne s , das die feste Norm für diesen Wandel selbst enthält und das ebendarum das wahrhaft Reale, das eigentlich Positive ist. Diese ursprüngliche »Position« ist es, die Heraklit mit dem Namen »Logos« bezeichnet. Der Logos und die !ναλογα sind im mathematischen Denken der Griechen die Ausdrücke, die zur Bezeichnung des Verhältnisses, der Proportion dienen. In diesem Sinne treten sie uns bei den Pythagoreern und später bei Euklid entgegen. Ein Ähnliches schwebt auch hier vor, wenngleich Heraklits Denken sich nicht in mathematischen Kategorien vollzieht. Der Logos ist ein »Seiendes«; aber ein Seiendes, das nicht als ein einzelnes Ding besteht, sondern das vielmehr ein durchgehendes Ver h alt en der Dinge bezeichnet. Denn alles Werden hat seine innere Regel, aus der es nicht heraustreten und von der es nicht abweichen kann. Die Elemente gehen ineinander über: »Feuer lebt der Erde Tod, Luft des Feuers Tod; Wasser lebt der Luft, Erde des Wassers Tod.«14 Aber dieser Übergang selbst ist nicht beliebig und von ungefähr. Er vollzieht sich in einer bestimmten Folge und nach einem stets wiederkehrenden Rhythmus. So ist das All ein eines, das sich ständig in sich selbst trennt, und diese sich spaltende und doch wieder in sich zurückkehrende Einheit, dieses 5ν διαφερμενον 8ayt&3 ist das eigentliche Weltgesetz. Wer dieses Gesetz erfaßt hat, der steht nach Heraklit am Ziel aller Weisheit: »[…] 5ν τ σοφν, %πστασαι γν9μην, ¢τ η %κυβ ρνησε πντα δι: πντων.«15 Heraklit ist ein abgesagter Feind jeglicher festen philosophischen Terminologie. Ihm liegt nichts am einzelnen Wort, denn er ist überzeugt davon, daß jedes Wort unendlich hinter dem zurückbleiben muß, was es bezeichnen will. Es kann den Sinn, auf den es sich richtet, nicht erschöpfen, es gibt niemals die volle Bedeutung, sondern es bleibt notwendig im Stadium der Andeutung. Alle Sprache, auch die religiöse und die philosophische, ist an diese Schranke gebunden. Der Gott, der das Orakel in Delphi besitzt – so sagt Heraklit –, spricht nicht aus und verbirgt nicht; er deutet an (»ο;τε λ γει ο;τε κρπτει !λλ: σημανει«).16 Jedes Wort ist mächtig und ohnmächtig zugleich, tief bedeutsam und doch dem Wesen, das es treffen will, inadäquat. So dürfen wir auch für das höchste Weltgesetz nach den verschiedensten 14 Ders., Fragm. 76, a. a. O., S. 73 [»ζ0ι π2ρ τν γ0ς νατον κα !=ρ ζ0ι τν πυρς νατον, >δωρ ζ0ι τν ! ρος νατον, γ0 τν > δατος.«]. 15 Ders., Fragm. 41, a. a. O., S. 68. 16 Ders., Fragm. 93, a. a. O., S. 75.

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Bezeichnungen greifen. Der Name »Zeus« mag für dasselbe bestehen bleiben, sofern wir uns nur bewußt sind, daß es | sich in ihm eben um nichts mehr als um einen Namen handelt. »Eines, das allein weise, will Zeus genannt werden und will es doch auch wieder nicht.«17 Unter all diesen wechselnden Benennungen aber gibt es eine, die dem Gedanken Heraklits am meisten gerecht wird und die ihn in höchster Prägnanz ausspricht. Es ist das Wort » D ik e« . »Dike« besagt die Ordnung des Rechts; aber für Heraklit besagt es ebenso die Ordnung der Natur. Denn beide, Recht und Natur, stehen unter der gleichen allumfassenden Regel. »Die Sonne wird ihre Maße nicht überschreiten; täte sie es, so würden die Erinnyen, die Helferinnen der Dike, sie ausfindig machen.«18 Was ist das Band, das in Heraklits Geist diese beiden Gegenpole, die Seinsordnung und die Rechtsordnung, miteinander verknüpft? So dunkel seine Sprache auch erscheint und so sehr sie es liebt, sich zu verhüllen, so herrscht doch an diesem Punkte bei ihm die höchste Klarheit. Das Gemeinsame ist deutlich herausgehoben: Es besteht darin, daß in beiden, im Logos wie in der Dike, das Dasein eines Univ er s ellen behauptet wird, das über allen »Eigensinn«, über jede Besonderheit des individuellen Vorstellens und Wähnens, erhaben ist. Die óδη φρνησις, die Absonderung des einzelnen vom Weltganzen und vom Weltgesetz ist für Heraklit der Quell alles Irrtums und die Wurzel alles Übels. Er selbst will nicht in eigenem Namen sprechen, und er verlangt nicht, daß man auf ihn, als einzelnen, hört; nur im Namen des Logos fordert er Gehör.19 Die Menschen aber verschließen sich in ihre eigene Vorstellungswelt und verlieren damit das Göttliche, allen Gemeinsame, das κοινν κα ε1ον. Sie gleichen damit den Schlafenden, nicht den Wachenden; denn »im Wachen haben wir eine gemeinsame Welt, während im Schlaf jeder seine eigene hat.«20 Blicken wir von hier aus zur Lehre des P ar me ni de s hinüber, so glauben wir mit einem Schlage in eine andere Welt versetzt zu sein. Alle Maßstäbe haben sich nicht nur verändert, sondern sie scheinen sich in ihr Gegenteil verkehrt zu haben. Wo Heraklit die höchste Wahrheit sieht, da sieht Parmenides nur Trug und Schein. Heraklit suchte den Logos; aber er war überzeugt, daß er nirgends anders als 17 Ders., Fragm. 32, a. a. O., S. 67 [»5ν τ σοφν μο2νον λ γεσαι οôκ % λει κα % λει Ζηνς @νομα.«]. 18 Ders., Fragm. 94, a. a. O., S. 75 [»Aλιος γ:ρ οχ -περβ#σεται μ τρα/ εB δ μ#, $Ερινες μιν Δκης %πκουροι %ξευρ#σουσιν.«]. 19 Ders., Fragm. 50, a. a. O., S. 69. 20 Ders., Fragm. 89, a. a. O., S. 75 [»φησ το1ς %γρηγορσιν Eνα κα κοινν κσμον ε6ναι, τ3ν δ κοιμωμ νων Eκαστον εóς ´διον !ποστρ φεσαι.«].

10–11

Logos, Dike, Kosmos

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in der Welt des Werdens, in der Welt der φσις zu finden ist. Aber vor dem kritischen Blick des Parmenides versinkt die Physis. Sie ist ihm nicht nur nichts Göttliches und Ewiges, sie ist ihm nicht einmal ein Seiendes; sie ist ihm nur ein seltsames Geflecht menschlicher »Wahngedanken«.21 | Hier besteht ein unversöhnlicher Gegensatz: Der Inhalt der Parmenideischen Lehre schließt den der Herakliteischen aus. Und doch sind zwischen beiden nicht alle Brücken abgebrochen. Denn wenn man nicht auf den dogmatischen Lehrgehalt als solchen hinblickt, sondern statt dessen die Frage ins Auge faßt, die Parmenides und Heraklit sich stellen, so ergibt sich zwischen beiden ein neuer, auf den ersten Blick höchst überraschender Zusammenhang. Wiederum können uns hier für die Erkenntnis dieses Zusammenhangs die Begriffe Logos und Dike als Führer dienen. Beide stehen sowohl bei Parmenides als bei Heraklit an zentraler Stelle. Auch Parmenides ruft in der großen Entscheidung, vor die er uns stellt, den Logos als den eigentlichen und einzigen Richter an. »Lasse dich nicht durch die vielerfahrene Gewohnheit auf diesen Weg zwingen, nur deinen Blick, den ziellosen, dein Gehör, das brausende, deine Zunge walten zu lassen: Nein, mit dem Logos bringe die vielumstrittene Prüfung, die ich dir riet, zur Entscheidung.«22 Als oberstes Gebot des Logos aber stellen die Eleaten ein neues Gesetz auf. Sie sind die ersten Entdecker des »Satzes vom Widerspruch«.23 Die Vermeidung des Widerspruchs: das ist die oberste Norm, unter welche sich jetzt das Denken stellt. Dieses eine Gesetz ist es, das von den Eleaten gewissermaßen als der kategorische Imperativ des Denkens verkündet wird. Wer diesem Imperativ folgt, der findet auf seinem Wege das Sein und die Wahrheit; wer ihm zuwiderhandelt, der findet nichts anderes als Trug und Täuschung. Das höchste Gebot, das jetzt an das Denken gerichtet wird, ist dies, daß es nicht nur einen neuen Weg, der von dem der Sinne und der Erfahrung weit abliegt, beschreitet – denn dies hatte die griechische Philosophie schon vor Parmenides getan –, sondern daß es ihn festhält, daß es ihn entschlossen bis zu Ende geht. Nichts, was außerhalb seines eigenen Kreises liegt, darf hierbei das Denken beirren oder ablenken. Was die Wahrnehmung oder Vorstellung, was α σησις und δξα uns 21 Parmenides, Fragm. 1, V. 30, a. a. O., S. 115 [»βροτ3ν δξας«]; ders., Fragm. 8, V. 50 ff., a. a. O., S. 121. 22 Ders., Fragm. 1, V. 34 ff., a. a. O., S. 115 [»[…] μηδ σ$ Fος πολπειρον Gδν κατ: τ#νδε βισω, νωμ+ν Hσκοπον @μμα κα Iχ#εσσαν !κου#ν κα γλ3σαν, κρ1ναι δ λγωι πολδηριν Fλεγχον %ξ %μ εν ῥη ντα.«]. 23 Näheres hierüber s. bei Ernst Hoffmann, Der historische Ursprung des Satzes vom Widerspruch. Heinrich Rickert zum 25. Mai 1923 gewidmet, in: Sokrates. Zeitschrift für das Gymnasialwesen, Neue Folge 11 (1923), S. 1–13.

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11–12

bieten, das sind, vom Standpunkt des Gedankens, nichts als Irrlichter. Durch solche Irrlichter verleitet, sprechen wir vom Werden, vom Entstehen und Vergehen. Aber es bleibt nur die Kunde von einem Wege möglich: vom Wege des »Es ist«. Auf ihm stehen gar viele Wahrzeichen. Denn wer den Begriff | des Seins einmal erfaßt und ihn in allem, was aus ihm folgt, durchdacht hat, der weiß auch, daß dieses Sein unvergänglich, ganz, in sich geschlossen, einheitlich, unwandelbar ohne Ende sein muß: ein einziges in sich zusammenhängendes Ganze (»ο7λον μουνογεν ς τε κα !τρεμς ñδ$ !τ λεστον«).24 Die Denker, die dies nicht erfaßt haben, taumeln auf ihrem Wege wie Stumme und Blinde dahin.25 Rückhaltloser und rücksichtsloser, als es hier geschieht, konnte die Forderung des Logos nicht verkündet werden. Dieser Logos beherrscht und durchdringt nicht mehr, wie bei Heraklit, die Sinnenwelt; sondern vor ihm versinkt die Sinnenwelt. Die strenge Logik endet im Akosmismus. Und wieder wird dieser Anspruch nicht vom Logos allein erhoben, sondern dieser spricht im Namen eines allgemeinen höheren Gesetzes, des Gesetzes der Dike. Ihre Gewalt wacht darüber, daß das Sein nicht aus der ihm vorgeschriebenen Ordnung weicht. Dike hält das Sein in strengen Banden; sie duldet nicht, daß es sich in irgendeiner Weise mit dem Nichtsein mischt und damit dem Widerspruch verfällt. Deshalb hat sie Werden und Vergehen nicht aus ihren Fesseln entlassen, sondern hält beides fest: »[…] ο;τε γεν σαι ο;τ$ @λλυσαι !ν0κε Δκη χαλσασα π δηισιν, !λλ$ Fχει.«26 Dies alles bedeutet zweifellos einen Umsturz aller Werte, die in der griechischen Naturphilosophie gegolten hatten, und eine gewaltige Revolution der Denkart. Dennoch zeigt sich bei näherer Betrachtung, daß auch das eleatische Denken in der griechischen Geistesgeschichte nicht als bloßer Fremdling oder als seltsamer Eindringling dasteht. All das Fremdartige und Eigenartige, was es enthält, ist vorbereitet. Die Kräfte, die hier am Werke sind, brechen nicht unvermittelt und plötzlich hervor. Sie haben ihre Stärke gewonnen in der stillen und beharrlichen Arbeit von Jahrhunderten, und sie haben sich, bevor sie in der Philosophie wirksam wurden, in anderen Gebieten der griechischen Kultur erprobt und geübt. Es ist im Rahmen dieser kurzen Skizze nicht entfernt möglich, den inneren Bildungsprozeß darzulegen, aus dem der Begriff des Logos wie der der Dike entstanden ist und dessen letzte reife Frucht sie bilden; ich muß mich mit der Andeutung einiger 24 Parmenides, Fragm. 8, V. 4, zit. nach: Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Bd. I, S. 119. 25 Ders., Fragm. 6, V. 6 ff., a. a. O., S. 117. 26 Ders., Fragm. 8, V. 13–15, a. a. O., S. 119.

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Logos, Dike, Kosmos

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Hauptphasen begnügen. Deutlich können wir verfolgen, daß es die griechische Sprachphilosophie war, die hier die μαιευτικ= τ χνη geübt hat – die gewissermaßen zur Geburtshelferin der griechischen Logik geworden ist. In der älteren Gestalt der griechischen Logik | durchdringt sich das Problem des Denkens so sehr mit dem der Sprache, daß es für uns kaum möglich ist, beide voneinander zu sondern. Hier besteht jene Form der »archaischen Logik«, deren Eigentümlichkeit eben darin besteht, daß sie zwischen Sprache und Denken nirgends einen scharfen Schnitt macht, daß sie den »Sinn« an das »Wort« bindet.27 Erst Platon führt diesen Schnitt; und aus ihm geht jener neue Begriff der Dia lek t ik hervor, den er der Rhetorik gegenüberstellt. Die große Auseinandersetzung, die der zweite Teil des Platonischen »Phaidros« bringt, bezeichnet hier den entscheidenden Wendepunkt.28 Was die Entwicklung des Begriffs der Dike in der griechischen Geistesgeschichte betrifft, so besitzen wir hierfür die außerordentlich reichhaltige und wertvolle Materialsammlung, die Rudolf Hirzel in seinem Buche »Themis, Dike und Verwandtes«29 gegeben hat. Sie ist später durch die Schrift von Victor Ehrenberg »Die Rechtsidee im frühen Griechentum«30 ergänzt worden. Aber die wirkliche Formung dieses Materials hat uns erst Werner Jaegers Buch gegeben. In Jaegers Schilderung der griechischen Paideia nimmt die Rechtsidee eine zentrale Stellung ein; sie wird zum geistigen Mittelpunkt und Brennpunkt. Jaeger zeigt, wie durch sie zunächst das Epos eine neue Gestalt gewinnt. Die Rechtsidee haucht dem Epos neues Leben ein, sie gibt ihm jenen persönlichen Charakter, den es bei Homer noch entbehrt hat. »Das große Neue [bei Hesiod] ist, daß der Dichter [hier] in eigener Person redet. Er gibt die herkömmliche Objektivität des Epos preis und wird selbst zum Verkünder der Lehre vom Fluch der Ungerechtigkeit und vom Segen des Rechtes.«31 Aber ihre eigentliche Probe hat die Rechtsidee freilich auf einem anderen Gebiet: im Aufbau der politischen und sozialen Wirklichkeit, zu bestehen. Wie ihr dies innerhalb des Griechentums gelingt und wie sie aus dieser Probe in geklärter und vertiefter Fassung hervorgeht, dies hat Jaeger in seiner Interpretation 27 Zum Begriff der »archaischen Logik« verweise ich auf die Ausführungen bei Ernst Hoffmann, Die Sprache und die archaische Logik, Tübingen 1925 (Heidelberger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte, Bd. 3). 28 Vgl. Platon, Phaidros 259 E ff. 29 Rudolf Hirzel, Themis, Dike und Verwandtes. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Rechtsidee bei den Griechen, Leipzig 1907. 30 Victor Ehrenberg, Die Rechtsidee im frühen Griechentum. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der werdenden Polis, Leipzig 1921. 31 Jaeger, Paideia, S. 96.

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von Solons politischer Reform und von Solons Dichtung gezeigt. Solon ist nach ihm »[…] nicht der Wiederentdecker der hesiodischen Gedanken – dessen bedurfte es nicht – sondern ihr Fortbildner. Auch für ihn steht fest, daß das Recht seine unerschütterliche Stelle im göttlichen Gefüge der Welt hat. […] Die | Strafe kommt früher oder später und stellt den notwendigen Ausgleich her, wo menschliche Hybris die gerechten Grenzen überschritten hat. [Aber d]ie göttliche Strafe ist für [Solon nicht] mehr Mißernte und Pestilenz wie für Hesiod, sondern sie vollzieht sich immanent durch die Störung des sozialen Organismus, die eine jede Verletzung des Rechts bewirkt.«32 Mit dieser Wen d u n g z u r I m ma ne nz ist das Problem in ein neues Stadium eingetreten, und jetzt erst kann sich der eigentliche, entscheidende Umschwung vollziehen. Nun war die Bahn frei für eine Auffassung des menschlichen Handelns, die in der mythischen Weltansicht kein Analogon hat. Noch war freilich dem Mythos die Herrschaft nicht entrissen; aber sie war ihm zum mindesten strittig gemacht. Damit der neu errungene Boden urbar und fruchtbar gemacht werden konnte, dazu war indes der Einsatz anderer Kräfte notwendig. Wie diese Kräfte entstehen und wie sie mehr und mehr erstarken, können wir ebensowohl an der Entwicklung der griechischen Philosophie wie an der der attischen Tragödie verfolgen. Beide schlagen zunächst getrennte Wege ein. Die Verbindung von Philosophie und Tragödie stellt sich erst in späterer Zeit bei Euripides her. Aischylos erscheint von rein theoretischen Motiven und Interessen noch kaum berührt. Er schreitet aus seinem eigensten Kreis, aus dem Kreis der dichterischen und religiösen Intuition, nirgends heraus. Er versucht nicht, seine Menschen- und Weltauffassung in rein begrifflicher, in abstrakter oder »diskursiver« Form auszudrücken. Dennoch spürt man bei Aischylos, wie bei jedem wahrhaft großen Tragiker, daß er nicht nur einzelne tragische Stoffe gestaltet, sondern daß das Ganze seines Werkes von einem ihm eigentümlichen, tragischen Lebensgefühl durchdrungen und der adäquate Ausdruck desselben ist. Dieses Gefühl versenkt sich in die mythische Welt, um sie innerlich umzuschaffen. Denn an den Inhalt der mythischen Überlieferung fühlt sich Aischylos nicht gebunden. Er schaltet mit ihm völlig frei; er gibt ihm das Gepräge seiner dichterischen Phantasie und seines religiösen Glaubens. Das Epos sieht alles, was es berührt, im Lichte der Vergangenheit. Es vertieft sich in das Geheimnis des Ursprungs und des Werdens der Götter. Durch Hesiod hatte diese Theogonie ihre dichterische Gestaltung erhalten. Aber im Drama waltet ein anderes Interesse. Hier muß 32

A. a. O., S. 193.

14–15

Logos, Dike, Kosmos

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alles zur lebendigen Gegenwart werden. Aus der Form der Erzählung geht der Mythos in die der Handlung über. Damit gewinnt auch die Frage | nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Mensch und Gott ein anderes Ansehen. Es ist der unmittelbare Konflikt zwischen beiden Welten, den das Drama gestalten will. Und dieser ist kein bloß äußerer Widerstreit, sondern hier handelt es sich um eine Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung von anderer, geistiger Art. Auch in der »Ilias« steigen die Götter in das menschliche Schlachtgetümmel hinab, und Aphrodite, die Göttin, kann vom Arm des sterblichen Kriegers getroffen und verwundet werden. Aber das Drama muß den Kampf in anderer Weise schildern. Wir sehen nicht nur, was dem Menschen durch Gott oder diesem durch jenen geschieht, sondern wir betrachten beide in ihrem inneren Sein, in ihrem Tun und Leiden. Dieses Tun und Leiden in seiner ganzen Tiefe auszumessen, wird zur eigentlichen und höchsten Aufgabe des tragischen Dichters. Der »Prometheus« des Aischylos ist das erste große und in gewissem Sinne unübertroffene Beispiel dafür, wie diese Aufgabe zu bewältigen, wie der Streit zwischen Gott und Mensch sichtbar zu machen ist, ohne daß er in dieser Sichtbarkeit irgend etwas von seiner reinen Innerlichkeit, von seiner »Idealität« verliert. Aischylos hat auch hier den Stoff ganz frei behandelt. Es ist nicht mehr ein einzelnes Vergehen, eine bestimmte objektive Tat, die an Prometheus bestraft wird. Nicht die Tatsache des Feuerraubs, sondern die Gesinnung, in der dieser Raub begangen wurde, wird zum eigentlichen dramatischen Thema. Prometheus, der selbst daran mitgeholfen hat, Zeus zur Herrschaft zu bringen, lehnt sich gegen ihn auf, als dieser beschließt, das Menschengeschlecht zu vernichten. Er wird zum Retter des Menschengeschlechts: nicht durch die Gabe des Feuers, sondern dadurch, daß er für dasselbe zum eigentlichen Heilbringer, zum Bringer der Kultur wird.33 Aber er kann den Menschen die Kultur nicht bringen, ohne daß er ihnen zuvor einen neuen Geist einpflanzt: den Geist, der in ihm selbst mächtig ist. Daß er sich dem Menschen in dieser Weise zuwendet und daß er ihn Anteil gewinnen lassen will an dem Besten, was er besitzt: darin besteht die »Menschenliebe«, deren er sich rühmt. Der Chor hält ihm vor, daß er die Himmlischen zu wenig, die Sterblichen zu hoch geehrt habe.34 Er 33 Über die Umwandlung des mythischen Stoffes in Aischylos’ »Prometheus« s. die Darstellung von Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Aischylos. Interpretationen, Berlin 1914, S. 130 ff. 34 Aischylos, Prometheus, in: Tragoediae, hrsg. v. Gottfried Hermann, Bd. I, Leipzig 1852, S. 43–83: S. 49, V. 123: »δι: τ=ν λαν φιλτητα βροτ3ν«; S. 64, V. 541–543: »Ζ0να γ:ρ ο τρομ ων Bδα γν9μα σ βει νατοJς Hγαν […]«.

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hat sie geehrt, indem er sie der Freiheit würdig erachtete, | die er in sich selbst wirksam und die er als sein eigentliches, unverlierbares Eigentum fühlt. Sie kann durch keine Strafe, die Zeus aussinnen mag, unterdrückt oder bezwungen werden. Am Felsen angeschmiedet und der Qual verfallen, ruft er noch einmal dem Zeus sein trotziges Freiheitsgefühl entgegen: »8κ9ν, 8κîν Aμαρτον, οκ !ρν#σομαι«.35 Sein Vergehen, wenn es ein Vergehen ist, war ein solches, das aus dem Wi s s e n, nicht aus Torheit oder Verblendung stammt.36 Er kann der Strafe nicht entgehen; aber sie wird ihn nicht zerbrechen, weil sie die Macht dieses Wissens in ihm nicht auslöschen kann. Noch merkwürdiger und noch bedeutsamer für unser Problem ist ein anderer Zug im Drama des Aischylos. Auch hier gibt es eine »Theogonie«‚ ein Werden der Götter; aber sie ist von völlig anderer Art als bei Hesiod. Denn es ist das Wesen des Göttlichen selbst, das sich, wenn wir der Entwicklung des Aischyleischen Dramas folgen, allmählich vor unseren Augen wandelt. Im »Prometheus« erscheint Zeus noch als der harte Tyrann, der sich durch Gewalt und List die Herrschaft angeeignet hat. Er ist nichts als ein eigensinniger und eigenmächtiger Despot. Aber wenn wir das Drama des Aischylos auf seiner Höhe und seiner Vollendung betrachten, hat sich das Bild völlig verändert. Zeus selbst ist ein anderer geworden: Er ist der Hüter und Schutzherr des Rechts. Nicht mehr Kratos und Bia, Kraft und Gewalt, sondern Dike und Aidos, Gerechtigkeit und fromme Scheu, sind diejenigen, die seine Gebote vollstrecken. Als ein starker und strenger, aber zugleich als gerechter und gütiger Herrscher wird Zeus in dem großen Chorlied des Agamemnon gepriesen.37 Damit erst ist die Entwicklung, die wir hier verfolgen, zu ihrem wirklichen inneren Abschluß gelangt. Der erste Akt in dem großen Drama zwischen Gott und Mensch war ein Akt der Empörung; der zweite ist ein Akt der Versöhnung. Die Eumeniden sind, am Schluß der »Orestie«, besänftigt. Sie folgen dem Rat Athenes, sie gehorchen der Stimme der Weisheit und der Mäßigung. Denn indem der Mensch sich gegen die mythischen Mächte auflehnte, hat er damit nicht nur sich selbst gewonnen, sondern er hat auch das Bild des Göttlichen in seiner Seele | gerettet. »Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott […]«:38 In dem Augenblick, wo der Mensch ein anderer A. a. O., S. 54, V. 268. »%γK δ τα2$ Lπαντ$ Iπιστμην.« Ebd., V. 267. 37 Vgl. hierzu Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in der Einleitung zur deutschen Übersetzung des »Agamemnon«, Vorwort zu: Aischylos, Agamemnon, in: Griechische Tragoedien, übers. v. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Bd. II: Orestie, Berlin 21901, S. 1–47: S. 45. 38 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zahme Xenien IV, in: Werke, hrsg. im 35 36

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Logos, Dike, Kosmos

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geworden ist, muß auch die Vorstellung des Göttlichen sich wandeln und zu einer reineren Gestalt geläutert werden. Die P h ilo so p h ie vollzieht nur die ihr eigentümliche und gemäße Aufgabe – die Aufgabe der Zusammenschau, des συνορ+ν εBς Eν, wie Platon es nennt – wenn sie alle diese verschiedenen Elemente und Momente der griechischen Bildung in sich aufnimmt, um sie mit einem Blicke zu umfassen und in ihrem inneren Zusammenhang zu verstehen. Sie dringt zu dem allgemeinen Gedanken einer universellen Gesetzesordnung vor, die sich uns in dreifacher Weise offenbart: als Denkgesetz, als sittliches Gesetz und als Naturgesetz. Dies ist es, was bei Heraklit und Parmenides noch in halb mythischen Bildern, bei Demokrit in der Sprache des mathematischen Denkens, bei Platon und Aristoteles in der Sprache metaphysicher Begriffe ausgesprochen wird. Bei Parmenides und Heraklit kann das »Verhängnis«‚ die εMμαρμ νη, noch zum Synonymon für Logos und Dike werden. »[Κ]ατ τινα εMμαρμ νην !νγκην« vollzieht sich nach einem Worte Heraklits aller Naturlauf.39 Im selben Sinne spricht Parmenides von der Allgewalt der Notwendigkeit, die das Sein in seiner Natur verharren läßt und es von allen Seiten fest umschließt: »κρατερ= γ:ρ $Aνγκη περατος %ν δεσμο1σιν Fχει, τ μιν !μφς % ργει.«40 Auch Platon kann sich, wo er von der Notwendigkeit spricht, der mythischen Bildkraft, die in dem griechischen Wort liegt, nicht entziehen. Im zehnten Buche des »Staats« spricht er von der »Spindel der Notwendigkeit«, durch die die Sphären in Umschwung gesetzt werden. Gedreht wird sie auf den Knien der Ananke; die Moiren, ihre Töchter, sitzen daneben und besingen das Geschehen; Lachesis das Vergangene, Klotho das Gegenwärtige, Atropos das Künftige.41 Was diese Notwendigkeit von der des Mythos scheidet, ist ein einziger fundamentaler Zug. Sie stammt für Heraklit wie für Platon von innen, nicht von außen. Das ist es, was Heraklit in dem lapidaren Satze »5ος !νρ9π&ω δαμ&ων« ausspricht,42 und das ist die Grundanschauung, die Platon im Bilde der »Seelenwahl« ausdrückt. »Nicht euch wird der Dämon erlosen«, so sagt Lachesis zu | Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 4 Abt., insges. 133 Bde. in 143 Bdn., Weimar 1887–1919, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 286–312: S. 288.] 39 Vgl. Cilicius Simplicius, In Aristotelis physicorum libros quattuor priores commentaria (Buch 2, 23), hrsg. mit Unterstützung der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften v. Hermann Diels (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Bd. IX), Berlin 1882, zit. nach: Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Bd. I, S. 58. 40 Parmenides, Fragm. 8, V. 30 f., a. a. O., S. 120. 41 Platon, Republik 616 C ff. [Zitat 616 C: »’Ανγκης Hτρακτον«]. 42 Heraklit, Fragm. 119, zit. nach: Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Bd. I, S. 78.

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den Seelen, denen sie die verschiedenen Lebenslose vorhält, »sondern ihr werdet den Dämon erlosen.«43 Wir können noch ganz nachfühlen, welches gewaltige Oxymoron in einem solchen Wort für einen Griechen des fünften Jahrhunderts liegen mußte. Vom Standpunkt des Mythos gesehen schließt dieses Wort einen Widersinn ein. Denn für den Mythos ist das »Dämonische« eben das, was jenseit alles Könnens und Wollens des Menschen liegt. Es steht ihm als ein Fremdes und unendlich Überlegenes gegenüber. Aber ebendieses schlechthin Undurchsichtige, dieses »Irrationale« wird jetzt der Wahl, und damit der ratio , der Entscheidung der sittlichen Vernunft anheimgegeben. Der Mensch, die sittliche Persönlichkeit nimmt die Schuld auf sich, die im Kreise des mythischen Bewußtseins dem Dämon zugeschoben wurde. Auch diesen Zug hat die griechische klassische Ethik mit der griechischen Tragödie gemein. Als Klytaimnestra im »Agamemnon« des Aischylos den Mord an Agamemnon von sich abzuwälzen sucht und erklärt, nicht sie, sondern der alte Fluchgeist des Hauses habe die Tat begangen, tritt ihr der Chor entgegen: Sie allein ist es, die die Tat getan und die sie zu verantworten hat.44 Die gleiche Grundüberzeugung spricht Platon in seiner Sprache aus: »αBτα 8λομ νου, ες !νατιος«.45 Um die Begriffsbestimmung des höchsten Gutes sind in der antiken Ethik hartnäckige Kämpfe geführt worden, die sich über Jahrhunderte erstrecken. Aber wenn wir heute diese Kämpfe überblicken, so tritt für uns die Einheit weit stärker als der Gegensatz hervor. Die Antwort mochte hier noch so verschieden ausfallen – der Unterschied wird doch immer wieder überbrückt durch die innere ideelle Gemeinschaft, die schon in der Fragestellung liegt. Eine solche Gemeinschaft spüren wir noch im heftigsten Streit der einzelnen philosophischen Schulen. Sie verbindet Platon und Demokrit, Stoiker und Epikureer. Denn überall herrscht hier die Überzeugung, daß die »Eudämonie« nichts ist, was dem Menschen von außen »zufällt«‚ daß sie kein bloßes »Akzidens« der Seele ist, sondern daß sie auf einer inneren Haltung der Seele beruht, die diese sich selbst geben muß. Gelingt ihr dieser Akt der Selbstbefreiung, so hat sie sich damit zwar nicht der Gewalt des Schicksals entzogen, wohl aber hat sie die Furcht vor dem Schicksal überwunden. Die Furcht vor dem bösen Dämon ist verschwunden: Die »Deisidämonie« ist zur »Eudämonie« geworden. »Wer einen festen und wohl43 [Platon, Republik 617 E: »οôχ -μ α 1 ς δαμων λ#ξεται, !λλ$ -με1ς δαμονα αMρ#σεσε. πρ3τος δ$ G λαχîν πρ3τος αMρεσω βον,  R συν σται %ξ !νγκης.«] 44 Aischylos, Agamemnon (V. 1498 ff.), in: Griechische Tragoedien, Bd. II, S. 49–118: S. 107. 45 Platon, Republik 617 E.

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gefügten Sinn besitzt, dem fügt sich auch | das Leben zu einem Ganzen«, so sagt auch Demokrit.46 Denn das Glück wohnt nicht in Herden oder Gold, sondern die Seele ist der Wohnsitz des Dämons (»ψυχ= οBκητ#ριον δαμονος«).47 In dieser ethischen Grundfrage erblicken wir Aristoteles unmittelbar an der Seite von Demokrit, den er in seiner Physik und Naturphilosophie unablässig bekämpft. Auch die »Nikomachische Ethik« betont, daß die wahre Eudämonie nicht im Besitze äußerer Güter, sondern allein in einer bestimmten Beschaffenheit der Seele gesucht werden müsse: denn »[d]as Größte und Höchste des Menschenlebens dem Zufall Preis zu geben, das wäre doch allzu verkehrt [und geradezu schmählich]«.48 Dies alles ist Theorie und will Theorie sein – aber es ist keineswegs bloß abstrakte Doktrin, sondern es ist ein Spiegel des Lebens selbst. Nirgends vielleicht spürt man die »Lebensnähe« der griechischen Philosophie so deutlich wie dort, wo die griechischen Denker von der Gerechtigkeit sprechen. Wenn Aristoteles, im fünften Buch der »Nikomachischen Ethik«, seine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit entwickelt, so nimmt auch seine sonst so gemessene und sachliche Sprache für uns einen neuen Klang an. Hier verwehrt er dieser Sprache nicht das Anklingen und innere Mitklingen des Gefühls. Nicht der Morgenstern und nicht der Abendstern – so sagt er – strahlt in so hellem Glanze wie die Gerechtigkeit. Die Lehre aber, daß die Gerechtigkeit die Quintessenz aller Tugenden ist und daß in ihr alle Einzeltugenden vereint und beschlossen sind, hat nicht erst der Ethiker Aristoteles geschaffen. Das Wort, auf das er sich in diesem Zusammenhang beruft: »%ν δ δικαιοσνTη συλλ#βην π+σ$ !ρετ= Fνι«,49 begegnet uns schon im sechsten Jahrhundert, in der Spruchdichtung des Phokylides und in den Elegien des Theognis. Die Philosophie hat hier also, rein zeitlich betrachtet, kaum die Führung; aber sie schließt die Entwicklung ab und drückt ihr gewissermaßen das Siegel auf. Denn durch sie allein ergab sich die Synthese von »theoretischer« und »praktischer« Vernunft: die Ableitung von Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit aus einer gemeinsamen Wurzel. Die Verbindung beider war schon zuvor gefühlt und gefordert, aber erst die Philosophie vermochte diese Forderung 46 »οãσιν G τρπος %στν ε;τακτος, τοτοισι κα ¢ βος ε7 τ τακται.« Demokrit, Fragm. 61, zit. nach: Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Bd. I, S. 401. 47 Ders., Fragm. 171, a. a. O., S. 416, vgl. Fragm. 170, ebd.: »εδαιμονη ψυχ0ς κα κακοδαιμονη«. 48 Aristoteles, Nikomachische Ethik I 10, 1099 b 24 f. [»τ δ μ γιστον κα κλλιστον %πιτρ ψαι τχTη λαν πλημμελς Uν ε η.« Verifziert nach: Opera, Bd. II, S. 1094–1181: S. 1099]. 49 [A. a. O., V 3, 1129 b 29 f., S. 1129.]

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zu erfüllen und zu rechtfertigen. Hirzel hat in seinem Buch »Themis, Dike und Verwandtes« eine Fülle von Belegstellen | gesammelt, in denen die Begriffe der Wahrheit und des Rechts Seite an Seite erscheinen. »Wo […] das Wesen der beiden Begriffe am reinsten strahlt«, so sagt er, »in der Personification, durch die sie sich zu den Göttern erheben, erscheint auch ihre Vereinigung als die engste, schwesterliche, da Δκη und $Αλ#εια beide als Töchter des Zeus gelten. Beide treffen sich auf ihren Wegen, die Δκη weiss und erkennt Alles und leitet zur Wahrheit, während andererseits wo die $Αλ#εια waltet oder ihr Ebenbild, die $Ατρ κεια, Alles [mit] Recht geschieht.«50 Erst aus dieser Verknüpfung mit dem Begriffe der Wahrheit konnte die Rechtsidee jene universelle Geltung gewinnen, die ihr im griechischen Denken zugesprochen wird. Mehr und mehr mußte sich jetzt die Überzeugung befestigen, daß das Recht sich zwar in bestimmten »Satzungen« ausspricht, daß aber sein letzter Ursprung in etwas anderem als in der bloßen Willkür solcher Einzelsatzungen zu suchen sei. Es läßt sich kaum sagen, ob sich dieser Gegensatz zwischen dem, was »der Sache nach« und dem, was »der Satzung nach« gilt, der Gegensatz zwischen dem φσει @ν und dem  σει @ν, am Problem der Naturerkenntnis oder an dem der sittlichen Erkenntnis entwickelt hat. Beide gehen hier Hand in Hand. Die Natur gilt dem Griechen niemals als ein bloß Gewordenes oder Gemachtes, denn der Begriff der »Schöpfung aus Nichts« ist dem griechischen Denken fremd. Die Aristotelische Physik sieht in Gott den »Anfang der Bewegung«, aber sie fragt nicht nach dem Anfang der Materie. Die Materie gilt als ungeworden und ewig. Ebensowenig läßt sich nach dem Ursprung der Form der Natur fragen. Platon greift im »Timaios« zu dem mythischen Bild des Weltschöpfers, des »Demiurgen«. Aber der Demiurg ist nur der Ordner, nicht der Schöpfer der Natur. Denn er könnte nicht schaffen, wenn er nicht in seiner Tätigkeit auf ein Beständiges, Ungewordenes, sich selbst Gleiches: auf die Welt der Ideen, hinblickte. Durch die Verbindung mit dem Begriff der »Natur« wird daher das Recht der Frage nach seiner zeitlichen Herkunft enthoben. Von ihm läßt sich jetzt das gleiche sagen, was Heraklit vom Kosmos sagt. »Diese Weltordnung, die für alle Wesen dieselbe ist, hat kein Gott und kein Mensch geschaffen, sondern sie war immerdar, und sie ist und wird sein.«51 So entsteht aus dem Gedanken der ungewordenen Wahrheit und der ungewordenen Hirzel, Themis, Dike und Verwandtes, S. 115 f. Heraklit, Fragm. 30, zit. nach: Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Bd. I, S. 66 [»κσμον τνδε, τν ατν πντων, ο≠τε τις ε3ν ο≠τε !νρ9πων %ποησεν, !λλ$ 5ν !ε κα ©στιν κα ©σται […]«]. 50 51

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Natur der kühne Gedanke | der Unwandelbarkeit des Rechts: ein Postulat, das aller Erfahrung zu widerstreiten scheint, das aber die »Vernunft« immer wieder aufrichtet und aufrechterhält. Logos und Dike trennen sich auch hier nicht; beide müssen als ein »Gemeinsames und Göttliches«, als ein κοινν καë ε1ον anerkannt werden. Wer sich von den Schranken des individuellen Wähnens und Wollens, von der Bδη φρνησις befreit, der erblickt dieses Allgemeine. Das wahrhafte Denken und die echte sittliche Gesinnung kann nur aus der Überzeugung von dieser einen, allen gemeinsamen Ordnung fließen. Hierauf beruht der logische Begriff des φρονε1ν wie der ethische Begriff der φρνησις und der σωφροσνη. Ethische und theoretische Selbstbesinnung führen zu dem gleichen Ziele hin. Den Gedanken des gemeinsamen, übergreifenden Weltgesetzes verkündet die Philosophie; aber die H i ng a be an dieses Gesetz galt den griechischen Denkern niemals als eine bloß theoretische oder kontemplative Aufgabe. Die Gemeinschaft, die Polis muß mit dieser Hingabe erfüllt und durchdrungen sein. Diesem Ziel strebt der Platonische Staatsentwurf nach; und Heraklit, der Aristokrat, ruft das Volk zu diesem Kampfe auf: »Das Volk soll kämpfen für das Gesetz wie um seine Mauer.«52 Die Philosophie nimmt die Leitung in diesem Kampfe für sich in Anspruch, weil sie sich zu jener Form des »reinen Denkens« erhoben hat, aus der allein die Kraft für ihn fließen kann. Damit ist die Kraft des Denkens als die Wurzel aller anderen Tätigkeit und Tüchtigkeit erklärt: »τ φρ ονε1ν !ρετ= μεγστη, κα σοφη !λη α λ γειν κα ποιε1ν κατ: φσιν %παãοντας.«53 Auch in der griechischen Tragödie finden wir ständig die Gleichsetzung der Rechtsordnung mit der kosmischen Ordnung. Durch sie erst wird das Recht, das wahre Recht, von allem Partikularen, Zufälligen und Willkürlichen befreit. Gegen die Willkür der positiven Satzungen darf der Mensch sich jetzt auf die Macht und die Geltung des »ungeschriebenen Gesetzes« berufen.54 So spricht Sophokles von der Rechtsordnung in denselben Worten, in denen Heraklit von der Naturordnung sprach: » ο γρ τι ν2ν γε κ!χ ς, !λλ$ !ε ποτε

ζT0 τα2τα, κοδες ο6δεν %ξ 4του %φνη.«55 | 52 Ders., Fragm. 44, a. a. O., S. 68 [»μχεσαι χρ= τν δ0μον -πρ το2 νμου 4κωσπερ τεχεος«]. 53 Ders., Fragm. 112, a. a. O., S. 77. 54 Über die Entwicklung des Begriffs des WΑγραφος νμος vgl. besonders Rudolf Hirzel, WΑγρ αφος νμος, Leipzig 1900 (Abhandlungen der philologischhistorischen Classe der Königl. Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Bd. 20, Nr. 1). 55 Sophokles, Antigone (V. 456 f.), hrsg. v. August Nauck, Berlin 1867, S. 176.

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Über der Polis, in ihrem faktischen und historischen Bestand, ist damit ein anderes und Höheres anerkannt, das diesen Bestand erst wahrhaft verbürgen kann. Sicherlich können wir das griechische geistige Leben vom Leben der Polis nicht loslösen. Für den Griechen der klassischen Zeit bleibt die Verbundenheit mit der Polis ein Höchstes, das er nicht missen kann oder will. Aber eben aus ihr ergibt sich die Tatsache, daß auch jeder Schritt zur geistigen Selbstbefreiung, den die Wissenschaft, die Kunst, die Philosophie tut, sofort auf das Idealbild der Polis zurückwirkt und ihm einen neuen Gehalt gibt. Die neue Freiheit löst die Bindung nicht auf; sie gibt ihr vielmehr eine andere Form und eine andere Begründung. Die Griechen sind die ersten, die den Zusammenhang von Freiheit und Gesetz in dieser Weise empfunden haben. Wenn sie ihren Unterschied von den Barbaren aussprechen und kennzeichnen wollen, so tritt für sie immer wieder dieser Zug in den Mittelpunkt. Was den Griechen vor dem Barbaren auszeichnet, ist dies, daß er keinen despotischen Zwang erträgt, daß er sich selbst befehlen kann und will. In dem Traumgesicht der Königin Atossa, in den »Persern« des Aischylos, sieht die Königin, wie Xerxes, ihr Sohn, zwei Frauen vor seinen Wagen gespannt hat, die eine in dorischer, die andere in persischer Tracht. Während diese sich dem Zwange fügt, bäumt jene sich unwillig auf; sie zertrümmert das Joch, so daß der König vom Wagen herabstürzt.56 Und auf die Frage der Atossa an den Chor, wer dem griechischen Heer als Herrscher gebiete, antwortet dieser, daß eine solche Form der Herrschaft für den Griechen nicht besteht. Er folgt nicht, als Höriger oder Sklave, dem Gebot eines einzelnen Mannes.57 Aber dies ist nur die e in e Seite des griechischen Freiheitsbegriffs. Denn nicht minder bestimmt spricht die griechische Philosophie und die griechische Tragödie es aus, daß das Gesetz allein der echte Ausdruck der Freiheit ist. Das ist die Staatsgesinnung Platons und die Summe seiner politischen Weisheit. Auch Euripides sieht hierin den wahren Unterschied zwischen Hellenen und Barbaren. Wenn Iason, in der »Medea« des Euripides, Medea vorhält, was sie ihm zu danken habe, so nennt er unter allen Segnungen der griechischen Kultur das Recht an erster Stelle: Hier gebiete nicht | die rohe Gewalt, sondern Recht und Gesetz.58 Den Sinn und Gehalt

Aischylos, Die Perser (V. 181 ff.), in: Tragoediae, S. 85–124: S. 93. A. a. O. (V. 242), S. 95: »ο;τινος δο2λοι κ κληνται φωτς οδ$ -π#κοοι«. 58 Euripides, Medea (V. 533–535), in: Tragoediae, hrsg. v. Adolf Kirchhoff, Bd. I, Berlin 1855, S. 141–182: S. 158: »πρ3τον μν XΕλλδ$ !ντ βαρβρου χνος γα1αν κατοικε1ς κα δκην %πστασαι νμοις δ χρ0σαι μ= πρς Bσχος χριν.« 56 57

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solcher Worte empfinden wir heute vielleicht stärker und tiefer als je zuvor. Heute wissen wir daher auch, daß es kein bloß gelehrtes Interesse ist, das wir an der griechischen Philosophie und am Ganzen der griechischen Bildung nehmen. Wir geben uns dabei keinem bloßen Rückblick hin, sondern was uns treibt, ist die Sorge um unsere geistige Zukunft. Wir wissen, daß diese Zukunft aufs schwerste bedroht ist, wenn es nicht gelingt, das Band zwischen Wahrheit und Recht zwischen Logos und Dike wieder in derselben Weise zu knüpfen, wie die Griechen es zuerst in der Geschichte der Menschheit geknüpft haben.

III Wenn der Begriff » K o s m o s « nichts anderes besagte als die Behauptung einer gewissen Ordnung und Regelmäßigkeit, die sich in den Naturerscheinungen beobachten läßt, so wäre es kaum möglich, die Frage nach dem historischen Ursprung dieses Begriffs mit Sicherheit zu beantworten. Denn die Ahnung einer solchen Ordnung scheint dem Menschen auf keiner Stufe seiner geistigen Entwicklung, die uns geschichtlich zugänglich ist, gefehlt zu haben. Daß die Naturerscheinungen einem bestimmten Rhythmus folgen und daß es in ihnen eine gewisse Wiederkehr gibt: dies gehört sicher zu den frühesten Beobachtungen, die der menschliche Geist gemacht hat. Und sofort mußte sich daran der Wunsch knüpfen, auf Grund dieser Wiederkehr das Künftige vorauszusagen und aus dem gegenwärtig Gegebenen zu bestimmen. Alles menschliche Handeln ist auf eine derartige Bestimmung, in so engen Grenzen sie sich auch halten mag, angewiesen; alle prudentia beruht in irgendeiner Weise auf der providentia. Am deutlichsten tritt diese Regel, der die Phänomene unterworfen sind, an dem periodischen Wechsel von Hell und Dunkel hervor. Hier, wenn irgendwo, müssen wir den ersten gedanklichen Keim zur Bildung des Kosmosbegriffes sehen. Vielleicht hat der Mensch an diesem Beispiel zuerst die Einsicht gewonnen, daß es etwas wie einen objektiven Verlauf des Geschehens gibt: eine Einsicht, die die Bedingung aller Erfor | schung und aller Erkenntnis der Natur ist. In diesem Sinne hat man mit Recht gesagt, daß das Wechselspiel zwischen Licht und Dunkel, zwischen Tag und Nacht als der früheste Impuls und zugleich als das höchste Ziel des menschlichen Denkvermögens angesehen werden könne. »Nicht nur unsere Erde, sondern wir selbst, unser eigenes geistiges Ich […] sind sonnengeboren und sonnengenährt. […] Die fortschreitende Auffassung des Unterschiedes von Tag und Nacht,

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Licht und Dunkel ist der innerste Nerv aller menschlichen Kulturentwicklung.«59 Als das erste spekulative Interesse in den Denkern der ionischen Schule erwachte, da fanden sie in der ägyptischen und babylonischen Wissenschaft bereits reiche Schätze von Beobachtungen und Berechnungen vor, auf die sie sich stützen konnten. Sie haben aus dieser Quelle immer wieder geschöpft, und die Fülle der inhaltlichen Erkenntnis, die sie dadurch gewonnen haben, läßt sich von uns kaum abschätzen. Und sicherlich waren es nicht nur empirische Einzelerkenntnisse, die sie hierbei gewannen, sondern sie sahen hier auch ein bestimmtes Musterbild wissenschaftlicher »Theorie« vor sich. Was Babylonier und Ägypter sich an wissenschaftlichen Einsichten erarbeitet haben, das wäre ohne eine solche Theorie kaum möglich gewesen. Man hat freilich oft behauptet, daß die ägyptische Geometrie über den Zustand einer praktischen Meßkunde kaum hinausgekommen sei und daß auch die babylonische Rechenkunst keine anderen als rein empirische Ziele verfolgt habe. Auf Grund des heutigen Standes der Forschung muß jedoch die Philosophiegeschichte mit derartigen Behauptungen sehr vorsichtig sein. Denn die besten Kenner des Quellenmaterials versichern uns vielfach das Gegenteil. Sie erklären, daß es eine hochentwickelte babylonische Algebra gegeben habe, der man auch ein bestimmtes »Beweisverfahren« zubilligen müsse. Auch betonen sie, daß sich schon hier mathematische Fragestellungen finden, die von den Problemen, die sich aus der Astronomie ergeben konnten, gänzlich unabhängig waren; die Entwicklung einer rechnenden Astronomie in der ersten Hälfte des ersten Jahrtausends sei vielmehr wesentlich bedingt durch den bereits erreichten hohen Entwicklungsstand der eigentlichen Mathematik.60 Worin bestand also das Kennzeichnende | und Auszeichnende der griechischen Mathematik, und was gibt ihr ihren spezifisch »philosophischen« Wert? Schon die Antike hat sich diese Frage gestellt, und sie hat eine bestimmte und höchst bezeichnende Antwort auf sie gegeben. Eines der bedeutsamsten Zeugnisse besitzen wir in einem Urteil, das Eudemos in seiner Geschichte der Geometrie gefällt und das Proklos uns in seinem Euklidkommentar aufbehalten hat. Hier wird Pythagoras als derjenige bezeichnet, dem es zuerst gelungen sei, die Geometrie zur 59 Troels Frederik Troels-Lund, Himmelsbild und Weltanschauung im Wandel der Zeiten, autoris., v. Verf. durchges. Übers. v. Leo Bloch, Leipzig 31908, S. 5. 60 Otto Neugebauer, Vorlesungen über Geschichte der antiken mathematischen Wissenschaften, Bd. I: Vorgriechische Mathematik (Die Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften in Einzeldarstellungen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Anwendungsgebiete, Bd. XLIII), Berlin 1934, S. 202 ff.

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Stufe einer reinen Wissenschaft (»εBς σχ0μα παιδεας %λευ ρου«) zu erheben. Dies sei dadurch geschehen, daß er sich nicht mit der Erforschung einzelner Probleme und mit der Anreihung einzelner Theoreme begnügt habe, sondern daß er statt dessen auf die ersten Anfänge (!ρχα ) der Geometrie zurückgegangen sei. Auch habe er die einzelnen Lehrsätze ohne Anlehnung an sinnlich-körperliche Beispiele rein gedanklich betrachtet (»!λως κα νοερ3ς τ: εωρ#ματα διερευν9μενος«).61 Die Frage, welchen rein historischen Wert wir diesem Urteil beimessen dürfen, lasse ich hier dahingestellt. Als Zeugnis für die Lehre und Persönlichkeit des Pythagoras selbst können wir es kaum verwenden. Denn alles, was wir hierüber wissen, gehört der mündlichen Tradition an, und die Legendenbildung hat auf diesem Gebiet schon sehr früh eingesetzt.62 Aber unverkennbar drückt sich in diesen Sätzen die Auffassung aus, die das klassische Griechentum, seit dem fünften Jahrhundert, vom Wesen und von der Aufgabe der wissenschaftlichen Mathematik besaß. Diese sollte kein bloßes Aggregat aus einzelnen Lehrstücken sein, sondern sie sollte ein System bilden. Und dies war nur dadurch erreichbar, daß man mit den Prinzipien begann und von dort, von oben her (Hνωεν) in geregeltem und lükkenlosem Beweisgang zu den Folgerungen weiterging. In Euklids Werk hat diese Forderung jene Erfüllung gefunden, die für alle Zeiten vorbildlich geworden ist: Der Ko s m o s d er Ge ome tr i e steht hier zum ersten Male in vollendeter Gestalt vor uns. Aber wie ist dieses κτ0μα %ς !ε zustande gekommen, und welchen Anteil hat die griechische P h ilo so p h ie an ihm gehabt? Daß Euklids Werk auf der Arbeit des Platonischen Kreises fußt und diese zu ihrem systematischen Abschluß bringt, ist unverkennbar. Die Kette der Tradition, die von den Mathematikern | der Platonischen Akademie, von Eudoxos und Theaitet bis zu Euklid hinführt, können wir genau verfolgen.63 Aber der Platonismus allein hätte diese neue Gestalt der wissenschaftlichen Geometrie kaum hervorbringen können. Betrachtet man die Entwicklung näher, so findet man, daß das Ganze der griechischen Philosophie, daß die Arbeit fast aller philosophischen Schulen erforderlich war, wenn eine derartige Leistung entstehen sollte. Pythago61 Proklos, In primum Euclidis elementorum librum commentarii, hrsg. v. Gottfried Friedlein, Leipzig 1873, S. 65. 62 Näheres über diese Frage bei Erich Frank, Plato und die sogenannten Pythagoreer. Ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte des griechischen Geistes, Halle a. d. S. 1923. 63 Vgl. hierzu Eva Sachs, Die fünf Platonischen Körper. Zur Geschichte der Mathematik und der Elementenlehre Platons und der Pythagoreer, Berlin 1917 (Philologische Untersuchungen, H. 24).

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reer und Platoniker, Anaxagoras und Demokrit haben an ihr mitgearbeitet. Und bei ihnen allen, so verschiedene Wege sie auch im einzelnen gegangen sind, läßt sich deutlich ein allgemeines gedankliches Motiv erkennen, in dem sie übereinstimmen. Immer bestimmter tritt hier eine gemeinsame Frage und eine gemeinsame Aufgabe heraus: die Aufgabe der Kritik der Sinneswahrnehmung. Schon die Naturphilosophie der Ionier konnte sich ihr nicht ganz entziehen. Heraklit bringt diese Naturphilosophie zum Abschluß; aber er bringt ihr zugleich ihre Enge und ihre methodische Grenze zum Bewußtsein. Denn er erklärt, daß Augen und Ohren den Menschen »schlechte Zeugen« seien, wenn sie »Barbarenseelen« hätten, d. h. wenn sie sich die Sprache, die die Sinne sprechen, nicht zu enträtseln und sie nicht in der rechten Weise zu deuten wüßten.64 Diese Deutung gelingt nicht der Wahrnehmung selbst; sie gelingt erst dem philosophischen Denken, das in der Fülle und in dem Wandel der Erscheinungen das Eine, sich Gleichbleibende, den immerseienden Logos erkennt. Aber Heraklit geht hierin noch nicht bis ans Ende. Denn der Logos ist ihm zwar ein rein Gedankliches; aber er scheut sich nicht, dieses Gedankliche, um es den Menschen zugänglich und verständlich zu machen, in sinnliche Bilder und Gleichnisse einzukleiden. Dies entspricht dem Charakter seiner Lehre, die nicht sowohl erklären als vielmehr »andeuten« will. In diesem Sinne wird der Kosmos, die Weltordnung als ewig lebendiges Feuer bezeichnet, das sich nach Maßen entzündet und nach Maßen verlischt.65 Das Maß (μ τρον), auf das Heraklit hinblickt, ist also kein abstraktes, vom Naturgeschehen ablösbares Maß; es stellt sich immer nur an diesem Geschehen und mitten in ihm dar. Eine Theorie der »reinen« Größe oder der »reinen« Zahl ist unter | diesem Gesichtspunkt weder erforderlich, noch ist sie möglich. Aber je weiter die Entwicklung des mathematischen Denkens fortschritt, um so gebieterischer machte sich ebendiese Forderung geltend. Die Pythagoreer verkünden die Lehre, daß das Wesen, die οσα der Dinge in der Zahl liegt. Aber dieses Wesen ist von anderer Art als die körperlichen Dinge, die Elemente, aus denen sich die physische Wirklichkeit zusammensetzt. Wonach gefragt wird, ist nicht mehr die Beschaffenheit dieser Elemente, sondern ihr Verhältnis, ihre Harmonie. Diese Harmonie wird jetzt zum eigentlichen und höchsten Gegenstand der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis. Denn erst in ihr wird die Vielfalt, die 64 Heraklit, Fragm. 107, zit. nach: Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Bd. I, S. 77: »κακο μρ τυρες !νρ 9ποισιν Yφαλμο κα 8τα βαρβρ ους ψυχ:ς %χντων«. 65 Ders., Fragm. 30, a. a. O. S. 66 f.

27–28

Logos, Dike, Kosmos

31

Buntheit und die Ungleichartigkeit überwunden, die den Phänomenen der Natur anhaftet, wenn wir sie in ihrer unmittelbaren Gestalt, in ihrer sinnlichen Gegebenheit betrachten. Solange wir die Musik nur in den Tönen, die Geometrie nur in einzelnen Gestalten, das Weltgebäude in den Himmelskörpern und ihren Umläufen erfassen, haben wir das wahre Wissen noch nicht erreicht. Dieses beginnt erst, sobald wir einsehen, daß hier nicht verschiedene Probleme, sondern e in Problem vorliegt. Die Töne der Musik, die Gestalten der Geometrie, die Bewegungen der Gestirne: dies alles sind nur Beispiele für ein und dasselbe. Durch alle sinnlichen Formen hindurch scheint und erscheint immer wieder dieses eine: die Harmonie des Alls. In diesem Sinne wird in den Fragmenten des Philolaos die Harmonie als bunt gemischter Dinge Einigung und verschieden gestimmter Dinge Zusammenstimmung erklärt.66 Auf diese Einigung und Zusammenstimmung richtet sich fortan das Wissen; und deshalb muß es zur »Theorie«‚ im strengen Sinne des Wortes, werden. Es muß sich von der Betrachtung der Elemente zur Betrachtung des Ganzen, von den Lehrsätzen zu den Grundsätzen erheben; denn erst damit gelangt es zur Erkenntnis dessen, was die Welt »[i]m Innersten zusammenhält«.67 Auch Demokrit stimmt in diesem Gedanken mit den Pythagoreern völlig überein. Sein »Diakosmos« scheint schon im Titel auf diesen Zusammenhang hinzuweisen. Aber es bedarf für uns nicht solcher Anklänge. Wichtiger ist es, einzusehen, daß das neue Wissenschaftsideal, das Demokrit aufstellt und dem er in seiner physikalischen Theorie, in der Grundlegung der Atomistik Genüge tun will, demselben gedanklichen Motiv wie der Pythagoreismus entstammt. | Auch hier steht die Kritik der Sinneswahrnehmung im Mittelpunkt, und sie führt zum gleichen Ziel. Zwei Formen der Erkenntnis sind es, die streng auseinandergehalten werden müssen. Die eine lehrt uns die Dinge in ihrer Vereinzelung kennen; die andere dringt in den Kern der Dinge ein und gibt uns das Verständnis ihrer allgemeinen Struktur. Nur die letztere hat Anspruch darauf, als echte Erkenntnis (γνηση γν9μη) zu gelten. Was die Sinne uns geben, ist von solcher Erkenntnis weit entfernt; es bleibt im Dunkeln und in der Ungewißheit.68 Wir streben vergeblich danach, in der Wahrnehmung das Wesen der Dinge zu erfassen; was wir durch sie kennenlernen, ist immer nur die Wir66 »Fστι λ:ρ ρμονα πολμιγ ων Eνωσις κα δχα φρονεντων συμφρνησις.« Philolaos, Fragm. 10, zit. nach: Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Bd. I, S. 242. 67 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Eine Tragödie. Erster Theil (Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XIV), S. 28.] 68 Vgl. Demokrit, Fragm. 11, nach: Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Bd. I, S. 389.

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28–29

kung, die die Gegenstände auf uns üben. In dieser aber spiegelt sich weit mehr unser eigenes Sein als das Sein der Dinge selbst ab. Mit jedem neuen Sinneseindruck verschiebt sich uns das Bild der Welt, und aus diesem kaleidoskopischen Wechsel läßt sich keine Wahrheit gewinnen.69 Die sinnliche Welt, die Welt der Farben und Töne, Gerüche und Geschmäcke besteht nur in der Vorstellung – in dem, was Demokrit mit dem Namen »Satzung« (νμος) benennt. »Der Satzung nach gibt es ein Süßes und Bitteres, ein Warmes und Kaltes, der Satzung nach eine Farbe; in Wahrheit aber sind die Atome und das Leere.«70 Denn das Wesen der Atome wird nicht mehr sinnlich angeschaut; es wird gedacht in den reinen Formen der Zahl und der Größe, in arithmetischen und geometrischen Bestimmungen. Mit ihnen erst befinden wir uns auf dem Boden der Notwendigkeit und damit auf dem Boden der Natur. Hier gibt es keinen Zufall mehr. Der mythische Begriff des Zufalls, der txh, ist für den Menschen unüberwindbar, solange er sich lediglich im Kreise der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung bewegt. Unter allen Idolen, die die Sinneswahrnehmung ständig erschafft, ist das Idol des Zufalls eines der gefährlichsten; denn es droht uns für immer in der Unwissenheit festzuhalten.71 Das philosophische und mathematische Denken erst überwindet und durchbricht diese Schranke. Es führt zur Einsicht, daß alles, was ist, kraft einer ihm innewohnenden logischen Notwendigkeit ist: »οδν χρ0μα μτην γνεται, !λλ: πντα %κ λγου τε κα -π$ !νγκμς.«72 | Man sieht, wie schon hier die Entwicklung des Begriffs des Kosmos jene Richtung einschlägt, die bei Platon in voller Deutlichkeit hervortreten wird. In der Tat ist es einseitig und irreführend, wenn man in den geschichtlichen Darstellungen der griechischen Philosophie einen scharfen Trennungsstrich zwischen Demokrit und Platon zu machen sucht, indem man in dem einen nur den großen »Materialisten«, in dem anderen den großen »Idealisten« sieht.73 Bei einer solchen Scheidung 69 Vgl. bes. Theophrast, De sensu 63 (A 135), S. 375: »τ3ν δ […] αBσητ3ν οδενς ε6ναι φσιν, !λλ: πντα πη τ0ς αBσ#σεως !λλοιουμ νης, %ξ \ς γνεσαι τ=ν φαντασαν.« 70 Demokrit, Fragm. 9, zit. nach: Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Bd. I, S. 388 [»Xνμωι$ γρ φησι XγλυκJ κα νμωι πικρν, νμωι ερμν, νμωι ψυχρν, νμωι χροι#, %τε0ι δ Hτομα κα κενν$.«]. 71 Ders., Fragm. 119, a. a. O. S. 407: »Hνρωποι τχης ε δωλον %πλσαντο πρφασιν Bδης !βουλης.« 72 Leukipp, Fragm. 2, S. 350. 73 Vgl. z. B. Wilhelm Windelband, Geschichte der alten Philosophie (Handbuch der klassischen Altertums-Wissenschaft in systematischer Darstellung mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Geschichte und Methodik der einzelnen Disziplinen, hrsg. v. Iwan von Müller, Bd. V/1), 2., sorgfältig durchges. Aufl., München 1894, S. 92 ff.

29–30

Logos, Dike, Kosmos

33

übersieht man allzuleicht, daß es eine Leistung des reinen Denkens, eine Leistung des Logos war, die nicht nur den Begriff der Ideenwelt, sondern auch den der materiellen Welt, der Welt der Atomistik, hervorgebracht hat. Erst Platon hat freilich den Weg, den die Pythagoreische Wissenschaft und die Atomistik eingeschlagen hatte, entschlossen bis zu Ende verfolgt. Er hat die strenge Scheidewand aufgerichtet, die fortan die beiden Arten des »Kosmos« voneinander trennt. Die »Sinnenwelt« und die »Verstandeswelt«, der κσμος Gρατς und der κσμος νοητς, stehen sich von nun ab in voller Bestimmtheit gegenüber. Aber auch die Pythagoreische Theorie der Mathematik und die atomistische Theorie der Naturwissenschaft schließen eine Art »ZweiWelten-Theorie« in sich. Die philosophische Größe Platons besteht darin, daß er diese Theorie, die implizit schon in der älteren Form der griechischen Wissenschaft enthalten war, bewußt aufstellt und daß er sie bis in ihre letzten Konsequenzen durchdenkt. Der Kühnheit dieser Konsequenzen ist er sich hierbei bewußt. Wo er den letzten Schritt tut, wo er die Idee des Guten als die letzte Spitze des Ideenreiches einführt, da spricht er selbst von der »Übersteigerung« des Denkens, deren es bedarf, um zu diesem höchsten Ziel zu gelangen. Die Idee des Guten, und die Idee überhaupt, ist und bleibt in der Tat im gewissen Sinne eine δαιμονα -περβολ#.74 Aber es ist für uns wichtig einzusehen, daß ohne diese »Hyperbel«‚ ohne diese gewaltige Anspannung des philosophischen Denkens, der Begriff Wi s s e ns c ha ft in dem Sinne, in dem er uns heute vertraut ist, nicht gewonnen werden konnte. Die Platonische Trennung zwischen Sinneswelt und Verstandeswelt, der χωρισμς, war der Preis, der in der Geschichte der Menschheit für diesen Begriff gezahlt werden mußte. Sie enthält, systematisch betrachtet, eine Fülle von Schwierigkeiten und Aporien, die Aristoteles in seiner Kritik scharf herausgearbeitet hat. | Die Philosophie hat im Lauf ihrer Entwicklung immer wieder mit diesen Schwierigkeiten zu ringen gehabt. Aber vom historischen Standpunkt aus müssen wir einsehen, daß ohne diesen Schritt, der über alle mögliche Erfahrung hinauszuführen schien, die wirkliche wissenschaftliche Erfahrung nicht begründet werden konnte. Nur durch das Medium der Platonischen Transzendenz konnte, auf langen und schwierigen Umwegen, die Immanenz der mathematischen und der naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis gewonnen und gesichert werden. Erst das Pythagoreisch-Demokriteisch-Platonische Weltbild war es, das auch der modernen Physik und der modernen Kosmologie die Wege gebahnt hat.75 Nachdem ein74 75

Vgl. Platon, Republik 509 C. Vgl. jetzt hierüber meinen Aufsatz »Mathematische Mystik und mathema-

34

Aufsätze und Abhandlungen

30–31

mal die Umrisse dieses Weltbildes festgestellt waren, traten schon im Altertum, in ununterbrochener Folge und in überraschender Schnelligkeit, die entscheidenden Konsequenzen zutage. Jetzt erst wurden die großen Entdeckungen der griechischen Astronomie: die Entdekkung der Kugelgestalt der Erde, die Entdeckung der wahren Planetenbewegung, die theoretische Festlegung des heliozentrischen Systems, möglich.76 Sie sind Resultate der angewandten Mathematik; aber ohne das Postulat der reinen Mathematik und ohne die Durchführung desselben in den verschiedenen philosophischen Schulen wären sie nicht erreichbar gewesen. Denn all dies konnte nur gewonnen werden, indem man zwar von der Erfahrung ausging, aber mehr und mehr lernte, die Erfahrung von der unmittelbaren Sinnenanschauung zu scheiden. Die Kugelgestalt der Erde und ihre Bewegung um die Sonne: dies alles entspricht nicht, sondern es widerspricht dem Zeugnis der Sinne. Aber das Denken nimmt diesen Widerspruch auf sich, wenn es dafür den tieferen und unheilbaren Widerspruch, den Widerspruch in sich selbst, vermeiden kann. Dem »Schein« der Sinne tritt jetzt die Sicherheit der gedanklichen Grundlegung (»tο2 !σφαλο2ς τ0ς -πο σεωw«)77 entgegen. Erst auf diesem Wege konnte zwischen Schein und Erscheinung, zwischen Idol und Idee, zwischen Wahrnehmung und wissenschaftlicher Erfahrung unterschieden und damit eine wahrhafte T he or i e des Kosmos begründet werden. | Für Platon lag hierin und hierin allein der endgültige Beweis der Güte und der Göttlichkeit des Seins. Zwei Punkte – so erklärt er am Schluß der »Gesetze« – sind es, die uns zum Glauben an die Götter führen: erstens die Betrachtung der Seele und der Kraft der Selbstbewegung, die ihr innewohnt; zweitens die Regelmäßigkeit, die wir in der Bewegung der Gestirne gewahr werden. »Denn noch nie ist es vorgekommen, daß irgend ein Mensch, der an die Betrachtung dieser Dinge auch nur mit einiger Fähigkeit und Sachkenntnis herangetreten ist, so gottvergessen gewesen wäre, daß er nicht gerade das Gegenteil von dem an sich erfahren hätte, was die große Menge davon erwartete. Denn diese huldigt der Ansicht, daß die Astronomie und die […] mit ihr verbundenen streng wissenschaftlichen Fächer diejenigen, die sich mit ihnen beschäftigen, zur Gottlosigkeit führen [Wir aber halten es jetzt für] undenkbar, daß irgend ein sterblicher Mensch zu unerschüttische Naturwissenschaft. Betrachtungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der exakten Wissenschaft«, in: Lychnos (1940), S. 248–265 [ECW 22, S. 284–303]. 76 Über die Einzelheiten dieser Entwicklung vgl. die Übersicht im Anhang zu der Schrift von Frank, Plato und die sogenannten Pythagoreer, S. 184 ff 77 Platon, Phaidon 101 D.

31

Logos, Dike, Kosmos

35

terlicher Gottesfurcht gelange, der nicht […] eben [diese beiden] Wahrheiten sich zu eigen gemacht hat, erstens, daß die Seele das Ursprünglichste ist […] und zweitens, daß die Vernunft als die Herrscherin über das Weltall und in der Bewegung der Gestirne waltet.«78 Das Motiv, das hier angeschlagen wird, ist für die gesamte Weiterentwicklung des philosophischen Idealismus maßgebend und wegweisend geblieben. Wir begegnen ihm, in kaum veränderter Gestalt, noch in jenen großartigen Schlußsätzen der »Kritik der praktischen Vernunft«, in denen Kant die Quintessenz seiner Naturlehre und seiner Freiheitslehre gegeben hat. Zwei Dinge – so wird hier erklärt – sind es, die das Gemüt mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht erfüllen, je öfter sich das Nachdenken mit ihnen beschäftigt: »[…] der bestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir.«79 Nach mehr als zweitausend Jahren hören wir hier noch einmal den deutlichen und starken Nachklang der Grundanschauung, die das klassische Griechentum geschaffen hat, indem es die Begriffstrias von Logos, Dike und Kosmos schuf und alle drei Begriffe zu einer unlöslichen systematischen Einheit verband.

78 Platon, Gesetze, 966 E ff. (die deutsche Übersetzung z. T. nach Otto Apelts Ausgabe: Gesetze, übers. u. erl. v. Otto Apelt, Bd. II: Buch 7–12, Leipzig 1916 [Philosophische Bibliothek, Bd. 160], S. 517 ff.: S. 517 f.) [Ab »und zweitens«: »5ν δ τ περ τ=ν φορν, ^ς Fχει τξεως, Hστρων τε κα 4σων Hλλων %γκρατ=ς νο2ς %στ τ π+ν διακεκοσμηκ9ς.«] 79 [Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, hrsg. v. Benzion Kellermann, in: Werke, Bd. V, S. 1–176: S. 174 (Akad.-Ausg. V, 161).]

75–76

37

Thorild und Herder1 (1941)

Daß Thorild in seinen philosophischen Hauptschriften, in den Schriften der Greifswalder Zeit, an die Seite Herders tritt und daß er sich hier als Mitstreiter in dem großen Kampfe fühlt, den Herder gegen die stärkste geistige Macht der Zeit, gegen die Kantische Philosophie führt, ist unverkennbar. Ein Blick auf die Schriften dieser Epoche, insbesondere auf die »Gelehrtenwelt« und die »Archimetria« genügt, um diesen Zusammenhang zu erweisen. Herder, der in seinen letzten Lebensjahren, seit dem Bruch mit Goethe, mehr und mehr unter der tragischen Vereinsamung litt, in der er sich befand, war freudig überrascht, als sich ihm in der Person Thorilds ein neuer und unerwarteter Bundesgenosse darbot. Als Thorild ihm die »Archimetria« zusandte, nahm er das Werk mit dem größten Interesse auf. Von ihm rührt die einzige eingehende Rezension dieser Schrift her, die damals in Deutschland erschienen ist. Und noch wärmer und enthusiastischer als in dieser Rezension sprach sich Herder in dem Brief an Thorild aus, mit dem er ihre Zusendung begleitete. »Enthülle dich, Geist, daß Wir uns begegnen«, so ruft er Thorild zu, »[d]aß wir più e meno Eins wollen, davon ist keine Frage. Dringen Sie vor.«2 Aber woher stammt diese ideelle Gemeinschaft zwischen Thorild und Herder, und wann hat sie sich zuerst geknüpft? Auf diese Frage hat die Thorildforschung bisher keine befriedigende Antwort gegeben. Daß hier ein Problem vorliegt, scheint man freilich oft gefühlt zu haben. Mit besonderem Nachdruck hat Mart in Lam m auf dieses Problem | hingewiesen. »[…] die Gleichheit der Resultate mit denen Herders«, so sagt er im 2. Bande seines Werkes »Upplysningstidens romantik«, »ist oft so stark, daß man sich immer wieder genötigt sieht, die chronologischen Kriterien zu prüfen, um festzustellen, daß Thorild sein System wirklich unabhängig von ihm geschaffen hat.«3 Diese Bemerkung ist völlig zutref[Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Theoria 7 (1941), S. 75–92.] [Johann Gottfried Herder, Rezension von Thorilds »Archimetria«: Maximum s. Archimetria. Berlin 1799, in: Sämmtliche Werke, hrsg. v. Bernhard Suphan, 33 Bde., Berlin 1877–1913, Bd. XX, S. 367–371 u. 409: S. 409.] 3 [Martin Lamm, Upplysningstidens romantik. Den mystiskt sentimentala strömningen i svensk litteratur, Bd. II, Stockholm 1920, S. 172: »[…] likheten i resultaten – särskilt med Herders åskådning – så stor, att man gång på gång känner sig nödgad att pröva de kronologiska kriterierna för att konstatera, att Thorild verkligen skapat sitt system oberoende av dem.«] 1

2

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Aufsätze und Abhandlungen

76–77

fend, wenn man den eigentlichen Berührungspunkt zwischen Thorild und Herder lediglich in ihrem Spinozismus sieht. Denn es steht fest, daß Herder eine eingehende und systematisch zusammenfassende Darstellung seines Spinozismus erst im Jahre 1787, in den »Gesprächen über Gott«, gegeben hat. Um diese Zeit hatte Thorild seinen Weg zu Spinoza längst gefunden. Auf Grund der Briefe Thorilds und auf Grund seiner philosophischen Jugendwerke läßt sich mit Sicherheit feststellen, daß die Wendung zu Spinoza sich bei ihm in der Zeit seines Lundenser Studiums, in den Jahren zwischen 1778 und 1780 vollzogen haben muß. Die ersten eingehenden Auszüge aus Spinozas »Theologisch-politischem Traktat« und aus der »Ethik«, die Thorild sich angefertigt hat und die zuerst von K a r i tz in seiner Schrift »Tankelinjer hos Thorild« veröffentlicht worden sind, gehören dem Jahre 1780 an, sind also von den »Gesprächen« Herders sicher unabhängig. Aber müssen wir die Verbindung mit Herder lediglich an dieser e i ne n Stelle suchen, oder gibt es zwischen beiden Denkern nicht noch ein anderes Band, das sie noch fester verknüpft und das aus den historischen Quellen, über die wir verfügen, mit Sicherheit erweisbar ist? Diese Frage ist es, die ich hier kurz behandeln möchte. Was mich an Thorilds Philosophie bei der ersten Bekanntschaft, die ich mit ihr machte, besonders angezogen und gefesselt hat, sind nicht literarhistorische oder ästhetische Fragen gewesen. Ich trat als Historiker des Erk en n t n is p r o b lem s an Thorild heran; und von diesem Standpunkt aus gesehen sah ich in ihm sofort eine höchst bedeutsame und merkwürdige Erscheinung. Thorilds Erkenntnislehre gehört freilich zu den schwierigsten und zu den am meisten umstrittenen Elementen seines Gesamtwerkes. Die Auffassungen von ihr gehen seit jeher weit auseinander. Es | scheint kaum eine der bekannten und geläufigen erkenntnistheoretischen Kategorien zu geben, die nicht gelegentlich zur Charakteristik der Thorildschen Lehre gebraucht worden wäre. Man hat ihn als Skeptiker, als Relativisten, als Sensualisten, als Rationalisten oder Intellektualisten bezeichnet. Man hat ihn bald zu Heraklit oder Protagoras, bald zur Stoa, bald zu Locke oder Condillac, bald zu Spinoza oder Leibniz gestellt. Aber alle diese Vergleiche erweisen sich, wie mir scheint, bei näherer Prüfung und bei schärferer Analyse von Thorilds Grundbegriffen als unzulänglich. Thorilds Erkenntnislehre ist im einzelnen reich an Schwierigkeiten. Aber sie ist keineswegs jene eklektische Mischung ganz verschiedenartiger Gedankenelemente, als die man sie oft dargestellt hat. Sie ist ein in sich geschlossenes Ganze, dessen Charakter sich freilich durch keinen der gebräuchlichen Namen bezeichnen läßt, die wir für die verschiedenen erkenntnistheoretischen

77–78

Thorild und Herder

39

Schulen anzuwenden pflegen. Thorilds Lehre hat sich unabhängig von den Schulstreitigkeiten entwickelt, die im 18. Jahrhundert zwischen Empiristen und Rationalisten, zwischen Sensualisten und Intellektualisten ausgefochten wurden. Sie geht ihnen gegenüber eigene Wege. Dennoch steht Thorild auf diesen Wegen keineswegs allein. Hier vielmehr ist er, wie sich meiner Ansicht nach mit Sicherheit feststellen läßt, Herder zuerst begegnet. Und diese Begegnung hat schon sehr früh stattgefunden. Sie fällt in jene frühen Jugendjahre Thorilds, in denen er seine erste große geistige Krise erlebt: eine Krise, die für seine ganze künftige Entwicklung bestimmend geworden ist. Im Jahre 1778, zu der Zeit, als Thorild als 19jähriger in Lund studierte, ließ Herder eine Schrift erscheinen, die im Ganzen seines Werkes eine höchst bedeutsame Stellung einnimmt. Sie führt den Titel » Vo m E r ke nne n und Emp fin d en d e r m en s ch lich en S eele« und geht auf die Bearbeitung einer Preisaufgabe zurück, die die Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften gestellt hatte. Daß Thorild diese Schrift gelesen hat, dafür haben wir freilich keinen direkten Beweis. Aber wenn man die Manuskripte studiert, in denen er seine eigene Erkenntnislehre zuerst entwickelt hat, und wenn man sie neben die | Schrift Herders legt, so springt die Verwandtschaft in der Grundanschauung sofort in die Augen. Ich kann hier diesen Zusammenhang nicht im einzelnen verfolgen, und ich kann das Beweismaterial, auf das ich mich stütze, nur zum kleinsten Teil vorlegen.4 Ich muß mich damit begnügen, einige Hauptpunkte herauszuheben; aber ich hoffe, daß dies zureichen wird, um die These, die ich hier vertreten will, so weit zu erweisen, als dies im Rahmen einer kurzen Skizze möglich ist. Die Frage der Berliner Akademie, die Herder die erste Anregung zur Ausarbeitung seiner Schrift gab, geht auf Sulzer zurück. Sulzer ist kein origineller und tiefer Denker; aber er hat, namentlich im Gebiet der Psychologie und Ästhetik, einen bedeutenden Einfluß ausgeübt. In ihm verkörpern sich die besten Tendenzen der deutschen Aufklärungsphilosophie. In seiner Problemstellung steht er auf dem Boden des Leibniz-Wolffischen Systems. Dieses System beruht auf der scharfen Unterscheidung zwischen Sinnlichkeit und Denken, zwischen den niederen und oberen Erkenntniskräften. Diese Scheidung muß sich im Aufbau der Gesamterkenntnis und im Aufbau jeder Einzelwissenschaft geltend machen. Überall steht ein apriorisches Element einem 4 Vollständig hoffe ich dieses Material demnächst in einer Schrift vorlegen zu können, die unter dem Titel »Thorilds Stellung in der Geistesgeschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts« in »Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademiens handlingar« erscheinen wird [ECW 21, S. 117–236].

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78–79

aposteriorischen Element, ein rationales einem faktischen Element, ein Notwendiges einem Zufälligen gegenüber. Das letztere, das Faktische und Zufällige, ist auf Empfindung oder Wahrnehmung gegründet; das erstere beruht auf der reinen Aktivität des Denkens. Alle Wissenschaft ist an diese Zweiteilung gebunden, die nach der Grundüberzeugung des Leibniz-Wolffischen Systems mit dem Wesen der Erkenntnis selbst gegeben ist. So macht Wolff nicht nur einen scharfen Schnitt zwischen der empirischen und rationalen Psychologie oder der empirischen und rationalen Physik, sondern er spricht sogar von einer »experimentellen Theologie«, die die Weisheit, Güte und Allmacht Gottes an der empirischen Natur | ordnung und ihrer inneren Zweckmäßigkeit erweist. Gegenüber dieser im 18. Jahrhundert noch fast unumschränkt geltenden Voraussetzung ist es für Herders Schrift charakteristisch, daß sie schon von ihren ersten Sätzen an einen neuen Weg einschlägt. Weit entfernt, die Frage Sulzers in dem Sinne, in dem sie von ihm gestellt worden war, lö s e n zu wollen, bestreitet Herder das Recht dieser Frage. Eine strenge Abscheidung zwischen Sinnlichkeit und Denken, zwischen dem Empfindungsvermögen und dem Erkenntnisvermögen, ist, wie er erklärt, nicht möglich. In der Abstraktion mögen wir beide Momente voneinander sondern, aber es wäre ein verhängnisvoller Irrtum, wenn man rein begrifflichen und logischen Trennungen eine ontologische Bedeutung beimessen, wenn man logische Unterscheidungen in reale Unterschiede umdeuten wollte. »Empfinden« und »Erkennen« bilden nach Herder keineswegs zwei getrennte Provinzen der Seele, die sich streng und bestimmt gegeneinander abgrenzen lassen. Sie sind L eb e ns ä uße r ung e n, und das Leben spottet aller solcher künstlicher Abgrenzungen, die der Gedanke zu ziehen versucht. Es läßt sich nicht in eine Mehrheit heterogener Kräfte auseinanderlegen; es ist und bleibt eine allumfassende Grundkraft und eine alldurchdringende Urkraft. »Empfinden« und »Erkennen« sind somit nur wie zwei verschiedene Zweige an ein und demselben Baum. Dieser Baum erwächst aus der Wurzel des F ü hl e ns und muß sich, wenn er nicht absterben soll, fort und fort aus dieser Wurzel nähren. Das »reine Denken«, das sich vom Empfinden und Fühlen abzusondern sucht, ist daher nichts als totes Denken; es ist eine Erfindung der Studierstube und der rationalistischen Schulphilosophie. »[…] wie fein ist die Ehe«, so sagt Herder, »die Gott zwischen Empfinden und Denken in unsrer Natur gemacht hat! Ein feines Gewebe, nur durch Wortformeln von einander zu trennen. […] Alles sogenannte r ein e Denken in die Gottheit hinein, ist Trug und Spiel, die ärgste Schwärmerei, die sich nur selbst nicht dafür erkennet. Alle unser Denken ist aus und durch Empfindung entstanden, trägt auch,

79–80

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Trotz aller Destillation, davon noch reiche Spuren. Die so|genannten reinen Begriffe sind meistens reine Ziffern und Zeros von der mathematischen Tafel, und haben, platt und plump auf Naturdinge unsrer so zusammengesetzten Menschheit angewandt, auch [nur] Zifferwerth.«5 Man gebe daher jeden Versuch auf, Empfindungsvermögen und Erkenntnisvermögen säuberlich gegeneinander zu scheiden und den Menschen zu einem Geschöpf zu machen, das aus verschiedenen Teilen, aus einem »oberen« und einem »unteren« Seelenvermögen zusammengeflickt wäre: »Mit Namen zimmern wir keine Fächer in unsrer Seele […]«6 Stellen wir jetzt diesen Äußerungen Herders die Erkenntnislehre gegenüber, die Thorild in seinen ersten philosophischen Schriften aufgestellt und die er seither unverändert festgehalten hat. Diese Schriften gehören den Jahren 1779–80 an; sie befinden sich also in unmittelbarer zeitlicher Nähe zu Herders Abhandlung. Die Übereinstimmung in der Grundanschauung tritt uns hier überall schlagend entgegen. Auch Thorild bekämpft unablässig jene »mechanische Psychologie«, die den Menschen, statt ihn als ein ursprüngliches und einheitliches Ganze zu sehen, in Teile zerschneidet – die die Seele in verschiedene Schubfächer sondert und zufrieden ist, wenn sie ihre Äußerungen in einem dieser Fächer unterbringen kann. »Schneidet doch den Menschen nicht in Stücke«, so ruft Thorild in der Vorrede zu »Passionerna« seinen Gegnern zu: »Åtskiljen ej människan. Den stora Känslan följer ej er mechaniska ordning.«7 Hier begegnen wir dem Ausdruck »känsla« zur Bezeichnung für das einheitliche Sein und Wirken des Menschen, wie Herder hierfür die Bezeichnung »Gefühl« und »Fühlen« gewählt hatte. Aber diese Bezeichnung ist freilich bei beiden nicht unzweideutig; sondern bedarf, wenn sie in ihrem eigentlichen Sinne verstanden werden soll, der näheren Bestimmung. Wir müssen auch hier von allen Vorstellungen der traditionellen Psychologie und von ihrer Schulsprache absehen und uns statt dessen in den Mittelpunkt von Herders und Thorilds Denkweise zu versetzen suchen. Seit Tetens hat das »Gefühl« in der empirischen Psychologie des 18. Jahrhunderts einen festen und bestimmten Platz. Es gilt als ein 5 [Johann Gottfried Herder, Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele. Bemerkungen und Träume, in: Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. VIII, S. 165–333: S. 233 f.] 6 [Ders., Verstand und Erfahrung. Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in: Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. XXI, S. 1–190: S. 19.] 7 [Thomas Thorild, Passionerna, in: Samlade skrifter, hrsg. v. Stellan Arvidson, Bd. I (Svenska författare, utgivna av Svenska vitterhetssamfundet, hrsg. v. Stellan Arvidson u. Casimir Fontaine, Bd. XV), Stockholm 1933, S. 35–56: S. 38.]

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selb | ständiges »Seelenvermögen«, das neben Denken und Wollen steht. Aber gerade gegen eine derartige S onde r s te l l ung setzen sich sowohl Herder wie Thorild zur Wehr. Für beide ist das Gefühl (känsla) kein Vermögen n eb en anderen, sondern es ist der Urgrund alles Bewußtseins. Es ist kein Teil, keine bestimmte Provinz unseres Ich, sondern es ist das Ich selbst – in seiner ungebrochenen Einheit und in seiner strömenden Lebensfülle. In diesem Sinne ist Thorild weder Sensualist noch Rationalist; er bleibt vielmehr, auch in seiner Erkenntnislehre, entschiedener Vitalist. Erkennen ist ihm nicht bloße Denkäußerung, sondern es ist Lebensäußerung. Von einem reinen, von einem »transzendentalen« Subjekt des Erkennens, im Sinne Kants, weiß Thorild nichts – sowenig Herder hiervon etwas weiß. Für ihn gibt es nur die menschliche Persönlichkeit in ihrer Unmittelbarkeit, in ihrer Konkretion und Totalität. Man könnte von Thorild sagen, daß er, auch in seiner Psychologie und Erkenntnislehre, entschiedener »Pantheist« ist. Er findet die wahre, ursprüngliche Wirklichkeit immer nur im Ganzen, nicht in den Teilen. Die Zerstückelung der Natur und die Zerstückelung des Menschen in Teile gilt ihm als das πρ3τον ψε2δος, als die eigentliche Todsünde der Abstraktion. Aus dieser seiner Grundeinstellung heraus erklärt es sich, daß er später zum schärfsten Gegner Kants werden mußte. Denn Kant ist und bleibt der große Analytiker und Kritiker der Erkenntnis. Er selbst hat sein Verfahren mit der »Scheidekunst der Chemiker«8 verglichen. Thorild aber hat von sich gesagt, daß ihm alle » Oppos i ta « verhaßt gewesen seien. In einem sehr bedeutsamen und aufschlußreichen Selbstbekenntnis, in einer Skizze seines Charakters, die er als Jüngling entworfen hat, bezeichnet er diesen Zug gradezu als Grundzug seines Wesens. »Hela naturen, dess minsta och största, lefde för min själ. Deraf hela karakteren af min filosofi: universalitet och enhet […] Jag hatade alla slag, opposita, undantag såsom litenhetens gränser, fånighet, missvett.«9 Aber betrachten wir nun, wie sich auf dieser Grundlage der Aufbau der Erkenntnis für Herder und für Thorild im einzelnen vollzieht. Herder erkennt nur zwei Erkenntnisquellen an, die er | mit den Namen »Erfahrung« und »Analogie« bezeichnet. Der Mensch begreift nur, was ihm durch einen unmittelbaren Sinneseindruck zugänglich ist 8 [Vgl. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, hrsg. v. Benzion Kellermann, in: Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, Bd. V, Berlin 1914, S. 1–176: S. 175 f.: »ein der Chemie ähnliches Verfahren der Scheidung« (Akad.-Ausg. V, 163).] 9 [Thomas Thorild, Karakter, in: Samlade skrifter, hrsg. v. Per Hanselli, Bd. I, Uppsala 1874, S. 278–281: S. 281.]

82–83

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oder was sich ihm in seinem inneren Dasein, in seinem unmittelbaren Lebensgefühl offenbart. Dieses Lebensgefühl ist der Schlüssel, der ihm allein die Natur und der ihm fremdes psychisches Sein aufschließen kann. Aus diesen ursprünglichen Grenzen kann der Mensch nicht heraustreten. Diese Art des »Anthropomorphismus« ist daher keine Schranke unserer Erkenntnis, sondern eine Notwendigkeit. Den metaphysischen Anspruch auf »Absolutheit« der Erkenntnis müssen wir ein für allemal aufgeben. Alles, was wir wissen können, gilt nur in bezug auf uns, in bezug auf die Schranken und Bedingungen unserer sinnlichen Natur. Schämen wir uns dieser Bedingtheit nicht, und machen wir nicht den vergeblichen Versuch, über unseren eigenen Schatten zu springen. Überlassen wir uns dem, was unsere Empfindung und unser unmittelbares Lebensgefühl uns lehrt, und versuchen wir nur, beide derart zu erweitern, daß sie imstande sind, das Ganze der Welt und das Ganze des menschlichen Daseins zu umspannen. Für Herder steht es fest, daß jede Philosophie, die den Versuch macht, sich von dieser ursprünglichen Bedingtheit loszureißen, notwendig in die Irre gehen muß. Denn sie hat schon mit den ersten Schritten den Boden unter den Füßen verloren; sie bewegt sich im leeren Raume der Abstraktion. »Betrügt mich der Schall, das Licht, der Duft, die Würze; ist mein Sin n falsch«, so sagt Herder in der Schrift »Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele«‚ »so bin ich mit alle meiner Känntniß und Spekulation verlohren. Auch kann der Gegenstand für tausend andre Sinnen in tausend andern Medien ganz etwas anders, vollends in sich selbst ein Abgrund seyn, von dem ich nichts wittre und ahnde; für mich ist er nur das, was mir der Sinn und sein Medium, jenes die Pforte, dies der Zeigefinger der Gottheit für unsre Seele, dargibt. In n ig wissen wir außer uns nichts: ohne Sinne wäre uns das Weltgebäude ein zusammen geflochtner Knäuel dunkler Reize […]«10 Und wo die unmittelbare Sinnesempfindung uns im Stich läßt, da tritt die Analogie in ihre Rechte. Wir deuten das | Wesen der Welt nach unserem eigenen Wesen. Dies ist nicht Täuschung; es ist vielmehr die einzige uns mögliche und uns zugängliche Wahrheit. »Aber wie?«, so fragt Herder, »ist in dieser ›Analogie zum Menschen‹ auch Wahrheit? Menschliche Wahrheit gewiß, und von einer höhern habe ich, so lange ich Mensch bin, keine Kunde. Mich kümmert die überirrdische Abstraktion sehr wenig, die sich aus allem, was ›Kreis unsres Denkens und Empfindens‹ heißt, ich weiß nicht auf welchen Thron der Gottheit setzet, da Wortwelten schafft und über alles Mögliche und Würkliche richtet. Was wir wissen, wissen wir […] aus Analogie, von der Kreatur 10

[Herder, Vom Erkennen und Empfinden, S. 187 f.]

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zu uns und von uns zum Schöpfer. […] Syllogismen können mich nichts lehren […] Die stille Aehnlichkeit, die ich im Ganzen meiner Schöpfung, meiner Seele und meines Lebens empfinde und ahnde: der große Geist, der mich anwehet und mir im Kleinen und Großen, in der sichtbaren und unsichtbaren Welt Einen Gang, Einerley Gesetze zeiget: der ist mein Siegel der Wahrheit. […] Ich schäme mich nicht, an den Brüsten dieser großen Mutter Natur nur als ein Kind zu saugen, laufe nach Bildern, nach Aehnlichkeiten […] weil ich kein andres Spiel meiner denkenden Kräfte […] kenne, und glaube übrigens, daß Homer und Sophokles, Dante, Shakespear und Klopstock der Psychologie und Menschenkänntniß mehr Stoff geliefert haben, als selbst die Aristoteles und Leibnitze aller Völker und Zeiten.«11 Auch hierin finden wir Thorild in seinen Jugendwerken durchaus an der Seite Herders, und die Übereinstimmung geht oft bis zum wörtlichen Anklang. Mit besonderer Deutlichkeit tritt diese Übereinstimmung in dem Aufsatz »En pantheists anmärkningar vid Reimarus« hervor, den wir mit Sicherheit datieren können; auch er gehört den Jahren 1779–80 an. Das Wesen der unendlichen Natur – so wird hier erklärt – besteht in nichts anderem als in einer überall verbreiteten Wirksamkeits- und Gefühlskraft – jener Kraft, die wir mit dem Namen »Leb en « bezeichnen. Die Annahme einer solchen Kraft ist keine selbstgemachte Erdichtung: Die stärkste und klarste Analogie spricht für sie. Und wo gäbe es, neben der Erfahrung, einen anderen | Wahrheitsgrund? Das natürliche, das physische Auge gelangt bald an seine Grenze; und wo es uns verläßt, müssen wir mit den »Augen der Analogie«12 sehen. Der Mensch kann eine fremde Wirklichkeit nur dadurch verstehen, daß er sein eigenes Wesen in sie hineinlegt und daß er sie nach Maßgabe seines eigenen Selbstgefühls deutet. Es gibt für den Menschen keine andere Wahrheit und keine andere Erkenntnis als die, die er in sich selbst vorfindet und die er durch Analogie auf das Universum überträgt. Einer höheren, angeblich »transzendenten« Wahrheit nachzujagen, ist ein eitles Bemühen. Auch in seinem Lehrgedicht hat Thorild, wie bekannt, die Analogie in überschwenglichen Worten gepriesen: » Analogi! sublima, strålande Sanningens Iris, Som hon utskickar vidt i Naturens okända riken, [A. a. O., S. 170 f.] [Thomas Thorild, En pantheists anmärkningar vid Reimarus. Naturliga religionens förnämsta sanningar, in: Samlade skrifter, hrsg. v. Stellan Arvidson, Bd. I, S. 320–342: S. 322: »analogiens öga«.] 11 12

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Analogi! du ser det; ropar det högt för den vise. Känslan i människo-stoftet är alt. är, namngifven, Tanke: Herrskande heter Passion […]«13 Gehen wir von dieser Übereinstimmung in den Grundprinzipien und in den Hauptergebnissen von Herders und Thorilds Erkenntnislehre aus, so gewinnen wir damit gewissermaßen ein neues hi s tor i s c he s Bezu gssy stem , das die Orientierung außerordentlich erleichtert und das geeignet ist, viele schwierige und heftig umstrittene Einzelfragen ihrer Lösung entgegenzuführen. Nimmt man Thorilds Lehre als isolierte Erscheinung, so ist es oft sehr schwer, in diesem Labyrinth einen festen Ariadnefaden zu finden. Thorild hat keine der Eigenschaften, die den strengen systematischen Denker kennzeichnen, obwohl es seinem Denken keineswegs an Eigenart und an Kraft fehlt. Alle strenge Durcharbeitung der Gedanken, alle scharfe Begriffsbestimmung, alle Bindung an eine feste Terminologie lehnt er unwillig und ungeduldig ab; man hat bisweilen den Eindruck, als ob er etwas derartiges als unter seiner Würde betrachtete. Thorild ist kein kühler und ruhiger Kopf, der die Probleme in allen ihren Konsequenzen durchdenkt und der seine Begriffe dialektisch zer | gliedert. Alles, was er ergreift, gewinnt sofort den Stempel seiner Persönlichkeit, seines spezifischen Lebensgefühls. Er will ein » G e ni e « und das heißt für ihn: ein Mann der S y n t h es e, sein. Die Analyse überläßt er denen, die er mit Geringschätzung die »kalten Handwerksgeister«14 nennt. »Die kleinen Geister«, so erklärt er, »trennen und zerstreuen, die großen vereinen.«15 So wirft er seine Gedanken nicht nur rasch hin, sondern er wirft sie bisweilen seinen Lesern und seinen Gegnern geradezu an den Kopf, und immer haben diese Gedanken nicht nur eine objektiv begriffliche, sondern auch eine ausgesprochen persönliche und polemische Färbung. Dadurch entstehen ständig Schwierigkeiten und Zweideutigkeiten. Aber all dies läßt sich klären, sobald man sich einmal der allgemeinen R ich t u n g von Thorilds Denken versichert hat. Denn an einer solchen durchgehenden Richtung fehlt es keineswegs. So undiszipliniert Thorilds Denken und seine Ausdrucksweise auch oft erscheinen mag, so ist dieses Denken doch keineswegs bloß willkürlich oder widerspruchsvoll. Tegnér hat von Thorild gesagt, [Ders., Passionerna, S. 43.] [A. a. O., S. 51: »kalla handtverks-Snillen«.] 15 [Ders., Skönheten och critiken, in: Samlade skrifter, hrsg. v. Erik Gustav Geijer, Bd. II, Uppsala 1820, S. 316: »De små förstånden klyfva, skingra, de stora förena.«] 13 14

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daß er sich, gleich dem Löwen, mit einem einzigen Sprung auf seine Beute stürze, daß er aber diese Beute nicht festzuhalten wisse. Das ist durchaus richtig in dem Sinne, daß die geduldige Durcharbeitung eines Gedankens nicht seine Sache ist. Er kann alles, was er erfassen will, nur im Sprunge erfassen. Aber in all diesen Sprüngen, in all diesen stets erneuten Einzelansätzen begegnen wir doch immer wieder ihm selbst – als einer starken Persönlichkeit, die entschlossen ihren Weg geht und der es nicht an innerer Folgerichtigkeit fehlt. Dies hat Thorild auch in der Entwicklung seiner Erkenntnislehre erwiesen. Sie ist von inneren Schwierigkeiten nicht frei, aber sie hat von Anfang bis zu Ende, von den Jugendwerken bis zu den Schriften der Greifswalder Jahre, eine bestimmte Ten d en z festgehalten, von der sie nicht abgewichen ist. Hat man diese allgemeine Tendenz einmal erkannt, so wird die Beurteilung des einzelnen dadurch wesentlich erleichtert. Und hier kann uns der Vergleich mit Herder immer wieder zu Hilfe kommen. Bei Herder steht, um uns eines bekannten Gleichnisses zu bedienen, das Platon | im »Staat« geprägt hat, vieles in großer Schrift zu lesen, was bei Thorild nur in kleiner Schrift erscheint und daher schwer zu entziffern und fast unleserlich ist. Auch Herder ist kein systematischer Denker, und wenn man ihn Kant gegenüberstellt, so neigt sich die Waage alsbald zu seinen Ungunsten. Kant hatte keine Mühe, ihm die Risse und Sprünge in seinem philosophischen Lehrgebäude nachzuweisen. Aber die Stellung, die Herder in der allgemeinen Ideengeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts einnimmt, wird dadurch nicht zweideutig oder fragwürdig. In bezug auf die großen Grundzüge seiner Mission und seiner geistigen Leistung können wir nicht irren. So kann er für uns auch zu einer Lichtquelle für das Verständnis von Thorilds Lehre werden, die der seinen so nahe steht. Kein Problem ist in der Thorildliteratur so lebhaft umstritten worden, wie der allgemeine Charakter seiner Erkenntnislehre. War er Empirist oder Rationalist, Sensualist oder Intellektualist? Wenn wir die gleiche Frage an Herder richten – welche Antwort erhalten wir? Daß die Schrift »Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele« einer der wuchtigsten Angriffe war, die gegen den Intellektualismus der Aufklärungsphilosophie geführt worden ist, kann nicht bestritten werden. Denn hier wird eben das geleugnet, was als das eigentliche P r i nz i p dieses Intellektualismus angesehen werden muß – hier wird, mit großer Energie und Kühnheit, die Trennung der Erkenntnis in zwei Sphären, in obere und untere, höhere und niedere Seelenkräfte beseitigt. Aber ist Herder mit diesem Angriff auf den Intellektualismus zum S e ns ua l i s te n geworden – will er damit Hume oder Condillac das Wort reden? Keineswegs – denn er beschuldigt die Systeme des Sensualismus desselben

86–87

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grundlegenden Fehlers, den er dem Intellektualismus vorgehalten hatte. Auch sie sind keine Beschreibungen der Wirklichkeit, sondern bewegen sich im Kreise bloßer Abstraktionen. Sie geben uns Steine statt Brot; sie geben uns bloße »Wortwesen« statt realer Erkenntnisse. Körper und Seele, Empfinden und Erkennen, Sinne und Intellekt gehören zusammen und können nur in ihrer wechselseitigen Durchdringung verstanden werden. Wer sie auseinanderreißt – und das tut so | wohl der Sensualismus wie der Intellektualismus –, der hat sich damit um das wirkliche Verständnis ihrer eigentümlichen Funktion gebracht. Der Widerspruch gegen Condillac ist daher bei Herder nicht weniger entschieden als gegen das Wolffische Schulsystem. Schon in der »Preisschrift über den Ursprung der Sprache« begegnen wir diesem Widerspruch. Condillacs Erklärung des Ursprungs der Sprache wird von Herder als hohl bezeichnet. Sie ist es deshalb, weil sie einer falschen und oberflächlichen Psychologie entstammt. Daß alle Erkenntnis sich aus den Sinnen nährt und daß sie hier ihre eigentliche Wurzel hat, hat auch Herder fort und fort betont. Aber was er den Systemen des philosophischen Sensualismus vorwirft, ist, daß sie das Leben der sinnlichen Erkenntnis selbst, statt es in seiner wirklichen Bedeutung zu erkennen und zu beschreiben, vielmehr ertötet haben. Sie treiben jene »Encheiresi[s] naturae«, über die Mephisto in der Schülerszene im »Faust« spottet. Sie haben die Teile in ihrer Hand – »Fehlt leider! nur das geistige Band.«16 Man verkennt und mißversteht den Sinn, wenn man nur seine »disjecta membra«, nur die einzelnen Perzeptionen des Gesichts, des Gehörs, des Tastsinns betrachtet, statt ihn in seiner unmittelbaren Ganzheit, als eine einzige ungeteilte Lebensäußerung zu nehmen. »Allen Sinnen liegt Gefühl zum Grunde, und dies gibt den verschiedenartigsten Sensationen schon ein so inniges, starkes, unaussprechliches Band, daß aus dieser Verbindung die sonderbarsten Erscheinungen entstehen. […] Alle Zergliederungen der Sensation bei Buffons, Condillacs und Bonnets empfindendem Menschen sind Abstraktionen: der Philosoph muß Einen Faden der Empfindung liegen laßen, indem er den andern verfolgt – in der Natur aber sind alle die Fäden Ein Gewebe!«17 Ganz ähnlichen Äußerungen begegnen wir fort und fort bei Thorild, und der so schwer deutbare Ausdruck »sinne«, der für seine 16 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Eine Tragödie. Erster Theil (Werke, hrsg. im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 1. Abt., Bd. XIV), Weimar 1887, S. 91.] 17 [Johann Gottfried Herder, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, welche den von der Königl. Academie der Wissenschaften für das Jahr 1770 gesezten Preis erhalten hat, in: Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. V, S. 1–154: S. 61 f.]

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gesamte Psychologie und Erkenntnislehre entscheidend ist, wird sofort klar, wenn wir von Herders Grundanschauung ausgehen. In den späteren Schriften, insbesondere in der »Gelehrtenwelt«, macht Thorild einen scharfen Unterschied zwischen »Attention« und »Abstraktion«. Die »Attention« ist ein Akt des reinen geistigen | Bemerkens und Aufmerkens. Sie will die seelischen Phänomene, denen sie sich zuwendet, in ihrer Unmittelbarkeit und Ursprünglichkeit erfassen; sie will sie in ihrer Eigenart zugänglich machen, statt sie willkürlich zu verändern und zu zerstückeln. »Die Attention«, so sagt Thorild in einem Brief an Reinhold, »unterscheidet Alles bis aufs Feinste; abscheidet aber nichts; (was aus der Musik und aller Kunst erhellt.) Unterscheiden belebt den Verstand des Ganzen; Abscheiden tödtet ihn […] Nur das immer neue Wahrnehmen (genauere Merken) kann alle Richtigkeiten finden, so wie in jeder Kunst: und hier also kommt Alles auf höheren Sinn an (in Kraft und Klarheit, d. i. in Genie und Jugement).«18 Das ist eine Äußerung der späteren Epoche, aber Ähnlichem begegnen wir auch ständig in den Jugendwerken; ja man kann den Gedanken, der sich hier ausspricht, geradezu als den roten Faden betrachten, der sich durch Thorilds ganzes Werk hindurchzieht. Hier gibt es bei ihm, soweit ich sehe, kein Schwanken und keinen Widerspruch. Nachdem er sie einmal erfaßt hat, hat er diese Grundüberzeugung ständig festgehalten und sie immer klarer und bestimmter zu formulieren gesucht. Dürfen wir aber annehmen, daß es Herders Schrift »Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele« war, die Thorild zuerst auf diesen Weg verwiesen hat – so klärt sich damit noch ein anderer schwieriger Punkt. Denn nun können wir auch Thorilds S pi noz i s mus unmittelbar an denjenigen Herders anknüpfen und ihn mit der Spinozarenaissance in Deutschland in Verbindung setzen. Einen Zusammenhang zwischen Thorild und der allgemeinen geistigen Bewegung, die in Deutschland zur Wiederentdeckung und zum tieferen Verständnis von Spinozas Lehre führte, hat schon A l be r t N i l s s on vermutet. Aber dieser Zusammenhang war schwer nachzuweisen, solange man auf kein literarisches Dokument hinweisen konnte, das hier die Brücke hätte schlagen können. An einem solchen Dokument schien es zu fehlen: Denn Herders Hauptschriften über den Spinozismus, insbeson18 [Thomas Thorild, Briefe an Karl Leonhard Reinhold vom 18. März 1800 und vom 25. Februar 1800, in: Ernst Reinhold (Hrsg.), Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s Leben und litterarisches Wirken, nebst einer Auswahl von Briefen Kant’s, Fichte’s, Jacobi’s und andrer philosophirender Zeitgenossen an ihn, Jena 1825, S. 290 u. 286–289: S. 287.]

88–90

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dere die Gespräche über »Gott«, gehören, wie bereits erwähnt wurde, einer viel späteren Epoche an, konnten also als eine Anregung für Thorilds Spinozismus, der sich in seiner Lun | denser Studienzeit, in den Jahren zwischen 1779 und 1781 entschied, nicht in Frage kommen. Dürfen wir aber annehmen, daß Thorild eben in dieser Zeit Herders Schrift »Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele« gelesen und daß er von ihr einen starken und nachhaltigen Eindruck empfangen hat – so besitzen wir damit das »missing link«, das bisher fehlende Glied. Denn eben in dieser Schrift findet sich Herders erstes offenes Bekenntnis zum Spinozismus – und hier spricht er von Spinoza mit einer Wärme und Begeisterung, wie nie zuvor von ihm gesprochen worden war. Zum ersten Mal erklingt jetzt jener neue Ton, den wir fortan immer wieder hören werden: bis zu Schleiermachers »Reden über die Religion« hin. Spinoza erscheint nicht nur als ein tiefer Denker und als ein Weiser, sondern er erscheint fast als ein Heiliger. Am Schluß des ersten Teils der Abhandlung »Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele« kommt Herder auf Spinozas Leugnung der Willensfreiheit zu sprechen. Er erklärt sich auch hier mit Spinoza einverstanden; er nimmt das System des strengen Determinismus an. »Von Freiheit schwätzen«, so sagt er, »ist sehr leicht, wenn man jedem Reiz, jedem Scheingut als einer u n s sufficienten Ursache dienet. Es ist meistens ein erbärmlicher Trug mit diesen sufficienten Gründen […] Man ist ein Knecht des Mechanismus […] und wähnet sich frei; ein Sklave in Ketten, und träumet sich diese als Blumenkränze. […] Da ists wahrlich der erste Keim zur Freiheit, fühlen, daß man ni c ht frei sei, und an welchen Banden man hafte? Die stärksten freisten Menschen fühlen das am tieffsten, und streben weiter […] L uthe r , mit seinem Buch de servo arbitrio, ward und wird von den Wenigsten verstanden […] Wo Geist des Herrn ist, da ist Freiheit. Je tiefer, reiner und göttlicher unser Erkennen ist, desto reiner, göttlicher und allgemeiner ist auch unser Würken, mithin desto freier unsre Freiheit. […] Wir stehen auf höherm Grunde […] wandeln im großen Sensorium der Schöpfung Gottes, der Flamme alles Denkens und Empfindens, der Lieb e. Sie ist die höchste Vernunft, wie das reinste, göttlichste Wollen; wollen wir dieses nicht dem h. Johannes, so mögen wirs dem ohne Zweifel noch | göttlichern Spinoza glauben, dessen Philosophie und Moral sich ganz um diese Achse beweget.«19 So heißt jetzt der Denker, der bisher als Gottesleugner, als gefürchteter und verworfener Atheist geschmäht wurde, der »göttliche Spinoza« – und das im Munde eines Herder, eines Theologen! 19

[Herder, Vom Erkennen und Empfinden, S. 201 f.]

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Wenn Thorild diese merkwürdigen Sätze las – welchen Eindruck mußten sie auf ihn machen? Ich will durchaus nicht behaupten, daß sie es gewesen sein müßten, die ihn zuerst auf Spinozas Lehre hingewiesen haben. Er kann seine Kenntnis des Spinozismus auch aus anderen Quellen geschöpft haben. Torgny Torgnysson S eg e r s te dt hat in seinem Buch »Moral-Sense skolan och dess inflytande på svensk filosofi« gezeigt, daß, zu der Zeit, als Thorild in Lund studierte, das Problem des Pantheismus bereits eine bedeutende Rolle in Schweden spielte und in akademischen Vorlesungen eifrig diskutiert wurde. Und es ist überhaupt fraglich, ob sich ein bestimmter konkreter A nl a ß finden läßt, der Thorild zum Pantheismus geführt hat. Denn der Pantheismus lag Thorild sozusagen im Blute; er entspricht so sehr seinem eigenen Naturgefühl und seinem Lebensgefühl, daß es für ihn kaum eines Anstoßes von außen bedurfte. Aber auch wenn Thorild die Wendung zu Spinoza aus eigenem Antrieb vollzogen und seinen Weg zu ihm selbständig gefunden hat, so blieb noch immer ein schweres Problem für ihn zu lösen. In den Jahren 1778–1780 steht er in der schwersten geistigen und sittlichen Krise seines Lebens. Zu Beginn des Jahres 1778 schreibt er am Karfreitag seinem Jugendfreund Hylander einen Brief, in dem er noch ganz als frommer Christ spricht. Aber kurz darauf hat sich der Umschwung vollzogen; er lebt in den Schriften Spinozas und wünscht, wie er in einem Brief an Heurlin am 12. Oktober 1780 schreibt, sich mit ihnen in ein einsames Tal zurückziehen zu können, um sich ganz ihrem Studium hinzugeben. Ohne schwere innere Kämpfe war ein solcher Wandel nicht möglich. Auf alle dogmatischen Glaubenssätze der überlieferten Religion konnte Thorild verzichten. Der »Weise« – so erklärt er – ist an sie nicht gebunden. Als sein Freund Hylander einen Versuch macht, ihn wieder zum Christentum zu bekehren und dafür an sein Gefühl | appelliert, lehnt er dies entschieden ab. Auf diese Weise – so erklärt er – kann ein Philosoph nicht bekehrt werden. »Sich von seinem Herzen dahin leiten lassen, eine Wahrheit anzunehmen oder abzulehnen: das heißt sich verführen lassen […] Willst du, daß ich das Licht des Tages verleugnen, daß ich mich selbst, mein Gefühl, mein Sein verleugnen soll aus Liebe zu dir?«20 Aber wenn subjektive Gefühlsgründe kein Recht haben, in dieser Frage mitzusprechen – so wiegen die moralischen Gründe um 20 [Thomas Thorild, Brief an Anders Hylander, in: Thomas Thorilds bref, hrsg. v. Lauritz Weibull, Bd. I, Uppsala 1899 (Skrifter utgifna af svenska literatursällskapet, Bd. 19/1), S. 6 f.: »Ledas af sit hjerta till eller från en sanning, är detsamma som förföras […] Will du, att jag skall förneka dagens ljus, förneka mig sjelf, min känsla, min varelse, af kärlek för dig?«]

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so schwerer. Ihnen konnte und wollte Thorild niemals entsagen. In der Moral gab es für ihn keinen Indifferentismus. Er hat sich sein Leben lang als Vorkämpfer bestimmter sittlicher und politischer Ideale gefühlt. Aber wie waren sie zu begründen, wenn man die traditionelle religiöse Grundlage aufgab – wenn man dem Vorsehungsglauben und dem Glauben an eine persönliche Unsterblichkeit entsagte? Hier lag für Thorild, wie für das gesamte 18. Jahrhundert, eines der schwierigsten Probleme, um das er sicher, in der Zeit seiner Abwendung vom Christentum, mit allen seinen Kräften gerungen hat. Und hier fand er plötzlich an Herder einen unerwarteten Bundesgenossen – und schon dieser ein e Zug mußte ihn diesem für immer verpflichten. Wir brauchen daher nicht anzunehmen, daß Herder es war, der Thorild zuerst auf Spinoza hingewiesen hat. Wohl aber war er es, der für ihn ein mächtiges Hindernis aus dem Wege räumte, das dem Bekenntnis zum Spinozismus entgegenstand. Jetzt hatte er einen wichtigen Zeugen und Eideshelfer dafür gewonnen, daß sich unter den Voraussetzungen Spinozas, auf dem Boden des strengen Naturalismus und Determinismus, nicht nur eine Ethik aufbauen lasse, sondern daß diese, was ihre Reinheit und ihren Wert betraf, den Vergleich mit keiner anderen zu scheuen brauchte. Wenn ein Denker wie Herder, der der geistige Führer und Vorkämpfer der jungen Generation war, erklären konnte, daß Spinozas Sittenlehre vollkommener und »göttlicher« sei als alle früheren Sittenlehren, so war Thorilds Streben mit einem Schlage bestätigt, gerechtfertigt, erfüllt. Wir können im einzelnen den Weg nicht verfolgen, auf dem die große geistige Bewegung, die sich an den Namen Spinoza knüpft, von Deutschland nach Schweden gelangt | ist. Aber nach allem, was wir wissen, ist die Annahme berechtigt, daß Herders Schrift »Vom Erkennen« hierbei eine wichtige und entscheidende Rolle gespielt hat, daß sie den ersten zündenden Funken gebildet hat, durch den die Spinozarenaissance von Deutschland nach Schweden übersprang. Daß sie hier auf einen Geist wie den jungen Thorild traf, das entschied ihr Schicksal; das bedeutete, daß sie nun auch für die schwedische Geistesgeschichte zu einer bestimmenden Macht wurde, die tief in ihre Entwicklung eingriff und die dieser Entwicklung neue Ziele und neue Bahnen wies.

5–6

53

Galileo: a New Science and a New Spirit1 (1942)

Three hundred years ago last January Galileo Galilei died – a date of supreme significance not only in the history of physics as a special science but also in the history of human civilization. Had Galileo died as a child the evolution of modern thought would have been retarded for decades and would almost certainly have differed in many fundamental aspects. He was one of those great and rare geniuses whose work is not restricted to any special field of investigation. We not only may, we must, think of his work from a general philosophical point of view and in the perspective of the history of modern philosophy. For even in the field of philosophy Galileo’s thought proved revolutionary. In his last work, »Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche interno due nuove scienze« (»Conversations and Mathematical Demonstations«), Galilei not only set forth new and fundamental physical facts; he introduced and firmly established a new general method of scientific thought, a method of empirical observation and mathematical deduction. To understand this method and to interpret it in its true sense became one of the principal tasks of modern philosophy. Thenceforth no philosophical school, no individual thinker, could avoid the problems first posed clearly by Galilei. The empirical and the rationalistic schools of modern philosophy are likewise under the influence and, so to speak, under the spell of Galilei’s work. We can trace his thought in the works of Spinoza and Leibniz, of Gassendi and Hobbes. And when, in his »Critique of Pure Reason«, Kant tried to appraise | the consequences of empiricism and rationalism he was obliged to go back to the source of this development. In the Preface to the second edition of the Critique he says: »When Galilei let balls of a particular weight, which he had determined himself, roll down an inclined plain […] a new light flashed on all students of nature. They comprehended that reason has insight into that only, which she herself produces on her own plan, and that she must move forward with the principles of her judgments, according to fixed law, and compel nature to answer her questions […] Reason, holding in one hand its principles […] and in the other hand the experiment, which it has devised according to those principles, 1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: The American Scholar 12 (1942), S. 5–19.] Based on a lecture delivered at Cornell University, April 1942.

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must approach nature, in order to be taught by it: but not in the character of a pupil, who agrees to everything the master likes, but as an appointed judge, who compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he himself proposes. […] Thus only has the study of nature entered on the secure method of a science, after having for many centuries done nothing but grope in the dark.«2 I wish here to emphasize the methodological purport of Galileo’s scientific work. Galileo’s fame as a scientist depends on his discovery and his experimental proof of the fundamental laws of dynamics and on his defense of the Copernican system. His trial and condemnation linked his name once and for all time with the history of that system. But this is not the question that most strikes us if nowadays we read and study Galileo’s work, for in the three hundred years since his death our scientific and philosophical interest has shifted. Many of the arguments whereby Galilei endeavored to support the Copernican theory have become obsolete. The decisive element in Galileo’s work was not the defense of a special physical or astronomical doctrine (however important this doctrine may be) but the defense of a new concept, of a new systematic ideal of truth. In a famous letter, written in the year 1613 to one of his pupils, Benedetto Castelli, at that time a professor of mathematics in the University of Pisa, Galilei formulated the new ideal with admirable brevity and clarity. | The letter was to play an important role in Galileo’s trial, for it became one of the principal grounds of his condemnation. But we find in it not only the assumption of a special astronomical hypothesis. The letter is much more; it is a new philosophy of science, a new appreciation of the task and the value of scientific thought. In this respect the letter is a radical revaluation of all values. There is no human or divine authority, declared Galilei, that may be placed above the authority of experiment and mathematical deduction. In the field of physics the principle of verbal inspiration – a principle that had theretofore been the guiding maxim of theology and consequently of medieval science – is to be rejected utterly. If ever there should arise an insoluble contradiction between something ascertained by empirical observation and something taught by the Holy Scripture there can be no doubt as to the side on which the scale of the balance of truth must decline. There is a double revelation of God, said Galilei – the one contained in His word, the other contained in His work, the one to be found in the Bible and the other to be found in nature and its general laws. But 2 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, First Part (Preface to 2nd Edition), transl. by Friedrich Max Müller, Vol. I, London 1881, pp. 368 f.

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Galileo: a New Science and a New Spirit

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in case of doubt the latter revelation must always prevail over the former. For words are destined for human purposes. They are the most important, nay the unique, means of all communication between men. But if there is any communication between God and men it cannot be based upon so uncertain a ground as words. Words are ambiguous by their very nature and essence. To be understood they must be interpreted – and this interpretation must always remain doubtful and insecure. But as soon as we turn to the second source of divine revelation, to God’s revelation in nature, this uncertainty ceases. Out of the mutual support of observable facts and demonstrable mathematical propositions there arises an image of reality that possesses a unique and necessary truth. Why should we therefore, concluded Galileo, in striving to know the universe and its parts begin with the word of God instead of with His work – or is perhaps the work less noble and excellent than the word? Whatever knowledge may be given us in the form of true experience | or whatever may be taught by conclusive demonstrations can never be questioned by any argument taken from Biblical texts, for not every word of the Scripture is governed by such rigid laws as every effect in nature. But this conception of the relation between God and nature immediately led to a new result, and one that from the point of view of medieval thought must have been not merely astonishing but scandalous. If mathematics is the bridge between human and Divine thought it follows that there can be no insurmountable gulf between these two forms of thought, no radical difference between our own finite mind and the Divine intellect. Galilei drew this inference in a famous passage in his »Dialogues«. If we compare God and man, he says, with regard to the extent of their knowledge it is clear that human science is to be set at naught. For even if man knew many thousands of true propositions their sum would be as nothing when compared with the infinity of possible knowledge. But if we understand knowledge in a qualitative or, as Galilei said, in an intensive sense, if instead of its extent we take into account its intrinsic worth and its logical perfection, the problem suddenly changes. We then find that our human intellect conceives some truths so perfectly that it can gain such absolute evidence of them as exists in nature. Of this sort are all mathematical truths – the verities of arithmetic and geometry. Obviously, pointed out Galilei, the Divine intellect knows and conceives an infinitely greater number of mathematical truths than we do; for it knows and comprehends them in their totality. But with regard to objective certainty the few verities known by the human mind are known as perfectly by man as they are

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by God. The verities of mathematics are necessary and eternal truths – and we cannot imagine any degree of perfection capable of surpassing this mathematical evidence. This passage, from our modern point of view harmless and innocent, gave the greatest offense to Galileo’s ecclesiastical judges. And if the passage is measured by the traditional | standards of the Church his judges were undoubtedly right, for implicitly it denies one of the keystones of the edifice of medieval thought. In the medieval system there was always an insurmountable boundary separating two different realms of truth. There was an immanent and a transcendent truth, a human and a Divine truth, a truth of reason and a truth of revelation. But Galilei ventured in his »Dialogues« to deny and to demolish this distinction. As soon as we have reached the real truth, the truth of mathematics, he asserted, this artificial fence breaks down. Mathematics is indivisible. There is no immanent or transcendent, no human or Divine, mathematics. And the same holds good in the field of natural science. Urban VIII, the Pope under whose pontificate Galilei was accused and condemned, had been while he was a cardinal one of Galilei’s protectors. To a certain extent he had even acknowledged the Copernican theory to be an admissible astronomical hypothesis. But in a personal conversation with Galilei he had objected that even if all observations and experiments and all mathematical reasoning supported Copernicus’ theory, it would not follow that Galilei’s doctrine must be true. For the omnipotence of God is not contingent on the rules and principles of human reason. God was, therefore, perfectly free to create the world according to laws entirely divergent from those which human science can discover and human reason comprehend. But Galilei could not accept this view. He knew and acknowledged no possible contradiction between the will of God on the one hand and the rules of logic, the axioms of mathematics, the facts of physics on the other. If these rules, these axioms, these facts are to be regarded as an immediate manifestation of God Himself we cannot restrict their objective truth. Where reason speaks, there speaks God – and He cannot contradict Himself. By this general philosophical and scientific conviction Galilei had cut himself off from every possible retreat in his conflict with the Church. Conflicts between reason and faith, between free and authoritative thought, had continually arisen throughout the Middle Ages, and during the early Renaissance the | latent crisis became more and more manifest. But in most of these cases there had always been an ultimate personal refuge. Nearly all who had doubted or contested a fundamental and dogmatic proposition concluded with the protesta-

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tion that they by no means intended to call the revealed truth into question. Their doubts could prove only one thing: that there is a double truth, one for God and one for men, one accessible to our reason and one far above and beyond it. In the philosophical schools of Italy the doctrine of a double truth had been carefully elaborated and developed into a special technique of thought. But this compromise was not open to Galilei, for he insisted with the greatest vigor that if there is any truth this truth must be one and indivisible. The truth is necessity; and necessity admits of no degrees. But Galilei had still another dualism to overcome before he could found a science of nature. Plato had based his philosophy upon the presupposition that we cannot speak of a science of nature in the same sense as we can of a science of mathematics. For him mathematics was directed to the ideal world, the world of eternal and unchanging things; whereas physics, confined within the limits of natural phenomena, which have no real being, could never discover the permanent. It was most difficult for Galilei to combat the authority of Plato. He fervently admired Plato. In many respects he felt himself a true disciple of the Greek philosopher and often quoted characteristic and important passages from the Platonic dialogues. But he was convinced that in his own work, in the new science of dynamics, he had removed the barrier Plato had erected between mathematical and natural science; for this new science proved nature itself a realm of necessity rather than of chance. Nature is governed by universal and inviolable laws. Nature, affirmed Galileo, is no mystery to the human mind. It is an open book accessible and legible to everyone. But to read this book we must first of all know the letters in which it is written. And it is written not in ordinary sense perceptions but in mathematical symbols: in triangles, circles, and other geometrical | figures. If we so understand nature then geometrical and physical knowledge become equivalent in their logical value. Motion ceased to be a mere changing and flowing phenomenon; for Galilei it became an idea, a pure form belonging just as surely to a realm of eternal truth as do our ideas of number or of geometrical space. The most striking characteristic of Galilei’s approach was his great simplicity of method. The words »Simplex sigillum veri«, simplicity is the seal of truth, are applicable to his first questions and experiments. He began with the investigation of a single and obvious phenomenon – the fall of heavy bodies – something that had been observed innumerable times. But the conclusions he drew from this simple phenomenon gradually led him to an all-embracing and comprehensive view of the physical world that changed man’s entire concept of nature. In

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his »Mécanique analytique« Lagrange, a great physicist of the 18th century who rounded out and completed the work of Galilei, commented: »For the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter, of the phases of Venus, of the sunspots and so on, nothing but telescopes and assiduity were required. But it called for an extraordinary genius to detect the laws of nature in such phenomena as, in all times, had been evident, but the explanation of which had always escaped philosophical thought.«3 The really revolutionary element in Galilei’s work consisted not only of the way in which he answered the question but of the way in which he put the question. And to achieve the new approach he had to free himself from a philosophical and scientific tradition that had for centuries determined man’s concept of the shape of the cosmic system. At first sight Aristotle’s physics seems to be in full agreement with the modern view of the universe. Aristotle defined a physical or natural object as something having within itself a principle of motion and rest in respect of place, size, or quality. Motion is therefore just as certainly the fundamental fact in Aristotle’s physics as it is the focus of Galilei’s thought and of | his physical theories. But there is a decisive difference in the »reasons« of motion as understood by Galilei and by Aristotle and his medieval followers. According to Aristotle we must seek these reasons in the essence and nature of things, in their »substantial forms«. Every particular substance has a motion of its own corresponding to its peculiar nature, to its ontological character. Fire, water, air, earth, are endowed with special inner tendencies and these tendencies determine the form of their motion: fire always strives upward to the heavens, earth always strives downward to the center of the universe. And beyond the sphere of the elementary movements – of the movements of water and air, of fire and earth – there is still another sphere composed of quite a different substance and therefore irreducible to the same general rules. Whereas all earthly elements move in straight lines – a movement that after a certain time must necessarily come to a standstill – the motion of celestial bodies is eternal because their substance is eternal and indestructible. The substance 3 [Joseph Louis de Lagrange, Mécanique analytique, Bd. I (Œuvres, Bd. XI), hrsg. v. Gaston Darboux, Paris 1888, S. 237 f.: »Les découvertes des satellites de Jupiter, des phases de Vénus, des taches du Soleil, etc., ne demandaient que des télescopes et de l’assiduité; mais il fallait un génie extraordinaire pour déméler les lois de la nature dans des phénomènes que l’on avait toujours eus sous les yeux, mais dont l’explication avait néanmoins toujours échappé aux recherches des philosophes.«]

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of the heavens is incorruptible whereas the substance of our elements, of the world below the moon, is liable to change and decay. The same view prevailed in all the great systems of medieval thought insofar as they dealt with the fundamental problems of natural philosophy. Thomas Aquinas expressly declared that we must not think of the substance of the celestial spheres as anything analogous to the stuff of our earthly bodies. Between earthly and heavenly matter there is a verbal rather than a real community. Galilei’s theory of dynamics destroyed this concept of a radical heterogeneity of matter – in the same sense in which his philosophy destroyed the assumption of a radical heterogeneity of truth. From his observations of falling bodies Galilei had learned that all heavy bodies fall in accordance with identical laws and with equal velocities, regardless of their mass or their chemical composition. Nature, concluded Galilei, is uniform; it always acts in the same way. For Galilei the homogeneity of matter was a simple corollary of his belief in the universality of the laws of nature. | But to reach this goal, to conceive of nature as a system governed by universal and inviolable laws, modern thought had to take another step. Man had to renounce his teleological interpretation of nature; he had to view categories of ends and means as merely human categories restricted to a special and limited field and losing their usefulness and validity as soon as men strive for a universal explanation of cosmic phenomena. Here we grasp the real significance of Galilei’s defense of the Copernican system. He could not desist; nor could he compromise without sacrificing the unity and the fundamental character of his thought. He adopted the Copernican system not merely as an astronomical hypothesis but as an emancipation from the narrow anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism that had theretofore impeded all investigation of natural phenomena. This concept of finality – that the processes of nature are directed toward an end or shaped by a purpose – pervaded both Aristotelian and medieval physics and metaphysics. Finality is both the reason for being of all things and the reason for all of our knowledge. From the human point of view this concept, fulfilling not only our intellectual but also our ethical and aesthetic demands, was natural and satisfactory. But modern science had to relinquish the principle of finality for an entirely new system of categories. Instead of being based on the concept of means and ends, modern science depends on the concept of space and time, number, quantity, and measure. It was a long time, however, before Aristotelian teleology was superseded by the modern mathematical view. In the science and philos-

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ophy of the Renaissance we can follow, step by step, the slow development from the one to the other. Kepler went back to the Pythagorean conception of the universe. He strove to explain nature on the basis of number and harmony: God, he reiterated, is always counting and reckoning. Despite this insistence Kepler had no wish to sacrifice the Aristotelian scheme of thought. Neither the three laws formulated by Kepler nor the new cosmology inherent in the work of Copernicus, however important and decisive they both proved to be for | the future development of scientific thought, were in themselves strong enough to break the power of the Aristotelian system of physics. Even while rejecting particular ideas and particular doctrines of Aristotelian physics, Copernicus and Kepler continued to argue and reason within the framework of his metaphysics and ontology. To convince men of the truth of the heliocentric system Copernicus reasoned teleologically. He argued that it is most natural to ascribe the noblest place, the place in the center of the world, to the noblest celestial body, the sun. And in Kepler’s »Harmonia mundi« we find, over and over again, the same mode of thinking. In Kepler’s mind mathematical thought and aesthetic speculation interpenetrated each other; they were inseparable. Galilei was the first to make such a separation. He did not deny that metaphysical or teleological explanations of the phenomena of nature are possible. But he conceived his own task, the task of natural philosophy, as having a different function. Alluding to some general cosmological speculations from Kepler’s »Mysterium cosmographicum« Galilei remarked: »But profound considerations of this kind belong to a higher science than ours […] We must be satisfied to belong to that class of less worthy workmen who procure from the quarry the marble out of which, later, the gifted sculptor produces those masterpieces which lay hidden in this rough and shapeless exterior.«4 We cannot, therefore, attain full insight into the nature and value of Galileo’s science if we content ourselves with characterizing it according to the standards we customarily use in describing a philosophical system. It is commonly thought that in analyzing modern philosophy one should draw a clear line of demarcation between the rationalistic and the empiricist theory of knowledge. But if we follow this procedure the place we should assign to the thought and work of Galileo is by no means obvious. Galileo was not merely an empiricist; it may be claimed that he and not Bacon was the true founder of | modern philosophical empiricism. On the other hand there has been no rationalistic 4 Galileo Galilei, Dialogues concerning Two New Sciences, transl. by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio, New York 1914, p. 193 [Zitat S. 194].

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thinker from the time of Leibniz on who has not admired Galileo and cited his method. The logical structure of Galileo’s natural philosophy is not to be described by the categories of empiricism or rationalism taken in their traditional sense. For his natural philosophy does not separate reason and experience; on the contrary it sets up between them an entirely new relationship. A law of nature must be based on facts; it must contain no element incapable of verification, of experimental proof. But the facts themselves are not derived from sensory experience alone. The brute facts, before they can become the basis for what we call a law of nature, must be analyzed and brought into a logical order. In Galilei’s scientific work we find the first and in a sense the classic examples of this type of mental analysis. Although grounded in experience it does not identify scientific experience with what is immediately perceived through sensory perception or accidental, unmethodical observation. All inquiry into the laws of nature is, Galileo was convinced, bound to a twofold procedure – to a method of analysis and synthesis or, to use Galileo’s own terms, to a method of resolution and a method of composition. Scientific thought must dissolve the complex phenomena of nature in order to reconstruct them out of their elements; it must differentiate them in order to integrate them. Galileo was not yet in possession of those technical concepts and methods introduced by modern mathematical thought, by Newton’s »theory of fluxions« and the differential calculus of Leibniz. But so towering was his mathematical genius that he succeeded in applying modern methods before they had found explicit expression or proof. By the application of the method of analysis and synthesis, of differentiation and integration, he arrived at his principal discoveries in the field of dynamics, his formulation of the law of inertia, his theories about the composition of movements and of forces, his deduction of the laws of falling bodies and of the parabola as the curve of projection. The law of inertia is a far cry from being the immediate descrip | tion of a phenomenon derived from sense experience. It seems, in fact, to contradict all the data of sense perception, for we have never observed a body actually moving independent of the influence of any outside force. But our scientific thought and our scientific imagination may very well, and must, assume and presuppose a state that strictly speaking is outside our observation. In his »Farbenlehre« Goethe drew a parallel between Bacon and Galileo. He declared that Bacon was in no sense the true founder of modern empiricism, for his method was much more a method of disintegration than of unification. In contrast to Bacon with his haphazard accumulation of positive and negative

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instances, Galileo introduced a new type of induction, a method of simplification rather than of expansion and dispersion. In most of Galileo’s fundamental experiments it is not so much the bulk of empirical evidence as it is his interpretation thereof that is of primary importance. Goethe goes on to say: »Through Bacon’s method of dispersion natural science seemed to be scattered forever. But through Galileo it became at once united and concentrated. Galileo proved in his early youth that for a true genius one case may stand for a thousand cases, inasmuch as he developed the theory of the pendulum and of the fall of bodies from the observation of a swinging lamp in a cathedral.«5 Looking back at the great discoveries of Galilei we realize that throughout the history of science there has perhaps been no other instance of so great a goal attained by means so slight and inadequate. Galilei had no physical laboratory and no technical apparatus in our modern sense. Most of his instruments he invented and constructed himself. He built his hydrostatic balance, his telescope. He had no chronometer, no instrument for measuring time. When observing the swinging lamp in the cathedral of Pisa he counted his pulse to measure the time. Nor did he possess our conceptual tools. He worked without the infinitesimal calculus that in the hands of his successors, Newton and Lagrange, was one of the most powerful of intellec | tual instruments. By the power, the clarity, the precision, of his analytical genius he became the founder of what we today call theoretical physics. Galilei was not a systematic philosopher in the sense we usually associate with this term. Yet although he did not, like Descartes, start with a general principle in order to deduce from this principle all the phenomena of the physical and spiritual universe, his various ideas were linked one with another in an admirably consistent whole. The concept of the unity of truth involves the concept of the unity of nature. Nature was for Galileo a system governed by inviolable laws. Galilei was not the first to conceive this idea. We find the same conception, more than a hundred years earlier, in the manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci. »Necessity,« wrote Leonardo, »is the master and tutor of nature; it is the subject matter as well as the discoverer of nature; it 5 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Materialien zur Geschichte der Farbenlehre, Vol. II/1 (Werke, ed. by order of the Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, Sect. 2, Vol. III), Weimar 1893, p. 246 [»Schien durch die Verulamische Zerstreuungsmethode die Naturwissenschaft auf ewig zersplittert, so ward sie durch Galilei sogleich wieder zur Sammlung gebracht; er führte die Naturlehre wieder in den Menschen zurück und zeigte schon in früher Jugend, daß dem Genie Ein Fall für tausend gelte, indem er sich aus schwingenden Kirchenlampen die Lehre des Pendels und des Falles der Körper entwickelte.«].

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is its bridle and its eternal ruler.«6 But Galileo proved what Leonardo had felt as a great artist and as a great scientific genius. It was in Galileo that all the basic ideas and ideals of the Renaissance reached their full maturity. Galileo should not be thought of as merely a great thinker and a great scientist. The manifestations of his genius were not limited to his discovery of natural phenomena, his formulation of scientific laws or his concept of the nature of the physical world. These are not his only and perhaps they are not his principal merit. Kant, at the end of his »Critique of Practical Reason«, wrote: »Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the sta r r y heav en s ab ov e a n d t h e m o r a l la w wit h i n. I have not to search for them and conjecture them as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence. The former begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense, and enlarges my connexion therein to an unbounded extent with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into limitless times | of their periodic motion, its beginning and continuance. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is traceable only by the understanding [It] infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent on animality and even on the whole sensible world […]«7 In both respects Galilei was a pioneer of modern thought and modern consciousness. He was great not only in his intellectual genius but in his personality. And he was never greater than in the last years of his life, after his trial and his condemnation. There is an old legend to the effect that after he had abjured the heresy of the Copernican system Galileo added in a low voice the words »Eppur si muove«, nevertheless it moves. These words were not spoken and could not have been spoken. Galilei could not defy the authorities of the Church who were the masters of his destiny. But as a prisoner of the Inquisition, 6 [Leonardo da Vinci, Scritti letterari cavati dagli Autografi (Nr. 1135), hrsg. v. Jean Paul Richter, Bd. II, London 1883, S. 285: »La neciessità è maestra e tutrice della natura; La neciessità è tema e inventrice della natura e freno e regola eterna.«] 7 Immanuel Kant, Critical Examination of Practical Reason, in: Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and other Works on the Theory of Ethics, transl. by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, London and others 61927, pp. 85–262: p. 260.

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and in the greatest personal misery, he continued and completed his principal work, the »Conversations and Mathematical Demonstrations on Two New Branches of Science« – a work that will always remain the classic of modern science. When he wrote it Galileo was more than seventy years old. He lived in utter seclusion, without friends, shut off from intercourse with other scientists, deprived of all means of scientific research and even of the ordinary comforts of life. He was suffering from several ailments and was without a physician’s care. In carrying on his work under such circumstances Galileo became a great discoverer not only in the field of physical science but equally in the moral world. Galileo realized that his work was not an end but a mere beginning and he foresaw its potentialities for the future. In his »Conversations and Mathematical Demonstrations on Two New Branches of Science« he wrote: »My purpose is to set forth a very new science dealing with a very ancient subject. There is, in nature, perhaps nothing older than motion, | concerning which the books written by philosophers are neither few nor small; nevertheless I have discovered by experiment some properties of it which are worth knowing and which have not hitherto been either observed or demonstrated. […] and what I consider more important, there have been opened up to this vast and most excellent science, of which my work is [only] the beginning, ways and means by which other minds more acute than mine will explore its remote corners.«8 I find in one of the works of the great medieval philosopher, Bonaventura, a thinker of the 13th century, a passage reasoning that there must always be a gulf between a conviction based on religious grounds and a conviction based upon mere scientific or rational arguments. The firmness and security derived from faith and revelation are always superior to a judgment having no other support than logic or empiricism. As confirmation of this thesis Bonaventura pointed out that there had never been a man who had died for the sake of a speculative truth. A geometer who would choose to die for a mathematical truth would be regarded as a fool whereas every faithful and pious man is ready to die for any article of his faith. These are characteristic words, strikingly illuminating the difference between medieval and modern thought – the thought represented by Galileo. In Galileo there appeared not only a new science but a new spirit – the ethics of science. »To believe your own thought,« wrote Emerson in his essay »Self-Reliance«, »to believe that what is true for you […] is true for all men, – 8

Galilei, Dialogues concerning Two New Sciences, pp. 153 f.

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that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost […]«9 These words we may apply to Galilei. He did not die the death of a martyr. But under the most tragic conditions he remained true to his great scientific task – he spoke his conviction and this conviction became the universal sense.

9 [Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in: Essays (The Works, Bd. II), London/New York 1906, S. 35–72: S. 37.]

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Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. A Study in the History of Renaissance Ideas1 (1942) (Part I) In the intellectual panorama of the Italian Renaissance Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is one of the most notable and remarkable figures. For us he is once and for all a part of this panorama and inseparably bound up with it. But the more deeply we study his work, the clearer it becomes that the real significance and substance of his thought can be only very incompletely and inadequately described as belonging to »the Renaissance« in the sense which investigations of the last century in the history of philosophy and of ideas have led us to associate with that term. There is no doubt that Pico belongs among the great representative thinkers of his epoch; but at the same time he falls outside it in many of his characteristics. The intellectual ancestry of his philosophy is to be sought in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages, not in the Quattrocento. In many respects he seems to represent and announce a new way of thinking. But on the other hand we find him still completely bound up with and even restricted to a century-old tradition drawn from the most divergent sources. The frame of | this 1 [Zuerst erschienen in: Journal of the History of Ideas 3 (1942), S. 123–144 u. 319–346.] This article here appears in the form in which it was written some time ago, in the summer of 1938. I mention this circumstance to explain my not taking account of the literature on Pico published since then. But I should at least like to refer to the important work of Avery Dulles, and in particular to state my position with regard to his conclusions (Avery Dulles, Princeps Concordiae. Pico della Mirandola and the Scholastic Tradition. The Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Prize Essay for 1940, Cambridge, Mass. 1941). Dulles tries to solve the problem by emphasizing the traditional features in Pico’s work and rather one-sidedly placing them in the foreground: in Pico he is willing to recognize only a »medieval realist« (ibid., p. XII). To be sure, so far as I can see he is unable to develop this position consistently. For at the same time he himself emphasizes that in opposition to the Thomists and Scotists Pico accepted the thesis of Ockham, that the object of logic is the rational and not the real (ibid., pp. 29 ff.). As for me, I do not at all deny the close connection between Pico’s thought and scholasticism; indeed, I have emphatically insisted on it. But the center of Pico’s thought lies elsewhere, as the present paper tries to show; we must look for it in these strains that point not to the past but to the future. I am indebted to Dr. Paul Oskar Kristeller of Columbia University for certain suggestions and references. The editors are responsible for the English translation.

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tradition Pico never tried to burst asunder. If we understand by »originality« the individual’s ability to break through in his thinking and action the limits of what has already been achieved, we cannot in Pico’s case look for even the disposition or the will to attain such originality. His intention was to be neither »original« nor »unique«; such originality would have stood in sharpest contradiction to the idea of truth that pervades and inspires his philosophy. For Pico the criterion of philosophic truth consists in its constancy, in its uniformity, and sameness. He understands philosophy as philosophia perennis – as the revelation of an enduring truth, in its main features immutable. This truth is handed down through the ages; but it is generated by no age, by no single epoch, because, as something which eternally is, it is beyond time and beyond becoming. Such a thinker we can hardly approach immediately with the question of what new trails he has blazed. To put the problem this way runs the danger of forcing us to apply standards inadmissible or at least inadequate for Pico’s system. » Das Wahre war schon längst gefunden, Hat edle Geisterschaft verbunden, Das alte Wahre faß es an!«2 These words of Goethe could be taken as the motto for what is distinctive in Pico’s entire philosophic work. He is convinced that what is true requires no »discovery«, no finding out through any personal inquiry of the individual; rather has it existed from time immemorial. What is characteristic for Pico is hence not the way in which he in creased the store of philosophic truth, but the way in which he made it man if es t . His whole thought moves in this direction, and the entire course of his intellectual development is determined by this tendency. If we run over the nine hundred theses which at the age of twenty-three he proposed to defend in Rome, we are astonished not only at their range, but also at the utter disparity of the questions to be treated in them. The first impression we receive from an inspection of these theses can only be one of complete confusion. They touch upon the most incompatible and disparate points; and without any clear or recognizable lines of demarcation the several questions merge into each other. Metaphysics and theological dogmatics, mathematics 2 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Vermächtniß, in: Werke, hrsg. im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 4 Abt., insges. 133 Bde. in 143 Bdn., Weimar 1887–1919, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 82 f.: S. 82.]

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and astrology, | magic and cabbalistic speculation, the history of philosophy, church history, natural history – we encounter them all in motley array. It is as though Pico’s ambition was to assemble the positions he desired to treat and defend from every region of the »globus intellectualis«. This wealth of material seems at first glance bounded or restricted by no intellectual form. But if we look more closely, we find that it is just in this extravagance and excess that a new and distinctive way of thinking comes to light – that the apparent chaos of the nine hundred theses nevertheless takes on the form of an intellectual cosmos. For the present we shall disregard the question of whether and how far there can be discovered any real internal order in the c onte nts of Pico’s theses; for this question can find an answer and a clarification only in a later phase of our investigation. For the time being we limit ourselves to the h is t o r ical bearing of the theses, to the way they propose to come to terms with all previous forces and currents in the history of philosophy, the history of religion, and the general history of ideas. What is here characteristic of Pico, and what distinguishes him from all the other thinkers of his time, even from Nicholas Cusanus, is the extent of his intellectual horizon and the breadth of his survey, which tries to exclude or limit no single aspect. It is as though he had made it his goal to render vocal at the same time a l l the intellectual forces which had heretofore cooperated in establishing religious, philosophical, and scientific knowledge. None of them is to be merely attacked or rejected; each of them is granted a definite positive share in the totality of philosophic knowledge and truth. There is no longer for Pico any limitation or dogmatic restriction. He proposes to conjure up the whole great chorus of minds of the past – and to each voice he gives ear impartially and willingly. For he is convinced that only by means of this p o ly p h o n y can that inner harmony be won that is the mark of truth. Thus we hear from Pico’s theses at one and the same time the voices of the great classical tradition, of patristic and medieval theology, of Arabic and Jewish speculation – and each of them he wants to sound forth full and clear and to stand out in its independent significance. Never to such an extent and with such freedom and lack of prejudice had any thinker before Pico examined the fruits of previous intellectual work in the field of philosophy and religion. In Pico’s theses we can indeed detect the true spirit | of the Renaissance; but in him the Renaissance does not think and feel as something emancipated, as something relying on its own power and will. It sees its real greatness in the complete mastery and intellectual acquisition of whatever the

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intellectual life of man has worked out in all its different enterprises. It desires to possess and to guard faithfully the heritage of the ages in its entire extent. For Pico this heritage cannot and must not be limited to classical antiquity: the one-sidedness of the humanistic ideal, like every other one-sidedness, he rejected and attacked. His love and his admiration and reverence cannot be divided; they go out equally to the Middle Ages and to antiquity, to Christianity and to Islam, to the form of the knowledge of God expressed in the writings of the Christian Fathers, of Arabian philosophers or of the Jewish Cabbala. »Haec est prima et vera Cabala,« he says in the »Apology« for his nine hundred theses, speaking of his interpretation of the Jewish Cabbalistic sources, »de qua credo me primum apud Latinos explicitam fecisse mentionem, et est illa, qua ego utor in meis conclusionibus […]«3 The same universalistic attitude pervades the whole of Pico’s work and gives it its characteristic stamp. In this he differs from his friend and master Ficino. For Ficino wants to further the victory of a definite and particular line of thought, and he feels himself its representative and protagonist. His task is to establish again the main ideas of Platonism, to set forth their agreement with Christianity, and to exhibit them as the foundation of every true philosophic and religious system. But this task which Ficino and the Platonic Academy set themselves was not enough for Pico. He was able to devote himself to it; but he was far from seeing in it the goal of philosophy, of the search for truth in itself. »[…] ego ita me institui,« he writes in his oration »De hominis dignitate«, »ut in nullius verba juratus, me per omnes philosophiae magistros funderem, omnes schaedas excuterem, omnes familias agnoscerem.«4 Pico does not wish to fight for the rights and the mastery of any particular philosophic school: for him the real meaning and goal of philosophy lies not in fighting, but in peace. The pax philosophica is his real ideal, which he sets by the side of the pax christiana. »Cum […] statutum sit mihi,« he writes in a letter to Benivieni, »ut nulla pretereat dies quin aliquid legam ex | Evangelica doctrina, incidit in manus […] illud Christi: Pacem meam do vobis […] pacem relinquo vobis. Illico subit(a) quadam animi concitatione de pace quedam ad philosophie laudes facientia tanta celeritate dictavi, ut notarii manum precurrerem […]«5 3 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Apologia adversus eos qui aliquot propositiones theologicas carpebant, in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, Basle without year, pp. 114– 240: p. 180. 4 Idem, De hominis dignitate, in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 313–331: p. 324. 5 Idem, Letter to Girolamo Benivieni, November 12, 1486, in: Léon Dorez, Lettres inédites de Jean Pic de la Mirandole (1482–1492), in: Giornale storico della

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But did Pico really manage to complete this great design of his? Did not that idea of a pax philosophica that pervades his whole thought remain to the end a mere dream? Indeed, can the goal Pico set himself be formulated and justified from a systematic and philosophic point of view? For Pico the s ch o lar it is one of his great and imperishable claims to fame, that in his passionate zeal for learning and in his almost unbounded ability to learn, he left almost no field of knowledge untouched. He came to terms with almost all the great intellectual forces of his time. Not only did he go to school to scholasticism, to Arabian philosophy, to Humanism; in all these movements he himself took part independently and advanced them productively. But it is questionable whether in this advance he made, an advance that historically considered was of great significance and left deep traces, we can see any specifically philosophical achievement. If we measure Pico’s thought by strictly philosophical standards, we often get the impression that we are here dealing less with a fixed d oc tr i ne of definite form and clear outline, than with a kind of intellectual alchemy. It is as though Pico never tired of assembling all the positions he encountered, uniting them all with each other, mixing and combining them, in order to see what kind of a product would arise from this treatment. He loves to seek out just the most diverse and curious doctrines, in order to throw them all into the crucible of his thought and to submit them there to a process of purification and clarification. It is as though he thought he could find the philosopher’s stone by regarding it as an elixir to be distilled from the most divergent kinds of essences, from an extract of the most incompatible materials. It cannot but give pause when Pico places on the same level propositions from the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies and ideas which belong to Plotinus, Proclus, or Dionysius the Areopagite, and tries immediately to bring them into harmony. But what result is to be expected when to this he adds propositions and problems from Origen or Augustine, from | Thomas Aquinas or Duns Scotus, from Avicenna or Averroës, from the hermetic and cabbalistic literature? Does there not disappear in the end all possibility of distinction, of philosophic criticism – and are we not always in danger of falling into the most obvious contradictions? This objection has been directed against Pico from the very beginning, and it has determined the traditional estimate of his philosophy. letteratura italiana 25 (1895), pp. 352–361: p. 358; cf. Eugenio Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Vita e dottrina, Florence 1937 (Pubblicazioni della R. Università degli Studi di Firenze, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Series 3, Vol. 5), p. 73.

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His many-sidedness and comprehensiveness have been admired, but in the same breath his thought has been denied any philosophic value. For men saw in it for the most part nothing but an expression of eclecticism and syncretism. The accounts of the first historians of philosophy who treated Pico in detail, and tried to determine his position in the development of modern philosophy, expressed just such a view. Brucker in his critical history of philosophy sees in Pico’s thought nothing but an assembling and confusing of the most incompatible elements: »[…] inepte miscet omnia, et […] inter se misere confundit.«6 Later historians have sought to soften this judgment, at least to defend Pico against the charge of being a fool and intellectually incompetent. They too have found the supposed »system« of Pico burdened with the heaviest contradictions; but they have admired the subjective ability and readiness with which Pico succeeded in harmonizing all these contradictions, at least in his own mind, and effecting an apparent reconciliation. Renan speaks of a »wise eclecticism« which Pico sought to preserve in his philosophy.7 But is there any clear and distinct meaning to be associated with such a phrase? Or is not this oxymoron rather but the expression of the embarrassment into which we fall, when instead of judging Pico’s thought by purely historical standards we approach it with genuinely systematic claims? A »wise« eclecticism seems indeed no other and no better than a wooden piece of iron. Even the most recent Pico literature has brought no final and satisfactory clarification of this point. In recent years two works have appeared, one by Eugenio Garin, the other by Eugenio Anagnine.8 Garin’s work marks an important step in advance: both in systematic interpretation and in the investigation of the | sources it has reached new conclusions. But it appears that neither Garin nor Anagnine has fully succeeded in really destroying the force of the charge of »syncretism« brought against Pico’s thought. Anagnine indeed refers in the very title of his book to a »sincretismo religioso-filosofico«. By these words he does not mean that the combination is a wholly uncritical mixture of incompatible elements. In his account Pico appears as by 6 [Johann Jakob Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae a tempore resuscitatarum in occidente literarum ad nostra tempora, Bd. IV/1, Leipzig 1743, S. 60.] 7 Ernest Renan, Averroès et l’averroïsme. Essai historique, 6th ed., Paris without year, p. 395 [Verifiziert nach: 2., durchges. u. verm. Aufl., Paris 1861: »sage éclectisme«.]. 8 Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola; Eugenio Anagnine, G. Pico della Mirandola. Sincretismo religioso-filosofico. 1463–1494, Bari 1937 (Biblioteca di cultura moderna, Vol. 304).

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no means a thinker who simply surrendered to the divergent intellectual influences that affected him; he is indeed granted the fullest ability to elaborate all these strains independently. Thus there emerges the picture of a »conscious and tenacious syncretism« (»consapevole e tenace sincretismo«), which is said to be characteristic of Pico’s philosophy.9 Garin tries still more vigorously to dispel the evil connotations the word »syncretism« bears.10 One of the main purposes of his account is to show that Pico’s work did not remain a »rudis indigestaque moles«, an aggregate of ideas thrown together, but possesses a real »inner form« by which it is inspired and pervaded. And in truth it is just at this point that the critical problem lies, from the standpoint of the history of philosophy. Were we forced to deny to Pico’s thought any such »inner form«, it would then remain but a mere literary curiosity, a document in many respects important and interesting, instructive as to all the manifold and antagonistic interests that motivated the thinking of the Renaissance. But Pico’s thought would have to be expunged from the history of genuine p h ilos ophy. For we can attribute no philosophical significance to an accomplishment that takes no definite stand on the great antitheses of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics; which poses no definite problems and which maintains or rejects no certain solutions. Can we count Pico della Mirandola as belonging to philosophy in t h is sense, and include him in its intellectual development? And what is the distinctive pr i nc i pl e he set up, and expressed in the whole of his thinking? To the clarification of t h is question the following study is directed. For it seems to me not to have been exhaustively answered, even by the most recent research on Pico. In detail and in a purely factual respect neither the life of Pico nor the story of the development of his thought seems to confront any insoluble problems. On many difficult and obscure points of his life, as for | example his relation to Savonarola, new light has been thrown by modern research. And the genesis and distinctive »filiation« of Pico’s ideas are also clear in their main features. His relations to the scholasticism of Paris have been made plain by the valuable investigations of Dorez and Thuasne.11 His relation to Florentine Humanism and to the Platonic Academy Della Torre12 has set forth in detail. His relations to Averroës and the AverIbid., p. 204. Cf. Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, p. 73. 11 Léon Dorez/Louis Thuasne, Pic de la Mirandole en France (1485–1488), Paris 1897 (Petite bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie, Vol. 21). For this point cf. now Dulles, Princeps Concordiae (vid. p. 67 note 1). 12 Arnaldo Della Torre, Storia dell’Accademia Platonica di Firenze, Florence 9

10

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roistic movement which dominated the Italian universities were traced by Renan.13 For the understanding of the profound influence Pico received from the medieval Jewish philosophy, Steinschneider’s works are fundamental; and the range and significance of these influences, in particular the effect which the Cabbala had on Pico’s mind, have once again been placed in a clear light by the most recent works of Eugenio Garin and Eugenio Anagnine.14 So it seems that for the judgment and the historical understanding of Pico’s thought there is nothing essential lacking. We have apparently a firm grasp on the parts: but the intellectual bond that unites them is still absent. For at this point we come to the most difficult problem, the one that is really critical. Have all the strains that meet in Pico’s thought a purely accidental and subjective unity derived merely from himself, from his own individuality? Or does there hold between them a deeper and stricter, a purely objective connection? At first glance we shall hardly be inclined to consider even the possibility of such an objective connection. For what real bond could we conceive capable of bringing together such incompatible materials? Is not Pico effacing all distinction between problems, when in treating the foundations of Christian dogmatics he takes refuge in magic, when he goes so far as to explain that magic is the appropriate and the surest support of the truth of Christianity? »Nulla est scientia, quae nos magis certificet de divinitate Christi, quam Magia et Cabala.«15 And is he not neglecting and destroying every intellectual distinction between particular historical epochs and different cultures, when he jumps immediately from | propositions of medieval Christian theology to the rationalism and naturalism of the Arabian philosophy and to hermetic and cabbalistic interpretations? Such doubts are completely justified, and such objections are understandable. But they do not seem to me irrefutable. The following discussion aims to show that the doctrines Pico has collected in his »Conclusiones« and expresses in his chief philosophical works, in the »De ente et uno«, in the »Heptaplus«, and in the polemic against astrology, did not just happen to come together accidentally 1902 (Pubblicazioni del R. Istituto di Studi Superiori Pratici e di Perfezionamento in Firenze. Sezione di filosofia e filologia, Vol. 28). 13 Renan, Averroès, pp. 392 ff. 14 Cf. Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Pt. 3, chap. 2: La rivelazione e la Qabbalah), pp. 137 ff., and Anagnine, G. Pico della Mirandola (Chap. 3: Influenze ebraiche – Cabala cristiana), pp. 75 ff. 15 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones nongentae (Conclusiones magicae numero XXVI, secundum opinionem propriam, No. 9), in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 63–113: p. 105.

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in his mind because of divergent historical influences: they belong together in an internal, objective sense. The principle that unites them is indeed deeply concealed, and can only be brought to light through a careful analysis of the particular strains and ideas. In defending his nine hundred theses Pico himself guarded against the objection that his propositions were only a mere patchwork of completely incompatible ideas. He speaks of an »occulta […] concatenatio« holding between the apparently disparate individual propositions.16 This »obscure linkage« of his ideas we must make visible. To reveal this unity of arrangement, we must try to reduce Pico’s thinking to a few large and general central strains, and to show how these strains are linked together in his mind and united into a distinctive whole. first chapter The One and the Many – God and the World The ideas of the One and the Many form the two poles about which all philosophic and religious thinking revolves. Metaphysics and theology endeavor, in different ways and by different means, to grasp and clarify the relation between the ultimate First Cause of things, which can be conceived only as absolutely One, and the multiplicity of things, their extension in space and their duration in time. But whenever thought attacks this problem, it is in danger of being caught in an antinomy, in a final and insoluble contradiction. Instead of the intended reconciliation of opposites, on closer analysis one term of the opposition seems to disappear, and thus the whole problem appears to evaporate. If the »First Cause« is really to be conceived as such, i.e., if it is to mean not only the temporal origin of Being, but also its persisting and enduring | »Principle«, if it is to be that on which all continuance of reality depends and that which it requires at every moment for its existence and character; this means that we cannot effect any real detachment of the Many from the One. The Many must be not only externally dependent on the One. They must remain ever included within it; all the reality we attribute to them they must owe to the One. Hence the Many have scarcely come into being before they must in a sense be taken back once more into the bosom of the One Cause of the World. The latter can suffer nothing besides or outside itself. For any being different from itself, anything that is not itself, would mean a limitation; and this can and must not take place in the absolute and 16

Idem, Apologia (De abdita intelligentia animae disputatio), p. 235.

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unconditioned Being, which is assumed to be the totality of all perfection, the ens realissimum et perfectissimum. Hence for the »One« to pass beyond itself, and for the Many to proceed out of the One, cannot be conceived in strictly rational terms. Every such proceeding would be either a diminution of the One’s own nature, or a multiplying of this nature. And how would a multiplication be possible in what is assumed to be self-contained and perfect? Greek philosophy from the days of Parmenides felt such a multiplication to be contradictory and rejected it. »It is the same, and it rests in the self-same place, abiding in itself. And thus it remaineth constant in its place.«17 Each of the great systems that have followed the Eleatics has brought every resource to bear on freeing Being again from this absolute uniformity and fixity, and on indicating in Being the »possibility« of plurality and change. But this »gigantomachy« of thought, as Plato described it in the »Sophist«, has led to no final solution. None of the attempts at mediation between the opposite poles of unity and plurality, of Being and Becoming, can resolve the contradiction. Christian speculation rests on the assumptions and the ideas which Greek thought worked out; and at every point it must clothe its own distinctive problem in the l an g u ag e of Greek thought, in order to make it accessible and comprehensible to the mind. But its aim is from the outset different from that of Greek dialectic and metaphysics. For it does not inquire, in the same sense as dialectic thinking, into the »Why« of the world and the »Why« of plurality. This »Why« cannot be grasped by pure thought. In the begin | ning was the d ee d – was the free act of the Divine Will, through which the world came into being. Human reason cannot venture to »conceive« this free act, i.e., to deduce it as necessary from its own concepts and principles. It remains an absolutely unique event, unparalleled, »irrational«; it can be explained or understood through no analogy, through no comparison with anything we encounter in the sphere of our finite, empirical knowledge. But the c er t ain t y of God’s creation and incarnation is not thereby shaken. For it is derived not from rational demonstration but from a fundamentally different source of truth. It is founded on revelat io n . But p h ilo s o p h ic thought could not remain with this simple line of division between faith and knowledge, between reason and revela17 »taôtm t’ %m tat3i te μ mnm κα’ úaυτ τε κε1ται χο≠τωw Fμπεδον α_ι μ νει.« Parmenides, περë Φσεωw, Fragm. 8 (V. 29 f.), quoted from: Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Griechisch und deutsch, Vol. I, Berlin 21906, p. 120.

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tion. All medieval philosophy is filled with attempts to circumvent this division in some way, if only a mediate one, or at least to draw the line of demarcation less sharply than has here been done. The content of revelation is not derived from reason; but on the other hand it can and must not be absolutely inaccessible and impenetrable to reason. Thus there are now repeated on another level all the great typical attempts to solve the problem of the »One« and the »Many«. We need not here consider the particular co n t en t of these attempts at solution. To make clear the general historical context, it is sufficient to have in mind the basic ca tegor ies they rely upon. The specifically Christian and genuinely orthodox solution is determined by the category of c re a t io n . If this category is accepted, any real d u a l i s m between the One and the Many, between God and the world, is thereby avoided. For creation is wholly transferred to the interior of the Divine Being; it nowise means that this Being is in any respect dissipated, or lost in anything different from itself. The real and profound sense of »creation ex nihilo« is this: in it the Divine Power is not bound to any s u b s t r at um that could in any way condition or limit it. The world, plurality, has no substratum of that sort. For were such a substratum admitted, it would mean a kind of independence and self-sufficiency, by which the absolute dependence on God which is here to be displayed would be transformed into its opposite. If God is the content of all reality, there can be no matter »given« to him. This »givenness«, this material »subject« for action, holds only for human art, which | is thereby once and for all distinguished from genuine and absolute creation. Quite different from this conception is the relation of unity and plurality, of God and the world, exhibited in all those systems which start from the idea of e man at io n rather than of creation. Here the relation in a certain sense approaches more closely to the rationally comprehensible. For »emanation« stands not in the sign of freedom, but in that of necessity. In it there is expressed no free decree of the will; Being is simply following its own »nature« in passing beyond itself, in allowing something else to arise out of itself. It is not so much a free power that is here expressing itself, as a »must« conditioned and imposed by its essence. Hence there is here a firmly ordered series, based on an intelligible principle: a scale of beings leading down from the One to the Many, in which no step can be passed over. To set up and establish this scale of being is the core of Neoplatonic speculation. This speculation, as it appears above all in the Pseudo-Dionysian writings, in the work on the celestial hierarchy and on the hierarchy of the church, puts its stamp on all medieval thinking as well as on the thought

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of the Renaissance.18 The work of Pico della Mirandola and his whole intellectual development is completely saturated with the fundamental ideas and presuppositions of the Dionysian writings. The picture of the celestial choirs surrounding the highest Divine Being; the arrangement of the world in accordance with the different celestial spheres and the transmission of effects from above to the »sublunar« earthly sphere: all this forms the basic framework of his metaphysics, his theology and cosmology. But with this Neoplatonic influence there is joined another, which affected Pico from the very beginning of his intellectual development. In his first academic years in Padua, in 1480–1482, above all through the influence of his teacher Elia del Medigo, Pico fell under the spell of the Averroistic teaching. To it he remained faithful in later years; unlike Ficino, he did not cease to manifest his reverence and admiration for it, even though he did not accept all its consequences.19 But if we place ourselves on the level of this | teaching, at one stroke the problem of unity and plurality, of God and the world, assumes a completely different form. Now it is no longer a matter of solving this problem positively through a basic category of thought, either that of creation or that of emanation. The whole que s ti on resolves itself into nothing, into a purely dialectical pseudo-problem. On the principles of Averroism there is here nothing that could be significantly asked about – nothing that could raise any problem for the philosophic reason. The problem only arises and can only continue to exist, if reason makes no use of its basic right, the right of independent critical examination, but surrenders itself to dogma. Within the limits prescribed by the medieval picture of the world, Averroism is the attempt at a rational explanation of nature. It seeks to carry through this explanation of nature without the admixture of any dogmatic theological position. What it is looking for is insight into the strict determinism of all occurrences, which follows from the general determinations of matter and motion. What we can know clearly and with certainty is the connection that itself obtains under these determinations, and the way in which they mutually condition each other. But there can be no question of a »cause« of nature in the transcendent 18 Cf. the work of Prof. Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being. A Study of the History of an Idea. The William James Lectures, delivered at Harvard University, 1933, Cambridge, Mass. 1936, known to me unfortunately only after the completion of this paper. 19 On Pico’s relations to Averroism and to Elia del Medigo cf. Renan, Averroès, pp. 391 ff., Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, pp. 11 ff. and 26 ff., Anagnine, G. Pico della Mirandola, pp. 8 ff.

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sense. For nature as such, the whole of matter and motion, has no beginning in time. To the theological category of creation and to the metaphysical category of emanation there is here opposed the doctrine of the eternality of the world, as it had been established by Aristotle. »Creation ex nihilo« becomes an empty word: what we call Becoming is nothing but the continual change of forms and the arising of ever new forms within a matter that is unproduced and without beginning. God is no longer creator, he is only the First Mover. The series of generations is infinite a parte ante and a parte post. Whatever is possible will at some time arrive at actuality. For in the medium of eternity there is no difference between what can be and what is.20 We know the strong influence that Averroism exerted on scholastic thought, and we know how it gradually conquered the entire scientific world. In 1270 Étienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, summoned the faculty of masters of theology to condemn thirteen Averroistic theses.21 But not all the prohibitions following each | other in quick succession were able to prevent the spread of Averroism in the universities. The humanistic attacks, like those we find with extreme sharpness and violence in Petrarch,22 likewise rebounded from the iron armor of Averroës almost without effect. Averroism ends by appearing, in the form expressed in the School of Padua, as »science« pure and simple. The reason for this lies less in its empirical content of knowledge than in its conceptual f o r m and in the basic theoretical conviction it stood for. For only within the framework of Averroism could there be, under the conditions of medieval culture, anything like an »autonomous« physics, an interpretation of natural phenomena independent of theological presuppositions. It was this function that gave Averroism its meaning, even within the sphere of Christian culture, and secured its exceptional position – despite all the keen criticism directed against it from the side of the real defenders of the Christian faith, like Thomas Aquinas. Within its own field Averroism was invincible, so long as it 20 Cf. especially Averroës’ large commentary on the 12th book of the Aristotelian »Metaphysics«; further details in Renan, Averroès, pp. 108 ff. 21 Heinrich Denifle (ed.), Chartularium universitatis parisiensis sub auspiciis consilii generalis facultatum parisiensium, Vol. I, Paris 1889, pp. 486 f.; Pierre Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l’Averroïsme latin au XIIIme siècle, Part 1: Étude critique, 2nd ed., rev. and enlarged, Lievin 1911 (Les philosophes belges. Textes et études, Vol. 6), p. 111. 22 Cf. esp. Petrarch’s »De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia«; a collection of the attacks on Averroism scattered through Petrarch’s writings is given in Georg Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums oder das erste Jahrhundert des Humanismus, Vol. I, 2nd ed., rev., Berlin 1880, pp. 89 ff.

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offered the only possibility and the only assurance of a scientific physics. By John of Jandun Averroës was celebrated as »perfectus et gloriosissimus physicus,« as »veritatis amicus et defensor intrepidus«; and Girolamo Savonarola speaks of him, in the book which he composed in praise of the philosophy of the School of Padua, as a thinker who for the acuteness of his mind should be called truly divine.23 If we approach Pico’s work in the light of these general considerations, we are at once struck by a peculiar and strange trait. All the motives we have just distinguished have entered into Pico’s doctrine and put their stamp upon it. He rejected or attacked none of them, and in the different expositions he gave of his fundamental position he impartially made use of them all. In the »Heptaplus« the theme of creation predominates: it is intended as an allegorical interpretation of the Mosaic story of creation. Where Pico follows the Neoplatonic tradition and employs its language, the category of emanation emerges in its systematic significance and moves to the center of his thinking. But he always returned to the support of the Arabian philosophy, and considered it indispensable for the theoretical structure of knowledge. Did Pico pos | sess so little the systematic power of discrimination, that he could simply overlook the difference, and even the complete incompatibility of these fundamental strains, and think he could apply them together and at the same time? Or was the »irenic« drive of his nature so strong, that he was always ready and anxious to blunt the sharpness of contradictions, and to be satisfied with any solution that offered him the show of apparent harmony? Were this true of him, the synthesis he sought to complete in his thought might indeed possess a certain historical and personal interest. But in this case it would lack any general or systematic value. But such a judgment would by no means do justice to Pico’s achievement. For if we examine his work more carefully, we recognize that he was able to employ at the same time the idea of creation, the idea of emanation, and the ideas of Arabian rationalism and naturalism, only because he did not take them simply in their previous meaning, but related them to a definite ideal center, and by thus relating them transformed and enriched their content. No one of these ideas appears with Pico as the complete and exclusive solution to the problem of God and the world. For him they are significant rather as particular moments in the new solution he is seeking. Nor is this solution in any way new, so far as its content alone is concerned: it is not intended to oppose tradition or to break with it in principle. The validity of the 23

Renan, Averroès, pp. 341 [Zitat] and 350.

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principle of authority is still for Pico completely unshaken; and he seeks support for almost every one of his ideas in some one of the great scholastic authorities. But for all that, he is unwilling to subscribe to any particular school unconditionally and without reservation. Even against the Church Pico boldly defends this basic thesis of the libertas credendi; he is certain that no one can or ought to be forced to believe. This free attitude toward the Church and toward dogma was possible for Pico because he did not stand for any d o ctr i ne opposed to theirs, but in opposition to both was trying to assert the validity of his own prin cip le o f kn o wled g e. He himself hardly formulated this principle clearly and explicitly. But he employed it implicitly in all his writings, to whatever field of inquiry they might belong. The distinctive category under which he subsumed his doctrine of God, of the world and of man, his theology and his psychology, is the category of sy mb o lic t h o u g h t . Once we ascertain this central point of his thinking, the different parts of his doctrine imme | diately coalesce into a whole. The basic metaphysical problem of unity and plurality now takes on a specifically different significance. For it is no longer primarily a matter of explaining in what way unity contains plurality in a substantial sense, or by what causal process unity produces plurality out of itself, or passes over into it through a series of intermediaries. All such formulations now appear as merely preliminary, and as more or less inadequate expressions of the problem. Pico is no longer trying to exhibit the Many as the e ffe c t of the One, or to deduce them as such from their cause, with the aid of rational concepts. He sees the Many rather as e xp r es s io ns , as i ma g e s , as s ymbols of the One. And what he is trying to show is that only in this mediate and symbolic way can the absolutely One and absolutely unconditioned Being manifest itself to human knowledge. Metaphysics as well as dialectic or physics can yield no other and no higher truth. They are only different symbols and different interpretations of one and the same meaning, which is the foundation of them all, but which is not capable of being grasped by us as it is in itself, without any symbolic intermediary. It is evident that even this fundamental position is not absolutely »new«, that it belongs to and takes its place in a great intellectual tradition. At just this point the influence is clear which mys ti c i s m exerted on Pico and on the whole development of his thought. But what distinguishes Pico from many other forms of mysticism is the circumstance that he is and endeavors to remain primarily a theoretical t hin k er. He was subject to deep mystical experiences and emotions, and in the course of his life, particularly in his contact with Savonarola,

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these experiences seem to have won greater and greater power over his mind. But he was never willing to give up speculative thinking; nor did he ever believe that such a sacrifice could lead to a genuine and veridical knowledge of God. The true amor Dei is for Pico amor Dei intellectualis: for only to the intellect is there disclosed the truly Universal, which forms a necessary moment and the real mark of the Divine. Thus Pico also completed the equating of God and the »intellectus agens«: »Intellectus agens nihil aliud est quam Deus.«24 The mystic » s eein g « , the »visio intellectualis«, does not for him therefore coincide with mere mystic f eeling : it has an independent theoretical meaning and content. Hence Pico is by no means willing to renounce the | power of pure thought; he seeks rather to increase it and carry it to the point at which it can be supplemented and enhanced by another purely intuitive kind of knowledge. But at the same time he maintains the position that our thinking and conceiving, in so far as it is directed toward the Divine, can never be an adequate expression, but only an image and a metaphor. If we can speak of a controlling principle and a controlling method in Pico’s thinking, it is to be found in this position. This is the chain that binds together all his theses. And it leads to distinctive and radical consequences: for in the medium of this symbolic form of knowledge the fixed dogmatic content of the Church’s teaching begins in some measure to grow fluid. Whatever is substantial and sacramental is dissolved and becomes an intimation, an image of something purely spiritual. Neither word nor picture, neither rite nor any other external action can exhaust the deepest meaning of the religious: »Non in verbis scripturarum esse Evangelium, sed in sensu,« he says with Jerome, »non in superficie, sed in medulla, non in sermonum foliis, sed in radice rationis.«25 Relying on this basic position, Pico arrives at some of his most daring theses, like, for example, the proposition that Christ’s visit to Hell is not to be understood in a real and physical sense. Herein lies the great significance he has won for modern religious history. Through the way in which Pico’s position sought a pure »spiritualizing« of the doctrines of faith, through the way in which he distinguished the »sacramental« from the »symbolic«, he had a marked effect on the transformation and development of doctrine. Especially important is the influence he exerted on Zwingli in these respects.26 Pico, Conclusiones nongentae, p. 71. Idem, Apologia, p. 149. 26 On the effect of Pico on Zwingli, cf. Christoph Sigwart, Ulrich Zwingli. Der Charakter seiner Theologie mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Picus von Mirandula, 24 25

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But we shall not here pursue this religious significance and effect of Pico’s thought. We return rather to its purely philosophical content and to its position in the general history of philosophy. And in this respect we find in the central role which symbolic knowledge plays in the structure of Pico’s thought further important evidence. For we can recognize from this very trait the | close intellectual relationship between Pico and Nicholas Cusanus. In my volume »Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance« (1927) I tried to show that the system of Nicholas Cusanus forms one of the most important foci of the whole Renaissance movement, that it offers a center and focus of radiation in every direction. I tried to follow out in detail the influence of Cusanus on the basic ideas of the Platonic Academy in Florence. It has occasionally been objected against this view, that the systematic significance of Cusanus’ thought is indeed incontestable, but that I have overestimated the extent of its historical influence, and put it far too prominently in the foreground in the picture of the Renaissance. Even Garin, who in his new account agrees in essentials with my basic conception of Pico’s position, has reservations against bringing this position too close to the system of Cusanus.27 But he himself cites an important piece of evidence I had overlooked. He quotes the assertion in Dorez’ and Thuasne’s book on Pico’s stay in Paris, that Pico had planned a trip to Germany, principally in order to visit the library of Cusanus: »[…] cupiebat proficisci in Germaniam maxime studio visende bibliothece olim cardinalis de Cusa, et librorum comparandorum causa […]«28 Moreover Garin’s own analysis, which is distinguished both by systematic penetration and historical completeness, affords new convincing proof of the connection between Pico and Cusanus. For there here appear as the basic ideas on which Pico’s whole work is built the principle of »docta ignorantia«, the principle of »coincidentia oppositorum«, and the symbolic knowledge of God. To be sure, common prototypes for each of these ideas could be pointed to in the Neoplatonic tradition. But what cannot be explained or derived from that tradition is the characteristic c onne c ti on they possess in both Cusanus’ and Pico’s mind, and the way in which they Stuttgart/Hamburg 1855. Cf. also Wilhelm Dilthey, Auffassung und Analyse des Menschen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, in: Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation (Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. II), Leipzig/ Berlin 1914, pp. 1–89: pp. 64 ff., and idem, Das natürliche System der Geisteswissenschaften im 17. Jahrhundert, ibid., pp. 90–245: pp. 159 ff. 27 Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, p. 236. 28 Dorez/Thuasne, Pic de la Mirandole, p. 159; cf. Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, pp. 36 and 120.

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mutually supplement and support each other. So I think we are in any case entitled to assume a connection between both thinkers.29 | For the problem that here concerns us, this connection is less significant and important than the d if f e r e nc e indicated between Pico and Cusanus just because of that connection. If both start with a common interest and a common presupposition, they develop this presupposition in different ways and push it in different directions. In this development, in the new ap p licat io n he makes of the principle of »symbolic thinking« and of the principle of »coincidentia oppositorum«, there stands revealed the power and the independence of Pico’s philosophy. Nicholas Cusanus gives to the traditional ideas of »negative theology« the turn that God in his unity and truth is inaccessible to human knowledge, that he can only be known in the »otherness of assumption» (»[in] alteritate coniecturali«).30 But in this »otherness« there are different d eg r ees of comprehensibility and of relative accessibility. The true symbol must not be confused with the mere image; the sensible must be strictly distinguished from the intellectual precisely in the symbolic sphere. And genuine precision of intellectual vision belongs to but o n e class of symbols: the symbols of mathematics. If there is any field of human knowledge that gives us an insight, though only by analogy, into the essence of divinity, it is mathematical knowledge.31 This yields the distinctive, indeed in many respects the unique path that Cusanus follows in his philosophical development. From the mystic vision of God, which is and remains his real goal, and which he sought with the same ardor as the great medieval mystics, he finds himself suddenly transported to the field of mathematics, and he finds himself on the threshold of the problems of modern mathematics, the problems of the analysis of the infinite. And from this position there at times open before him a new vision and insight: for through the medium of mathematics he sees nature also in a new light. The 29 This connection is misunderstood in the account of Anagnine, who mentions Cusanus only very incidentally and does not do justice to the significance of his philosophy. And yet his very account of the contents of Pico’s chief works shows in spite of himself, as it were, how intimate the connection is: the significance of the ideas of »complicatio« and »explicatio«, of the »coincidentia« of freedom and necessity in God, and of other basic conceptions of Cusanus, is here made very clear (Cf. particularly the final chapter: La visione del mondo di Pico, Anagnine, G. Pico della Mirandola, pp. 235 ff.). 30 Nicolaus Cusanus, De coniecturis libri duo (Bk. 1, chap. 2), in: Opera. In quibus theologiae mysteria plurima, sine spiritu Dei inaccessa, iam aliquot seculis veleta et neglecta revelantur, Basle 1565, pp. 75–118: p. 76. 31 Cf. idem, De docta ignorantia libri tres (Bk. 1, chap. 11), in: Opera, pp. 1–62: p. 8.

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»praecisio« he has found in mathematical thinking opens for him the door to the understanding of another new form of e mpi r i c a l know l e d ge, of the nature of physical experimentation, into which he plunges in his book »De staticis experimentis«. Cusanus remains a strict apriorist: he is convinced that the human mind has the power to construct a closed system of knowledge out of its own basic ideas, out of the ideas of magnitude and mea | sure, of time and number. But at the same time he demands that the intellect should not remain within this system. It must call upon another and opposed power, the power of sense perception, because only by means of sense can it arrive at its own actuality, at its fulfillment and completion. The upward path that leads to God thus includes in itself the downward path that plunges into the intuition of the world in its multiplicity. »Intellectus […] in nostra anima, eapropter in sensum descendit, ut sensibile ascendat in ipsum. […] Intellectus […] qui secundum regionem intellectualem, in potentia est, secundum inferiores regiones, plus est in actu. Unde in sensibili mundo, in actu est […]«32 In a survey and retrospect which Cusanus himself at the end of his life gave of his philosophical development, he characterized this course of his thinking. While I have for many years believed, runs one of the last writings of Cusanus, »De apice theoriae«, that the Divine Being must be sought beyond all power of knowledge and before all multiplicity and all contradiction, and that it can be better found in obscurity, it now seems to me that the truth is nearer and more accessible to us in the measure that it is clear. For great is the power of truth – and it speaks to us on the highways and byways, as I have shown in my book »De idiota«.33 From this point we can at once clarify the internal me thodolo gical contradiction between the position of Pico della Mirandola and that of Cusanus, though both start from the idea and the problem of »symbolic knowledge«. Pico della Mirandola is neither a mathematical nor an empirical thinker. He is comprehensive enough, and he is seeking too earnestly after genuine philosophic universality to exclude the problems of mathematics and of natural knowledge from his task. 32 Idem, De coniecturis (Bk. 2, chap. 16), pp. 112 f.; further details in my »Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance«, Leipzig 1927 (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, Vol. 10), pp. 180 ff. [ECW 14, S. VII–IX u. 1–220: S. 197 ff.]. 33 Nicolaus Cusanus, De apice theoriae dialogus, in: Haec accurata recognitio trium voluminum operum. Cuius universalem indicem proxime sequens pagina monstrat, ed. by Jacobus Faber Stapulensis, Vol. I, Paris 1514, fol. 219 b–222 a: fol. 219 f.

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But he never escapes the limitations of the scholastic and Neoplatonic tradition. So far as mathematics is concerned, he always tries to employ it for his speculative interpretation of Being; and he thinks the deepest secrets of Being can be treated in the language of numbers and figures. But he never gets beyond the form of the Neopythagorean number mysticism. He never sought mathematics for its own sake, and he never granted it a special or »autonomous« truth-value. For him mathematics possesses neither any independent theoretical content, | nor any specific value.34 And for this reason he concludes that it is harmful to real and genuine knowledge of God: »Nihil magis nocivum Theologo, quam frequens et assidua in mathematicis Euclidis exercitatio.«35 So far as the empirical knowledge of nature is concerned, Pico doubtless has a place in its history; and he must be named amongst its promoters and predecessors. For by his decisive attack on astrology he prepared the path for the modern way of astronomical thinking. But this achievement of Pico’s springs, as we shall see, from another source than the empirical observation of nature. It is founded on a purely speculative principle: on his conception of man and of human freedom. From Pico’s own basic presuppositions there is thus no path that could lead immediately to a scientific mathematics and to an exact knowledge of nature. From the ideas of Cusanus there extends an influence that leads to Leonardo da Vinci’s and Galileo’s idea of experience and truth.36 But the form of mathematics recognized and fostered by Pico’s work is essentially m ag ica l mathematics; it is continued by Reuchlin in his »De arte cabalistica« and »De verbo mirifico«. For Pico never took the decisive step by which Cusanus introduced the new »orientation« into the knowledge of God. He does not seek God in the bright light of the empirical world and of sensible knowledge; he was convinced that God must be seized in the obscure depths of the human soul. The highest knowledge of which man is capable is and remains a »scientia abdita«. The human soul, Pico explains in one of his theses, has at its disposal two fundamental forms of comprehending. The one »natural« way of knowing turns to the things of the external world and seeks to represent them in images, by means of 34 Cf. Pico, Conclusiones nongentae (Conclusiones de mathematicis secundum opinionem propriam num. LXXXV, Nos. 1–3): »Mathematicae non sunt verae scientiae.« »Mathematicae scientiae non sunt propter se, sed ut via ad alias scientias quaerendae.« »Si felicitas sit in speculativa perfectione, mathematicae non faciunt ad felicitatem.« p. 100. 35 Ibid. (No. 6), p. 101. 36 Cf. Individuum und Kosmos, pp. 58 ff. [ECW 14, S. 63 ff.].

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perceptions and »phantasms«; these phantasms are then compared by the discursive intellect and reduced to definite classes. But our knowledge of God and of our own soul differs in principle from this natural way. Here there rules a supersensible knowledge, which is alone able to disclose the supersensible nature and the obscure | depths of the soul. »[…] intelligo de illo intelligere abdito, quod est sine phantasmate, vel adminiculo sensus aut phantasiae, et non adhuc de quocumque tali, sed intelligere abdito, directo, et permanenti […]«37 Pico does not yet dare to trust empirical knowledge with the same lack of prejudice and the same confidence as Nicholas Cusanus. He is afraid that in looking at the external world the power of genuine »spiritual« knowledge might be weakened. But if this locks for him the real door to natural science in the modern sense of the term, this loss is still not without positive gain. For with all the greater intensity and energy he now turns to the world of the human soul and the human mind alone. In this direction lies his peculiar achievement, which carries him beyond his mystical and Neoplatonic sources: he becomes the herald of a new ideal of human freedom. |

(Part II) second chapter The Idea of the Microcosm and the »Dignity of Man« It was no accident that Pico intended to preface the defense of his nine hundred theses with that great oration to which he gave the title »De hominis dignitate«. This was to be no mere rhetorical exhibition, to introduce the learned disputation and furnish a splendid if external proemium. The theme expresses rather the quintessence of all Pico’s underlying ideas; it indicates the point in which all his manifold endeavors converge. If we place ourselves at this intellectual focus, then Pico’s thought begins to appear as a self-contained whole. And at the same time, from this vantage point his real and genuinely distinctive achievement becomes clear. To be sure, even the general problem Pico’s oration raises hardly falls completely outside the framework of tradition. An historical criticism of the sources, like that of Konrad Burdach, could point everywhere in Pico’s oration to particular strains derived from the hermetic 37 Pico, Apologia (De abdita intelligentia animae disputatio), pp. 235 ff. [Zitat S. 235].

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literature.38 On the other hand, however, Pico himself indicated clearly and exactly the point at which he was departing from traditional and conventional views. The image of man as a »microcosm« is very ancient. It did not first arise in philosophical thought; it already belonged to mythical thinking, and is to be found, in the widest variations, in the myths of all times and all cultures.39 But Pico is not satisfied with the interpretation | of this image given in the philosophic schools. »Tritum in scholis verbum est,« he says, »esse hominem minorem mundum, in quo mixtum ex elementis corpus, et coelestis spiritus, et plantarum anima vegetalis, et brutorum sensus, et ratio, et angelica mens et Dei similitudo conspicitur.«40 Should we take this doctrine literally, it would not so much illuminate the distinctive nature and worth of man as destroy them both. For man would then have nothing proper to his own nature which he would owe to himself. He would be nothing but a product and as it were a »mixtum compositum« of the world. But Pico is not willing to take man as such an aggregate of all the cosmic elements. For him the chief thing is not to prove man’s substantial s im ilar it y with the world; it is rather, precisely within this similarity, and without prejudicing it at all, to point out a di ffe r e nc e – a difference that confers on man his exceptional and in a sense privileged position, not only as against the natural world but also as against the spiritual world. This is man’s privileged position: unlike any other creature, he owes his moral character to himself. He is what he ma ke s of himself – and he derives from himself the pattern he shall follow. The lines in which Pico has set forth this fundamental view of his are well-known and famous. But we must repeat them here, since they lead us to the very heart of his philosophy, and form the basis of any interpretation. »Neither a fixed abode, nor a form in thine own likeness, nor any gift peculiar to thyself alone, have we given thee,« says the Creator to Adam, »in order that what abode, what likeness, what gifts thou shalt choose, may be thine to have and to possess. […] Thou, restrained by no narrow bounds, according to thy own free will, in whose power I have placed thee, shalt define thy nature for thyself. 38 Cf. Alois Bernt/Konrad Burdach (ed.), Der Ackermann aus Böhmen (Vom Mittelalter zur Reformation. Forschungen zur Geschichte der deutschen Bildung, Vol. III/1), Berlin 1917, pp. 293 ff. and 314 ff. 39 Cf. my article »Die Begriffsform im mythischen Denken«, Leipzig/Berlin 1922 (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, Vol. 1), pp. 38 ff. [ECW 16, S. 3–73: S. 44 ff.]. 40 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Heptaplus, de Dei creatoris sex dierum opere geneseos (Praefatio), in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 1–62: p. 8.

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[…] Nor have we made thee either heavenly or earthly, mortal or immortal, to the end that thou, being, as it were, thy own free maker and moulder, shouldst fashion thyself in what form may like thee best.«41 This idea, that man is his own maker and molder, adds a new element to the basic religious notion of »likeness to God«. For it is no longer God who in his creation once and for all impressed upon man his own seal, and created him after his own image. The | likeness and resemblance to God is not a gift bestowed on man to begin with, but an achievement for him to work out: it is t o b e b r oug ht a bout by man himself. Just this ability to bring it about, rooted in his own nature, is the highest gift he owes to the Divine grace. Now we begin to see how little either the pure idea of creation, or the idea of emanation, is in accord with the main central notion of Pico’s thought, and how unsuited both ideas are to express that notion adequately. For in creation as in emanation man appears always as a something either produced by the free act of a Being outside and above himself, or arisen as a link in a necessary process of development. Here on the contrary both kinds of dependence are to be excluded; man does not bring with him as his portion his real and deepest being, he owes that being to his own acts. Here once more is displayed the characteristic opposition between the direction foreshadowed for modern philosophy by Cusanus, and that foreshadowed by Pico. Cusanus sets out from an analysis of the mathematical form of knowledge, in which he sees the model for every type of certainty: »[…] nihil certi habemus in nostra scientia, nisi nostram mathematicam […]«42 And from this fact he straightway derives the idea of a universal mathematical structure and determination of reality, of a reality whose spiritual core and origin is revealed in its being the subject of universal natural laws, laws of number and magnitude. Pico is seeking after another content of knowledge and another way of knowing. He employs his »abdita intelligentia«; he plunges into Nature and into the peculiar darkness of the soul. But in this darkness there suddenly bursts upon him a new light, outshining all others: the light of human freedom, standing higher than any necessity of nature and elevated above it. This is the great theme which, especially in his work against astrology, he treats again and again.43 If we 41 Idem, De hominis dignitate, pp. 314 f.; transl.: John Addington Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Revival of Learning, London 21882, p. 35 [Zitat S. 49]. 42 [Nicolaus Cusanus, De possest, in: Opera, Basel 1565, S. 249–266: S. 259.] 43 Further details in »Individuum und Kosmos«, pp. 124 ff. [ECW 14, S. 136 ff.].

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see in Pico’s oration, as is generally done, primarily a significant document for the history of civilization, we are easily led to the notion that it is treating an ancient problem of metaphysics, that of the freedom of the will, and supporting that freedom with familiar arguments. Hence the value of the oration seems to rest not on its content but on its form. But even this form cannot be regarded as something merely external: it is the expression of a definite | attitude and a definite personality. Throughout the entire oration we can trace the lofty rapture and the youthful fire with which Pico sets about and carries through his task. Only an age inspired by and thoroughly permeated with a new ideal of man could strike off such lines. In this sense Jacob Burckhardt called the oration »De hominis dignitate« one of the noblest legacies of the Renaissance.44 But we can hardly stop with such a notion and such a judgment. The deeper meaning and value of Pico’s oration are not revealed until we place it in the context of his work as a whole and compare it with that work in detail. To our surprise we then become aware that the whole of that work and its internal structure is determined by the same underlying idea that Pico has made central in his oration. Pico’s metaphysics, his psychology and theology, his ethics and natural philosophy – these all now appear as a continuous and consistent unfolding of the underlying theme here announced. To perceive this clearly, we indeed need a patient and thorough analysis, an analysis that shall follow the theme of Pico’s oration in all its particular variations. Let us first ask what the connection is between the principles of »docta ignorantia« and of »coincidentia oppositorum«, which govern the structure of Pico’s entire speculative philosophy, and his ethics and his idea of human freedom. Both principles, which had dominated theological thought for centuries, suddenly take a new turn in the fifteenth century. Their general significance is maintained; but they now receive a content of new problems and new interests. What had formerly been a negative principle of theology now becomes a positive principle of natural philosophy, cosmology, and epistemology. Nicholas Cusanus proceeds from his conception and interpretation of the idea of »docta ignorantia« to an acute criticism of the Aristotelian logic and the Aristotelian physics. Aristotle’s logic is unexcelled in the precise working out of contradictions, in setting up the categories by which the classes of being are distinguished. But it is unable to overcome this opposition between the various classes of being; it does not 44 Jacob Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch, Vol. II, 8th ed., worked through by Ludwig Geiger, Leipzig 1901, p. 73.

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press on to their real point of unification. Hence it remains caught in the empirical and the finite; it is unable to rise to a truly speculative interpretation of the universe. The physical universe of Aristotle is dominated by the opposition between »the straight« and »the | curved«; motion in straight lines and motion in circles are for him essentially and radically distinct. But the transition to the infinitely large and the infinitely small shows that this is a matter not of an absolute but of a relative distinction. The circle with an infinite radius coincides with the straight line; the infinitely small arc is indistinguishable from its chord. In the same manner the spatial distinction of »up« and »down« becomes relative for Cusanus. There is no absolute up or down, no »lower« or »higher« sphere. No place in the universe differs in its nature from any other – and each can with equal right claim to be the center of the world. All such cosmological consequences are alien to Pico’s thought. The framework of scholastic physics he did not attempt to disrupt. But he consummated another revolution no less significant and distinctive, through which the whole picture of nature and the world worked out in the Renaissance first finds its inner completion. The principle Cusanus had applied to nature Pico applies to the specifically human world, to the world of history. The underlying idea is here in a sense carried over from the field of space to that of time. As in space no point has an absolute precedence or privileged value over any other, as each, with the same right, or lack of right, can be regarded as the center of the world, so are the moments of time equivalent to each other. What is the nature of man, and in what his specific dignity consists, can be judged only when we dissolve the fixed temporal distinctions, the now, the before and after – when we comprehend past, present, and future in a single vision. And in such a kind of »seeing together« there is first revealed the full meaning of human freedom. This freedom means for Pico, as we have seen, that man is not inclosed from the beginning within the limits of a determinate being. It is this fact that raises him above even those beings that stand higher than himself in the hierarchical order. Upon the angels and the heavenly intelligences their nature and their perfection have been bestowed from the beginning of creation: man possesses his perfection only as he achieves it for himself independently and on the basis of a free decision. And this challenge stands not only for single individuals, it stands also for historical epochs. From each epoch to the next there is handed down a definite intellectual heritage; an uninter | rupted chain of tradition binds the present to the past. It would be presumptuous and disastrous, according to Pico, to seek to break this »aurea catena« which

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binds together all times and all intellectual and moral life. But on the other hand each moment of history can and must be taken and interpreted as a new beginning and a fresh start. For without this meaning the basic principle of human freedom would be infringed. Just as to man, in distinction from all other natural and all other spiritual beings, God did not give the gift he bestowed all ready-made, but expected and demanded of him that he should achieve it for himself independently – so neither can history simply give to man goods all ready-made for him. These goods must be faithfully guarded, and they must be handed on and on in uninterrupted succession. But each historical moment has at once the right and the duty to appropriate them in independence – to understand them in its own way and to increase them in its own way. Pico declares explicitly that no other form of knowing truth is granted man. Indeed, he almost anticipates the saying of Lessing, that not the possession of truth, but the search after it, is the vocation and the lot of man. In this basic conception there is manifest the deep effect of the Platonic theme of Er o s , that forms the distinctive idea underlying the world view of the Florentine circle. He who serves Eros and regards him as the genuinely vitalizing force of philosophy, will not hold in possession, but will endeavor to earn for himself; he will not so much know as inquire. »Amare Deum dum sumus in corpore plus possumus quam vel eloqui vel cognoscere. Amando plus nobis proficimus, minus laboramus, illi magis obsequimur. Malumus tamen semper quaerendo per cognitionem nunquam invenire quod quaerimus, quam amando possidere. Id quod non amando frustra etiam inveniretur […]«45 This form of love, that consists in seeking, not in possessing, according to Pico gives man that worth in which he needs yield to no other being: for nothing can be higher than the spiritual power that is expressed in the freedom of the will. This alone is to form man’s goal and his »holy ambition«, his »sacra ambitio«; but if he allows it to rule him in the right manner, nothing is for him unattainable: »Erimus illis,« says Pico of the heavenly intelligences in the oration »De hominis dignitate«, »cum voluerimus nihilo inferiores.«46 | From this fundamental starting point there follow at once a series of consequences of the greatest significance for the place of Pico’s thought in intellectual history, and for the mission it filled in the whole 45 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, De ente et uno opus, in quo plurimi loci, in Mose, in Platone et Aristotele, explicantur (Chap. 5), in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 241–310: p. 250. 46 Idem, De hominis dignitate, p. 316.

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philosophy of the Renaissance. On this basis we immediately understand the battles which Pico, for whom peace came first and whose highest aim was the »pax philosophica«, had to fight on all sides. We understand the conflict with the ecclesiastical system in which he was forced to engage from the very beginning of his teaching, from the announcement of his nine hundred theses. Pico is not only filled with a deep inner piety; to him any resistance to ecclesiastical authority, any spirit of rebellion, is quite alien. No man admired more sincerely the tradition of the Fathers and tried to hold to it more faithfully than he.47 But here too it is not a fixed body of basic dogma he wants to preserve and defend under all circumstances; what he is seeking and what attracts him is the free dialectic movement of thought. He claims the right of free inquiry for himself as for any other thinker. This is the standpoint to which he adhered in his »Apology« for the nine hundred theses and upon which he based his defense. The teachings of the Fathers of the Church are to be accepted with due respect: »[…] non tamen sunt eorum dicta ita firmae authoritatis et immobilitatis, ut eis contradicere non liceat, et circa ea dubitare […]«48 Thus even in this field, even in religious dogma, there is no real infallibility or »immobility«. Faith too, like knowledge, has its history, and only in the totality of this history can its inner truth emerge. The same sense of independence here revealed distinguishes also Pico’s attitude toward Humanism. He stands quite in the center and inner circle of the great Humanistic movement; and in his admiration for the ancients, in particular for Plato and Aristotle, he is surpassed by none of the other Renaissance thinkers. But here too he rejects any dogmatic crystallization of the humanistic ideals and claims. To the dogma of classical antiquity he is as unwilling to submit as to any other. In this respect his famous letter to Ermolao Barbaro is really a declaration of war against the narrow »sectarian spirit« of Humanism. Pico here insists that no single epoch, no matter how admirable and deserving of | respect, can claim to represent the whole of mankind. This whole is to be found only in the totality of its intellectual history. He who forgets this fact, and fails to grant to each epoch its own substantial rights, he who makes mere splendor of style and speech the only criterion – he is judging not as a philosopher but as a philologist. Such a placing of words above content is contrary to truth. »Est elegans res (fatemur hoc) facundia plena illecebrae et voluptatis, sed in 47 Cf. on this point the comprehensive citations in Dulles’ work »Princeps Concordiae«. 48 Pico, Apologia, p. 143.

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philosopho nec decora nec grata.« And it is in terms of philosophy, i.e., in terms of the search for truth in its universal sense, not in terms of philology, that Pico is seeking to define essential and genuine »humanitas«. Philosophy, not the science of speech or grammar, is for him the heart of science. »Vivere sine lingua possumus forte, non commode, sed sine corde nullo modo possumus. Non est humanus qui sit insolens pollitioris literaturae. Non est homo qui sit expers philosophiae.«49 But even the most immediate and concrete task which Pico was to accomplish in the history of thought bears this stamp of his personality and attitude. If we follow out the controversy between the P l a to n ic and the A ris t o t elian p h ilo s ophi e s , as it was conducted during the first half of the fifteenth century, we are struck by the fact that the real problem had not as yet been grasped, that the actual systematic and methodological differences between the two thinkers had not as yet been seen, let alone worked out with precision. The conflict takes the form of a mere polemic between two rival schools, and it is carried on in a most bitterly personal manner; it does not even shrink from personal innuendos and vilification. Bessarion entitled his work »Adversus Calumniatorem Platonis«; and it bears this title not without justification, in view of the way in which the polemic was being conducted by the opponents of Plato. The »Comparatio Platonis et Aristotelis« of Georgius Trapezuntius had heaped upon Plato the most foolish reproaches, against both his person and his ideas.50 Another spirit and tone prevail in the School of Florence. Here for the first time there begins the genuine philological and intellec | tual inquiry into the problem of Plato and Aristotle. Ficino is a mild and conciliatory spirit, anxious to extend the bounds of religious and philosophical truth as far as possible. He accepts amongst his »saints« and sages not only Christ and Plato, but also Moses, Hermes Trismegistos, Orpheus, and Pythagoras.51 But in his judgments even he is not free from all partisan spirit. Plato stands for him as the real and indeed the 49 Idem, Letter to Ermolao Barbaro, in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 351–367: pp. 353 and 357. On Pico’s relation to Humanism and his polemic against the »grammarians«, cf. the material in Anagnine, G. Pico della Mirandola, pp. 19 ff., and in Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, pp. 61 ff. 50 On the controversy between Platonists and Aristotelians, cf. Guido De Ruggiero, Storia della filosofia. Part 3: Rinascimento, riforma e controriforma, Vol. I, Bari 1930 (Biblioteca di cultura moderna, No. 184/1), pp. 115 ff. 51 Marsilio Ficino, Epistolae, in: Opera omnia, 2 vols., Basle without year, Vol. I/2, pp. 607–964: pp. 866 and 871; cf. idem, De christiana religione (Chap. 22), in: Opera omnia, Vol. I/1, pp. 1–77: pp. 24 f.

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only guide in all questions that concern spiritual being. To the Aristotelian doctrine he grants only a conditional and limited value, for the problems of natural philosophy. »In Aristotele vero […] humanum tantum, sed in Platone divinum pariter et humanum.«52 Pico is far from making any such distinction; from the very beginning he is concerned to apply the same rule to both. In his letter to Ermolao Barbaro, in which he speaks of his Platonic studies, he explains that he, the former scholastic and Peripatetic, is coming into the Platonic camp not as a deserter but as an explorer.53 Pico desired to fight neither for nor against Plato; he wanted to be a free inquirer. And he remained true to this attitude even while he was working as second to Ficino in the Florentine Academy. His great work on the comparison of the Platonic and the Aristotelian philosophies, on which he labored with especial zeal, and whose completion was prevented by his early death, would certainly, had he finished it, have possessed a different character and served a different end than the commentaries of Ficino. We can imagine that Pico would have portrayed Plato and Aristotle in the way in which Goethe saw them: as two men who both in a sense shared in the possession of a common humanity, as the differing spokesmen for splendid but not easily reconcilable traits.54 All this is by no means mere »toleration«, as it can seem at first glance – and as it seemed to Pico’s contemporaries, when they called him »Princeps Concordiae«. It is something different and more profound, which follows as the immediate consequence of Pico’s idea of freedom. For this idea not only makes possible, it demands a new form of »individualism«. It holds not only for | mankind as a whole, it holds also for each single individual, that to him there can be assigned no fixed and determined position in the realm of the spirit: he must seek his position independently. This search is not only his right, it is his duty: in his pursuit of it he must not be hindered. Pico rejects any inquisition, in the domain of knowledge as in that of faith. For him there are no heretics of the intellect. The intellect can be moved to accept a determinate proposition only when it produces the conviction of that proposition in itself; and this conviction must be founded 52 Cf. idem, Epistolae (Bk. 12); cf. Giuseppe Saitta, La filosofia di Marsilio Ficino, Messina 1923 (Studi filosofici, Vol. 15), p. 55 note [Danach zitiert]; vid. also Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, pp. 78 ff. 53 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Letter to Ermolao Barbaro, December 6, 1484, in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 368 f.: p. 368. 54 Cf. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Materialien zur Geschichte der Farbenlehre, Vol. II/1 (Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. III), p. 142.

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on determinate grounds. Even in religious matters a proposition of faith cannot be simply transferred externally; it must be appropriated internally. Any compulsion in the things of faith is for Pico not only to be rejected on moral and religious grounds: it is also ineffective and futile. For it is not in man’s power to accept or reject a proposition of faith on external command. »Non est in libera potestate hominis credere articulum fidei esse verum, quando sibi placet, et credere eum non esse verum, quando sibi placet.«55 Individual inquiry, ever-renewed examination, is therefore indispensable for the subsistence of every truth, philosophical as well as religious; only from and through such inquiry can this subsistence be won and preserved. Pico’s whole view is pervaded with respect for this individual inquiry. If I am not mistaken, Pico was the first thinker to see in the history of philosophy not only a collection of opinions, not only a persisting set of problems and solutions, but also an expression of individual intellectual personalities. In the contemplation of this rich and intricate world of thought he loved to find absorption. He not only brings to each particular philosophical »family« sympathy and understanding; he also distinguishes within each family the characteristics of each individual thinker and his distinctive manner of thinking. »[…] in unaquaque familia est aliquid insigne, quod non sit ei commune cum caeteris. […] Est in Joanne Scoto vegetum quiddam atque discussum. In Thoma solidum et aequabile. […] Est apud Arabes in Averroe firmum et inconcussum. […] In Alpharabio grave et meditatum. In Avicenna divinum atque Platonicum. Est apud Graecos in universum quidem nitida, in primis et casta philosophia. Apud Simplicium locuples et copiosa. […] Apud Alexandrum constans et docta. Apud Theophrastum graviter elaborata. […] Et | si ad Platonicos te converteris […] In Porphyrio rerum copia et multijuga religione delectaberis. In Jamblico secretiorem philosophiam et barbarorum mysteria veneraberis. In Plotino primum quicquam non est quod admireris, qui se undique praebet admirandum […]«56 In his endeavor to comprehend the whole of philosophy, Pico never abandons a critical attitude and standards of his own. But with him the work of the dialectician should be preceded by the work of the »synopsist«: he insists on surveying the intellectual achievement of the past in its totality and in the fullness of its individual differences, before undertaking to judge it. Each individual who, in the name of the philosophical Eros, has ever sought and inquired with genuine and devoted love for truth, he finds worthy of respect; for in each case the 55 56

Pico, Apologia (De libertate credendi disputatio), p. 224. Idem, De hominis dignitate, p. 325.

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inquirer is an intellectual microcosm, a »parvus mundus«, mirroring the entire world of ideas. If from this point we reconsider Pico’s oration, we find that what is really important and essential in it lies less in what it immediately contains than in what it suppresses and rejects in silence. That man came forth from the hand of the Creator a free being, and that it is just in this freedom that his likeness to God consists, is the universally accepted doctrine of the theologians. But to this doctrine there is at once added, that man has lost this privilege forever through the Fall. What held for man in his »original state« the Fall transformed into its opposite. Henceforth man is driven forever from the paradise of innocence and freedom; and by his own powers he cannot find the way back again. Not any achievement of his will, but only a supernatural work of grace, can raise him up once more. When we consider with what vehemence Pelagianism had been fought in the medieval church since the days of Augustine, and how unconditionally it had been rejected as heresy, we must be astonished at the frankness and boldness with which Pico reaffirms the basic Pelagian thesis. For him man’s sinfulness does not stand as an indelible stain upon his nature; for in it he sees nothing but the correlate and counterpart to something other and higher. Man must be capable of sin, that he may become capable of good. For this is just Pico’s underlying idea, that in good as in evil man is never a completed being, that he neither rests ever securely in good, nor is ever a hopeless prey to sin. The way to both lies ever open before him – and the decision is placed within | his own power. An absolute termination of this process is inconceivable; for it would be equivalent to a denial of the specific nature of man. It lies in man’s nature to find himself forever confronting the pr obl e m of good and evil, and to have to solve it independently and with his own powers. Hence however high he may rise, man must always expect a Fall: but at the same time no Fall, however deep, excludes the possibility of his rising and standing erect once more. On this ground Pico defends in his theses even the teaching of Origen, that there can be no eternal punishment: he finds it unjust and disproportionate that to a fault of which a man had been guilty during his life, and hence in a finite extent of time, should correspond an infinite reparation.57 An eternity of punishment would imply a form 57 Cf. idem, Apologia (De salute Origenis disputatio), pp. 207 ff. Cf. ibid. (De poena peccati mortalis disputatio), pp. 150 ff.; idem, Conclusiones nongentae (Conclusiones in theologia numero XXIX, secundum opinionem propriam a communi modo dicendi theologorum satis diversam, No. 20), p. 94: »[…] peccato

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of finality which, according to Pico’s basic conception, would contradict the real meaning of human existence. The freedom of man consists in the uninterrupted creativity he exercises upon himself, which can at no point come to a complete cessation. Such a cessation is in a certain sense the lot of every other nature except man. The heavenly intelligences are blessed in contemplating divinity – and this beatitude is a possession accorded them forever: for them it can never be troubled or diminished. Mere natural creatures, plants and animals, lead their lives within a narrowly limited circle and within a uniform and everrepeated rhythm of existence. Their instinct impels them to follow certain paths, and within the channels of this instinct they move with unconscious security. But to man this security is denied. He must be forever seeking and choosing his own path: and this choice carries with it for him a perpetual danger. But this uncertainty, this perpetual peril of human existence – not in the physical, but in the moral and religious sense – at the same time constitutes for Pico man’s real greatness. Without it he would not be what his destiny demands he should be. Man’s failure is hence for Pico not merely guilt; it is rather the expression of that same indestructible power that makes it possible for him to attain good. Only a being capable of, and as it were at the mercy of sin, can achieve that highest worth that lies in the independent overcoming of sensuality, in the free elevation to the | »Intelligible«. »Nascenti homini omnifaria semina, et omnigenae vitae germina indidit pater. Quae quisque excoluerit, illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia, planta fiet. Si sensualia, obbrutescet. Si rationalia, coeleste evadet animal. Si intellectualia, angelus erit et Dei filius. Et si nulla creaturarum sorte contentus, in unitatis centrum suae se receperit, unus cum Deo spiritus factus, in solitaria patris caligine qui est super omnia constitutus, omnibus antestabit.«58 But this implies still another consequence, which likewise belongs among the most remarkable and surprising features of Pico’s oration. What he here sets up as the distinctive privilege of man is the almost unlimited p o wer o f s elf - t r an s f o rma ti on at his disposal. Man is that being to whom no particular form has been prescribed and assigned. He possesses the power of entering into any form whatever. What is novel in this idea lies not in its content, but rather in the v a l ue Pico places on this content. For it is an extraordinarily bold step of Pico’s to reverse at this point the conventional metaphysical and theomortali finiti temporis, non debetur poena infinita secundum tempus, sed finita tantum.« 58 Idem, De hominis dignitate, p. 315.

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logical estimate. The latter proceeds from the basic notion that the highest and indeed in the end the only value belongs to what is immutable and eternal. This notion pervades Plato’s theory of knowledge and Aristotle’s metaphysics and cosmology. With them is joined the medieval religious world view, which sets the goal of all human activity in eternity, and which sees in the multiplicity, in the mutability, in the inconstancy of human action but a sign of its vanity. So long as man fails to master this inner unrest of his, and in so far as he fails to end and conquer it, he cannot find the way to God. »[…] inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te.«59 But with Pico this inner unrest of man, impelling him on from one goal to another, and forcing him to pass from one form to another, no longer appears as a mere stigma upon human nature, as a mere blot and weakness. Pico admires this multiplicity and multiformity, and he sees in it a mark of human greatness. That man is confined to temporality, that even in his highest achievements he cannot overstep time, this now no longer appears merely a proof of his Fall, through which he has been alienated from his original divine nature. The fact that he is temporally conditioned and temporally mutable is the basis of the distinctive power of man. For the power of human freedom can be verified only in man’s | molding his own life, and for this molding it must be possible for him to pass through and in a sense make trial of the most varied spheres of existence. The scholastic thesis: »Essentiae rerum sunt immutabiles«, may hold for all other beings; but with Pico it does not hold for man. Man is a true chameleon, a being in a sense iridescent with every color. But from this circumstance Pico does not draw the same conclusion which Platonism or the medieval ascetic world view had drawn. He dares to affirm just what they had denied. »Quis hunc nostrum chamaeleonta non admiretur? aut omnino quis aliud quicquam admiretur magis?«60 How was such a transformation possible? On what philosophical principle is it grounded? It is founded frankly upon that distinction on which rests the entire structure of Pico’s thought: on the distinction between »Nature« and »Freedom«. In the realm of freedom the same standards do not hold as in the realm of nature: the »Intelligible« and the »Sensible« must be measured with different criteria. For natural 59 [Aurelius Augustinus, Confessiones libri XIII, in: Opera omnia, post lovaniensium theologorum recensionem castigata denuo ad manuscriptos codices gallicos, vaticanos, belgicos, etc., necnon ad editiones antiquiores et castigatiores, hrsg. v. Jacques-Paul Migne, Bd. I (Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, Bd. XXXII), Paris 1861, Sp. 659–868: Sp. 661.] 60 Pico, De hominis dignitate, p. 315.

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things, for merely physical things, it does indeed mean a limitation and a privation of being that they are conceived in perpetual flux, that not for a moment do they preserve their self-identity. This is expressed in their possessing no constant nature, in their being suspended in fluctuating experience. But does the same conclusion follow for the world of thought? Physical things do not change themselves, they are changed. It is the operation of an external cause that produces their change, and to this operation they are subject with complete passivity. They do not themselves posit a definite change and evoke it out of themselves; the change is rather forced upon them by something else. But this manner of compulsion is transcended in human action and production. Here there is an independent setting of a goal: man ch o o ses the form he will bring forth, at which he will arrive in the very process itself. Thus man is not merely subject to a passive becoming; he rather determines his own goal and realizes it in free activity. It is this activity toward which Pico’s admiration is directed, and his oration is but the philosophical hymn in which he gives expression to this admiration. The mind of man can be satisfied with no moderation, indeed, with no possession of any sort that has fixed limits. His ambition, which Pico calls »holy«, consists in striving on and on. »Invadat animum sacra quaedam ambitio, ut mediocribus non contenti | anhelemus ad summa, adque illa (quando possumus si volumus) consequenda totis viribus enitamur.«61 Man can arrive at the highest only if he does not restrain this power of self-molding he feels in himself, but allows it free scope in every direction; and this mutability, taken as the power of self-formation, constitutes not man’s weakness but his greatness. With this conclusion new light is thrown not only on Pico’s philosophy, but also on the underlying intellectual attitude of the entire Florentine circle. It is as though from this position we could for the first time grasp completely certain sides of Michelangelo’s nature. In Pico’s oration man is called his own almost arbitrary molder: »[s]ui ipsius quasi arbitrarius honorariusque plastes et fictor […]«62 He is the »sculptor« who must bring forth and in a sense chisel out his own form from the material with which nature has endowed him. We can understand how such a view must have affected the aesthetics and the theory of art of the Renaissance. It contains nothing less than a kind of theodicy of art. For art, especially plastic art, is now no longer derived from pleasure in the imitation of the varied multiplicity of sensible things. It has found a different and a purely »spiritual« goal. It expresses 61 62

Ibid., p. 316. [A. a. O., S. 314.]

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within its own sphere what characterizes and distinguishes mankind as a whole. Beauty becomes, to express it in Kantian terms, the »symbol of morality«:63 for in the capacity of man to produce from himself a world of forms, there is expressed his innate freedom. The artist in a sense possesses this freedom raised to a higher power; from it and because of it he can bring forth a new »Nature«. This trait adds a new strain to the »cult of beauty« of the Renaissance. Pico too was suffused with this cult of beauty. He shared it with all the men of the Florentine circle – with Ficino, with Girolamo Benivieni, on whose »Canzone dell’ amor celeste e divino« he wrote a philosophical commentary.64 But in all this he is by no means merely »artistic«; his attitude is rather thoroughly universal; art is for him not a particular realm of human activity, but the expression and revelation of the primary »creative« nature of man. It is obvious that at the same time the temporal character and the »historical nature« of man receives a new meaning and value. In its proofs for the immortality of the soul, Renaissance philosophy singles out an argument that is pushed more and more to the center | of attention, and that we find in various versions, in Nicholas of Cusa as well as in Ficino. The guarantee for the continued existence of the soul lies in the fact that it is not subject to time; for instead of being »in« time, time is rather in it. It is the mind itself that, by virtue of a native power resident in it, produces from itself not only the ideas of number and magnitude, but also that of time: how then could the mind be subject to that which it generates from its own nature? »[…] anima rationalis, non est tempori subdita, sed ad tempus se habet anterioriter, sicut visus ad oculum […] Ita anima rationalis […] non […] ipsa subest tempori, sed potius e converso […]«65 In this derivation of time from the thinking subject another interest, that of speculative idealism, comes to the fore. The thinking subject must be raised a b o v e time, must be in a sense withdrawn from it, so 63 [Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, hrsg. v. Otto Buek, in: Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, Bd. V, Berlin 1914, S. 233–568: S. 428 (Akad.-Ausg. V, 351): »Symbol der Sittlichkeit«.] 64 See Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Item cabala Ioannis Reuchlini, ad intelligenda loca quaedam Pici, magno usui futura lectori, in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 733–923. 65 Nicholas Cusanus, De ludo globi libri tres (Bk. 2), in: Opera, Basle 1565, pp. 208–239: p. 232; cf. Marsilio Ficino, Theologiae platonicae, de immortalite animorum (Bk. 8, chap. 16), in: Opera omnia, Vol. I/1, pp. 79–424: pp. 200–202 (further details in »Individuum und Kosmos«, pp. 43 ff. and 74 f. [ECW 14, S. 47 ff. u. 82 f.]).

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that it can be revealed in its fundamental »transcendental« character, as the condition for all temporality. Pico comes close to this conception; we can indeed say that it is this notion that is in a sense at the basis of his entire criticism of astrology.66 But he does not remain in this position. He does not simply wish to elevate the mind above time, he wishes rather to locate it in the midst of time: he sees the mind in its actual »history«. But he can see it thus without being forced to abandon or limit his spiritualism in any way. For to him history is no mere fate, and time is not merely the external frame within which this fate is worked out. History is no mere »occurrence« which seizes man from without and carries him along with it, like the wheel of Ixion. It is the sum total of the intellectual forms which man produces from himself. In his own history therefore man is not simply subject to the temporality and transitoriness of things; in it he rather reveals his own nature – a nature indeed mutable, but in this very mutability free, because it is the self-changing, the eternal »Proteus«.67 This Protean nature is elevated above the transitoriness of natural existence, because it manifests no mere being acted upon, but an activity, the sum total indeed of human action. And here we approach also the solution of one of the most difficult problems the philosophy of Pico presents. In the historical and | systematic interpretation of Pico’s thought, the position it takes with regard to Averroism constitutes the real stumbling-block. That Pico in his first student years at Padua was under the influence of Averroism is easy to understand; for the School of Padua had long been the citadel of Averroistic teaching. But could he adhere to this teaching and defend it after he had become a »Platonist«, and after he had come into the closest contact with the Florentine Academy? The goal of this Academy, set by its founder Marsilio Ficino, was the philosophic proof of the fundamental truths of Christianity. Among these for Ficino himself the doctrine of the continued existence of the individual soul, of personal immortality, held the first place. His whole P l a toni c T he ol o gy was directed toward this single goal. But it was just this doctrine that was most bitterly contested by Averroism. In a long series of writings, which reached their logical conclusion in Pomponazzi’s treatise »De immortalitate animae«, this underlying theme is treated again and again. And the result is always the same: it is shown not only that reason is unable to furnish a proof for the continued existence of the individual soul, but that such a thesis is in direct contradiction to 66 67

Cf. the exposition of Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, pp. 177 f. Cf. Pico, De hominis dignitate, p. 315.

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reason. For the »Intellect« to which alone belongs eternity is One for all mankind; it knows no differentiation or individuation. Accordingly, Ficino rightly saw in the Averroists the most dangerous enemies of his own basic position; against them he unceasingly directed his attacks. Was it thus not treason to the cause of Ficino and to the Platonic Academy for Pico, though to be sure he did not accept the doctrine of the unity of the intellect, nevertheless to continue to display his admiration for Averroism, and in a sense to come to terms with it? This can indeed be explained only by making completely clear to ourselves wherein the connection between Pico’s philosophy and Averroism consisted. The Averroists have been characterized as the »freethinkers of the Middle Ages.« They treat the doctrines of the positive religions as myths; what they are seeking is a doctrine of God that shall remain within the bounds of mere reason. In this underlying aim of rationalism, Pico could and must feel himself related to them: for he too constantly defended the »libertas credendi«, and for the sake of this defense he too fell under the ban of the Church. But the relationship extends no further: for if Pico granted the r at i ona l i s ti c assumptions of Averroism, he rejected all the more sharply the na tur a l i s ti c | conclusions it had drawn from them. Averroism was in all its major forms bound up in the closest way with that astrological determinism and fatalism, in combatting which Pico saw one of the chief tasks of his philosophy. For the doctrine of human freedom there was in Averroism no place. The transcendence of God has also taken on for Pico a new meaning. The basic presupposition of Neoplatonic doctrine, the absolute transcendence of primary Being, Pico never contested. He adhered strictly to the fundamental ideas of »negative theology«. No predicate that we find in finite things can be applied to God, and every attribute by which we characterize them we must deny to him. God’s essence lies beyond any comparison: »finiti et infiniti nulla […] proportio.«68 But there is none the less one form of understanding that escapes this criticism. If we can ascribe to the Divine Being no property or characteristic that belongs to things, there still remains a basic intellectual phenomenon by virtue of which we are not only related to him but actually one with him. For human f r eed o m is of such a kind that any increase in its meaning or value is impossible, that it is elevated above any comparison. Thus when Pico ascribes to man an independent and innate creative power, he has in this one fundamental respect made 68

[Cusanus, De docta ignorantia (Buch 1, Kap. 3), S. 2.]

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man equal to Divinity. There is now a genuinely positive predicate that is bound to change the character of negative theology fundamentally. The entire world of ideas of Neoplatonism falls therewith into flux: for even »immanence« and »transcendence« are revealed as opposites which in accordance with the principle of the »coincidentia oppositorum« must be overcome and transcended. Where man appears not as a mere creature of nature, but as truly spiritual, i.e., as a creative being, he has risen above this opposition. In the e x te nt of his creation he remains infinitely removed from God; but in the fact, in the qua l i ty of his creation he feels himself at the same time most intimately related to God. What this idea of the »coincidentia oppositorum« means for the whole philosophy of the Renaissance, and what achievement remained for it to consummate – this we can best make clear, if at this point we compare the development reached in the t he or y of know l e dg e with that reached in co s m o lo g y and phys i c s . The medieval Aristotelian physics rests on the basic idea, that the corporeal world is divided into two spheres. These two spheres are continuous | with each other; and motions within the one continue in an uninterrupted causal chain into the other. But they remain nonetheless substantially divided from each other: the matter of which the celestial world consists is not the same as that of the »sublunar« world. The late Middle Ages had already dared to doubt this doctrine of the strict opposition between earthly and heavenly substance – and in the fourteenth century, as the studies of Duhem have shown, it was seriously shaken. But it could be truly overcome only when the idea of the r e l a ti v i ty of place and motion had broken the way, and when this idea had found its speculative foundation in the system of Nicholas of Cusa.69 Here the dualism between »above« and »below«, between the »higher« and the »lower« world, ceases, because every position in space is made equal to every other. On this foundation Giordano Bruno was able to develop his doctrine of the infinity of worlds, which taken together form a genuine and true unity, and of which each on the other hand is self-contained. Instead of a single central point, or instead of two opposite poles, there are now an infinite number of completely independent centers. There are motions about an infinite number of centers; but they all in their totality make a whole: the unified life of the cosmos. Pico’s doctrine effects the same revolution for the intellectual and historical world. This world too appears now as a unified whole, filled 69 Further details in my work »Individuum und Kosmos«, pp. 183 ff. [ECW 14, S. 201 ff.].

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with the most diverse forms of life. It too appears now – in accordance with the familiar analogy – as an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose periphery is nowhere. For the periphery of the intellectual and historical world cannot be bounded and fixed; it is being perpetually extended by the work of men. But on the other hand we can be sure that this extension is no mere dissolution: even if the end is never reached, and even if the boundary is pushed ever further, we are at every point »within« truth. The real outcome of the movement here introduced was first presented in the thought of Leibniz. For it first placed by the side of the cosmological picture of Bruno the corresponding metaphysical picture: it saw reality as a whole of independent entities, each of which expresses the entire universe and represents it from its own particular »viewpoint«. The sources of this »monadological« conception lie in the Renaissance. Leibniz was able to erect his system of »pre-established harmony« because he brought to | gether what in the Renaissance still remained separate; because he sought to derive the new cosmology and the new intellectual and historical world view from a common underlying principle, and to found them upon that principle.

third chapter The Natural Philosophy of Pico and his Polemic against Astrology Pico’s conception of the world of intellectual history forms the real center of his thought, and upon it rests what distinctive and novel ideas he bestowed on modern philosophy. In opposition to this achievement, the natural philosophy of Pico has a subordinate significance. It likewise had a strong influence upon subsequent Italian and German natural philosophy, and thinkers like Agrippa von Nettesheim and Paracelsus in particular drew directly from Pico. But Pico’s teaching is here less significant and interesting in what it contains in the way of particular ideas, than in the fact that in a sense he determined the type of conception of nature to which thenceforth all the natural philosophers of the Renaissance belong. The principle he finds to obtain can be characterized as that of U n iv er s al Vit ali s m. Nature is not composed of parts, and does not fall into different classes of entities, that are distinct in substance from each other. It forms a single great interconnected Life; and this Life is of such a kind that the motion of the whole is to be detected in each part. There is here not only a continuous chain of effects continuing spatially from one point to the next;

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there rules an original and thoroughgoing »sympathy«, by virtue of which each individual occurrence is bound up with the whole system of occurrences. The universe is like a string under tension, which, touched at any point, propagates the disturbance in every direction, so that it can be traced in every one of its parts. Historically, this doctrine goes back to the Stoics, especially to Poseidonios. In accordance with this conception, any k n o win g of nature can mean only, and can be directed toward nothing higher than, to sympathize with this universal order of Life; all the notions we form of nature must, if they are not to remain mere abstractions, grow out of this feeling. This form of »anthropocentric« consideration of nature Pico was never able to and never wished to deny. A single stream of | thought flows from Pico’s basic conception of natural philosophy to Schelling’s treatment of the World-Soul. For Pico too the World-Soul is what holds the world together in its inmost being; it is the source of all the manifold motions of the cosmos and gives them their order and harmony.70 For Pico therefore it is certain, just as for Schelling, that nature can be regarded and interpreted only as the first stage of spirit. The principle revealed in mind in the form of self-consciousness, operates in nature as an unconscious power. Nature is reason; but she is reason still concealed, not yet arrived at self-knowledge: »ratio mersa et confusa.«71 Nature, humanity, and God are thus related, in accordance with an analogy of Pico’s, as are colors, the eye, and light. Colors are present only in possibility, in potentiality; they first receive their actualization through the eye that sees them; and the eye could not see them were there no source of light to make them visible. That Pico is here recurring to a Platonic theme, to Plato’s notion of the »Idea of the Good« as the sun of the intelligible world, is obvious;72 and at the same time it is clear that for him there is no real separate place for natural philosophy, that it has for him a meaning only in the totality of his »philosophy of mind«. The structure of natural philosophy is for Pico inseparable from the ideas developed in his oration »De hominis dignitate«: here too man is characterized as »oculus mundi«, as that being who unites in himself and comprehends in single vision what in the universe exists apart. »[…] si intellectum quasi oculum capimus qui non ex se, sed lucis participatione videt, cum Deus sit lux, Pico, Conclusiones nongentae (Secundum Jamblicum IX), p. 75. [Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Dialogorum liber VIII ad serenum de otio (Abschn. 5), in: Opera quae supersunt, hrsg. v. Friedrich Haase, Bd. I, Leipzig 1852, S. 164– 170: S. 167.] 72 Cf. Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, pp. 220 f. 70 71

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lux enim est veritas, et visio actio sit qua oculus lucem attingit, non eget Deus hac operatione qui est ipsa lux […]«73 This throws light also on the controlling influence which m ag i c has in Pico’s conception of nature. For to him magic is by no means the employment of supernatural forces; it remains completely within the sphere of nature. Genuine magic is no art of sorcery that makes use of the aid of demonic powers. It proceeds rather from the understanding of the immanent vital interconnections of nature, from the knowledge of all the relationships and sympathies that govern her parts. The true »magician« is he who knows the forces of nature and understands how to direct them to their proper ends, by uniting what is separate and bringing them | to a common operation. In this sense, the countryman who joins the vine with the elm is working »magic«: for he is uniting different natural existences and making them live henceforth a common life.74 This unification can include even those elements that seem most incompatible and widely separated: for no element in nature falls outside the whole, outside her great all-embracing system of activities. »Nulla est virtus in coelo aut in terra seminaliter et separata, quam et actuare et unire magus non possit.«75 All this is still far from any immediate observation of nature and from any form of natural »science«, and at no point does it break through the circle of speculative metaphysics and theology. This mixing of the two spheres, as it is found throughout Pico, was bound to awaken opposition not only from the standpoint of natural science, but also from that of religious knowledge. Pico even went so far as to see in Christ the highest magician, because as the true »vinculum mundi« he knows all the secret connections of things. If we keep in mind this limitation of Pico’s thought, then the step he took in his »Polemic against Astrology« makes all the greater and more surprising an impression. What this work means for the entire philosophy of the Renaissance I have tried to set forth in another place76 – and I do not wish to return to this question here. I am selecting once more only those points of essential significance for our present problem, for the question of the inner articulation of the different parts of Pico’s thought. Here we are forced to face a difficulty. In his work against astrology Pico makes a sharp distinction between merely symbolic Pico, Heptaplus (Chap. 6), p. 35. Idem, Apologia, pp. 121 ff. and 167 ff. It is this conception that had particular influence on Paracelsus; cf. Theophrastus Paracelsus, Das Buch Paragranum, ed. by Franz Strunz, Leipzig 1903, pp. 70 ff. 75 Pico, Conclusiones nongentae (Conclusiones magicae, No. 5), p. 104. 76 Individuum und Kosmos, pp. 121 ff. [ECW 14, S. 133 ff.]. 73 74

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knowledge and empirical knowledge. He demands that we see in nature no mere system of marks and signs, and he explains that it is futile to base the prediction of future events on such a system. We must penetrate into the forces of things and grasp them not merely in abstract schematization but in their individual nature and their concrete operations. It tells us nothing, and it is an unfruitful game, to regard the »heavens«, in the sense of the astrologers, as ruling and directing all earthly events. This remains mere words, so long as we fail to indicate the m ean s for this presumed operation of the heavens. But that cannot be found in the conjunctions of the planets, or in | any of the other fantastic combinations in which astrology loses itself. The connections which are here really demonstrable and really certain, consist not in any secret relations, but in public and in a sense everyday phenomena. Not the positions of the stars, and not the »houses« of the heavens which astrology has invented, but the forces of light and heat, must be held responsible for the real influence of the heavens. »Praeter communem motus et luminis influentiam nullam vim coelestibus peculiarem inesse.«77 It is quite remarkable how Pico seems here to free himself at a single stroke not only from astrology, but also from the entire metaphysics of substantial forms and occult qualities, and to take his stand on the ground of an empirical and causal explanation of nature. For was he not bound with a thousand ties to this metaphysics, and does not »symbolic« knowledge form the exact center and core of Pico’s entire theory of knowledge? What then could cause him, and what could make it possible for him, to oppose to this symbolic knowledge another kind, that should rest on its own independent foundation? In his theology and religious philosophy Pico makes an unlimited, indeed we could even say a hyperbolic use of the principle of allegorical interpretation. Neither in the Bible nor in any other sacred document is there for him a sentence we can understand in its proper literal sense. There is needed always a difficult interpretation to release the genuine, the mystic and spiritual sense, from the literal one. And only when we have penetrated to this meaning is the religious truth disclosed to us. For this reason the Kabbala acquires for Pico a controlling and central significance. For it is the key that first truly unlocks the secrets of the Divine nature. Divine revelation is dumb, it cannot be understood by man in its deepest sense, before we have appropriated this key and learned to use it in the right way. The word of the Bible is indeed the 77 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, De astrologia disputationum Lib. XII (Bk. 3, chap. 5), in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 411–732: p. 461.

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highest; but it speaks only to him who cracks the hard shell of the mere word. Within this hard shell of the Divine law as written there lies the Divine meaning: the »sensus anagogicus«, which alone leads truly upward, and not only procures for us entrance to the world of spirits, but also solves its deepest secrets. »Sicut vera Astrologia docet nos legere in libro Dei,« Pico states in his theses, »ita Cabala docet nos legere in libro legis.«78 Here | »true astrology« is thus placed immediately by the side of the Kabbala. But if this is so, why is astrology to be denied the use of that symbolic and allegorical thinking which Kabbalistic interpretation employs incessantly? Why does this thinking lead to error when applied to nature, while in religion it is the source of all truth? We can get an answer to this question only if we make clear to ourselves the distinctive structure of Pico’s thought. This structure rests on the sharp distinction he makes between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom. For each realm there hold different laws, and accordingly, different ways of knowing. Everything physical is subject to strict necessity; everything spiritual rests on freedom and can be understood only in its terms. The conclusive objection Pico raises against astrology is that it fails to see this distinction. Instead of understanding each of the two realms, the world of bodies and the world of spirits, in its own specific sense, and instead of applying to each its appropriate method of knowing, astrology wilfully obliterates all distinctions. It tries to derive the being of man from the heavens, and to read his destiny in the stars. But for Pico the destiny of man lies in himself; it is determined by his will and his actions. And this will cannot be reduced to an external material compulsion, since matter would thus be proclaimed the master of spirit. The principle of the »primacy of spirit« and the »primacy of freedom« is thus the real driving power in Pico’s polemic against astrology.79 In everything created by man, and produced through freedom, we are not only able to rely on symbolic interpretation, we cannot dispense with it. For the world of men, the world of science, of art, of religion can be revealed only in speech and writing, in pictures and symbols, and only in them does it acquire a stable existence. But the nature of the corporeal world is no sum of »meanings«; it is a con78 Idem, Conclusiones nongentae (Conclusiones cabbalisticae numero LXXI, secundum opinionem propriam, ex ipsis Hebraeorum sapientum fundamentis christianam religionem maxime confirmantes, No. 72), p. 113. 79 Cf. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. V: The Sixteenth Century, New York 1941 (History of Science Society Publications, New Series, Vol. 4), p. VI.

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nected chain of causes and effects. We must follow this chain from link to link without introducing anything different or of another order. In the methodological sense astrology is a hybrid and a non-entity, because it constantly confuses the two ways of approach; because it seeks intimations and portents where it should be seeking causes and effects. On this basis Pico arrives at a clear distinction between the »true« and the | false astrology. The science of the stars as a mathematical science of nature he sets off sharply from the art of prophesy, as practiced in the »astrologia divinatrix«. The one is as far from the other as light is from darkness, or truth from lies.80 In its details also the criticism of astrology is often of surprising acuteness. Because astrology has not sharply distinguished the meaning of the »natural« from that of the »spiritual«, it is for Pico everywhere a prey to ambiguity even in the particular categories it has applied. In the description of spiritual and hence supersensible relations, it everywhere intrudes spatial and sensible images. It sets out from the basic notion and dogma that the »higher« exercises domination over the »lower«; but instead of understanding the two terms as an o p p o sit io n o f v alu e, it takes them as a spatial opposition. The higher is for it what is »above«, the lower, what is »below«. But it is obvious for Pico that this is to commit an equivocation. In the spiritual sense man stands »above« the stars and above the whole of corporeal nature, so truly as he u n d er s t a nds this nature and is able to know its order and laws. This is his real greatness and elevation. As a natural being he is a vanishing nothing; as a thinking being he understands the heavens, and in this understanding transcends them: »Nihil magnum in terra praeter hominem, nihil magnum in homine praeter mentem et animum, huc si ascendis coelum transcendis, si ad corpus inclinas, et coelum suspicis, muscam te vides, et musca aliquid minus.«81 What from the standpoint of intellectual history is most notable about this argument is the circumstance that while it reaches a result of decisive significance for the progress of natural science, this achievement developed on an entirely different soil from that of exact scientific thinking. It is curious to consider how much harder it was for Kepler, a veritable scientific genius, to escape the bonds of the astrological way of thinking. Pico’s speculative doctrine of freedom proved here to be more effective than Kepler’s mathematical conception of nature. And Kepler himself could probably not have taken the final 80 81

Pico, De astrologia (Bk. 1 and 10, chap. 1), pp. 422 and 680. Ibid. (Bk. 3, chap. 27), p. 519.

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step, had not Pico, upon whom he expressly relies, preceded him.82 It was not by pure rational argu | ments based on scientific grounds that the bonds were broken at this point; there was needed a new attitude and a new sense of the world. Pico himself concentrated this new sense in the epigram: »[…] miracula […] animi […] coelo maiora sunt […]«83 This is no mere isolated statement; we could take it as the motto for Pico’s entire work. Pico was perhaps the only man in his age completely free from fear of demons and from fear of the baneful influence of the stars. How different he is in this respect from even the men of his immediate circle, is shown in comparison with Ficino,84 who despite all his efforts was never able to banish this fear from his life. Pico knew no such fear, because it contradicted what he felt as the true meaning of human existence, and extolled in his great oration as the »dignity of man«. For him this dignity consists in the fact that the work of man is the expression of his own will, not the influence of the stars and the gift of higher powers. Aristotle was great, not because he was born under a more favorable star, but because he was born with high bodily and mental powers – and even these powers would not have been able to establish his greatness had he not devoted all the force of his will to their cultivation. »[…] sortitus est animam bonam […] tum sortitus est corpus idoneum ut tali animae famularetur […] elegit philosophari. Hoc et principiorum opus quae diximus, hoc est animi et corporis, et sui arbitrii fuit; profecit in philosophia, hic arrepti propositi et suae industriae fructus. […] Sortitus erat non astrum melius, sed ingenium melius. Nec ingenium ab astro, siquidem incorporale, sed a Deo […]«85 For everything intellectual comes from God, and must be attributed immediately to him as its real and only source. Here there can and must be no intermediary – and even nature, even the heavens must be rejected as such an intermediary. To sum up our discussion, there now stands revealed a complete and rounded picture of Pico’s philosophy. If we consider the details of the 82 On the relation of Kepler to Pico, vid. the material in Johannes Kepler, De stella nova in pede serpentarii, in: Opera omnia, ed. by Christian Frisch, 8 vols., Frankfort on the Main/Erlangen 1858 ff., Vol. II, pp. 575–750: pp. 578 ff., and idem, Astronomia nova seu de motu stellae maris, in: Opera omnia, Vol. III, pp. 1–135: p. 29. 83 Pico, De astrologia (Bk. 3, chap. 27), p. 519. 84 On Ficino’s attitude toward astrology, cf. Individuum und Kosmos, pp. 118 ff. [ECW 14, S. 129 ff.]. 85 Pico, De astrologia (Bk. 3, chap. 27), p. 517.

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execution, this picture is by no means free from strange and curious traits, and it contains many features difficult of interpretation. But it does not lack a firm outline and a sure drawing. Just as little does it appear a mere mosaic, put together from pieces | of different meaning and origin, and in a sense assembled from all the regions of philosophy. From the charge of »bad syncretism«, so often and so persistently raised against Pico, we must, it seems to me, absolve him. To be sure, we can hardly approach his thought with modern expectations and demands: for he is no »modern« thinker. He still stands entirely within scholasticism – and he not only clung to and defended the scholastic form of philosophy, the »stilus Parisiensis«, he also preserved its matter. He knew the scholastic heritage as few others, and he did not reject it; he desired to preserve and increase it.86 But this conservative attitude did not prevent Pico from accomplishing in the whole of his thinking something that proved significant and pointed to the future. In this respect his thought displays the true spirit of the Renaissance, the spirit of a genuine new beginning. It is, to use an expression of Leibniz, »chargé du passé et gros de l’avenir.«87 For the influence of Pico’s philosophy was great and many-sided, and extended to almost every realm of intellectual life. The great theme announced in his oration »De hominis dignitate« resounded thereafter in the most diverse variations – in a gradually stronger and stronger crescendo. We hear it in the religious conflicts of the age of the Reformation, we hear it in the new philosophy of nature, and we shall finally hear it – though in altered form – in the modern rebirth of philosophical idealism, in Descartes and in Leibniz. The aesthetics and the theory of art of the following centuries likewise drew upon Pico and took from him many of their basic problems and themes. From his thought there spread influences which led in the one direction in English philosophy through the Cambridge School to Shaftesbury, in the other, in German, to Winckelmann. The »occulta concatenatio« of his own basic ideas and of his seemingly incompatible theses Pico was hardly able to make clear even to himself – much less to make accessible to his contemporaries. Only posterity, only the further philo86 This dependence on scholasticism is very strongly emphasized in the most recent treatment of Pico: Dulles, Princeps Concordiae; vid. note 47, and the general note to Part I of this article, p. 67. 87 [Vgl. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais sur l’entendement humain, par l’auteur du système de l’harmonie préétablie, in: Opera philosophica quae exstant latina gallica germanica omnia, hrsg. v. Johann Eduard Erdmann, Berlin 1840, S. 194–418: S. 197: »[…] le présent est plein de l’avenir et chargé du passé […]«.]

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sophic development of the problems, could bring it like a buried treasure to light. But such a deep and continued influence could be | exerted only by a philosophy which, quite apart from its temporal limitations and its debt to the past, contained a new way of thinking, and which in all its parts, in its doctrine of God, in its doctrine of nature, and in its ethics, was seeking to make that new way prevail. Yale University

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The mathematician Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, one of the founders of so-called mathematical intuitionism, in one of the papers in which he attempts to explain and prove his fundamental conceptions, says that mathematics, science, and language are the principle functions of man’s intellectual activity. It is by these functions, declares Brouwer, that man becomes able to govern nature and maintain order in the midst of nature.2 If this be true it would seem to be one of the most interesting problems as well as one of the most important tasks of philosophy to investigate the logical character of these three functions and to elucidate their relationship. For the business of philosophy is to study the different forms and sources of knowledge and make clear the way in which they interlink and cooperate. The approach to this problem, however, is not easy, and in the past has been impeded, not only by inner difficulties but also by conditions that depend to a large extent upon the organization of scientific research and of our academic training. Our universities follow the principle of a strict division of labor. They are divided into different departments that do not know very much of each other. None of these departments wishes or dares to encroach on another territory. This specialization may be a very sound principle and from the teacher’s point of view even indispensable. But when approaching the field of philosophy we can no longer maintain such a division of labor. What we demand and expect from philosophy is a synthesis of the various scientific efforts. We wish to know their mutual relations and their systematic connections. Even with this approach, however, we do not feel inclined to think of language and mathematics as kindred branches of knowledge. They seem to be very far from each other and to belong to entirely different spheres. They are, so to speak, the opposite hemispheres of our »globus intellectualis«. Mathematics belongs to science and is the very foundation of science. Language is an | historical phenomenon that can be studied and explained only by historical methods. If we accept the [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: The Journal of Philosophy 39 (1942), S. 309–327.] Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, Mathematik, Wissenschaft und Sprache, in: Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 36 (1929), pp. 153–164. 1 2

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theory of many modern logicians, mathematical and historical thought are separated from each other by an unbridgeable gulf. Science and history can never be brought under one and the same common denominator. The structure of history and the structure of the so-called »Geisteswissenschaften« are of quite different types from the structure of mathematics or natural science. I do not wish to enter into the details of this vigorously debated question, but in this paper I do wish to indicate a way by which we may hope to bridge this logical gap. I do not deny the specific differences that, from the point of view of a general theory of knowledge, admittedly exist between language on the one hand and mathematical and scientific thought on the other hand. But I think it is just this difference that entitles us and in a sense obliges us to search after the logical genus to which both kinds are subordinated. In order to make clear my point I shall begin with a short survey of the historical development of our problem. But I do not intend to develop all the historical facts. My present task is systematic, not merely historical. From the historical evolution of language and of mathematical and scientific thought I wish to draw some general systematic consequences that may perhaps be helpful in elucidating the situation of modern epistemology. According to Plato wonder (αυμζειν) is the beginning of all philosophy. Without the ability to wonder man would never have developed philosophy. It is, indeed, this emotion that Greek thought first felt when dealing with the problem of language. Philosophy was under the spell of language; it was surprised and, as it were, fascinated by the bright light that shone forth from language. We feel this fascination if we study early Greek philosophy and if we read the fragments of Heraclitus in which he praises the power of the »Logos«. But the Greek mind could not simply submit to this power. I think, for example, that nobody who has any thorough knowledge of Greek science and Greek philosophy can subscribe to the opinion of John Stuart Mill, that Greek speculation was little more than a mere sifting and analyzing of the notions attached to common language.3 The Greek mind was critical and analytical; it could not surrender itself to language without investigating its nature and its conditions. Language remained the great guide of thought; but philosophy had no longer an implicit faith in this guide. It began to seek its own route according to the principles and standards of truth that it estab | lished. We can follow this in Greek 3 John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation (Bk. 1, chap. 3), Vol. I, London 71868, pp. 49 ff.

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logic and metaphysics, in Greek empirical science, in Greek ethics and natural philosophy. In ethical thought the first decisive step is made by Socrates. If we read the Socratic dialogues of Plato we feel at once the way in which the thought of Socrates is bound to language and that in which it strives to free itself from language. Socrates is the eternal conversationalist. Nobody can meet him without immediately getting entangled in conversation and disputation. Socrates is convinced that there is no other way to detect ethical truth than this discursive and dialectic way. But it is here that we make the first decisive step that leads us from linguistic thought to philosophical thought. Socrates always begins with distinctions that at first sight seem to be nothing else than verbal discriminations. He cannot explain his thought and his concepts without referring to the common usage of words. He asks for the meaning of these words – for the meaning of !γαm, kalm, !mδρεα, δικαιnσmh, qoφρnqmh – of the good and the beautiful, of courage, justice, temperance. Dialectic is the art of determining and fixing the fluctuating meaning of words. Speech is moving – and in this movement all our words and terms undergo an incessant change. But it is for philosophy, for dialectic, to bring this change to a standstill, to transmute the mobile and uncertain shape of words into steadfast and constant concepts. What Socrates began in the field of ethics was maintained and continued by Aristotle in the field of physics. In Aristotle’s physics we meet with the same confidence in language and with the same distrust of language. Most of the commentators of Aristotle have laid stress on the first point. In his »Geschichte der Kategorienlehre«, Trendelenburg tries to convince us that the system of categories that is at the bottom of Aristotle’s logic, physics, and metaphysics is nothing else than a sort of transposition of linguistic and grammatical distinctions into logical distinctions. In this case the whole thought of Aristotle would be moulded upon the pattern of Greek language. But I do not think that we can maintain this view without qualification. Aristotle was not only a logician; he was at the same time an acute and careful observer of natural phenomena. In order to do full justice to his system of physics we must constantly keep in view these two poles of his thought; we must pay heed both to the empirical and the speculative sides of the problem. But in both respects we can connect the Aristotelian concept of nature with the general function of language. Aristotle does not regard nature as a mere aggregate of facts. He wishes to understand nature as a system – as a coherent, logical whole. But to discover this system he does not use the same | method as modern science. Galileo, Kepler, or Newton were searching for Philosophiae

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naturalis principia mathematica – for general laws and principles of nature the purport of which can be described by mathematical concepts and mathematical functions. Aristotle’s thought is directed to a different aim. What he strives at is a complete logical classification of the facts of nature. And for this principal task Aristotle refers and appeals to those classifications that, before the beginnings of an empirical science of nature, have been made by language. Language is not possible without the use of general names – and these names are not only arbitrary conventional signs; they are supposed to be the expression of objective differences. They correspond to different classes and different properties of things. Aristotle accepts this general view; he thinks that the words of language have not only a verbal but an ontological meaning. Arguing upon this principle we may say that there is a double approach to ontology, to a general theory of being. We may begin with an analysis of the fundamental phenomena of nature; but we may begin just as much with an analysis of linguistic phenomena – we may study the general structure of the sentence. In both cases we shall be led to the same result. We find as the first fundamental category the category of substance or being (nqa) – that corresponds to the subject of the sentence. Every predication presupposes an ultimate point to which it refers. Substance (-πnkeμemnm) is this ultimate point; it underlies all predication but cannot be expressed by any predicate. In the same sense we may connect the other categories with the facts and distinctions of language. Quantity and quality (πnqm and πnim) refer to the adjective, πnie1m and πqxeim correspond to the active and the passive forms of the verb, and so on. We can easily understand that Aristotle when building up this system was convinced that he was standing upon firm and unshakable ground. He could scarcely distrust that general scheme of thought which was imposed on him by the structure of Greek language. We must bear in mind the fact that the distinction between different types of languages is a very late attainment of philosophical and linguistic thought. Wilhelm von Humboldt was the first to give a systematic survey of the various types of language. And even Humboldt, who studied all these types with the greatest care and with a perfectly unbiassed mind, could not forbear to ascribe a special value and a definite philosophical and logical preeminence to the Indo-European languages. According to him the form of these languages – the method of inflexion – is, as he says »die einzig gesetzmässige Form«, the only linguistic type | that follows perfectly clear and strict rules.4 This log4

Cf. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen

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ical superiority of the inflective type depends on the fact that it is here – and here alone – that we meet with a sharp distinction between the fundamental elements of the sentence – between the subject, the predicate, the copula. We can scarcely maintain this view of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s any longer. It has become rather doubtful whether we can construct a hierarchy of languages in which the inflective type would maintain the highest rank and could claim a logical superiority over all the other types. In this respect the evolution of logic and the evolution of linguistics seem to lead to the same result. Logic has taught us that there are many and very important types of propositions that cannot be reduced to that simple scheme of the sentence we find in the inflected languages. It was especially the study of mathematical relations that imperatively demanded the enlargement of this scheme. On the other hand linguistics seems to have given up all hope of finding a unique prototype of language and speech. After many unsuccessful attempts made in this direction most of the modern linguists seem to have ceased to seek this privileged and ideal type. Alan Henderson Gardiner in his »Theory of Speech and Language«5 says: »It is clear that so well-established and passionately held a faith as that which asserts that every sentence ›consists of‹ or ›can be analysed into‹ subject and predicate cannot be wholly without foundation. […] But even had that belief proved true, the possession of subject and predicate would still have been no infallible test by which a sentence could be recognized as such. […] Equally untenable is the claim of some grammarians that every sentence must contain a finite verb. […] whatever the facts as regards the Indo-European languages, I can aver with the utmost assurance that Old Egyptian dispensed with the copula […] Throughout the whole of the Old and Middle Egyptian periods sentences with a noun as predicative word regularly dispensed with the copula. […] Similar evidence could be produced from Hebrew and Arabic […]« I need not emphasize to what a large extent this progress in logical analysis and this enlargement of our empirical linguistic knowledge has influenced the development of modern metaphysics. The severe criticism of the one-sided subject-predicate scheme of the sentence is Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by the Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sect. 1: Werke, ed. by Albert Leitzmann, Vol. VII/1), Berlin 1907, p. 162. 5 Alan Henderson Gardiner, The Theory of Speech and Language, Oxford 1932, pp. 214 ff. [Zitat S. 214 u. 217–219].

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one of the outstanding features in Whitehead’s philosophical work. It has proved to be one of the most powerful motives in his reconstruction of metaphysics, in his attempt to build up a new cosmology. As regards the physics and cosmology of Aristotle they seem, | at first sight, to be in full agreement with our own modern views. He defines a physical or natural thing as a thing which has in itself »!ρxêm kim#qeoς κα στσeoς,« a principle of motion and rest in respect of place, of size or quality.6 The phenomenon of motion is, therefore, the fundamental fact in Aristotle’s physics – just as much as this phenomenon is the focus of Galileo’s physical theories. But what makes the decisive difference between Aristotle and Galileo is the fact that the former describes and defines motion in terms of substances and qualities whereas the latter defines it in terms of relations and quantities. By this the whole order and method of thought is inverted. It is not the subject matter of physics but it is its logical form that in the work of Galileo undergoes a complete change of meaning. In analyzing the phenomenon of motion Aristotle follows the way that is prescribed to him by his general principles. Motion is a predicate – and such a predicate cannot be thought without the subject to which it inheres. We have, therefore, to begin with the study of this subject, to inquire into the nature of the moving bodies in order to determine and discriminate the various forms of motion. But for this purpose we need another preparatory step. The empirical bodies we meet with in common experience are not the ultimate elements of things. They have to be reduced to simpler constituents in order to be accessible to a scientific explanation. These constituents we find when going back to those simple qualities of which the physical universe is composed. To each of these qualities there corresponds a special form of motion. If we achieve a complete and exhaustive survey of them we have, therefore, reached our goal: we have attained a description, a systematic classification of all the possible forms of motion. But how can we discover these simple irreducible qualities? It is at this point that Aristotle once more relies on the power of language. Language has made the first fundamental distinctions. It has classified the phenomena of nature according to certain points of view. We need only to follow its example in order to find out the true elements of things. But, like Socrates in his ethical investigations, Aristotle is perfectly aware of the fact that every 6 Aristotle, Physics B, 192 B, V. 20 [Zitat: 192 B, Z. 14. Cassirer zitiert Aristoteles unter Angabe der Bekker-Paginierung. Die Verifizierung erfolgt nach: Aristoteles, Physica, in: Opera, durchges. v. Immanuel Bekker, hrsg. v. der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bd. I, Berlin 1831, S. 184–267: S. 192].

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philosophical use of language at the same time demands a criticism of language. We have to examine, to complete, and to correct its discriminations and classifications. It is not until such a critical examination has been made that we are entitled to trust them. By applying this method Aristotle is finally led to the distinction of two classes of qualities each of which is divided into two opposite terms. Heat and cold, dryness and humidity, are declared to be the fundamental qualities of things. The empirical bodies consist of these primary qualities. Water is the thing which | contains in its nature the qualities of coldness and humidity; fire combines the qualities of heat and dryness and so on. And each of these qualities demands and determines a special form of motion. Every single element has its natural place in the physical universe. When detached from this place it strives, by an inward inclination and tendency, to return to it. By this the general order of the universe is constantly restored and maintained. The first attacks against this system were made in the last centuries of the Middle Ages. Here we first meet with thinkers who, although following the general scholastic tradition, no longer regard Aristotle as an absolute authority. They attempt to take a new way – the via moderna as they used to call it. The disciples of William of Occam were the first to envisage the possibility of a new theory of motion that in many aspects diverged from the principles of Aristotle. Pierre Duhem – the distinguished French physicist who at the same time was one of the best students of medieval philosophy – has shown in a series of very careful and detailed investigations7 the importance of the work of the later nominalists for the discovery of a new statics and dynamics. But I think that Duhem overrates the systematic significance of these scholastic efforts. The nominalists could pave the way; they could call in question and enfeeble the authority of Aristotle, but they were not able to build up a new constructive theory of nature. It was the fundamental logical principle of nominalism itself which was in the way of such a theory. According to this principle nature consists of individual things and individual events. »[…] omnis res [positiva] extra animam,« says William of Occam, »[eo ipso] est […] singularis […]«8 But if this is true there arises a difficulty. In which way is this singularity of things to be reconciled with the universality which is 7 Pierre Duhem, Les origines de la statique, 2 vols., Paris 1905–1906 (Les sources des théories physiques); idem, Études sur Léonard de Vinci ceux qu’il a lus et ceux qui l’ont lu, 3 vols., Paris 1906–1913; idem, Le système du monde, 5 vols., Paris 1913–1917. 8 [Wilhelm von Ockham, Super 4 libros sententiarum (Buch 1, Distinctio 2, Quaestio 6) (Opera plurima, Bd. III), Lyon 1494–1496.]

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implied in every mathematical proposition? It was this problem that had to be solved before a mathematical theory of nature could arise. For such a theory it was not enough to introduce new means and new methods of empirical observation. Of course, the »nuova scienza« of Galileo, the new science of dynamics, was not a speculative but an empirical science. It depended on the discovery of fundamental facts. But even these facts could not have been found and ascertained if Galileo had not approached nature from a different angle. The form of induction introduced by Galileo presupposes a new theory of knowledge – a theory that conceives reality and scientific thought in a way that was unknown | both to Aristotle and to the medieval nominalists.9 In this theory language could no longer maintain the same place. In Galileo’s conception of scientific truth the discriminations made by language were not completely overthrown and negated. But they were declared to have only a preliminary character. Those qualities, he said, described in terms like heat or cold, dryness or humidity, may be sufficient to classify the world of our sense perceptions. But they by no means suffice to detect the fundamental order of nature. This view was expressed with admirable clarity and conciseness in a polemic against the Aristotelian and scholastic physics that is contained in a treatise of Galileo’s entitled »Il saggiatore« (The Assayer). It is here that we first meet with that fundamental distinction that later on was described as the distinction between secondary and primary qualities. Language – declared Galileo – may be a very satisfactory and very useful instrument of thought if we pursue no other aim than to survey and classify the objects of our common experience, the world of sense data. But it falls as soon as we set ourselves a different and higher task. For discovering the fundamental laws of nature, the principles of motion, we need other and more reliable modes of expression. The symbols of language have to be superseded by the symbols of mathematics. Geometry and arithmetic are the only true language of nature. Nature, says Galileo, is no secret to the human mind. It is an open book legible to everyone. But in order to read this book we first have to learn the letters in which it is written. These letters are not the ordinary sense data: the perceptions of heat or cold, of red or blue and so on. The book of nature is written in mathematical characters, in points, lines, surfaces, numbers. By this postulate Galileo removed the 9 For further details cf. my paper »Wahrheitsbegriff und Wahrheitsproblem bei Galilei«, in: Scientia 62 (1937), pp. 121–130 and 185–193 [ECW 22, S. 51–72].

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keystone of Aristotelian physics. Those distinctions which are regarded in the system of Aristotle as ontological distinctions, as fundamental qualities of things, are now declared to be nothing else than outward denominations. It is a mistake – says Galileo in the »Saggiatore« – to consider a property like cold or warmth as an objective quality inherent in the thing itself. If I wish to conceive matter I am under the necessity of conceiving it at this place or another, in that shape or another. But there is no need for me to imagine matter in this or another way, to ascribe to it a special color, to think of it as silent or sounding, as warm or cold. All this does not belong to matter; it only belongs to our own human organization; it depends on the | special conditions of our sense organs. Cold or warmth, dryness or humidity, are no elementary qualities – they are mere names – puri nomi, as Galileo says.10 We understand from these sentences that the new principles introduced by the dynamics of Galileo could not be found and could not be firmly established without a general logical and epistemological revolution. It would be tempting to follow up this line of thought in the whole development of modern philosophy. But here I am not allowed to yield to this temptation. I must content myself with a few remarks. With regard to the problem of language, modern philosophy manifests two different tendencies. Just as much as in any other field of knowledge, we meet here with the general opposition between empiricism and rationalism. English empiricism begins with a criticism of language and with a vehement attack against the power which it hitherto has exerted over both philosophical and scientific thought. This power is illegitimate; it was wrongfully usurped. Language is denounced by Bacon as one of the most dangerous sources of deception. It is described as an idolum fori – as an illusion and prejudice that arises from the intercourse of men. »[…] although we think we govern our words,« says Bacon,11 »yet certain it is that words, as a Tartar’s bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment […] it must be confessed that it is not possible to divorce ourselves from these fallacies and false appearances, because they are inseparable from our nature and condition of life; so yet nev10 Cf. Galileo Galilei, Il saggiatore (1623), in: Le opere. Edizione nazionale, sotto gli auspicii di sua maestà il re d’Italia, Vol. VI, Florence 1896, pp. 197–372: pp. 346 ff. 11 Francis Bacon, The Twoo Bookes of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Humane (Bk. 2), in: The Works, ed. by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, Vol. III, London 1859, pp. 259– 491: pp. 396 f.

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ertheless the caution of them […] doth extremely import the true conduct of human judgment.« But rationalism takes an opposite route. It does not deny the value of language and it does not intend to diminish or abolish its power. It strives on the contrary to perfect language, to bring it to its highest achievement. All the philosophical efforts of Leibniz, however manifold and divergent they may at first sight appear, are concentrated upon this problem. The foundation of a »Lingua universalis« and a »Characteristica generalis« were always one of the highest aims of Leibniz’ philosophy. This general characteristic was not liable to the same errors or open to the same objections as the common use of language. It was to be free from all the defects, ambiguities, and obscurities that are unavoidable in common speech. It was to define all its terms and express in a precise and adequate manner the relations between these terms. Language, if once brought to this state of logical perfection, could no longer be regarded as an impediment or as an enemy of thought. | It would become, on the contrary, the most powerful ally of thought. Leibniz diverged in many important points from Aristotle. But in consequence of the general character of his philosophy and of his own personal character he insisted much more on the agreement between ancient and modern thought than on their discord and opposition. He appreciated and retained the syllogistic of Aristotle; but he regarded it only as a single and small province that by no means comprehended the whole territory of thought. We must extend both the limits of language and the limits of traditional logic in order to reach a universal instrument of truth. By this conception Leibniz anticipated a great deal of those problems which later on were raised in the course of the evolution of modern mathematics and modern symbolic logic. A new decisive step in this direction was made by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry. If we look back at classical physics and at the systems of classical rationalism we find that both of them presupposed a common principle. They argued upon the presupposition that there existed one invariable and absolute truth that was expressed in the axioms of Euclidean geometry. When studying Galileo’s Dialogues on the two principal systems of the world – the Ptolemaic and the Copernican – we meet with a very interesting and impressive passage. Galileo, adapting himself to the language of his adversaries, to the terminology of the Schoolmen, makes a sharp distinction between two forms of knowledge: God’s knowledge and Man’s knowledge, the knowledge of the infinite and the finite mind. But at the same time he declares that this distinction becomes irrelevant if we approach the

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realm of mathematical thought. Mathematical knowledge means adequate knowledge – and such an adequate knowledge is not capable of any gradation. It does not admit of different degrees. Of course the divine intellect is infinitely superior with regard to the extent of its knowledge. But this quantitative difference does not mean a qualitative difference – a difference of clearness or certainty. Any mathematical proposition which we have found and demonstrated is known by us in the same indubitable and infallible way as it is known by God. It is this same concept of geometry and same ideal of geometrical truth that we find in Spinoza – and this ideal proves to be one of the most fundamental and most characteristic motives of Spinozistic thought. If Spinoza wishes to express the highest degree of philosophical certainty he always tells us that this certainty is as indubitable and unshakable as the theorem of Euclid that in a triangle the sum of the angles is equal to two right angles. In the year 1829, however, there appeared a geometrical system, | the system of Lobatschevsky, which dared to dispense with this Euclidean theorem. The first philosophers who had to face this fact found the question to be a rather inextricable paradox. And it was a very long time before this paradox could be explained in a satisfactory way. When judged according to philosophical standards the so-called »Metageometry« always seemed to be a stumbling block. In so late a period as the end of the nineteenth century as eminent a thinker as Lotze did not hesitate to make a vehement assault against non-Euclidean geometry. He spoke of it with open distrust and disdain; he suspected it to be a sort of mathematical charlatanism and, to put it mildly, a vain and infertile formalism. Philosophers would have found it much easier to understand the true meaning and the value of non-Euclidean geometry if they had approached the problem from a different angle. In spite of all the theories of the ideality of space they continued to speak and think of space as if it were a sort of physical or metaphysical thing the nature of which had to be explored and described by geometry. But geometry is not the description of a thing; it is a system of symbols, a symbolic language. By the discovery of the different systems of non-Euclidean geometry it became obvious that this language is of a much greater variety and multiplicity than it ever was supposed in classical mathematics and in the systems of classical rationalism. The geometry of Lobatschevsky, of Bolyai, of Riemann, the geometry that hitherto had spoken a unique language proved to be divided into different idioms; it became, as it were, polyglot. The rigid system of Euclid had to give way to a system of much greater richness and flex-

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ibility. This was not only an enrichment for mathematics; it was at the same time a decisive progress from the point of view of a general theory of knowledge. We find the same characteristic progression if we look at the evolution of modern physics. I do not venture here to enter into the very difficult problem which I have attempted to treat in my book »Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics«.12 In this short paper I must content myself with quoting some passages borrowed from the leading physicists in order to show that even in this field the problem of language has won a new importance and in a sense is the very focus of modern scientific thought. In modern physics this problem has developed, so to speak, from a latent state to an explicit state. In a survey of the general evolution of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr declares that the concept of complementarity introduced by him was destined to constantly remind the physicist of the fact that all the words of our language are | originally created for a single and special purpose. What we wish to express and to describe by them are the objects of the macroscopic world. But we cannot expect these descriptions and these forms to be valid nor can we employ them in the same sense when we pass the threshold of a new world – when we study the structure of the atom. In the latter case we have to alter our symbolism and this alteration demands a certain change so far as the intuitive character (Anschaulichkeit) of our words and our fundamental physical concepts are concerned.13 The same view is expressed in one of the papers of Max Born concerning the fundamental problem of quantum mechanics. Our common language, says Born, never can forget or deny its origin. For many thousands of years it was constantly conversant with the objects of our macroscopic world. Can we be surprised to find that the words and terms in which this conversation was carried on have to be changed as soon as we change the topic of conversation – as soon as we approach the microscopic world? But in spite of this general reflection it seemed at first sight not only surprising, but also contradictory that modern physics had not only to introduce a new language but that it was con12 Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik. Historische und systematische Studien zum Kausalproblem (Göteborgs Högskolas Årsskrift 42 [1936]) [ECW 19]. 13 Cf. Niels Bohr, Einleitende Übersicht, in: idem, Atomtheorie und Naturbeschreibung. Vier Aufsätze mit einer einleitenden Übersicht, Berlin 1931, pp. 1–15: p. 12; idem, Das Quantenpostulat und die neuere Entwicklung der Atomistik, ibid., pp. 34–59: p. 59; idem, Wirkungsquantum und Naturbeschreibung, ibid., pp. 60–66: p. 64.

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strained to maintain a radical dualism. The electron could not be described in a unique way. On the one hand it had to be regarded as a particle or corpuscle; on the other hand, it had to be considered as a wave. This seems to be unintelligible and even absurd as long as we maintain a mere copy-theory of knowledge. If our scientific concepts are supposed to be the portraits of things – how can we account for the fact that these portraits are not only unlike each other but incompatible with each other? Can there be any greater incongruity than to conceive one and the same thing both as a corpuscle and as a wave, as discontinuous and continuous? But this difficulty ceases to be an antinomy, a logical contradiction, if we reflect on the general task of a scientific theory. Kant has described this task by saying that the scope of a scientific theory is: »Erscheinungen zu buchstabieren, um sie als Erfahrung[en] lesen zu können« (»to spell phenomena in order to be able to read them as experiences«).14 Modern evolution of physics has shown us that science in this spelling of phenomena may follow different ways. It is not restricted to a special type of spelling and to a single alphabet; it is at liberty to choose various sets of symbols. But of course we cannot use these symbols at random. We must find certain rules that determine their mutual relation and connection. For the new language spoken by quantum mechanics we have, so | to speak, to find a general grammar and a general semantics. With this semantics we can clarify the use of our fundamental symbols. We shall find that, although there can be no similarity between the concept of a wave and the concept of a particle, there exists nevertheless – as Heisenberg says – a »symbolic correspondence« between both concepts. Owing to this correspondence, they can and they must, indeed, be used side by side. It is this view that is maintained and explained in Heisenberg’s book »Die physikalischen Prinzipien der Quantentheorie«. Heisenberg does not only admit, he even postulates two different kinds of symbols. He does not regard the dualism that we find at the bottom of modern quantum mechanics as a temporary and unsatisfactory condition which we may hope to avoid and overcome in the further development of science. His thesis is that this dualism is not an accidental but a necessary feature in the structure of the physics of the atom. We need not, however, fear this dualism; for we can understand its mean14 [Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können, in: Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, 11 Bde., Berlin 1912–1921, Bd. IV, hrsg. v. Artur Buchenau u. Ernst Cassirer, S. 1–139: S. 64 (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 312). S. auch ders., Kritik der reinen Vernunft, hrsg. v. Albert Görland (Werke, Bd. III), S. 257 (B 370 f.).]

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ing; we can lay down the general principles according to which the two sets of symbols are to be employed and to be interpreted. If we look at the historical development of scientific thought and if we try to judge and appreciate this development from a more general, a philosophical point of view, we always meet with a strange difficulty. We have to face a rather paradoxical fact. Every great progress made in scientific thought seems to give us a feeling that is of a very ambiguous nature. What we feel is a strange mixture of pride and modesty, of a nearly unlimited hope and of a certain resignation. The first and the most natural reaction is to regard the new step as a new proof of the power of human reason. We are convinced that there are no definite limits set to this power; it may extend indefinitely. But we may just as much approach the question from quite a different angle and we may interpret it not from an optimistic but from a pessimistic point of view. If the truth of yesterday proves to be an error according to the standards of our present knowledge, what guaranty do we possess that our own truth, the truth of today, will not be and must not indeed be the error of tomorrow? Must we not despair of any objective truth, if science proves to be such a changeable and fluctuating thing – if every age has its own scientific truth? When the physical theory of relativity first appeared it was very often used for the purpose of proving a general theory of epistemological relativism. But I think that all these attempts were made upon a false assumption and a false interpretation of this theory. The problem has found its satisfactory answer by the further development of modern physics. None of us, I suppose, any longer re | gards the theory of relativity as a restriction of our ideal of scientific truth. We think, on the contrary, that it has contributed to define and explain this ideal in a clearer and more definite way. We have been taught that many of these determinations which in our common experience and in the system of classical physics have been regarded as fundamental and invariable properties or relations are dependent on special conditions. We have to give them a different value as soon as we change our frame of reference. But this by no means prevents us from seeking after other properties and relations that are exempt from this condition and that, therefore, have a more general, a more objective character – that prove to be invariable whatever frame of reference we may choose. From the point of view of our present problem we may raise the same question with regard to the world of language. Every language has its individuality, its particularity, and even its idiosyncrasy. But the scope of language as a means of communication would not be reached if, in spite of all the obvious differences between the various linguistic

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types and idioms, we could not find some general structural laws of language. It is not an easy task to discover these universal features. Rationalism always was inclined to think that from the fact of a unique logic we can immediately infer that there must be a unique grammar. In modern philosophy the logicians of Port Royal, the pupils of Descartes, were the first to postulate such a universal grammar – a »Grammaire générale et raisonnée« – and they have given us a very interesting description of it. But we are always exposed to the danger of confounding some special properties of our own language with universal semantic properties when approaching the problem from a merely logical side. Our logical analysis must be completed and corrected by those observations gained by empirical methods, by a comparative study of linguistic facts. In this respect there seems to be a certain methodological analogy between modern linguistics and modern physics. In the same sense as physics is seeking after certain invariants of nature, linguistics endeavors to discover certain invariants of grammatical structure. The question wherein these invariants consist has not yet found a generally admitted solution. If we look at contemporary linguistic literature – at the works of Trubezkoy and his pupils, of Brøndal, of Sapir, of Bloomfield, and others – we may find different answers to this question. In his work on »Language«, Edward Sapir declares that every language contains some necessary and indispensable categories side by side with others that are of a more accidental character.15 If we | consult those languages with which most of us are familiar we may be inclined to think that the category of the verb is sharply distinguished from that of the adjective. The verb and the adjective seem to perform perfectly different tasks that are irreducible to each other. Nevertheless we find many languages in which this distinction becomes irrelevant. »It is [only] a matter of English,« says Sapir, »or of general Indo-European idiom that we cannot say ›it reds‹ in the [same] sense of ›it is red.‹ There are hundreds of languages […] that can express what we should call […] adjective[s] only by making a participle out of a verb. ›Red‹ in such [a] language[…] is merely a derivative ›being red,‹ as our ›sleeping‹ or ›walking‹ are derivatives [from] primary verbs.«16 It seems therefore as though we have to assume two strata of linguistic thought and linguistic expression: one of them containing the basic elements, the other the more changing and subsidiary features of human speech. Even modern linguistics does not hesitate to speak of a »Philosophy 15 Edward Sapir, Language. An Introduction to the Study of Speech, New York 1921, pp. 124 ff. 16 [A. a. O., S. 124.]

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of Grammar« although it can no longer define and employ the term in its traditional sense. The former systems of a »Grammaire générale et raisonnée« were, consciously or unconsciously, governed by the thought that the fundamental features of Latin grammar are to be considered as necessary constituents of rational thought and speech.17 The part-of-speech system that we find in Latin was regarded as a general prototype. Even eminent modern logicians could not free themselves from this supposition. They persisted in thinking that, after all, it must be possible to find a one-to-one correspondence between the distinctions of Latin grammar and the intrinsic and essential categories of thought. »[…] Grammar,« declares John Stuart Mill, for instance, »is the most elementary part of Logic. It is the beginning of the analysis of the thinking process. The principles and rules of grammar are the means by which the forms of language are made to correspond with the universal forms of thought. The distinctions between the various parts of speech, between the cases of nouns, the moods and tenses of verbs, the functions of particles, are distinctions in thought, not merely in words. … The structure of every sentence is a lesson in logic.«18 Modern linguistics and modern logics can no longer maintain this view. The enlargement of linguistic knowledge, especially the study of the so-called primitive languages, has taught us that there are many languages of a fundamentally different type from our own Indo-European languages and that it would be a hopeless attempt to stretch all of them into the procrustean bed of | our Latin grammar and our partof-speech system. Even when confining ourselves within the limits of the Indo-European languages, we find no generally valid part-ofspeech system. In modern linguistics it has often been emphasized that the endeavor to find the distinctions of Latin grammar in that of English or French has only resulted in grave errors and has proved to be a serious obstacle to the unprejudiced description of linguistic phenomena.19 Nevertheless we must not necessarily renounce the old ideal of a philosophical grammar. The distinguished Danish scholar, Otto Jes17 For further details cf. Leonard Bloomfield, Language (Chap. 1), London 1935, pp. 3 ff. 18 John Stuart Mill, Rectorial Address at St. Andrews, 1867, quoted from: Otto Jespersen, The Philosophy of Grammar, London/New York 1924, p. 47. 19 Cf. Ferdinand Brunot, La pensée et la langue. Méthode, principes et plan d’une théorie nouvelle du langage appliquée au français, Paris 1922; Archibald Henry Sayce, Art. »Grammar«, in: The Encyclopaedia Britannica. A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, New York 91880, Vol. XI, pp. 37–43; Jespersen, The Philosophy of Grammar, pp. 46 ff.

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persen, one of the veterans of modern linguistics, has written a book entitled »The Philosophy of Grammar«. In it he declares that beside, or above, or behind the syntactic categories which depend on the structure of each language as it is actually found, there are some categories which are independent of the more or less accidental facts of existing languages; they are universal in so far as they are applicable to all languages, though rarely expressed in them in a clear and unmistakable way. Jespersen proposes to call these categories »notional« categories – and he declares that it is the grammarian’s task in each case to investigate the relation between the notional and the syntactic categories. We are led to a similar point of view when approaching the problem from the psychological side. If we inquire into the psychological conditions of language it may at first sight appear very difficult, if not impossible, to find any common denominator for the innumerable acts of speech. The difference between these acts is boundless and inexhaustible. Every individual speaker has a language of his own; and even in the life of a single individual there are few things that are subject to such continuous change as his manner of speaking. Psychologically speaking all these acts are on the same level. We cannot make any discrimination between them; we cannot prescribe for them any definite rules or norms. But in spite of this multiplicity and variety of the single acts of speech, linguistic psychology has by no means renounced the hope of determining certain conditions and presuppositions that are to be considered prerequisites of language in general. If we look at the psychology of the nineteenth century, we find that in dealing with linguistic problems all its attention was focussed on a single point. The genetic view, the question of the evolution of language, was the only one that seemed to have a psychological interest. But in recent psychological literature we meet, in this respect, with a very important methodological change. It seems as if the structural view were on the point of prevailing | over the mere genetic view. This development of modern linguistic psychology can be followed up in the work of Alan Henderson Gardiner »Theory of Speech and Language« (1932) and especially in Karl Bühler’s »Sprachtheorie« (1934). Gardiner and Bühler endeavor to show us that there exists a general model of language – »ein Organonmodell«, as Bühler says – and that all the single utterances of speech, however different and divergent they may be, are moulded according to this structural pattern. In all usage of language we find that, apart from the particular conditions, there are some general conditions. We find the speaker, the hearer, and the subject matter spoken of. The manner in which these three different moments are distinguished from each other and interrelated with each other follows

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definite rules; it is a constant feature in all language whatever. Even from the psychological point of view we are therefore entitled to speak of essential and accessory linguistic facts and even here we may attempt to construct a sort of »Theory of Invariants«, to distinguish between the durable and the changeable elements of language. If we follow up the history of philosophy we find that language at all times was exposed to grave objections and fundamental sceptical doubts. These doubts did not arise from one and the same source. They originated, on the contrary, in different and even incompatible motives. On the one hand religious mysticism always upheld the doctrine that a real knowledge, a knowledge of God as the absolute Being and the absolute truth – cannot be reached, as long as man does not succeed in freeing himself from the fetters of language. We have to break the chain of language in order to see the Absolute. He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know – is one of the maxims of Lao Tse. In Indian religion, in the Upanishads and in Buddhistic thought, we find the doctrine that our empirical world is based on two fundamental principles, upon the principles of name and form. Name and form (nama-rupa) are the two main features of our empirical knowledge. But likewise they prove to be the fundamental obstacles that prevent us from reaching a true philosophical and religious insight. Name and form are the two weavers who constantly weave the veil of Maya – the veil of illusion. The Absolute has neither name nor form. If we wish to describe it by means of our own language we can only describe it in a negative, not in a positive, way. The Atman, the Self – says one of the texts of the Upanishads – is to be described by No, no. We find the same view in the so-called negative theology of the Middle Ages. And it has by no means died out in contemporary philosophy, in modern metaphysics. »La métaphysique,« says Berg | son, »est […] la science qui […] se passer de symboles.«20 Metaphysics is the science which dispenses with symbols. It is only by renouncing all symbolism whatever that we can find reality and truth, that we can intuit la durée réelle. It is from the opposite side that language and symbolism are attacked in all the empirical schools. Language is blamed not for precluding us from metaphysics but for entangling us in metaphysics. It incessantly forces on us abstract ideas and insoluble problems. But we need only go back to the ultimate elements of things, to the data of sense perception, in order to escape all difficulties. »In vain,« says Berkeley, »do we extend our view into the heavens […] in vain do we 20 [Henri Bergson, Introduction à la métaphysique, in: Revue de métaphysique et de morale 11 (1903), S. 1–36: S. 4.]

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consult the writings of learned men and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity. We need only draw the curtain of words, to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our [own] hand.«21 Both the theories of mysticism and the theories of empiricism and sensationalism are, at first sight, very tempting solutions of our problem. But I think they fail in one and the same point. They try to convince us that there is an ultimate reality that is beyond the power and the reach of all symbolic thought – a reality in itself and by itself, a »[…] substantia […] qu[ae] in se est et per se concipitur […]«22 But if we analyze this supposition we find that both the Bergsonian theory of intuition and the theories of radical positivism or sensationalism are in the same predicament. Intuition cannot be separated from expression – and expression always involves the function of language – taken in its most general sense. I think that in this respect the objections raised by Benedetto Croce against Bergson and all the other metaphysical doctrines of intuition are perfectly convincing. And we may apply the same principle to those objections and attacks that have been directed against language and its objective value from the opposite side. Intuitionism is based on the presupposition that knowledge has to penetrate its object and to melt together with its object. As long as there remains any distance between the object itself and the thought of the object we cannot speak of truth. Empiricism and sensationalism do not argue from such a theory of identification, but from a theory of imitation or reproduction. It is clear that even from such a point of view language must appear as a very poor and defective instrument. For how can we hope to reproduce by a small number of words, of general names, the totality and the inexhaustive richness of our individual perceptions? But knowledge depends neither on identification nor on reproduction. It means objectification – and in this process of objectification language is the first step. Without its help we could not come to an objective view, to a | representation of the world; we would be bound and restricted to a dull feeling, an obscure impression of reality. It is by language that we pass from the passive acceptance of single sense data to a new constructive and spontaneous view of the universe. Language proves to be indispensable not only for the con21 [George Berkeley, A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, in: The Works, hrsg. v. Alexander Campbell Fraser, Bd. I, Oxford 1901, S. 211–347: S. 255.] 22 [Baruch de Spinoza, Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (Teil 1, Def. 3), in: Opera quae supersunt omnia, hrsg. v. Karl Hermann Bruder, Bd. I, Leipzig 1843, S. 149–416: S. 187.]

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struction of our world of thought but also for the construction of our world of perception. Unfortunately I cannot prove this thesis in the limit of this short paper and I cannot show the empirical evidence upon which it is based. This evidence rests in the main on the facts of linguistic psychology and on recent investigations into the psychopathology of speech. The careful study of cases of Aphasia – made by Goldstein, by Gelb, by Henry Head, and other neurologists – have shown us the eminent role that language plays in the construction of an objective world. I cannot enter here into this side of the question – but I may be allowed to refer to an article in which I have discussed the problem at some length. It has been published in French under the title »Le langage et la construction du monde des objets« in the »Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique«.23 It is easy to point out the lacks, the defects, the ambiguities that are unavoidable and that seem to be ineradicable in every use of language. But these evils cannot be cured by mysticism, by intuitionism, or sensationalism. Language may be compared with the spear of Amfortas in the legend of the Holy Grail. The wounds that language inflicts upon human thought cannot be healed except by language itself. Language is the distinctive mark of man – and even in its development, in its growing perfection it remains human – perhaps too human. It is anthropocentric in its very essence and nature. But at the same time it possesses an inherent power by which, in its ultimate result, it seems to transcend itself. From these forms of speech that are meant as means of communication and that are necessary for every social life and intercourse it develops into new forms; it sets itself different and higher tasks. And by this it becomes able to clear itself of those fallacies and illusions to which the common usage of language is necessarily subject. Man can proceed from ordinary language to scientific language, to the language of logic, of mathematics, of physics. But he never can avoid or reject the power of symbolism and symbolic thought. In this short paper I could only indicate the problem, I could not hope to solve it. All I wished was to ask the question and to give a few suggestions as to where its solution might lie. Yale University.

23 Le langage et la construction du monde des objets, in: Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique 30 (1933), pp. 18–44 [ECW 18, S. 265–290].

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Newton and Leibniz1 (1943)

The controversy between Newton and Leibniz is one of the most important phenomena in the history of modern thought. If we follow this controversy step by step, if we study the correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke, who acted as spokesman for Newton, we are immediately aware that much more was at stake than the particular physical and metaphysical questions which are explicitly treated by the two adversaries. Newton and Leibniz disagreed not merely as to the solution of these questions. They not only had different views on the nature and properties of God, on the structure of the material universe, the concepts of space and time, and the possibility of an »actio n at a dis t an ce« . However important all these questions may be, they have here only a mediate and subordinate significance. They are overshadowed by another problem which was of vital interest for the future development of scientific and philosophic thought. Modern thought had reached a parting of the ways where it had to choose between two alternatives. In the dispute between Newton and Leibniz these alternatives were clearly indicated. The two opposing theses were represented and defended by two powerful and original thinkers who stood without a rival in contemporary science or philosophy.2 This is not, therefore, a mere scholastic disputation. For behind the catchwords of the two schools of thought we feel the clash and trial of strength of two great intellectual forces. Nor is this simply a controversy between individual thinkers; it is rather a collision between two fundamental philosophical methods. And it is this feature of the dispute which makes it important and interesting even for the presentday reader. Perusal of the various papers which passed between Leibniz and Clarke in the years 1715 and 17163 does not suffice for an understanding of the full meaning and purport of this polemic. At first such a perusal is very disappointing. Both sides repeat the | same arguments [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: The Philosophical Review 52 (1943), S. 366–391.] The full authenticity of the Clarke papers is proved by the fact that the outlines of Clarke’s replies have been found among Newton’s manuscripts. 3 In the following I refer to the English edition published after Leibniz’ death: Samuel Clarke, A Collection of Papers, which passed between the Late Learned Mr. Leibnitz, and Dr. Clarke, in the Years 1715 and 1716. Relating to the Principles of Natural Philosophy and Religion. With an Appendix, London 1717. 1 2

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over and over again until interaction between their views seems impossible. For each party obstinately holds its ground refusing to enter into his opponent’s views. Moreover, from the outset the controversy was obscured by personal invective. Each side accused the other of undermining the foundations of natural religion. The more the discussion proceeded the more this tone of arguing and reasoning tended to prevail. Yet this was natural and unavoidable. For Samuel Clarke, who pleaded for Newton, was neither a scientist nor a philosopher. He was one of the best-known theological controversialists of his time. In his book »A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God« he had undertaken to demonstrate the existence of God and all the other fundamental truths of the Christian religion by merely logical arguments and to answer all the objections of the »freethinkers«, the sceptics, the deists, and atheists.4 This book became so famous that Voltaire could not forbear paying his respects to its author. In his »Lettres sur les Anglais« Voltaire spoke of Clarke as »a veritable reasoning machine« (»une vraie machine à raisonnements«).5 And there were still other factors tending to obscure the point at issue. The old dispute between Newton and Leibniz about the priority of the invention of the infinitesimal calculus was not forgotten. Personal ambitions and jealousies, even national prejudices, began to awake again. For us this side of the question has lost its interest. After the most careful historical investigations this point seems now to be entirely cleared up.6 We know that both Leibniz and Newton, on the basis of independent considerations, had come to the same results; we know that each method, the method of fluxions and that of the differential and integral calculus, has its peculiar character and its peculiar merit. »From the point of view of the history of ideas« – it has been rightly said – »there exists no controversy in the annals of science more de | plorable and less fertile [than this discussion of the priority of the invention of the infinitesimal calculus]. It is remarkable that this famous dispute, which originated 4 The full title of the book is: A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God: More particularly in Answer to Mr. Hobbs, Spinoza, and their Followers, London 1705; 2nd ed., corr., London 1706. 5 Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais, ou lettres philosophiques (Letter 7), in: Mélanges historiques, Vol. I (Œuvres complètes, ed. by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet, and Jacques Joseph Marie Decroix, Vol. XXVI), Paris 1821, pp. 5–157: pp. 33 ff. [Zitat S. 34]. 6 For the history of this controversy I refer to Moritz Cantor, Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik, Vol. III: Von 1668–1758, Leipzig 1898, pp. 274– 316, and to David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (Chap. 15), 2 vols., Edinburgh/London 1855, Vol. II, pp. 36–83.

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under quite accidental circumstances […] did not affect or modify in any respect the ideas of the two adversaries or the philosophical tendencies of their pupils. It would be difficult to show that a single step of progress was made by this controversy over the new conceptions of the infinite and the infinitely small. As a result of this conflict the English school and the German school of thought deprived themselves for a long time of all the advantages which they might have derived from united efforts. […] The quarrel between […] Newton and Leibniz, founded upon mere personal rivalries, left the two philosophical methods stationary. The detailed study of this quarrel supplies us in the main with interesting observations concerning the psychology of Leibniz, of Newton, and of other eminent scholars of their time. But it gives us very little information about the distinctive features of the Leibnizian and Newtonian systems.«7 In order to discover these distinctive features we must, indeed, try a different approach. We must endeavor to trace back the dispute between Leibniz and Newton to its real source, and to look behind the scenes of the great intellectual spectacle presented here. In this case we shall find that the ideas propounded and defended by these two adversaries have by no means lost their value and interest. These ideas are still alive, and, to a certain extent, they are still in the focus of modern philosophical and scientific thought – even though we may, indeed we must, express them in a different manner. There was no real dissension between Leibniz and Newton about the fundamental problem: the validity and necessity of a mathematical science of nature. We may call Newton a »physicist«, and Leibniz a »metaphysician«; but Leibniz himself would never have subscribed to such a distinction between mathematical and metaphysical thought, for he admitted no chasm here. Whenever he mentioned his metaphysics he described it 7 Léon Bloch, La philosophie de Newton, Diss., Paris 1908, pp. 115 f. [»Mais au point de vue de l’histoire des idées, il n’existe pas sans doute dans les annales de la science de querelle plus déplorable et moins féconde. Il est remarquable que cette dispute célèbre, née de circonstances tout accidentelles […] n’ait modifié en rien ni les idées des deux adversaires, ni les tendances de leurs disciples. On pourrait difficilement citer un seul progrès que cette dispute ait fait faire aux notions nouvelles touchant les infiniment petits, alors qu’en armant l’une contre l’autre l’Ecole anglaise et l’Ecole allemande, elle les priva pour longtemps l’une et l’autre des avantages qu’elles eussent tirés de leur union. […] Autant la querelle […] de Newton et de Leibniz, fondée sur de simples rivalités, a laissé ces méthodes stationnaires. L’étude complète de cette querelle donne surtout des aperçus curieux sur la psychologie de Leibniz, de Newton et des principaux savants de leur temps. Mais elle fournit fort peu de renseignements sur les traits distinctifs du système de Newton et du système de Leibniz.«].

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as a »metaphysic of mathematics«. »Ma metaphysique,« he wrote in a letter, »est toute mathematique […]«8 | It would be a more correct statement of our problem to say that Leibniz defends a » ded u ct iv e« ideal of scientific thought whereas Newton speaks as the champion of an empirical, a merely » i nduc tive« method. But even this distinction would be misleading in many respects. »Induction« and »deduction« are rather vague terms. They have been used in various and widely divergent senses. If we understand the ideal of induction in the sense of Bacon’s »Novum Organum«, or of some more recent logicians, as, for instance, John Stuart Mill, then we must say that Newton never recommended or defended a strictly »inductive« method. The method introduced by Newton was of a quite different type. What in Bacon’s aphorisms had only been dreamed of seemed suddenly to have become a reality. Newton’s first pupils revered him not merely as one of the greatest scientists of all time. They saw in him the very incarnation of the philosophic spirit because he was the first to understand what a p h i l os ophy of nature really is and means. John Freind, an Oxford professor of Chemistry, who in his »Praelectiones Chymicae« was one of the first to try to apply the Newtonian principles of mechanics to chemical problems, spoke of Newton as the »prince of mathematicians and philosophers«. »By his excellent genius,« he said, »he has taught us a sure way for the improvement of physics and has fixed natural knowledge on such weighty reasons that he has done more to illustrate and to explain it than all philosophers of all nations.«9 Freind declared that Newton’s conclusions in philosophy are as demonstrative as his discoveries are surprising.10 »It has been ignorantly objected by some,« wrote another 8 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Letter to Guillaume François Antoine de l’Hospital, December 27, 1694, in: Mathematische Schriften, ed. by Carl Immanuel Gerhardt (Gesammelte Werke, from the Manuscripts of the Royal Library of Hanover ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, 3. Series: Mathematik), Vols. I and II: Berlin 1850, Vols. III–VII: Halle a. d. S. 1855–1860, Vol. II, pp. 255–262: p. 258. 9 John Freind, [Remarks upon an account of his Praelectiones Chymicae, given in the Acta Eruditorum, 1711], in: Henry Jones (ed.), The Philosophical Transactions (From the Year 1700, to the Year 1720.) Abridg’d, and dispos’d under General Heads, Vol. V, London 21731, pp. 428–435: pp. 429 ff. [Zitat S. 428: »[…] quam Mathematicorum Princeps in Philosophiam intulit Newtonus: Qui quidem Vir, admirabili quo est ingenio, ad res Physicas promovendas certam patefecit viam, naturalemque Scientiam tanto rationum pondere stabilivit, tam incredibili rerum inventione locupletavit, ut ad eam illustrandam plura praestiterit, quam omnes omnium gentium Philosophi.«] 10 See the English edition of his »Praelectiones Chymicae«. John Freind, Chymical Lectures: In which Almost All the Operations of Chymistry are reduced to

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of Newton’s disciples, »that the Newtonian philosophy, like all others before it, will grow old and out of date, and be succeeded by some new system […] But this objection is very falsly made. For never a philosopher before Newton ever took the method that he did. For whilst their systems are nothing but hypotheses, conceits, fictions, conjectures, and romances, invented at pleasure, and without any foundation in | the nature of things. He on the contrary, and by himself alone, set out upon a quite different footing. […] The foundation is now firmly laid: the Newtonian philosophy may indeed be improved, and further advanced; but it can never be overthrown […]«11 But what was the true character of this method? By which fundamental feature is it to be distinguished from that other ideal of »induction« which is represented in Bacon’s method of »positive and negative instances«? To answer this question historically we may say that Newton in his »Principia« carried on and brought to completion the work of Galileo, not the work of Bacon. There is a fundamental difference between Galileo’s and Bacon’s conception of a true inductive method.12 Even Bacon was striving for a »rational« method of science. He was an empiricist but no sensationalist. He has described his aim in a short and characteristic formula by saying that his »Novum Organum« was composed with the intention of putting an end to all those unfortunate conflicts and dissensions which hitherto had disturbed the human family; and to establish, for all time, a firm and legitimate matrimony between the empirical and the rational faculties of the human mind.13 But the Baconian ideal was an ideal of extension and amplification, whereas the ideal of Galileo and Newton is one of intension and simplification. Bacon hoped to attain his end, he hoped to promote and secure the »advancement of learning«, by steadily and incessantly increasing the bulk of our empirical evidence. If we collect and compare all the available data we shall be in a position to disclose and isolate the »pure forms« of things. Newton imposed a different task their True Principles, and the Laws of Nature. Read in the Museum at Oxford, 1704. To which is added, an Appendix, containing the Account of this Book in the Lipsick Acts, together with the Author’s Remarks thereon (Appendix), London 1712, p. 174. 11 William Emerson, The Principles of Mechanics, 3rd ed., corr., London 1773, pp. V ff. [Zitat S. VI f.]. 12 Concerning this question I refer to my remarks in a recent article on Galileo, Galileo: a New Science and a New Spirit, in: The American Scholar 12 (1942), pp. 5–19 [In diesem Band, S. 53–65]. 13 See Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, sive indicia vera de interpretatione naturae (Praefatio), in: Works, ed. by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, Vol. I, London 1858, pp. 70–365: p. 131.

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upon Science. As a physicist he was not investigating these substantial forms – the form of heat or the »essence« of gravity. He wished to reduce the phenomena of nature to general laws and to derive these laws from mathematical principles.14 For this purpose the accumulative and comparative process of the Baconian induction had to be turned into an analytical process. Without the latter all our empirical evidence would remain sterile; it could not bear its fruit. In all the different | fields of physical inquiry Newton always insisted upon this character of his »analytical induction«. »As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy,« he said in his »Opticks«, »the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. […] In the two first Books of these Opticks, I proceeded by this Analysis to discover and prove the original Differences of the Rays of Light in respect of Refrangibility, Reflexibility, and Colour […] And these Discoveries being proved, may be assumed in the Method of Composition for explaining the Phaenomena arising from them […]«15 Newton did not arrive at his principal theories by simply collecting new facts. Most of the empirical evidence he needed for constructing his optical theories or his theory of gravitation was contained in the work of former scientists or contemporaries – in the work of Galileo and Kepler, of Snellius and Fermat, of Christiaan Huyghens, and of Halley or Hooke. Newton’s real merit lay in uniting and concentrating the different and dispersed achievements of these men. The most important and the most characteristic feature of his work was not so much the discovery of new facts as the new i nte r pr e ta ti on of data already available. The general law of gravity had been discussed long before the publication of Newton’s »Principia«. All the great physicists and astronomers participated in this discussion. They saw the problem and examined the methods of its solution. Even Newton’s formula was not an entirely new discovery. Christopher Wren, Hooke, and Halley had developed their theories of attraction in which, on the basis of independent considerations, they were led to the conclusion that the centripetal force decreased in proportion to the squares of the 14 Isaac Newton, Opticks or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light. Reprinted from the Fourth Edition, London 1931 (Bk. 3, pt. 1), London 1931, pp. 317 ff.; idem, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Preface to the First Edition), in: Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the World, transl. by Andrew Motte in 1729, rev. by Florian Cajori, Berkeley, Cal./Los Angeles, Cal./London 1934, pp. XI–547: pp. XVII f. 15 Idem, Opticks (Bk. 3, pt. 1), pp. 404 ff. [Zitat S. 404 f.].

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distances reciprocally. Newton did not deny or underrate the merits of his predecessors. When he published his »Principia« he added a special scholium in which these merits are frankly acknowledged; he declared that Wren, Hooke, and Halley, had independently deduced the law of gravity from the second law of Kepler.16 Since the time of Kepler the hypothesis of general attraction between all the celestial bodies had, indeed, been under considera | tion by all the physicists and astronomers. Kepler had asserted that not only does the earth attract the stone, but the stone also attracts the earth. And this conception plays an important part in his reform of the Aristotelian cosmology. Twelve years before the appearance of Newton’s »Principia« Hooke had submitted a paper to the Royal Society in which he investigated the nature and magnitude of this attractive force. He declares that the action of the attractive forces of the celestial bodies increases in proportion to the proximity to their centers of the body on which these forces act. »Now, what these several degrees are,« continued Hooke, »I have not yet experimentally verified, but it is a notion which, if fully prosecuted, as it ought to be, will mightily assist the astronomers to reduce all the celestial motions to a certain rule, which I doubt will never be done without it. He that understands the nature of the circular pendulum, and of circular motion, will easily understand the whole of this principle, and will know where to find directions in nature for the true stating thereof. This I only hint at present to such as have ability and opportunity of prosecuting this inquiry, and are not wanting of industry for observing and calculating, wishing heartily such may be found, having myself many other things in hand which I would first complete, and therefore cannot so well attend it. But this I durst promise the undertaker, that he will find all the great motions of the world to be influenced by this principle, and that the true understanding thereof will be the true perfection of astronomy.«17 We may infer from these words that Newton’s discovery could not come as a surprise to the astronomers and physicists of his own time. This event was carefully prepared for, both in its experimental and in its theoretical aspect. But the really novel, and subsequently decisive, element consisted in Newton’s systematic proof of his theory. In this 16 See idem, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (Liber I, Propositio IV, Corollarium 6, Scholium), Vol. I, Geneva 1739, pp. 46 f. 17 Robert Hooke, An Attempt to prove the Motion of the Earth, in: Philosophical Transactions, No. 101, p. 12. – See Brewster, Memoirs, Vol. I, pp. 286 f. [Danach zitiert].

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regard he was entirely original. We have indeed very interesting biographical proof that Newton saw his problem in this light. While preparing the first edition of his »Principia« in 1686 he had a letter from Halley in which he was told that Hooke had some pretensions with regard to the first discovery of the law of gravity. Newton, when he heard of Hooke’s | claims, became so frightened at the prospect of becoming involved in a public controversy on a question of priority that he wished to suppress his third book rather than undergo such an ordeal. »Philosophy,« he wrote to Halley, »is such an impertinently litigious Lady, that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits, as have to do with her. I found it so formerly, and now I am no sooner come near her again, but she gives me warning.«18 The fact that there ever was a moment in Newton’s life in which he seriously resolved to suppress one of the most important parts of his classical work, is one of the greatest paradoxes in Newton’s biography and in the whole history of science. Many modern writers have been at a complete loss to understand this fact which seemed to be a blot on his personal and scientific character. »[…] one can not excuse [Newton],« says one of his most recent biographers, »for his decision – to suppress the third book […] What manner of a man was Newton, who could thus contemptuously cast off his own intellectual child; there is certainly no parallel to the incident in all history. Did any other man ever show a deeper jealousy and vanity than Newton, who could let the personal criticism of another, and a slight reflection on his own character, outweigh the work of his life and the fruit of his genius?«19 I think, however, that we can exculpate Newton from this charge. It is true that during his whole life he feared nothing more than involvement in public disputes about his work. But to ascribe this fact to a sort of moral weakness, let alone to mere vanity or jealousy, seems to me a very poor psychological explanation. Vanity and jealousy would have had the opposite effect; they would rather have incited him to such disputation than deterred him from it. There was more than the mere personal factor in Newton’s desire for peace. This desire originated in his respect for his work and for the greatness of his scientific 18 Isaac Newton, Letter to Edmond Halley, June 20, 1686, in: Brewster, Memoirs, Vol. I, pp. 439–445: p. 441. – The correspondence between Newton and Halley was first published in the Appendix to Stephen Peter Rigaud, Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Issac Newton’s Principia, Oxford 1838, pp. 25–49. It has since been reprinted in Brewster, Memoirs, Vol. I (Appendix No. 8), pp. 437–456. 19 Louis Trenchard More, Isaac Newton. A Biography, New York/London 1934, p. 311.

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task. If Newton was ever able to bring himself to suppress the third book of the »Principia«, he must have been convinced that this omission could | not affect the fundamental value of his work. He thought that the first two books had an independent meaning and merit. And on this point, I suppose, he was quite right. The traditional view is to connect Newton’s name with Newton’s law. We usually do not differentiate between the two: we see in the law of gravity his principal merit and his real claim for immortality. From the viewpoint of the general history of ideas, however, we ought to revise this judgment. Paradoxical as it may sound, it must be conceded that even without the law of gravity the »Principia« would still stand as one of the greatest achievements of modern science. For in this work Newton bequeathed to posterity not merely a universal law of nature, but also a universal inst r u m en t of scientific thought and of scientific research. No one before him had the same clear conception of what a »theoretical physics« is and means. Newton’s empirical discoveries were the ripe fruits of this original conception. In his ideal of a »scientific induction« the empirical and theoretical elements are welded into an indissoluble unity. Leib n iz’s natural philosophy exhibits throughout a different orientation. Whereas Newton started out with the study of certain natural p h en o mena – with an investigation of optical phenomena and with a theory of the motion of the moon, Leibniz, on the other hand, began with a lo gical an aly s is o f t r u t h . »As a man who wishes to construct a building upon sandy ground,« he writes in a fragment, »must continue to dig with his spade until he comes to a solid and stony basis, as a man who wishes to untie an intricate knot must find some starting point, and as Archimedes required an immovable point in order to be able to lift the universe – so we are in need of a fixed point as a foundation upon which we may establish the elements of human knowledge. And this starting point is the analysis of the different kinds of truth.«20 Leibniz fully acknowledges the value of empirical truth. But to his mind empirical truth is only a small part, a fragment, a single sector, of the universe of truth. Behind individual 20 See Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, De la nature des vérités necessaires et contingentes, in: Opuscules et fragments inédits, ed. by Louis Couturat, Paris 1903, pp. 401–403: p. 401 [»Quemadmodum in loco sabuloso aedificium molienti continuanda fossio est, donec solidam rupem firmave fundamenta offendat; et filum implicatum evoluturo quaerendum est initium; et pro maximis ponderibus movendis stabilem tantummodo locum postulabat Archimedes; ita ad humanae scientiae Elementa constituenda desideratur punctum aliquod fixum, cui tuto inniti atque unde secure progredi possimus.«].

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statements of empirical fact, it is the task of the philosopher to discover the necessary forms of thought. In physics we find factual truth; in logic, arithmetic, geometry, we have necessary or eternal truth. But the | factual truth of physics does not form an independent realm which, in its fundamental character, is opposed to the truth of logic and mathematics. Both realms have, so to speak, their own rational, constitutional laws. »The great Foundation of Mathematicks,« says Leibniz in the second paper addressed to Clarke, »is the principle of Contradiction, or Identity, that is, that a Proposition cannot be true and false at the same time; and that therefore [it is what it is] and cannot be [what it is not] This [one] Principle is sufficient to demonstrate every part of Arithmetick and Geometry, that is, all Mathematical Principles. But in order to proceed from Mathematicks to Natural Philosophy, another Principle is requisite […] the Principle of a sufficient Reason, vi z . , that nothing happens without a Reason why it should be so , rather than other wis e. And therefore Archimedes [when] proceed[ing] from Mathematicks to Natural Philosophy, in his Book De Æquilibrio, was obliged to [employ] a particular Case of the great Principle of a sufficient Reason.«21 It is this principle that makes physics possible, because it allows us to make the great step from mathematics to nature, to throw a bridge across the gap which, at first sight, seems to separate factual truth (vérités de fait) from necessary truth (vérités éternelles). This is not, however, a solution of the problem; it is only the statement of the problem. What does Leibniz mean by his »principle of sufficient reason«? We cannot grasp his meaning so long as we take his terms and his arguments at their face value. For his own description of his principle, as contained in his replies to Clarke, is rather vague. »The Principle in Question,« he says, »is the Principle of the want of a sufficient Reason; in order to any thing’s existing, in order to any Event’s happening, in order to any truth’s taking place. Is This a Principle, that wants to be proved?«22 Such argumentation seems scarcely worthy of so great a logician as Leibniz. It was open to all the attacks which Hume later directed against the objective validity of the principle of sufficient reason. To discover the true and deeper sense of Leibniz’s principle we must consult the whole of his logical work. 21 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Second Paper. Being an Answer to Dr. Clarke’s First Reply (Sect. 1), in: Clarke, A Collection of Papers, pp. 19–35: p. 21. 22 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Fifth Paper. Being an Answer to Dr. Clarke’s Fourth Reply (Sect. 125), in: Clarke, A Collection of Papers, pp. 154–279: p. 275.

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Leibniz always insists that his principle is pregnant with the most important consequences. From it he expects a real revolution in philosophic | and scientific thinking. If understood in its fullest sense this principle will alter the whole realm of metaphysics. It will make metaphysics operative and demonstrative whereas before it generally consisted only of empty words.23 »It must be confessed,« states Leibniz, »that though this great Principle has been acknowledged, yet it has not been sufficiently made use of. Which is, in great measure, the Reason why the P rima Ph ilo s o p h ia has not been hitherto so fruitful and demonstrative, as it should have been.«24 Wherein consists the »greatness«, the novelty, the revolutionary power that Leibniz ascribes to the principle of sufficient reason? Leibniz began with a description and classification of the various types of truth. He insisted that logical and mathematical truth is »necessary«, whereas empirical truth is »contingent«. But he was not content with this discrimination. According to Leibniz this distinction between factual and necessary truth, between the »vérités de fait« and the »vérités éternelles«, has only a relative, not an absolute value. It is true that the two kinds do not belong to the same class. They cannot be reduced to a common denominator. But that does not mean that they are opposed to one another or are mutually exclusive. However different they may be, yet they are interrelated. Leibniz liked to illustrate this interrelation by a mathematical example. We may say that »factual« truth is incommensurable with logical and demonstrative truth. There appears to be no common measure. But it is precisely this concept of incommensurability which can lead us to the right solution. If in geometry we speak of incommensurable lengths we mean that these lengths cannot be expressed by our ordinary »rational« numbers. They correspond to »surd« or »irrational« numbers. But these irrational quantities are by no means in d et er mi na te quantities. If we cannot express them by an ordinary fractional number, we can find an in fin ite series of rational numbers by which this value is fully determined. The farther we proceed in this infinite series of rational numbers, the more nearly we shall approximate the »true« value of the surd quantity. It is the same with empirical and rational truth.25 Of 23 Idem, Fourth Paper. Being an Answer to Dr. Clarke’s Third Reply (Sect. 5), in: Clarke, A Collection of Papers, pp. 92–118: p. 95. 24 Idem, Fifth Paper (Sect. 21), p. 173. 25 Leibniz stresses this analogy in many passages. See especially »De libertate«, in: Nouvelles lettres et opuscules inédits de Leibniz, ed. by Louis Alexandre Foucher de | Careil, Paris 1857, pp. 178–185: p. 183; also in: Philosophische Schriften, Vol. VII, pp. 198–203: p. 200.

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course Leibniz admits | that there are wide areas of human knowledge in which we have to be content with mere factual truth. All we can do here is to collect the empirical evidence without being able to deduce the facts from higher reasons or principles. But this is only a first and preliminary step. The philosopher and the scientist will never be satisfied with this state of affairs. They will continue their analyses until they come nearer and nearer to their ultimate goal – the goal not merely of collecting, but also of understanding, the phenomena of nature. Rational or necessary truth must be conceived as the ideal, the »limit« of empirical truth. This ideal is not immediately given, but the search for it is the essential task of science and philosophy. Rational truth is the eternal theme of scientific and philosophical investigation. In this sense Leibniz often calls his principle not only the »principle of sufficient reason«, but the »principium reddendae rationis«.26 We do not know the reasons behind all things, but we must never despair of finding and proving these reasons. The progress of knowledge is unlimited; nor does knowledge admit of any fixed boundaries. The maxim »plus ultra« was a favorite of Leibniz’s.27 What the »principle of sufficient reason«, or still better, the »principium reddendae rationis«, really means and emphasizes is that in the last analysis a l l e mpi r i c a l tru th is d es cr ib ab le in t er m s of r a ti ona l tr uth a nd r e ducib le to t h e t y p e o f r at io n al t ruth. 28 Behind every scientific achievement we are sure to find a new scientific problem. But this infinity is in no sense opposed to a genuine rationality. On the contrary, it is the very expression of such a rationality. It means that the individual steps taken in the advancement of our empirical knowledge form a convergent, not a divergent, series. By virtue of this convergence, which is ascertained by the principle of sufficient reason, we can be sure that there is a constant approximation towards truth, that our empirical knowledge of particular facts will, more and more, be reduced to a knowledge of general rules and universal principles. | By way of this conception of empirical and rational truth Leibniz was led to his fundamental philosophical concept, the concept of a »Scientia generalis«. The principal aim of this »General Science« was to transform all mere fa c t u a l truth into r at ion a l truth. By a complete 26 Cf. idem, Specimen inventorum de admirandis naturae generalis arcanis, in: Philosophische Schriften, Vol. VII, pp. 309–318: p. 309. 27 Cf. idem, Guilielmi Pacidii plus ultra sive initia et specimina scientiae generalis de instauratione et augmentis scientiarium, ac de perficienda mente, rerumque inventionibus ad publicam felicitatem, ibid., pp. 49–51. 28 Cf. idem, Letter to Antoine Arnauld, July 14, 1686, in: Philosophische Schriften, Vol. II, pp. 59–63.

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analysis of all our thoughts we shall find the means to change mere »facts« into »concepts« and »theories«. Such a change is indeed a paradox; it would seem to involve a sort of logical transubstantiation. How can we ever hope to resolve the conditions of concrete, empirical thought into those of abstract, rational thought – to reduce »vérités de fait« to »vérités nécessaires«? Leibniz was convinced that he had succeeded in finding the solution of this riddle. The task will be solved by the power of sy m b o lic t h o u g h t . If we analyze all our ideas into their simple elements, if we express these elements by adequate symbols, if we study the rules of the connection of these symbols, then we shall find a clue of Ariadne which may serve us as a reliable guide in the labyrinth of human thought. Not only mathematical, but also empirical, thought is capable of such a progressive symbolization and formalization. If we understand Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason in this way, we can easily account for the role it plays in the general structure of his philosophy. Leibniz’s discovery of the infinitesimal calculus was but one step in this direction. The plan of his »Scientia generalis«, founded upon a »Characteristica generalis«, had been conceived long before. It became the great unifying force in his thought and in his scientific work. The mind of Leibniz has often been described as »encyclopedic«. But such a description is scarcely adequate. For in addition to a desire to master all sorts of knowledge, he endeavored to understand the various f o r m s of this knowledge; and to him this meant deriving and deducing the forms from universal principles. His encyclopedism was of a systematic, not an eclectic or merely cumulative, type. The hopes which Leibniz built upon this plan of a »General Science« may seem extravagant to us. His faith in his logical ideal was unshakable. He was convinced that nothing in nature or human life could ever resist the power of rational thought. He applied his method not only to mathematical or physical, but also to political, social, and religious problems. As a youth of twenty- | three in 1659, he wrote his »Specimen demonstrationum politicarum pro eligendo rege polonorum; novo scribendi genere ad claram certitudinem exactum«.29 This political pamphlet was indeed written in a new style. He tried to prove »more geometrico«, by mere »arguments in form«, that, of all the candidates competing for the Polish throne, Stanislaus Letizinsky was 29 Idem, Specimen demonstrationum politicarum pro eligendo rege polonorum; novo scribendi genere ad claram certitudinem exactum, in: Opera omnia, nunc primum collecta, in classes distributa, praefationibus et indicibus exornata, ed. by Louis Dutens, 6 vols., Geneva 1768, Vol. IV/3, pp. 522–630.

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the most entitled and the most promising. By the same method Leibniz tried to convince Louis XIV that it was much better to attack Egypt than to conquer Holland.30 Even problems of Christian dogmatics were treated in similar fashion. In 1669 Leibniz published a »Defensio trinitatis per nova reperta logica«, in which he undertook to defend the Trinitarian dogma against the objections of Wissowatius.31 In like manner he attempted to refute, by mere logical arguments, the errors of Socinus and the adherents of Socinianism.32 If we bear in mind these characteristic features of Leibniz’s and Newton’s philosophy we can easily understand their discussion of particular questions. They differed not merely in their principles, but also in philosophical temperament, in their general frame of mind. Leibniz was perhaps the most resolute champion of rationalism who ever appeared in the history of philosophy. Not even Hegel could outdo him in this respect. For Leibniz there exists no separation, no chasm, between »reason« and »reality«. There is nothing in heaven or on earth, no mystery in religion, no secret in nature, which can defy the power and efforts of reason. »[…] le reel,« he wrote in a letter, »ne laisse pas de se gouverner parfaitement par l’ideal et l’abstrait […] c’est par ce que tout se gouverne par raison, et qu’autrement il n’y auroit point de science ny regle, ce qui ne seroit [pas] conforme avec la nature du souverain principe.«33 Newton’s conception of the task of science was very different. He too felt the pride of a great scientific genius, but this pride | was combined with a great modesty. He never would have accepted the praise contained in Alexander Pope’s well known verses:

30 Idem, Specimen demonstrationis politicae. De eo quod Franciae intersit impraesentiarum seu de optimo consilio quod potentissimo regi dari potest. Concluditur expeditio in Hollandiam Orientis seu Aegyptum, in: Die Werke gemäß seinem handschriftlichen Nachlasse in der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover, ed. by Onno Klopp, 1. Series: Historisch-politische und staatswissenschaftliche Schriften, Vol. II, Hanover 1864, pp. 100–107. 31 Idem, Defensio trinitatis per nova reperta logica, contra epistolam ariani, in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 10–16. 32 Idem, Remarques de Mr. Leibniz, sur le livre d’un antitrinitaire anglois, qui contient des considérations sur plusieurs explications de la Trinité, ibid., pp. 24–27. 33 Idem, Letter to Pierre Varignon, February 2, 1702, in: Mathematische Schriften, Vol. IV, pp. 91–95: pp. 93 f.

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» Nature and nature’s law lay hid in night: God said, ›Let Newton be‹ and all was light.«34 To Newton nature was accessible to, but not penetrable by, human reason. Whenever he mentioned his own discoveries it was always in a humble way. »I do not know,« he once said, »what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.«35 Science may lead us very far, but it cannot hope to probe into the real depth of the »ocean of truth«. This depth remains immeasurable and unfathomable to human thought. We are now in a position better to understand the different role which mathematics plays in the systems of these two men. As regards the objective value of mathematics and its indispensability for natural philosophy, there is not the slightest difference between Leibniz and Newton. They both follow the maxim laid down by Galileo; they are convinced that without mathematics nature would remain a sealed book. Moreover, Newton and Leibniz made the same progress in the general development of mathematical thought. They created a new type of mathematics: the mathematics of variable quantities. It is, however, a very remarkable fact that even here Newton and Leibniz, though pursuing the same end, did not go the same way. As we have indicated, Leibniz’s infinitesimal calculus was merely a special application of his general logical method. It is the creation of a new s ymbol i s m which is the most important point in Leibniz’s theory. This symbolism, in its clarity and simplicity, proved to be superior to Newton’s method of fluxions, and, after a short struggle, its victory was decided. But it is not the technical side of the problem with which we are concerned here. What is more important is the general methodological aspect of the question. In order to express the difference between Leibniz’s differential and integral calculus and Newton’s | method of fluxions we may say that Newton, as a physicist, began with a study of f a c ts , whereas Leibniz, as a logician, began with a study of for ms . Of all the facts of nature m o t io n is the most general one. According to Newton’s mechanics there is no natural phenomenon which is not 34 [Alexander Pope, Intended for Sir Isaac Newton. In Westminster Abbey, in: Select Poetical Works, Leipzig 1848 (Collection of British Authors, Bd. 152), S. 302.] 35 See Brewster, Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 407.

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reducible to motion and its general laws. Hence follows that we shall never find a true correspondence between thought and reality, between mathematics and physics, so long as we exclude the concept of motion from the realm of pure mathematics. It was, however, precisely this exclusion which constituted one of the fundamental and most characteristic features of classical mathematics. Classical mathematics had its origin in Platonic thought. All the great Greek mathematicians, from Eudoxus and Theaetetus down to Euclid, were, directly or indirectly, pupils of Plato. But from a Platonic point of view it would have been a contradiction in terms to admit a concept like motion as a basic principle of geometry. Geometry had been defined by Plato as the realm of the !ε @ν. The knowledge at which it aims is knowledge of the eternal, and not of that which is perishing and transient.36 To introduce into pure mathematics the category of change would be to undermine its truth and certainty. But this was precisely the step taken by Newton. He was not exclusively or primarily interested in the solution of abstract mathematical problems. From the outset of his scientific work he had combined the study of algebra or geometry – the study of infinite series, of the methods of drawing tangents, of the quadrature of curved lines – with a study of natural phenomena, of optical and mechanical questions. Constantly and quite naturally he passed from one field to the other. To such a mind there could be no gap, no Platonic »severance«, between the ideal world of mathematics and the empirical world of physics. In order to find the »mathematical principles of natural philosophy« Newton had to alter the traditional conception of mathematics itself. If mathematics was to fulfill its principal task, if it was destined to give us a theory of nature, it could not overlook or minimize nature’s principal phenomenon. Motion could no longer be regarded as a mere physical fact; it became a basic concept, a category of mathematics. Such was the problem solved by Newton’s theory of | fluxions.37 A physical concept, the concept of velocity, was admitted to geometry and algebra. The increase and decrease of abstract quantities was described in terms of mechanics – as an increase or decrease in velocities. In order to determine the ratios of the increments of indeterminate quantities Newton described these increments by the term »moments«; and to the velocities with which the quantiPlato, Republic 527 A. For the history of the theory of fluxions and for all technical details I must refer the reader to the monographs on the subject. See, for instance, Ferdinand Rosenberger, Isaac Newton und seine physikalischen Principien. Ein Hauptstück aus der Entwickelungsgeschichte der modernen Physik, Leipzig 1895, and Bloch, La philosophie de Newton. 36 37

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ties increase he gave the names »motions«, »velocities of increase«, and »fluxions«. He considered quantities not as composed of indivisibles, but as generated by motion.38 »Quantitates Mathematicas,« he writes, »non ut ex partibus quam minimis constantes, sed ut motu continuo descriptas hic considero.«39 This was not in itself an entirely new conception. We find the same view of a »generation« of curved lines or solids by continuous motions in Descartes’ geometry or in Kepler’s »Stereometria doliorum«. But in these cases the term »motion« is used in a mere metaphorical sense. It had not yet been naturalized in the realm of mathematics. To legitimatize this concept of motion was one of the principal aims of Newton’s theory of fluxions. For this purpose he had to change the whole hierarchy of the sciences. In his system mechanics is no longer subordinated to geometry; it becomes the very basis of geometry. »[…] it is the glory of geometry,« says Newton in the Preface to the »Principia«, »that from […] few principles, brought from without, it is able to produce so many things. Therefore geometry is founded in mechanical practice, and is nothing but that part of universal mechanics which accurately proposes and demonstrates the art of measuring.«40 In Leibniz we find the classical hierarchic order of scientific knowledge. Geometry and arithmetic are subordinated to logic: all their truths can be derived from the mere principle of contradiction. In mechanics and physics it is necessary to introduce a new principle, | the principle of sufficient reason. But even mechanics is simply an »applied« arithmetics and geometry – a study of geometrical and arithmetical relations in concreto. By virtue of Newton’s new orientation of mathematical thought, by the introduction of the concept of velocity into »pure« mathematics, all this was completely changed. If we consider abstract quantities as generated by continuous motions, this is not a mere figure of speech. It expresses a real fact. »Hae Geneses,« declared Newton in his work on the quadrature of curved lines, »in rerum natura locum vere habent, et in Motu Corporum quotidie cernuntur.«41 In other words, such generations of quantities as are supposed in the new calculus are not figments of the human mind, nor are they mere mathematical conventions. They have a »fundamentum in re« – a support and basis in the nature of things. We do not merely conceive or imagine, we see and experience, these generations. For further details see Brewster, Memoirs, Vol. II, pp. 11 ff. Isaac Newton, Tractatus de quadratura curvarum (Introduction), in: Opuscula mathematica, philosophica et philologica, ed. by Johann Castillioneus, Vol. I, Lausanne/Geneva 1744, pp. 201–244: p. 203. 40 Newton, Mathematical Principles (Preface to the First Edition), p. XVII. 41 Idem, Tractatus de quadratura curvarum, pp. 203 f. 38 39

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Leibniz’s approach to the infinitesimal calculus was quite different. He saw the problem from the viewpoint of logic, not from that of the physicist. As a mathematician Leibniz always remained faithful to the great classical tradition. He spoke as a resolute Platonist. To him mathematics was a branch of logic. But it was logic itself which in the philosophy of Leibniz had assumed a new shape. He by no means despised the methods of traditional logic, of Aristotle and the Schoolmen. He defended their right against the attacks of the moderns. In his »Nouveaux Essais sur l’entendement humain« he praises the invention of the various forms of the syllogism as one of the most beautiful, and as one of the most important, achievements of the human mind. »It is a species of u n iv er s a l mathematics,« he asserted, »whose importance is not sufficiently known; and it may be said that an i nfa l l i bl e a r t is therein contained, provided we know and can use it, which is not always allowed.«42 The same view is given in a letter of Leibniz to Gabriel Wagner (1696), which was written for the express purpose of defending the Aristotelian logic against its modern critics and detractors.43 On the other hand the syllogistic science | of Aristotle did not represent for Leibniz the whole extent of logic, but only a small portion. In his »Characteristica generalis« he had found and studied types of arguing and reasoning entirely different from those contained in the classical logic. »You appear to apologize for common logic,« replies Philalethes in the »Nouveaux Essais«, »but I see clearly that what you bring forward belongs to a more sublime logic, to which the common is only what the alphabet is to scholarship […]«44 Leibniz had in view not the destruction, but the perfection, of classical logic. He wished to analyze all the possible types of deductive reasoning and give them adequate symbolic expression.45 The new calculus was but a single chapter in this larger work. It was not based on the observation of natural phenomena; it was derived from a mathematical concept which first became explicit in the thought of Leibniz – i n the g e ne r a l c oncep t o f f u n ct io n . Leibniz’s analysis brought this concept into focus so that it became one of the most powerful instruments of modern mathematics. In this regard we cannot look upon Leibniz and Newton 42 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, New Essays concerning Human Understanding (Bk. 4, chap. 17, sect. 4), transl. by Alfred Gideon Langley, Chicago/London 21916, p. 559. 43 Idem, Letter to Gabriel Wagner (1696), in: Philosophische Schriften, Vol. VII, pp. 512–527: pp. 514 ff. 44 Idem, New Essays (Bk. 4, chap. 17, sect. 7), p. 566. 45 For all details I refer to the excellent account in Louis Couturat, La logique de Leibniz d’après des documents inédits, Paris 1901.

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as rivals or adversaries. They set themselves different tasks, and they performed these tasks by different means. Newton attained his end by a new orientation of physical thought; Leibniz attained his by a new orientation of logical thought. Looking at the conflict in this light we can give both men their due. We can free their controversy from all those accidental and merely personal circumstances which have obscured it from the start. Even one of the most intricate problems appears now in a new perspective. For a modern reader there is perhaps no more interesting problem in this controversy than that of s p ace an d ti me . On this issue the crisis of seventeenth-century philosophic and scientific thought suddenly developed. For Newton space and time were not only real things, but the very framework of reality. They belong not merely to the material world; they are absolute attributes of God. All this is asserted by Leibniz to be radically wrong. Time and space are not separate existences; they possess no substantial reality of their own. They are »forms« or »orders«, not things; they are not absolute, but merely relative. Here Leibniz | envisaged a problem which only in recent times has received clear and explicit statement. For him space and time have no independent physical or metaphysical existence. Space is the order which renders bodies capable of being situated, and by which they have a situation among themselves, when they exist together; time is that order with respect to their successive positions.46 »[…] in order to have an Idea of Place, and consequently of Space, it is sufficient to consider […] Relations, and the Rules of their Changes, without needing to fancy any absolute Reality o u t o f the Things whose Situation we consider.«47 I cannot enter into a systematic discussion of the problem itself. I wish only to elucidate the historical side of the question. In Leibniz’s and Newton’s theories of space and time we find the same fundamental opposition which we were able to observe in all other fields. This opposition does not originate in a mere dispute between individual thinkers or in a conflict between philosophical schools. Newton and Leibniz apply different s t an d ar d s of truth and they employ different frames of reference. Newton argues upon a principle that at first sight seems to admit of no doubt. If there is any truth, it must be found »in rerum natura«. All truth must be based on facts. Even mathemat46 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Third Paper. Being an Answer to Dr. Clarke’s Second Reply (Sect. 4), in: Clarke, A Collection of Papers, pp. 54–71: p. 57; idem, Fourth Paper (Sect. 41), p. 113. 47 Idem, Fifth Paper (Sect. 47), p. 199.

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ical truth – the so-called »ideal truth« – forms no exception to this general rule. Newton had found a new type of mathematics – the mathematics of variable quantities. He was convinced that this form of mathematics, the doctrine of »fluxions«, would not be possible without a substantial foundation, a substratum in reality. We cannot study the relations between variable quantities without presupposing that uniform and continuous motion which we call »duration« or »flux of time«. If we take away this substratum all physical things and all mathematical truth lose their foundation. Absolute, true, and mathematical time is no mere concept; it is a fundamental reality which of itself and from its own nature flows equably without relation to anything external.48 Leibniz too is convinced that there must be conformity, if not identity, between »truth« and »reality«. There is no chasm between the »ideal« and the »real« | world; they are united by a »preestablished harmony«. But Leibniz stresses the opposite pole. The nature of things and the nature of mind agree. Yet very often – Leibniz objects in criticizing Locke – »[…] the consideration of the nature of things is nothing else than the knowledge of the nature of our mind, and of those innate ideas which we have no need to seek outside.«49 To Newton’s realistic theory of space and time Leibniz opposes his own idealistic theory. But the t er m »idealism« is not sufficient to give us a clear characterization of the difference. As a result of the wide variety of senses in which this term has been used in the history of idealism, it has become vague and misleading. There are almost as many forms of »idealism« as there are philosophical schools or systems. Leibniz’s idealism is an »objective«, not a »subjective« idealism; a mathematical, not a psychological idealism; a Platonic, not a Berkeleyan idealism. Thus when Leibniz asserted the »ideality« of space and time he never meant to cast any doubt upon the objective t ruth of these concepts. He always compares this ideality with the ideality of numbers. Number being the very foundation of mathematics, it is logically immune to attack. But Leibniz objects to the i nte r pr e ta tio n of the objective truth of space and time contained in Newton’s system. For Leibniz space and time are r e l a ti ons or or de r s , not ab so lu te existences or entities. Space is the »order of coexistences«; time the »order of successions«. »[…] those things consist only in the Truth of R ela t io n s , and not at all in any absolute Reality.«50 This truth of relations is dealt with in Leibniz’s logic. For him the theory 48 49 50

See Newton, Mathematical Principles (Bk. 1, def. 8, Scholium), pp. 6 ff. Leibniz, New Essays (Bk. 1, chap. 1, sect. 21), p. 74. Idem, Fifth Paper (Sect. 47), p. 205.

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of space and time belongs to logic, not to physics. These concepts are parts of a greater universe, of the universe of logical forms or, as Leibniz calls it, of the »intellectus ipse«. We may conclude, then, that the theories of space and time of Newton and Leibniz, while diametrically opposed ontol og i c a l l y, have, nevertheless, a point of contact. This becomes clear when we approach the problem from the ep is t em o log i c a l angle. Epistemologically the two theories have a common feature because they have a common adversary. They both resist the thesis upheld by all the schools of English empiricism and sensationalism. Space | and time cannot be described and defined in terms of mere sense perception. With this negative statement Newton and Leibniz are in complete agreement. But even here their judgments are based upon different reasons. For Newton it is clear that space and time, as absolute entities, are beyond the reach of immediate sense experience. For Leibniz, on the other hand, they are pure intellectual forms which involve a constructive power of the human mind. The equal and uniform flux of time signified for Newton an ultimate substantial r e a l i ty; for Leibniz, however, it amounted to a necessary assumption, a fundamental hyp o th esis. If, with our conventional historical classifications in mind, we study the famous scholium of Newton’s »Principia«, in which he insists on the distinction between absolute and relative motion; we are at first confronted with a curious paradox. Newton begins by sharply distinguishing between the concepts of »the vulgar« and the true scientific concepts. Common people conceive space, time, and motion, according to no other notions than the relations these concepts bear to sensible objects. But from such a habit of thinking certain errors and prejudices arise which have to be eradicated by philosophic thought. Because the parts of absolute space cannot be seen or distinguished from one another by our senses, we tend to substitute sense measures for absolute measures. This is without inconvenience for the purposes of everyday life, but it will not do for philo so p h y. Here we wish to know the true nature of things, and to this end we must abstract from our senses and consider the things themselves as distinguished from our measures of things according to the standards of the senses alone: »in philosophicis […] abstrahendum est a sensibus.«51 Who is speaking here, we are tempted to ask. Is it Newton, the great empiricist, or his adversary, the »intellectualist« and 51 See Isaac Newton, Philosophia naturalis principia mathematica (Bk. 1, def. 8, Scholium) (Opera quae exstant omnia, ed. by Samuel Horsley, Vol. II), London 1779, p. 8. – English translation: Mathematical Principles, pp. 8 ff.

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rationalist Leibniz? As a matter of fact both Newton and Leibniz reject the standards of sensationalism. The senses, taken in themselves, cannot yield us the truth. But here again the two thinkers pursue this principle in a twofold direction. Newton is intent upon determining the substantial reality of space and time as two infinite, homogeneous things, independent of any sensible object. Leibniz no longer | admits such a reality. According to him, if we wish to find the ultimate source of our ideas of »pure space« and »pure time«, we shall have to inquire into the nature of our in t ellect rather than into the nature of thi ng s . This difference is very clearly expressed in a passage of the »Nouveaux Essais sur l’entendement humain«. »A succession of perceptions awakes in us the idea of duration, but it does not make it. Our perceptions never have a succession sufficiently constant and regular to correspond to that of time, which is a continuum uniform and simple, like a straight line. Changing perceptions furnish us the occasion for thinking of time, and we measure it by uniform changes. […] So that knowing the rules of different motions, we can always refer them to the uniform intelligible motions […] in this sense time is the measure of motion, i.e. uniform motion is the measure of non-uniform motion.«52 We have here the key to Leibniz’s opposition to all sensationalist theories as well as to his opposition to Newton’s realistic theory. It is usual, and it appears to be natural, to look upon the controversy between Newton and Leibniz as a collision between scientific and metaphysical thought. But if we accept this interpretation we are faced with a grave difficulty. How can we account for the fact that our modern theories of space and time have adopted the »relativistic« theory of Leibniz, whereas they have very severely criticized the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time? Shall we say that since the time of Newton science has developed from an empirical state to a more »metaphysical« state? This would of course be a very strange and dubious way of stating the problem. To regard Newton as a mere »empiricist« would be just as wrong as to regard Leibniz as a mere »metaphysician«. In the seventeenth century we cannot draw such a line of demarcation between metaphysical and mathematical, between theological and physical thinking.53 What both Newton and Leibniz call »natural philosophy« is still embedded in the greater whole of Leibniz, New Essays (Bk. 2, chap. 14, sect. 16), p. 156. In the case of Malebranche this has been shown in a very interesting and suggestive article by Paul Schrecker, Le parallélisme théologico-mathématique chez Malebranche, in: Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 63 (1938), pp. 215–252. 52 53

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metaphysics. Leibniz could not develop | his theory of space and time without constantly referring to his fundamental metaphysical conceptions, to his monadology, his principle of the »identity of indiscernibles«, and his system of »preestablished harmony«. Newton, on the other hand, however reserved in his judgment about the »ultimate causes« of natural phenomena, never could avoid metaphysical problems. He had very definite conceptions of the nature of the deity, and of the general structure of the spiritual world and its connection with the material universe.54 In the »queries« added to his »Opticks« Newton treated all these questions explicitly. To speak of Newton as if he were a precursor of Comte and his positivistic philosophy is, indeed, impossible. The whole intellectual atmosphere of Newton’s thought and scientific work is in flagrant contradiction to the spirit of positivism.55 When Newton’s »Principia« first appeared it was hailed not only as the work of a great scientist, but also as the work of a great theologian and of a great religious thinker. The most influential theological schools in England were unanimous in this judgment. In Newton’s book they saw the firmest stronghold against those systems of natural philosophy which threatened to subvert the foundations of natural religion and the Christian faith.56 The modern reader’s interest in all this is little more than historical. What he seeks and finds in the documents of the dispute between Leibniz and Newton is something quite different. It is a logical and epistemological, not a metaphysical, problem. As has been shown, it is the lo g ica l structure of space and time which was seen in a new light in the philosophy of Leibniz. Instead of propounding a theory of the absolute » e s s e nc e « of space and time, Leibniz began with a critical study of the » me a ni ng « of these terms. It was this critical tendency of thought which proved to be pregnant with far-reaching consequences for both science and phi54 For fuller documentation I refer to the detailed account of the metaphysical background of Newton’s theory of space and time in my book »Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit«, Vol. II, Berlin 31922, pp. 442–472 [ECW 3, S. 372–397]. 55 The best and most convincing refutation of a »positivistic« interpretation of Newton’s work has been given by Prof. Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. A Historical and Critical Essay, Diss., London/New York 1925 (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy, and Scientific Method), 2nd ed., rev., London 1932. See especially pp. 223 ff. 56 For this problem I refer to the very interesting material contained in the book of Hélène Metzger, Attraction universelle et religion naturelle chez quelques commentateurs anglais de Newton, 3 vols., Paris 1938 (Actualités scientifiques et industrielles, Vols. 621–623/Philosophie et histoire de la pensée scientifique, Vols. 4–6).

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losophy. When Einstein, two centuries later, | developed his special theory of relativity he found it necessary, first and foremost, to analyze the »meaning« of time. This seems to me to be the real point of contact between the views of Leibniz and those of modern science. In the eighteenth century the great scientists still had implicit faith in Newton’s authority. In 1748 Euler wrote his »Réflexions sur l’espace et le tems«,57 in which he tried to prove that without the Newtonian concepts of an absolute space the law of inertia and, accordingly, the whole system of mechanics would become meaningless. The r e s ul ts of Newton’s physics were so closely interwoven with his fundamental co n cep t s that it seemed impossible to give up or change the latter without endangering the former. Any such attempt – it was felt – was bound to end in complete scepticism and anarchy: To many great physicists Leibniz’s theories concerning the relativity of space and time appeared to be subversive thoughts. An entirely new and fresh intellectual impulse was required to perceive that these subversive thoughts could be turned into co n s tr uc ti v e thoughts, that a new system of physics could be built upon the ruins of the Newtonian concepts of space and time. »Several men had written systems of philosophy before Sir Isaac,« declared William Emerson in his commentary on Newton’s »Principia« (1770), »but, for their ignorance of nature, none of them could stand the test. But his principles being built upon the unerring foundation of observations and experiments, must necessarily stand good till the dissolution of nature itself.«58 Even as late as the mid-nineteenth century commentators and biographers of Newton were still talking in a similar vein. »To have been the chosen sage summoned to the study of that earth, these systems, and that universe, – the favoured lawgiver to worlds unnumbered, the high-priest in the temple of boundless space,« exclaimed David Brewster in his »Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton«, »was a privilege that could be granted but to one member of the human family; – and to have executed the task was an | achievement which in its magnitude can be measured only by the infinite in space, and in the duration of its triumphs by the infinite in time. That Sage – that Lawgiver – that High-priest was Newton.«59 No modern scientist would 57 Leonhard Euler, Réflexions sur l’espace et le tems, in: Histoire de l’academie royale des sciences et belles lettres, Annual Vol. 1748, Berlin 1750, pp. 324–333. 58 William Emerson, A Short Comment on Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia. Containing Explanations of some Difficult Places in that Excellent Work, in: Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, new ed., Vol. III, London 1803, p. 83–87: p. 86. 59 Brewster, Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 319.

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subscribe to this judgment without critical reservations. Yet this apparent detraction takes nothing away from the fundamental merits of Newton. For it is not the method of Newton but the dogmatic faith in his results, and the uncritical use made of his principles, which had to be overcome by the further development of scientific thought. As Einstein said in an article published at the second centenary of Newton’s death,60 theoretical physics outgrew Newton’s framework, which for nearly two centuries had provided fixity and intellectual guidance for science. From the dispute between Leibniz and Newton and its prolongation through the two following centuries we may draw a general conclusion. Conflicts within the realm of scientific and philosophic thought appear to be unavoidable. But amid these incessant combats it is comforting to see that the opposing powers, instead of being mutually destructive, are of mutual assistance to, and steadily cooperate with, one another. If, as in the case of Newton and Leibniz, the battle is fought between two thinkers of equal intellectual stature, then the struggle does not end in the defeat or victory of one party; it leads rather to a new synthesis of scientific and philosophic thought. Yale University

60 Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton. His Mechanics. Influence on Growth of Theoretical Physics, in: The Manchester Guardian, March 19, 1927, pp. 11 f.

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Hermann Cohen, 1842–19181 (1943)

On June 4th of last year one hundred years had elapsed since the birth of Hermann Cohen. No German philosophical review and no contemporary German philosopher noted the date. In Germany the greatest efforts have been made to forget the name of Hermann Cohen, and to efface or suppress his philosophical work. But all these efforts will prove useless. Future historians of German philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century will regard Cohen as one of the greatest representatives of that period. It was Cohen who inaugurated that great intellectual movement that is commonly described under the name of Neo-Kantianism, and who led it to its real aim and its culmination. He spent more than thirty years on his description and interpretation of the Kantian doctrine, and not until he had performed this task did he begin to publish his own systematic works: his »Logik der reinen Erkenntnis«, his »Ethik des reinen Willens«, his »Aesthetik des reinen Gefühls«. When these works first appeared they were a great surprise to the philosophical world in Germany. Cohen had won a great reputation in the field of Kantian studies, being regarded as one of the subtlest and most profound commentators of Kant. But at the same time he was charged with a sort of Kantian orthodoxy that was attacked from many sides. In his great systematic works Cohen entirely refuted this view. Here he stands before us not as a commentator or as an historian of philosophy but as a very independent and original thinker. Even in his books on Kant Cohen never swore by the master’s words, but sought to pave his own way. In his last works, however, in the works of his old age, he went much further in this respect. He never lost sight of the first principles that had been firmly established by Kant, the principles of true critical philosophy, but he strove to enlarge those principles and to apply them to new | problems. For this purpose he had to analyze once more, and sometimes to criticize very severely, some of the fundamental concepts of Kant’s theory of knowledge. Cohen felt himself to be only a single link in a great intellectual process, in that »golden chain« of idealistic thought that begins with Plato and, by way of Descartes and Leibniz, leads to Kant. On the other 1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Social Research. An International Quarterly of Political and Social Science 10 (1943), S. 219–232.]

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hand he was convinced that, according to the statement of Kant himself, we cannot speak of a »classical author«2 in the field of philosophy. What distinguishes critical thought from dogmatic thought is, according to Cohen, the fact that the former never expresses itself in a merely static way. It is a living and dynamic effort that must always be prepared for a new start: not gegeben but aufgegeben; not an immovable center of our intellectual universe but continual process and endeavor. It is not easy to delineate within the limits of a short discussion the whole range of problems with which the philosophy of Cohen is concerned. I must content myself with giving a general survey of the principal questions. I With regard to Cohen’s interpretation of the Kantian system I may perhaps be allowed to begin with a personal experience. I was led to my first acquaintance with the works of Cohen in a rather unusual way. It was about fifty years ago that I first became interested in the study of Kantian philosophy. At that time I was a young student not of philosophy but of German language and German literature at the University of Berlin. I was deeply impressed by the »Critique of Pure Reason«, and after each new reading I felt myself more under the spell of that book. But at the same time I had the greatest difficulty in understanding the thought of Kant. I met with various interpretations that were not only widely divergent but directly opposed to one another. It was then a generally admitted opinion that no one could enter the field of philosophy without a careful and thorough study of the work of Kant. The »back to Kant« idea – first promulgated by thinkers like Helmholtz, Eduard Zeller, Friedrich Albert Lange – | was deeply inculcated in all philosophical minds. But this general agreement was only an apparent one. It contained the germs of a radical dissension. Nearly all the philosophical schools referred to Kant and appealed to his authority, but there was never a clear and unambiguous way of interpreting his fundamental doctrines. There was an empiristic view 2 [Immanuel Kant, Über eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll, in: Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, 11 Bde., Berlin 1912–1921, Bd. VI, hrsg. v. Artur Buchenau, Ernst Cassirer u. Benzion Kellermann, S. 1–71: S. 36 Anm. (Akad.-Ausg. VIII, 219): »klassischen Autor«.]

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of the Kantian system side by side with a rationalistic view; there was a metaphysical conception side by side with a strict phenomenalism, nay a strict skepticism; there was a »realistic« explanation in contradistinction to another that seemed to lead to mere »subjective idealism«. It was extremely difficult to find one’s bearings in this mass of opposite interpretations. I remember very well the day on which I left the lectures on Kant given by Friedrich Paulsen with the definite impression that what Paulsen had taught here was not a true description but a polemical caricature, a travesty of the thought of Kant. As a young student, however, I felt entirely unable to prove my point and to contradict the famous professor, who at that time was one of the best known and most influential teachers of philosophy at the University of Berlin. Paulsen’s own philosophy was a strange eclecticism that strove to combine various and even incompatible elements of thought. In his ontology he maintained a universal idealism that came very near to being a system of panpsychism in the sense of Gustav Theodor Fechner. But this metaphysical attitude did not prevent him from upholding a strictly empiristic, even skeptical view in his theory of knowledge. In this field he was from first to last an admirer and disciple of Hume. He was convinced that Kant had failed in his principal task, that he had never succeeded in solving the Humian problem. A few months ago I found by chance a striking example of this attitude in a preface written by Wickham Steed.3 Professor Steed went to Berlin as a student of philosophy in the autumn of 1892 – at the same time that I was attending the lectures of Paulsen. But Paulsen could scarcely understand his interest in German philosophy. »I can’t imagine,« he told him, »why you English people come here to study German philoso | phy. You have got it all at home, and much more clearly, in David Hume.«4 A man who thought in that way could be a very good academic teacher, but could scarcely introduce a student to Kant. I made a second attempt to find a clue in the labyrinth of the »Critique of Pure Reason« by attending the lectures of Georg Simmel. And here I was lucky from the beginning. Simmel was a very original and penetrating thinker. He worked in nearly all the fields of modern philosophy, and later he became one of the first founders of philosophical sociology. At that time, however, he was still a young privatdocent who delivered his lectures before a small but very interested and attentive audience. In one of the first hours he gave a short bibliography of 3 4

To the book of Aurel Kolnai, The War Against the West, New York 1938. [Wickham Steed, Preface, a. a. O., S. 5–11: S. 6.]

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the literature on Kant. And it was on that occasion that I first heard the name of Hermann Cohen. Simmel emphasized how much he himself owed to the study of Cohen’s books, but he immediately added that those books, in spite of their real sagacity and profundity, suffered from a very grave defect. They were written, he said, in such an obscure style that as yet there was probably no one who had succeeded in deciphering them. That was, of course, a great paradox that could not fail to make an impression on the mind of a young man. What a surprise to hear that, after all, there was a work on Kant which the best judges considered to be a true and thorough explanation of his fundamental thoughts but which at the same time was declared to be nearly inaccessible to the common reader! Prompt in acting, as suits a boy of nineteen, I resolved to try the adventure myself. I bought Cohen’s book, »Kants Theorie der Erfahrung«,5 and began to study it. And here I felt, from the first pages, that I was on firm and secure ground. I could by no means overcome all the difficulties at once – the less so as I was still imperfectly acquainted with the technical language of philosophy. But I pursued the reading of Cohen’s work, for I was convinced that here at last I had found the guide that I had so badly missed and so eagerly desired in my study of Kant’s philosophy. After a short time I had gone through all the principal works of Cohen, and it | was only when I had come to this point that I felt prepared to make his personal acquaintance. I went to Marburg, where he held the chair of philosophy, and soon became a pupil of Cohen’s and ultimately one of his most devoted and intimate friends. A full account of what seem to me the most important features in Cohen’s interpretation of the Kantian system would necessitate a highly technical analysis. For those readers who are interested I may refer to an article in which I have explicitly treated these problems.6 Here it will be enough to offer a few suggestions. In the first half of the nineteenth century all German philosophers were following the path that had been hewed by Kant and were attempting to complete his work. But in this task they were divided into two different camps. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel offered a metaphysical interpretation of the thought of Kant; Fries and his pupils, and to 5 Hermann Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Berlin 1871; 2nd ed., rev. and enl., Berlin 1885. 6 Hermann Cohen und die Erneuerung der Kantischen Philosophie, in: KantStudien 17 (1912), pp. 252–273 [ECW 9, S. 119–138], on the occasion of Cohen’s seventieth birthday.

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a certain extent Herbart, were convinced that the true access to Kant could be found only by a new method of psychological analysis. It is at this point that Cohen’s work began. According to him the first step is to recognize that neither a metaphysical nor a psychological method is adequate. Both of them miss the point. Kant introduced neither a new metaphysics nor a new psychology; what he offered was something quite different – a new theory of experience. Such a theory cannot and need not go beyond the limits of possible experience. It cannot answer any ontological questions about the existence or the qualities of the »thing in itself«. But neither is it limited to a genetic view, to the problems of the origin of our concepts and ideas. A theory of experience is what in modern terminology we may call a general »axiomatic« of experience. Such a doctrine must be built up on independent logical principles. To discover and to establish these principles, first and foremost the principles of mathematics and mathematical physics, was the real aim of Kant. In pursuing it he had to introduce what he described as the »transcendental« method, which, though based on experi | ence, depends not on mere empirical facts but on the general »conditions«, on the »form« of experience. This fundamental form cannot be ascertained by mere psychological induction. Induction can never lead us to the certainty and the universal validity that are required for a true theory of experience. Cohen pointed out that all the modern attempts to revive the Kantian system failed in this very point. They were made by great physicists, like Helmholtz, or by philosophers like Friedrich Albert Lange, author of the »Geschichte des Materialismus«. Helmholtz approached the problem from a physiologist’s point of view. He thought that he had found a new and convincing proof of Kant’s transcendental theory in his doctrine of the specific energy of the senses: just as our eye can perceive nothing but light and color, our intellect can grasp nothing but what is contained in its fundamental concepts and categories. And the same conception is to be found in Lange’s description of the Kantian theory: the whole of our experience is based on our specific psychophysical organization; we cannot go beyond this circle; the limits of our sense experience are at the same time the limits of our human world. But it was Kant himself who warned against such an interpretation of his fundamental theory. In a very characteristic passage of the »Critique of Pure Reason« he gave a strict refutation of the theory that was later attributed to him. If this theory were true, he declared, all our judgments would, a priori, lose their ground. Our psychophysical organization is an empirical and therefore a contingent fact; and how

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can we hope to found upon such a contingent fact the universality and necessity that we claim for an a priori principle? »There are only two ways,« says Kant, »in which we can account for a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects: either experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make experience possible. […] A middle course may be proposed between the two above mentioned, namely, that the categories are neither selfthought first principles a priori of our knowledge nor derived from experience, but subjective dispositions of | thought, implanted in us from the first moment of our existence, and so ordered by our Creator that their employment is in complete harmony with the laws of nature in accordance with which experience proceeds – a kind of preformation-system of pure reason. Apart, however, from the objection that on such an hypothesis we can set no limit to the assumption of predetermined dispositions to future judgments, there is this decisive objection against the suggested middle course, that the necessity of the categories, which belongs to their very conception, would then have to be sacrificed. The concept of cause, for instance, which expresses the necessity of an event under a presupposed condition, would be false if it rested only on an arbitrary subjective necessity, implanted in us, of connecting certain empirical representations according to the rule of causal relation. I would not then be able to say that the effect is connected with the cause in the object, that is to say, necessarily, but only that I am so constituted that I cannot think this representation otherwise than as thus connected. This is exactly what the sceptic most desires. For if this be the situation, all our insight, resting on the supposed objective validity of our judgments, is nothing but sheer illusion; nor would there be wanting people who would refuse to admit this subjective necessity, which can only be felt. Certainly a man cannot dispute with anyone regarding that which depends merely on the mode in which he is himself organised.«7

II If from the early books of Cohen we now proceed to the works of his old age, in which he presents a full and systematic description of his philosophical thought, we are confronted with a serious difficulty, for what we find here is not only a new direction of thought but also a 7 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (B 166–168), transl. by Norman Kemp Smith, London 1929, pp. 174 f.

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new language. Cohen made use of a philosophical terminology which in many respects deviated both from the general tradition and from the Kantian terms. He spoke a strictly technical | language that cannot be reproduced here. For present purposes it must be enough to give a brief account of the general tendency that governs and pervades his whole philosophical work. In a certain sense it is easy enough to describe this tendency. What Cohen wished to present was a coherent system of philosophical idealism. And he understood this term in its original and classical sense, in the sense in which it was understood by Plato or Parmenides. The latter’s dictum that »thinking and being are one thing«8 is the essential theme of Cohen’s »Logik der reinen Erkenntnis«, a theme that is repeated and varied in his »Ethik des reinen Willens« and his »Aesthetik des reinen Gefühls«. There is no gulf, no difference, between reality and thought. Thought does not reproduce an outward reality; it is the foundation and the very core of reality. Cohen’s »Logik« is based on what he called »das Prinzip des Ursprungs«9 (»the principle of origin«). By this principle he wished to express the fact that there is no being, no objectivity, no »nature of things« that does not originate in thought. A reality outside the sphere of thought and exempt from its principles and conditions is a meaningless concept. Thus Cohen rejected a fundamental step in Kant’s theory of knowledge, for he did not admit that distinction between »sensibility« and »understanding« (Sinnlichkeit and Verstand) which is a cardinal point in Kant’s »Critique of Pure Reason«. Sensibility is described by Kant as the »receptivity« of the human mind, whereas understanding is defined as a form of spontaneity. But according to Cohen we have to efface the term »receptivity« from our theory of knowledge. Neither in its sensuous experience nor in its rational activity is the human mind a tabula rasa, an empty tablet upon which outward things may make their impressions. It is active in all its functions, in perception as well as in conception, in feeling as well as in volition. There is no room left for a mere »receptivity« in addition to and outside the spontaneity of the human mind. The concept of a passive substratum – a mere material that is »given« from without, on which the human mind has to impress its own form, is to be abandoned in a true and coherent 8 [Parmenides, Fragm. 5, zit. nach: Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Griechisch und deutsch, Bd. I, Berlin 21906, S. 117: »… t g:ρ atí mne1m %qtm te kaë e6mai.«] 9 [Hermann Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (System der Philosophie, Teil 1), 2., verb. Aufl., Berlin 1914, S. 35.]

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system of philo|sophical idealism. »Dem Denken darf nichts als gegeben gelten.«10 This general thesis wins new significance if we pass from the field of theoretical philosophy to the field of practical philosophy. What is called »spontaneity« in the domain of logic appears in the domain of ethics under a new name. But this change of name is not a change of principle. The fundamental law of truth (das Grundgesetz der Wahrheit) is the same for logic and for morality. The latter is the theory of »pure will«, in the same sense in which logic is the theory of »pure knowledge«. All moral truth is based on the principle of autonomy. As soon as we leave or restrict the autonomy of the human will we lose our ethical ground. Thus rationality, according to Cohen, is the outstanding feature and the characteristic mark of every true system of morality. »Without knowledge,« he says, »there is no idea of man and no idea of morality. Inspiration, imagination, mere reception or learning from other sources or spirits, are not possible foundations of knowledge; and just as little can they be regarded as true foundations of morality or of our idea of man. Knowledge is knowledge out of presuppositions and principles which the knowing one himself must account for, in each single step.«11 For the moral law, therefore, there is no other »lawgiver« than the human mind itself. There is no other authority to which we can appeal, no authority of a superhuman power or a holy scripture. »Only by our own action can morality become a true reality. For this action God means nothing else than, so to speak, the possibility of an ideal pattern and scheme.«12 But when he had arrived at this point of his intellectual evolution Cohen had to face a very grave problem. He was animated by a deep religious faith. From his early childhood he had learned to read the 10 [Vgl. a. a. O., S. 36: »Denken ist Denken des Ursprungs. Dem Ursprung darf nichts gegeben sein.«] 11 Idem, Religion und Sittlichkeit, in: Jüdische Schriften, ed. by Bruno Strauß, 3 vols., Berlin 1924 (Veröffentlichungen der Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums), Vol. III, pp. 98–168: p. 111 [»Ohne Erkenntnis kein Begriff des Menschen und kein Begriff der Sittlichkeit. Nicht Erleuchtung, nicht Phantasie, nicht Aufnahme und bloßes Lernen von anderen Quellen oder Geistern ist für die Erkenntnis möglich, und also auch nicht für die Sittlichkeit, und also auch nicht für den Begriff des Menschen. Erkenntnis ist Erkenntnis aus Voraussetzungen und Grundlagen, von denen und an denen der Erkennende selbst Rechenschaft abzulegen hat für jeden Schritt seiner Erkenntnis.«]. 12 Ibid., p. 138 [»Die Sittlichkeit kann nur und ausschließlich durch unsere eigene Handlung unsere Wirklichkeit werden. Gott bedeutet hierfür nur gleichsam die Möglichkeit des Musters und Schemas.«].

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Bible and the other sources of Judaism; his father, a Jewish teacher, was his first instructor in Hebrew and in the Jewish religion. Later on he was a student of Jewish theology at the semi | nar in Breslau. Had he to give up and to forget all this when he became a philosopher? Or could he reserve a place for the fundamental problems of religion in his philosophical system? The answer to this question was not easy; and in studying the books of Cohen we perceive a certain tension, a sort of inward struggle, with regard to this problem. As a philosopher Cohen was not inclined toward any compromise. He did not hesitate to draw the most radical consequences from his premises. And according to these premises he could not admit a separate source of religious truth, a special revelation. There was no room for a religious truth apart from an intellectual or moral truth. In consequence of this, Cohen’s system of philosophy does not contain a philosophy of religion as a separate and independent part. We find in this system a philosophy of knowledge, a moral philosophy, a philosophy of art, but no philosophy of religion. In his »Ethik des reinen Willens« Cohen expressly declared that religion is to be resolved into morality. He admitted that the idea of God is an integral part of philosophical ethics, but denied that this idea introduces a new and independent principle. In a thorough philosophical analysis the idea of God, when understood in its true sense and when purified of all anthropomorphic elements, coincides with the idea of the Good. In a later treatise, »Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie«, Cohen somewhat modified this view. Here he seems to allow to religion a greater independence, and to reserve for it a special category, that of individuality. But even in this modification he made a characteristic restriction. Schleiermacher, in his »Reden über die Religion«, tried to derive religion from a special feeling that he called »das Gefühl der schlechthinnigen Abhängigkeit,«13 the feeling of absolute dependence. If this were true, Cohen objected, there could be no philosophical approach to religion and no possible reconciliation between religion and philosophy. According to the fundamental definition given by Cohen, philosophy is based on spontaneity, not on receptivity. It means freedom and autonomy instead of absolute | dependence. If we cannot build up a religion of freedom we have to renounce every hope of 13 [Vgl. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt, Bd. I, Berlin 1821, S. 33: »Das gemeinsame aller frommen Erregungen, also das Wesen der Frömmigkeit ist dieses, daß wir uns unsrer selbst als schlechthin abhängig bewußt sind, das heißt, daß wir uns abhängig fühlen von Gott.«]

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finding philosophical religion. But Cohen did not admit that in order to establish the truth of religion we have to deny or restrict the power of theoretical thought. Religion in its true and genuine sense is to be proved by the strength of man, not by his weakness or infirmity. And the true strength of man rests on the power of his intellect and his moral consciousness. Religion cannot intend to mutilate these powers. Its real aim is to complete them, to bring them to their highest perfection and to direct them to one and the same end. This is the philosophical concept and the philosophical ideal of religion that are maintained and defended in all the works of Cohen. But he was perfectly aware, of course, that religion in its concrete, actual, historical existence does not coincide with this conception. Religion always contains an element that is unaccountable from the point of view of speculative thought. Its origin is mythical, not intellectual or ethical. Even in its highest stage religion can never deny or forget this mythical background. Myth is not merely an accidental feature that accompanies the life and the development of religion: it pervades its whole essence. If we cut off the mythical roots of religion it becomes lifeless and ineffective. Therefore it would be hopeless to attempt to describe religion wholly in terms of a philosophical system or an ethical ideal. Religion is not a system of thought, nor is it a code of moral demands. The roots of its historical existence and of its real meaning are to be sought in our emotional and imaginative life. Cohen did not contest or minimize this intimate and indispensable connection between myth and religion, but he saw in it only a first and preliminary step: he described the evolution of religion as an evolution from mythical thought and feeling to prophetic thought and feeling. In the books of the prophets, in Isaiah and Jeremiah, he found the consummation, the culminating point of religion. Even here the mythical elements are by no means eradicated, but they are overshadowed by a new ideal. »All civilization,« declared Cohen, »has grown out of mythical thought – knowledge | as well as morality, poetry and all the other arts. Civilization in all its different fundamental directions has unfolded from mythical elements.«14 But man, in the course of his intellectual, moral, and religious history, has gradually won a new perspective. Instead of interpreting his life from the point of view of the mythical past he has begun to understand it from the point of view 14 [Cohen, Religion und Sittlichkeit, S. 119: »Aus dem Mythos ist alle Kultur herausgewachsen; die Wissenschaft, die Sittlichkeit, die Poesie und alle Kunst. Die Kultur hat sich in allen ihren Urrichtungen aus dem Mythos heraus entwickelt […]«.]

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of its ultimate end: the idea and the ideal of the future have overcome the belief in the mythical past. »Myth,« said Cohen, »goes back to the first beginnings, to the primeval age. It is here that man finds the roots of the holy and the religious. The holy has the worth and the dignity of an immemorial past. From this mythical time we come to a cosmic time. The divine is not only to be regarded as the beginning of time, as the origin in which religious thought and religious feeling are absorbed. It stands before us as the present and eternal order of nature, as a cosmic order. Even Plato speaks of the stars as ›visible gods‹. In the unchangeable course, the periodical movement of the heavenly bodies, we contemplate an unalterable divine order always identical with itself. The prophets, however, speak neither of the mythical primordial time nor of the cosmic time. They are inspired by the vision of the future time. The future, not the past or the present, becomes the true revelation of God. And this new religious point of view means also a new orientation of human life and a new ideal of humanity.« The very essence of monotheism is now to be understood in a new and more profound sense. Myth has nothing in common with this ideal of monotheism. Myth is interested in clan, in tribe, in nation; no heathen myth ever directed its view upon humanity. »The idea of humanity,« said Cohen, »is the fruit and issue of the unity of God. The prophets, by defying the mythical relation between God and man, could implant the correlation between man and man into the original soil of prophetic religion. It was only by the idea of the unity of God […] that they were able to discover the unity of mankind – that highest thought of morality.«15 Cohen emphatically denied the view that the God revealed and | proclaimed by the prophets was nothing more than a national God. The Messiah predicted by the prophets is to be understood not as a national but as a universal redeemer. »Providence is divine if it does not take into account a special individual in particular, nor a special nation, but if it regards the whole of mankind […]«16 This culminat15 [A. a. O., S. 139 f.: »Die Idee der Menschheit ist die Frucht der Einheit Gottes. Und nur weil die Propheten vermocht haben, der mythischen Korrelation zwischen Mensch und Gott zu trotzen, und dagegen die Korrelation zwischen Mensch und Mensch einwurzelten in den Mutterboden der prophetischen Religion, nur durch die Einheit Gottes […] vermochten sie die Einheit des Menschengeschlechts, den höchsten, den letzten Gedanken der Sittlichkeit, zu entdecken.«] 16 [Ders., Die Messiasidee, in: Jüdische Schriften, Bd. I, S. 105–124: S. 106: »Göttlich aber ist die Vorsehung, wenn sie nicht zunächst und nicht zumeist auf

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ing point of Jewish prophecy, this belief in the future of mankind, is the content of the idea of a Messiah. »Man is not at liberty to seek his supreme salvation simply in his nationality, much less, as nowadays they venture to say, in his pretended race. He must open his heart to more universal historical motives […]«17 It may be objected, and it has often been objected, that this interpretation of the fundamental ideas of Judaism and of religion in general is not an historical description but an idealization of the religious facts. Cohen did not fear this objection. As a matter of fact, it was quite unintelligible from his point of view, for he was one of the most resolute Platonists that has ever appeared in the history of philosophy. As a Platonist he could not think of the »idea« as a lower or derivative reality that is to be subordinated to the phenomena, to the empirical facts. The idea was to him the Urbild, not the Abbild; the archetype, not the mere copy of things. Without such an ideal archetype we could never understand the true life, the deepest tendency of religion. Therefore idealization is by no means a mutilation or falsification of the historical facts. It is purification – and it is only in this continual process of purification that the true sense of religious facts can be discovered. »Without sympathy,« wrote Cohen, »without the presupposition that in all mature religions true humanity or, what means the same, true divinity is striving for its development, we cannot understand and we cannot judge any positive religion. Idealization is the first condition – for everyone who confesses a religion and just as much and no less for everyone who wishes to judge its value.«18 | A survey of Cohen’s fundamental theoretical views would remain inadequate if it made no mention of his social and political views. Cohen was no politician in the proper sense of the term. He did not intend to play a political role, and he did not subscribe to the program das Individuum sich bezieht, und ebenso auch nicht allein auf das eigne Volk, sondern auf die ganze Menschheit […]«.] 17 Idem, Religion und Sittlichkeit, p. 165 [»Der Mensch darf nicht sein höchstes Heil schlechthin in seiner Nationalität, geschweige, wie man heute zu sagen sich erdreistet, in seiner angeblichen Rasse erkennen, sondern er muß allgemeineren geschichtlichen Motiven sein Herz öffnen […]«]. 18 Idem, Die Bedeutung des Judentums für den religiösen Fortschritt der Menschheit (address, delivered at the Fifth World Congress for Free Christianity and Religious Progress [1910]), in: Jüdische Schriften, Vol. I, pp. 18–35: p. 18 [»Ohne Sympathie, ohne die Voraussetzung, daß wahrhafte Menschlichkeit, was dasselbe ist mit wahrhafter Göttlichkeit, in allen reifen Religionen zur Entwicklung ringt, läßt sich keine positive Religion verstehen und beurteilen. Idealisierung ist auch für das Kunstwerk der Religion die Grundbedingung für jeden ihrer Bekenner, nicht minder aber auch für den fremden Beurteiler.«].

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of any political party. But he was deeply interested in all the political and social problems of his time, and on many occasions he expressed in clear and energetic words his fundamental convictions. He had the deepest sympathy for the working class; he was aware of its needs and he defended its claims. In this respect he was always a »socialist« – even at a time in which a profession of socialism was very dangerous for a professor at a German university. But he could never adopt an »orthodox« socialism. His whole philosophy was in strongest opposition to the fundamental views of Marxism, to »economic materialism«. »Who could ever have thought,« he remarked in one of his papers, »that the great political party, which fights out the social problem in all its consequences, should regard materialism as its true basis and its principal dogma? This program and this party grew from the soil of idealism […] Historical materialism is the strongest contradiction to that ethical idealism in which socialism has both its theoretical and its historical roots.«19 Even in this respect the philosophy of Cohen was thoroughly consistent; from the beginning to the end it was made from the same mold. I should like to conclude this short survey of Cohen’s doctrine with words that he himself spoke, thirty years ago, when addressing the World Congress for Free Christianity and Religious Progress. They express in a very clear and striking way the spirit that pervaded all his works and gave to his various efforts an intellectual unity and a personal harmony. »We have to regain the belief in moral regeneration, in the moral future of mankind. We have to regain this belief in the face of and in spite of the egoism of nations and the materialism of classes. The true living God cannot breathe except in social morality and cosmopolitan humanity […]«20 (Yale University)

19 [Ders., Religion und Sittlichkeit, S. 109: »Wer hätte denken können, daß die große politische Partei, welche das soziale Problem in seiner Konsequenz innerhalb der jetzigen Weltlage durchkämpft, auf denselben Materialismus verfallen könnte? Aus dem Idealismus der deutschen Philosophie war dieses Programm und diese Partei entsprossen […] Der Materialismus der Geschichtsansicht ist der schroffste Widerspruch zu dem ethischen Idealismus, in welchem der Sozialismus ebenso begrifflich, wie historisch, seine Wurzel hat.«] 20 [Ders., Die Bedeutung des Judentums, S. 35: »Es gilt den Glauben wiederzugewinnen an die sittliche Wiedergeburt, an die sittliche Zukunft der Menschheit. Es gilt diesen Glauben wiederzugewinnen gegenüber der Selbstsucht der Völker und dem Materialismus der Stände. Nur in sozialer Sittlichkeit und nur in weltbürgerlicher Humanität atmet der echte lebendige Gott […]«.]

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Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance1 (1943)

I am very glad to accept the kind invitation of the editors of the »Journal of the History of Ideas« to take part in the discussion of »the originality of the Renaissance«. But I should prefer not to limit myself to repeating here my own views on this theme, which I have treated in several works, and to justifying them with new arguments. If the question seems to have been so little clarified as yet, and if we are still receiving diametrically opposed answers to it, the responsibility lies, in my judgment, less with any difference of opinion concerning the historical materials themselves than with a lack of clarity as to the pro b lem and the m et h o d o f in v es t ig ati on in the his | tory of ideas. This point is very clearly brought out in the present papers of Durand and Baron. The following remarks are merely intended to amplify the expositions of both writers in this one particular. Every philologist is acquainted with the phenomenon we call »semantic change«. For linguistics the phenomena of phonetic change, analogic change, and semantic change constitute the only possibility of explaining the facts of language.2 In semantic change the old forms of speech may indeed be long preserved, but their meaning shifts, and is at times even transformed into its very opposite. This holds also of »semantic change« in history. But the historical »meaning« of a given »idea« is not so easy to ascertain as the linguistic meaning of a word. It always requires a difficult and painstaking analysis. I must refuse to go into this important question here in detail; but I should like to attempt to illustrate it in a few cases which have been much discussed in the recent literature dealing with the Renaissance, and which it seems are at present in the focus of attention. I. The antecedents of Galileo’s science are now much more precisely known than they were a few decades back. When I began my studies in Galileo forty years ago, this field was largely a terra incognita. A turning point here came with the investigations of Duhem.3 It became clear [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943), S. 49–56.] Cf. Leonard Bloomfield, Language (Chap. 20–24), 2nd ed., rev., London 1935, pp. 346–443. 3 Cf. Dana Bennett Durand, Tradition and Innovation in Fifteenth Century Italy. »Il primato dell’ Italia« in the Field of Science, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943), pp. 1–20: p. 6. 1 2

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that by the sixteenth century Aristotle’s theory of motion no longer enjoyed the undisputed authority which had often been ascribed to it. We now know that long before Galileo there was a new theory of »impetus« which in many ways prepared the ground for Galileo’s dynamics. The antecedents of Galileo’s theory of method have also been thoroughly and intensively examined.4 I clearly remember how surprised I was when in studying Zabarella’s works I came upon an explicit statement of the difference between the »compositive« and the »resolutive method« which seemed to show a very marked analogy to Galileo’s conception. In my examination of the problem of knowledge I laid great emphasis on this circumstance, which seemed to me very significant historically.5 That Zabarella was here only one link in a great chain, that he was following a century-old tradition that extends through the whole history of the School of Padua, I have recently learned from Professor Randall’s study. But can all this historical evidence seriously shake our conviction of the incomparable scientific originality of Galileo? I believe that it can only serve to strengthen this conviction and to support it with new arguments. Galileo was completely right when in his »Discorsi e Demonstrazioni« he explained that he was presenting »a very new science about a very old sub | ject.«6 A work like the »Dynamics« of Galileo could not come to birth all at once, like Athene from the head of Zeus. It needed a slow preparation, empirically as well as logically and methodologically. But to all these given elements Galileo added something completely new. No one before him had been able to make the kind of u s e of the »resolutive and compositive method« that Galileo made in his demonstration of the laws of falling bodies or in his discovery of the parabolic form of the trajectory. All this is wholly new and unique – and unique not only as a particular discovery, but as the expression of a scientific attitude and temper. For it is the significance

4 John Herman Randall, Jr., The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940), pp. 177–206; Philip Paul Wiener, The Tradition behind Galileo’s Methodology, in: Osiris 1 (1936), pp. 733–746. 5 Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, Vol. I, 2nd ed., rev., Berlin 1911, pp. 136 f. [ECW 2, S. 113 f.]. 6 [Galileo Galilei, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze attenenti alla meccanica ed ai movimenti locali. Altrimenti dialoghi delle nuove scienze (Le opere. Prima edizione completa condotta sugli autentici manoscritti Palatini, 15 Bde., hrsg. v. der Società editrice Fiorentina, Florenz 1842 ff., Bd. XIII), S. 148: »De subjecto vetustissimo novissimam promovemus scientiam.«]

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and value attached to the mathematical method, not its mere content, that introduce a clear change over the fifteenth century. That mathematics, to use Kant’s expression, is the »pride of human reason«7 had never been seriously disputed since Plato’s time. Augustine likewise speaks with the greatest enthusiasm of mathematics and its »eternal truths«, which open to us an immediate entrance into the intelligible world. And even the idea of a mathematical science of nature by no means first originated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The necessity of a strictly mathematical treatment of optics was recognized, for instance, by Roger Bacon: »[…] virtus efficientis et materiae sciri non potest sine magna mathematicae potestate, sicut nec ipsi effectus producti.«8 And we seem to find an anticipation of Galileo’s conception of causation when William of Ockham explains that no event can be regarded as the cause of another »nisi per experientiam possit convinci ita scilicet quod ipso posito alio destructo sequitur effectus, vel quod ipso non posito quocumque alio posito non sequitur effectus.«9 But all these analogies, to which might be added many others, prove nothing. Mathematics had been an e l em en t in culture long before the Renaissance; but in the Renaissance, with thinkers like Leonardo or Galileo, it became a new cultural f o r ce . It is the intensity with which this new force fills the whole intellectual life and transforms it from within that we should regard as what is significantly new. »He who scorns the very great certainty of mathematics,« says Leonardo, »is feeding his mind on confusion, and will never be able to silence the sophistical teachings that lead only to an eternal battle of words.«10 This is the conviction of Galileo also. For him mathematics is not one f ield of knowledge, but the only valid c r it eri on of knowledge – the norm by which all else that is called knowledge is to be measured and before which it must pass its tests. This new estimation of the value of mathematical physics rests on 7 [Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, Bd. III, hrsg. v. Albert Görland), Berlin 1913, S. 333 (B 492): »Stolz[…] der menschlichen Vernunft«.] 8 Roger Bacon, The »Opus Majus« (Pt. 4, dist. 2, chap. 1), ed. by John Henry Bridges, Vol. I, Oxford 1900, p. 110. 9 Cf. Galileo Galileo, Il saggiatore, in: Le opere, Vol. IV, pp. 145–369: p. 216: »[…] quella e non altra si debba propriamente stimar causa, la qual posta segue sempre l’effetto, e rimossa si rimuove […]«. 10 Leonardo da Vinci, Scritti letterari cavati dagli Autografi (No. 1157), ed. by Jean Paul Richter, Vol. II, London 1883, p. 289 [»Chi biasima la somna certezza della matematica, si pasce di confusione e mai porrà silentio alle contraditioni delle soffistiche scientie, colle quali s’inpara uno eterno gridore.«].

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another | underlying idea. In medieval philosophy we find a b ifur c a tio n o f k n o wled g e, which we meet first in Augustine and which then runs like a red thread through the entire history of scholasticism. It is the divorce between »scientia« and »sapientia«. »Scientia« is the knowledge of »natural« things, »sapientia« the knowledge of »supernatural« things. Scientia is concerned with the »regnum naturae«, sapientia with the »regnum gratiae«. The unquestioned preeminence, the »primacy« of sapientia over mere scientia, is established for all medieval thinkers. »Si ergo haec est sapientiae et scientiae recta distinctio,« says Augustine, »ut ad sapientiam pertineat aeternarum rerum cognitio intellectualis; ad scientiam vero, temporalium rerum cognitio rationalis: quid cui praeponendum sive postponendum sit, non est difficile judicare.«11 According to this distinction any mathematical science of nature – if there is such a science – is a science of the created world; it can hence never claim a position equal to metaphysics and theology, the sciences of the eternal. »[…] cognitio certitudinalis esse non potest, nisi sit ex parte scibilis immutabilitas, et infallibilitas ex parte scientis. Veritas autem creata non est immutabilis simpliciter, sed ex suppositione; similiter nec lux creaturae est omnino infallibilis ex propria virtute, cum utraque sit creata et prodierit de non-esse in esse.«12 All this is completely changed in Galileo. Mathematical physics is for him not merely a special branch of »science«, it has become the tool, the necessary condition and instrument for any knowledge of truth. Without it there would be no truth for men. All »supernatural« truth which contradicts the conclusions of natural science or attempts to set limits to them is mere appearance. This was the new ideal for which Galileo fought – and it was this fight that led to his condemnation. For him mathematical physics had become a necessary element in his conception of life and of the world, in his interpretation of the universe. What Galileo introduced and established is a new h er me ne uti c s . The theological hermeneutics of the Middle Ages was in possession of the truth in the Holy Scriptures and in the interpretation of the Scriptures given by the Church Fathers. The humanistic hermeneutics 11 Aurelius Augustine, De trinitate libri XV (Bk. 12, chap. 15), in: Opera omnia, post lovaniensium theologorum recensionem castigata denuo ad manuscriptos codices gallicos, vaticanos, belgicos, etc., necnon ad editiones antiquiores et castigatiores, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Vol. VIII, Paris 1886, col. 819–1098: col. 1012. 12 Bonaventura, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, in: Opera omnia, Vol. V, Florence 1891, pp. 293–316 [Zitat: ders., De scientia Christi, a. a. O., S. 3–43: S. 23.]

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knew and recognized no higher authority than that of the classical writers: the comparison of texts gave truth and »was« truth. All this Galileo dismissed with a few epigrams. »This kind of men believe,« he wrote to Kepler, »that philosophy is a book like the Aeneid or the Odyssey, and that the truth is not to be found in the universe or in nature, but (and these are their own words) in the comparison of texts.«13 | II. The like holds for Kepler’s »Astronomia nova«. It too is completely justified in its title – not only its contents but also its methodology is new. The first point is undisputed: without Kepler’s laws Newton would not have been able to construct his system of the world or to write his »Principia«. But neither can the universal philosophical significance of Kepler’s work be brought into question. In the recent literature on Kepler there seems to be a strong tendency to emphasize the »mystical« elements in his thought. That there are such elements, and that Kepler is much closer than Galileo to the Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean traditions, is unmistakable. But it is not only an exaggeration, it is absurd, when men like Dietrich Mahnke14 try to derive his entire science from these ideas. »Mystical« ideas may well have had great influence on Kepler’s personal attitude. We find clear traces of them in the »Mysterium cosmographicum« and in the »Harmonia mundi«. Even the belief in astrology Kepler seems never to have overcome fully – though he speaks with increasing detachment and often with a clear irony about his own astrological ideas. But none of this is really significant. The real emancipation is accomplished in Kepler’s wo r k . And it could be accomplished there only because Kepler stood for a new and stricter i de a l of tr uth. Kepler himself tells us that in his first studies of planetary motion he had arrived at an hypothesis which formulated all his observations with sufficient accuracy: the error amounted to only eight minutes, and in accordance with the prevailing opinion of the time could be neglected. 13 See further details in my paper »Wahrheitsbegriff und Wahrheitsproblem bei Galilei«, in: Scientia (1937), pp. 121–130 and 185–193 [ECW 22, S. 51–72; Zitat: Galileo Galilei, Brief an Johannes Kepler vom 19. August 1610, in: Johannes Kepler, Opera omnia, hrsg. v. Christian Frisch, 8 Bde., Frankfurt a. M./Erlangen 1858 ff., Bd. II, S. 457 f.: S. 457: »Putat enim hoc hominum genus, philosophiam esse librum quendam, velut Aeneida et Odyssea: vera autem non in mundo aut in natura, sed in confrontatione textuum (utor illorum verbis) esse quaerenda.«]. 14 Dietrich Mahnke, Unendliche Sphäre und Allmittelpunkt. Beiträge zur Genealogie der mathematischen Mystik, Halle on the Saale 1937 (Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, Vol. 23). For criticism of this book cf. my article »Mathematische Mystik und mathematische Naturwissenschaft«, in: Lychnos (1940), pp. 248–265 [ECW 22, S. 284–303].

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But he was not satisfied, and went further: »[…] these eight minutes,« he himself says, »became the beginning of the whole new astronomy […]«15 It was thus a new demand for »precision« which gave birth to Kepler’s laws. And so there grew up a new and stricter scientific critique of all pictorial and symbolic ideas, a clearer recognition of what symbols can and cannot do. »Ludo quippe et ego symbolis,« Kepler says in a letter, »sed ita ludo, ut me ludere non obliviscar. Nihil enim probatur symbolis, nihil abstrusi eruitur in naturali philosophia per symbolas geometricas, tantum ante nota accommodantur, nisi certis rationibus evincatur, non tantum esse symbolica, sed esse descriptos connexionis rei utriusque modos et causas […]«16 III. In conclusion, I should like to touch briefly on another problem that has for some time been at the center of the »Renaissance controversy«. Ever since Burckhardt set forth »the discovery of Nature and of Man« in | the Renaissance – ever since he explained that the Italian Renaissance was the age »in which Man became an intellectual In d ivid u al and recognized himself as such«17 – this thesis has been repeated countless times. Often the so-called »individualism« of the Renaissance has been used as a mere catchword. That this should have called forth the sharpest criticism is easy to understand. Huizinga once said that it is impossible to confine »individualism« to the Renaissance, since figures like Abailard, John of Salisbury, and Wolfram of Eschenbach remain outside its boundaries. But it is clear that Burckhardt did not intend his thesis in this sense. What he was trying to say was that in the Age of the Renaissance the relative emphasis placed on the »universal« and on the »particular« began to shift. In the scale of values the individual was now assuming another place and another station. I am content to make this clear in a single case, that of Montaigne. Montaignes »Essais« created a new »philosophy« of the individual. That the portrayal of a particular man as a particular man – with all his peculiarities, accidents, and idio15 [Johannes Kepler, Astronomia nova !itinlγητοw, seu physica coelestis tradita commentariis de motibus stellae martis, in: Opera omnia, Bd. III, S. 135– 508: S. 258: »[…] haec 8' viam praeiverunt ad totam astronomiam reformandam […]«.] 16 Idem, Letter to Joachim Tanck, May 12, 1608, in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, pp. 375–384: p. 378. 17 [Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch (Kap. 4: Die Entdeckung der Welt und des Menschen) (Gesamtausgabe, Bd. V, hrsg. v. Werner Kaegi), Berlin/Leipzig 1930, S. 202 u. 95: »Die Entdeckung der Welt und des Menschen« u. »[…] der Mensch wird geistiges Individuum und erkennt sich als solches.«]

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syncrasies – could have a theoretical interest, was recognized by no philosophy before the Renaissance. The portrayal of men gave rise rather to types or »characters« – like the »Characters« of Theophrastus. Montaigne is the first thinker who dares to break with this tradition and who completes the break with full awareness of what he is doing. Augustine was able to set down his private confessions – but a portrait of himself in Montaigne’s sense would have seemed to him pure blasphemy. »Les aultres forment l’homme,« says Montaigne, »je le recite; et en represente un particulier, bien mal formé […] Je ne puis asseurer mon object; il va trouble et chancelant, d’une yvresse naturelle: je le prends en ce poinct, comme il est en l’instant que je m’amuse à luy: je ne peinds pas l’estre, je peinds le passage, non un passage d’aage en aultre, ou, comme dict le peuple, de sept en sept ans, mais de jour en jour, de minute en minute […] chasque homme porte la forme entiere de l’humaine condition. Les aucteurs se communiquent au peuple par quelque marque speciale et estrangiere; moy, le premier, par mon estre universel; comme Michel de Montaigne, non comme grammairien, ou poëte, ou jurisconsulte. […] Au moins j’ay cecy selon la discipline, Que jamais homme ne traicta subject qu’il entendist, ne cogneust mieulx que je fois celuy que j’ay entreprins; et qu’en celuy là je suis le plus sçavant homme qui vive […]«18 That an author should dare to portray himself in all his peculiarities, particulars, accidents, and idiosyncrasies – and that he should nevertheless claim for this, portrait a unive r s al significance: this is indeed something new with the Renaissance. The consideration of individuality thus acquires an entirely new value. It is no accident that Montaignes »Essais« was one of Shakespeare’s favorite books. Our controversy as to the originality of the Renaissance and as to the dividing line between the »Renaissance« and the »Middle Ages« seems to me in many ways rather a »logical« dispute than one about the historical | facts. Ideas like »Gothic«, »Renaissance«, or »Baroque« are ideas of historical »style«. As to the meaning of these ideas of »style« there still prevails a great lack of clarity in many respects.19 They can be used to c har act er iz e and in t er pr e t intellectual movements, but they express no actual historical fa c ts that ever existed at 18 Michel de Montaigne, Du repentir (Bk. 3, chap. 2), in: Essais, avec les notes de tous les commentateurs, ed. by Joseph-Victor Le Clerc, Vol. II, Paris 1836, pp. 220–239: pp. 220–222. 19 I have tried to analyze and clarify this character in a book that has just appeared, Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften. Fünf Studien, Gotenburg 1942 (Göteborgs Högskolas Årsskrift, Vol. 48, 1942:1) [In diesem Band, S. 355–486]. A copy of the book is available in the Yale University Library.

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any given time. »Renaissance« and »Middle Ages« are, strictly speaking, not names for historical periods at all, but they are concepts of »ideal types«, in Max Weber’s sense. We cannot therefore use them as instruments for any strict division of periods; we cannot inquire at what temporal point the Middle Ages »stopped« or the Renaissance »began«. The actual historical facts cut across and extend over each other in the most complicated manner. Nevertheless the distinction itself has a real meaning. What we can express by it, and what alone we intend to express, is that from the beginning of the fifteenth century onward the ba l a nc e between the particular forces – society, state, religion, church, art, science – begins to shift slowly. New forces press up out of the depths and alter the previous equilibrium. And the character of every culture rests on the equilibrium between the forces that give it form. Whenever therefore we make any comparison between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it is never enough to single out particular ideas or concepts. What we want to know is not the particular idea as such, but the importance it possesses, and the strength with which it is acting in the whole structure. »Middle Ages« and »Renaissance« are two great and mighty streams of ideas. When we single out from them a particular idea, we are doing what a chemist does in analyzing the water of a stream or what a geographer does in trying to trace it to its source. No one denies that these are interesting and important questions. But they are neither the only nor the most important concern of the hi s tor i a n of i de a s . The historian of ideas knows that the water which the river carries with it changes only very slowly. The same ideas are always appearing again and again, and are maintained for centuries. The force and the tenacity of tradition can hardly be overestimated. From this point of view we must acknowledge over and over again that there is nothing new under the sun. But the historian of ideas is not asking primarily what the s u b s t an ce is of particular ideas. He is asking what their fu n ctio n is. What he is studying – or should be studying – is less the con t en t of ideas than their d y na mi c s . To continue the figure, we could say that he is not trying to analyze the drops of water in the river, but that he is seeking to measure its width and depth and to ascertain the force and velocity of the current. It is all the s e factors that are fundamentally altered in the Renaissance: the dynamics of ideas has changed. | Consider a case like that of Pico della Mirandola. In a study recently published in these pages20 I tried to show that the p robl e m of fr e e 20

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. A Study in the History of Renaissance Ideas,

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dom lies at the center of Pico’s thought. This is certainly no »new« idea. It belongs with the eternal questions of philosophy, which no philosophic thinker and no theologian can fail to reckon with. But what Pico makes out of this problem – the way in which he sets it in the focus of philosophic and religious concern and follows it as it radiates outward from this focus in every direction – all this was new and profoundly significant. Only this kind of or i g i na l i ty, it seems to me, can be claimed for the Renaissance. Its great achievements lay much less in the new co n t en t it created – although that too is infinitely rich – than in the new en er g ies it awakened and in the intensity with which these energies acted. Yale University

in: Journal of the History of Ideas 3 (1942), pp. 123–144 and 319–346 [In diesem Band, S. 67–113].

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The Place of Vesalius in the Culture of the Renaissance1 (1943)

I must begin with expressing my cordial thanks for your kind invitation. It is a great pleasure to me and I regard it as a great privilege to be asked to participate in this celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of Vesalius’ »De humani corporis fabrica«. But I have to confess that I felt serious scruples about my competence for the task you have assigned to me. Is a philosopher entitled to speak about Vesalius’ work, the work of a great physician and a great anatomist? Like Galileo, Vesalius was engaged in a continuous struggle against philosophical authorities. He denied and defied the scholastic tradition. His work seems to be entirely original. »[…] immortale opus,« said Albrecht von Haller, the great physiologist, in speaking of »De humani corporis fabrica«, »et quo priora omnia, quae ante se scripta fuissent, pene reddidit supervacua«2 – an immortal work which made superfluous almost all that had been written before. Nevertheless, there are no isolated facts and no isolated figures in the history of human thought. Even Vesalius does not stand alone. He is a typical example and a classical witness to the spirit of the Renaissance. But what does Renaissance mean? There are scholars – and scholars of high authority in their special fields – that have warned us against the use of the very term Renaissance. Many of them flatly deny that there ever was such a thing as a renaissance in European culture. »[…] what is the use of questioning the Renaissance?« wrote Lynn Thorndike in one of the last issues of the »Journal of the History of Ideas«. »No one has ever proved its existence; no one has really tried to.«3 But we must not dispute about words. Recent research – made by men like Pierre Duhem, George Sarton, Lynn Thorndike – has shown us that there are innumerable threads which connect the scientific work of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento with medieval science – with that science that was taught at the universities of the Middle Ages. But that the work of Vesalius or Galileo was an immense progress and has a | claim to a real and fundamental originality seems to me to be undeniable. 1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 16 (1943), S. 109–119.] 2 [Albrecht von Haller, Bibliotheca anatomica. Qua scripta ad anatomen et physiologiam facientia a rerum initiis recensentur, Bd. I, o. O. 1774, S. 181.] 3 [Lynn Thorndike, Renaissance or Prerenaissance?, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943), S. 65–74: S. 74.]

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Galileo was perfectly right to speak of his Dynamics as a »new science«. Galileo’s science of motion was not only new in its answers but also in its mode of questioning and investigating. By this new method of investigation that we find in Galileo’s and Vesalius’ work there were not only discovered new facts; the whole intellectual structure of science and philosophy underwent a profound change. To understand the character of this intellectual process we must begin with an analysis of medieval thought. The medieval thinkers were divided into various schools. Between these schools – between the realists and nominalists – there were interminable discussions. Nevertheless, there was a deep unity in medieval philosophy and medieval culture. There was a common center of thought that remained firm and unchangeable for many centuries. To grasp this unity of medieval thought there is perhaps no better and easier way than to study the two books Πeρë t0w nρamaw Mεραρxαw and Πeρë t0w %κκλησιαστικ0w Mεραρxαw (»On the celestial hierarchy« and »On the ecclesiastical hierarchy«). The author of these books is unknown. In the Middle Ages they were generally attributed to Dionysius Areopagita, the disciple of St. Paul, who was converted and baptized by him. But this is only a legend. The books were probably written by a neo-Platonic writer, a disciple of Proclus. They presuppose the theory of emanation that had been developed by Plotinus, the founder of the neo-Platonic school. In order to understand a thing we must – according to this theory – always go back to its first principle and we must show in what way it has evolved from this principle. The first principle, the cause and origin of all things is the One, the Absolute. This absolute One develops into the multiplicity of things. But that is not a process of evolution in our modern sense, it is rather a process of degradation. The whole world is held together by a golden chain – that aurea catena of which Homer spoke in a famous passage of his »Iliad«. All things whatsoever – spiritual and material things – the archangels, the angels, the Seraphim and Cherubim and all the other celestial legions, man, organic nature, matter – all of them are bound in this golden chain about the feet of God. There are two different hierarchies; the hierarchy of existence and that of value. But they are not opposed to each other; they correspond to each other and are in perfect harmony. The degree of value depends on the degree of being. What | is lower in the scale of existence is also lower in the ethical scale. The more a thing is remote from the first principle, from the source of all things, so much the less is its grade of perfection. The pseudo-Dionysian books about the celestial and ecclesiastic hierarchies were widely and eagerly studied throughout the Middle

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Ages. They became one of the principal sources of scholastic philosophy. The system developed in these books influenced not only the thoughts of men; it was connected with their deepest feelings and it was expressed, in different ways, in the whole ethical, religious, and social order. Also the physical, the cosmological order, was conceived according to the principles of this system. In Aristotelian cosmology God is described as the »unmoved mover« of the universe. He is the ultimate source of motion – being at rest himself. He transmits his moving force first to the things that are next to him: to the highest celestial spheres. From here this force descends, by different degrees, to our own world, to the earth, the sublunar world, the world below the moon. But here we no longer find the same perfection. The higher world, the world of the celestial bodies, is made of an imperishable and incorruptible substance – the Ether or the quinta essentia, and the movements of these bodies are eternal. In our world everything is perishable and liable to decay; and every movement comes, after a short time, to its standstill. There is a sharp discrimination between the lower and the higher worlds; they do not consist of the same substance and they do not follow the same laws of motion. The same principle holds for the structure of the political and social world. In religious life we find the ecclesiastical hierarchy that reaches from the Pope, as the summit, to the cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops down to the lower degrees of the clergy. In the state the highest power is concentrated in the Emperor, who delegates this power to his inferiors, the princes, the dukes, and all the other vassals. This feudal system is an exact image and counterpart of the general hierarchical system; it is an expression and a symbol of that universal cosmic order that has been established by God and which, therefore, is eternal and immutable. This system has prevailed throughout the Middle Ages and proved its force in all spheres of human life. But in the first centuries of the Renaissance, in the Quattrocento and Cinquecento, it changes its form. This change does not come all of a sudden. We do not find a complete breakdown, an abrogation or an open denial of | the fundamental principles of medieval thought. Nevertheless, one breach after another is made in the hierarchical system that seemed to be so firmly established and that had governed the thoughts and feelings of men for many centuries. The system is not destroyed; but it begins to fade away, it begins to lose its unquestioned authority. The Aristotelian cosmologic system is replaced by the astronomical system of Copernicus. In the latter we find no longer a distinction between the »higher« and the »lower« world. All movements whatever – the movements of the earth and those of the celestial bodies – obey the same universal

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rules. According to Giordano Bruno, who was the first thinker to give a metaphysical interpretation of the Copernican system, the world is an infinite whole, pervaded and animated by the same infinite divine spirit. There are no privileged points in the universe, no »Above« or »Below«. In the political sphere the feudal order is dissolved and begins to crumble. In Italy we find new political bodies of a quite different type. We find the Renaissance tyrannies, created by individual men, the great condottieri of the Renaissance, or by great families, the Visconti or Sforzas in Milan, the Medici in Florence, the Gonzagas in Mantua. In religious life the former ecclesiastical order is shaken to its very foundation by the work of the reformation. There is no longer any gradation in the spiritual and religious world; everyone becomes his own priest. But after this long introduction I must be quite prepared for a certain impatience on the part of my audience. All these general phenomena – you will perhaps aver – may be very interesting, but what have they to do with the present question, with the celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of »De humani corporis fabrica« by Andreas Vesalius? How can such generalities as the dissolution of the hierarchical system affect the work of an anatomist? I admit that this seems to be a very plausible argument. But on the other hand, we must not forget that in the intellectual world, in the world of scientific and philosophical ideas, all things hang together. Practically speaking we must introduce a division of labor; we must separate the various branches of knowledge and specialize in certain fields. But we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by these specializations. The globus intellectualis is a coherent whole. What happens in one sphere always affects, to a greater or less degree, all the other spheres. That holds also for the work of Vesalius. At first sight it seems to be restricted to a | special field. Vesalius never indulges in general metaphysical speculations. In his work we do not meet with abstract theories, but with observations and experiments. Nevertheless, I hope to convince you that Vesalius’ work had not only a particular but a universal merit; not only a scientific but also a philosophic interest. What was the place of science in the medieval system? Even in the organization of scientific thought we find the same fundamental principle. There is a hierarchy of knowledge in the same sense as there is an ecclesiastical or political hierarchy. The highest knowledge is that branch of knowledge that deals with the highest object. This highest object is God. The superiority of theology, its reign over all the other sciences – mathematics, physics, natural history – is, therefore, clear and incontestable. The different sciences are invested with their

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truth in the same way in which, in the feudal system, the vassals were invested with their lands by the supreme power of the Emperor. We get a clear insight into this hierarchical system of science when studying the work of a great scholastic thinker of the thirteenth century: the work of Bonaventura, »Reductio artium ad theologiam«. Bonaventura tries to assign to every branch of knowledge its special place and to confer upon it its special dignity. It is the distance from the common center – the distance from theology – that determines this dignity; that gives to every special science its rank in the general order. But if we accept this system, what becomes of the art of medicine? To be sure medicine was held in the highest esteem during the Middle Ages. It had its place in all the medieval universities. The works of Galen and of the great Arabian and Jewish physicians were studied with the greatest interest. Also in the social order the physician had a very high rank. Nevertheless, there remained a difficult question. According to the general principle of medieval thought – the principle of the correspondence of the scale of being and the scale of value – medicine must, after all, content itself with a lower rank; it cannot hope to ascend to the highest dignity. For it is a science of the body. The first Fathers of the Church had spoken of the body in a very contemptuous way; they hated and despised the body. In the later systems – especially in the system of Thomas Aquinas – we no longer find the same contempt. The natural world is no longer in strict opposition to the spiritual world, the world of Grace; it has a value of its own. »Gratia,« said Thomas Aquinas, »naturam non tollit, sed perficit«4 – Grace does not destroy nature; it perfects nature. | Nevertheless, there could be no doubt that in the general order of things spiritual things are always superior to material things. If the value of a science depends upon its subject the science of the body can never claim the same value and perfection as those sciences which deal with spiritual subjects. Even in the Renaissance this view was still generally admitted. To illustrate this by a special example I refer to the book of Coluccio Salutati, »De nobilitate legum et medicinae«. In this book Salutati, a famous Renaissance writer, asks the question whether the art of jurisprudence or the art of medicine is the higher and nobler one. According to him the answer to this question is clear. »Nos […] curamus temporalia,« says the art of medicine in Salutati’s book, »sed leges aeterna … ego de terra

4 [Thomas von Aquin: Summa theologia. Teil 1 (Quaestio 1, Art. 8) (Opera omnia, Bd. IV), Rom 1888, S. 22: »[…] gratia non tollat naturam, sed perficiat […]«.]

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creata sum, lex vero de mente divina […]«5 – medicine has to do with temporal things, jurisprudence with justice, which is an eternal thing; medicine has its root in the earth, law originates in heaven. The problem becomes even more difficult and precarious if from medicine in general we pass to anatomy. For the subject-matter of anatomy is not the living body, but the dead body. And in the hierarchy of existence the dead body is the lowest of the low. Such views were by no means rare in the age of the Renaissance. The Renaissance was the period of classical humanism; and humanistic culture was prone to disdain the study of the human body. We have a characteristic anecdote to illustrate this point. When engaged in his anatomical work Vesalius once was visited by a friend. This friend, a scholar and humanist, was shocked and scandalized. How could a man of high education and refined taste, he asked him, ever condescend to do such a dirty and hideous work as to dissect human corpses? To become the founder of scientific anatomy, Vesalius had not only to struggle with technical but also with all sorts of moral difficulties. He had to do many things that seemed to be very hazardous and objectionable. A well-known story tells us how Vesalius once got up in the night, in order to steal in the darkness the corpses of two hanged robbers from the gallows and later smuggled them stealthily into the house of a friend. Such were the conditions under which Vesalius had to live and work. All of this needed not only great intellectual, but also great moral powers; not only an ardent desire to know but also great willpower, an undaunted courage. Anatomy had a new flowering season in the period of the Renaissance. Not only the scientists or physicians of | the Renaissance but also the great artists, the painters and sculptors, had a keen interest in anatomical problems. But theoretically and philosophically anatomy had not yet found its place in the sun – in the totality of man’s intellectual culture. From the point of view of the general history of ideas it is very interesting and highly attractive to trace the slow processes of thought by which this intellectual crisis was finally overcome. The first vigorous attack was made by that powerful genius whose name we find everywhere among the pioneers of modern culture. We may study a scientific problem, a problem of statics or dynamics, or a problem of 5 [Coluccio Salutati, Tractatus insignis et elegans Colutii Pieri Salutati de nobilitate legum et medicinae, in quo terminatur illa quaestio versatilis in studiis: utrum dignior sit scientia legalis vel medicinalis (Kap. 38), Venedig 1542, zit. nach: Ernst Walser, Poggius Florentinus. Leben und Werke, Leipzig/Berlin 1914 (Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, H. 14), S. 253 Anm. 2.]

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natural history, of anatomy or physiology, we may study the history of painting, sculpture, architecture, we always meet with Leonardo da Vinci. In Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts the first step was made to destroy the traditional hierarchy of sciences. This hierarchy was based on the principle that the rank and dignity of a science depend upon its subject-matter. Leonardo da Vinci refuses to accept this principle. With what subject a science is concerned is quite irrelevant. What we look for in science is truth, and truth may be found in the lowest thing just as much as in the highest. What do we know with absolute certainty of these highest things – the archangels, the angels, the whole celestial hierarchy? What theology or metaphysics tell us about these things is very doubtful, and in many cases it is obviously wrong. We must therefore change our whole standard of value. We must seek for a firm, indubitable, and unshakable knowledge, not for a knowledge of the greatest and most sublime things. »To lie is so vile,« says Leonardo, »that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something [of] God’s grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble. […] truth is […] so excellent that, even [if] it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses […] But you who live in dreams are better pleased [with] the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than [with] those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.«6 The same thought is expressed, in the most concise and striking way, in a short epigram of Leonardo da Vinci. »[…] meglio è la piccola certezza che la gran bugia«7 – a small truth is better than a great lie. By this dictum of Leonardo’s the spell was broken. It became the magic word – the key word that unlocked the doors of understanding | to a new conception of the meaning and value of science. At first sight, the remarks of Leonardo may seem to be very simple and even obvious. But simplicity is always the distinctive mark of a true genius: simplex sigillum veri. It was, however, the tragic fate of Leonardo 6 [Leonardo da Vinci, Scritti letterari cavati dagli Autografi (Nr. 1168), hrsg. v. Jean Paul Richter, Bd. II, London 1883, S. 292 f.: »È di tanto vilipendio la bugia, che s’ella dicesse bene già cose di Dio, ella toglie gratia a sua deità, ed è di tanta eccellentia la uerità, che s’ella laudasse cose minime elle si fanno nobili […] essa verità […] di tanta eccellentia che, ancora ch’ella s’estenda sopra umili e basse materie, sanza comparatione ella eccede le incertezze e bugie estese sopra li magni e altissimi discorsi […] Ma tu che viui di sogni, ti piaciono più le ragioni soffistiche e barerie de’ pallaji nelle cose grandi e incerte, che le certe naturali e non di tanta altura.«] 7 [A. a. O. (Nr. 1184), S. 296.]

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that most of his deepest thoughts could exert no immediate influence. They were buried, for many centuries, in his manuscripts. The great scientists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had to rediscover the same principle that, a long time before, had been so clearly expressed by Leonardo. Galileo emphasizes, time and again, that it is more estimable to find out the truth, even in an insignificant detail, than to speculate extensively on the highest problems without a positive and definite result. The relation between Vesalius’ »Fabrica« and the anatomical studies of Leonardo seems still to be a controversial problem. Many scholars have gone so far as to charge Vesalius with a plagiarism of Leonardo’s manuscripts. The arguments proposed for supporting this charge were sometimes very strange. One of the strangest arguments was to say that it seems highly improbable that such a perfect work as the »Fabrica« was written by a young man of twentyeight years. But that same young man had attended plague cases and practiced surgery as a boy of fifteen years. When arguing in this way we wrong not only Vesalius but also his whole age, the age of the Renaissance. The Renaissance produced more of these miracles. The first writings and the first scientific discoveries of Galileo show us a very mature and precocious mind. Vesalius may have known, he must, indeed, have known many of Leonardo’s results. It is for the history of medicine to decide how much he owed to these results. What seems to me to be sure is that, in a methodological or philosophical sense, his work has a real claim to originality. Vesalius’ »Fabrica« became the fulfillment of what had been demanded by Leonardo. As Leonardo had pointed out, the value of a science does not depend upon its subject-matter, but upon the degree of certainty of which it is capable. By Vesalius’ work anatomy was raised to a degree of certainty that it never had before. In the Middle Ages and in the Quattrocento and Cinquecento anatomy was still closely connected with all sorts of mythical speculations. Many of the famous physicians of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were at the same time famous astrologers. In their study of the human body they started from the principle that the human body is a parvus mundus, a microcosm, and that the true nature of this microcosm | can only be recognized by comparing it to the macrocosm, the great world. By virtue of this principle the human body became an exact counterpart of the cosmic order. The heart was regarded as the sun, the other organs, the lung, the liver, were correlated with the planets. When studying the manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci we still find many striking examples of this strange astrological anatomy. All this was completely obliterated in the work of Vesalius. Anatomy was recognized in its true character; it became a

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pure empirical science second to none. By this step anatomy overcame its intellectual crisis. Its value could no longer be called in question; it had at last found its firm place in the globus intellectualis. All this had a strong influence not only upon the further development of medical thought but also upon the development of philosophical thought. Unfortunately this point has been unduly neglected by the historians of modern philosophy. The name of Vesalius does not appear in our text-books of the history of philosophy. It would, however, be a very appealing task to study the influence which Vesalius’ work exercised on the first founders of modern philosophy. Here, at the end of this address, I cannot enter into this question. Nevertheless, I cannot refrain from giving at least a few hints. Descartes was a great admirer of Vesalius. He was deeply interested in anatomical problems; and he made a regular practice of dissecting animals, the bodies of which he had himself procured from his butcher. During his sojourn in Holland Descartes once had a visit from a French gentleman who in the course of the conversation asked him which were his favorite books in the field of physics and natural history. I will show you my books, replied Descartes, if you will follow me. After this he led his guest to the courtyard and pointing to the body of a calf that he had just received from his butcher and that he intended to dissect the next morning, he said, »These are my books!« Another example may be taken from Francis Bacon. »The human intellect,« says Bacon in his »Novum Organon«, »is carried to abstracts by reason of its proper nature, and feigns that those things, which are variable, are constant. Better is to dissect Nature than to abstract her, as did the school of Democritus, which penetrated farther into Nature than the rest did. Matter might rather be considered its structure and changes of structure […] for forms are fictions of the human soul, unless it be allowable to call the laws of action forms.«8 | Vesalius was one of the great representatives of this school of Democritus which is praised by Bacon. To compare his work with that of Galileo or Descartes may at first sight appear to be arbitrary. Vesalius, Galileo, and Descartes were not concerned with the same problems. 8 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, sive indicia vera de interpretatione naturae (Bk. 1, aph. 51), in: Works, ed. by Robert Leslie Ellis, James Spedding, and Douglas Denon Heath, Vol. I, London 1857, pp. 70–365: pp. 168 f. [»Intellectus humanus fertur ad abstracta propter naturam propriam, atque ea quae fluxa sunt fingit esse constantia. Melius autem est naturam secare, quam abstrahere; id quod Democriti schola fecit, quae magis penetravit in naturam quam reliquae. Materia potius considerari debet, et ejus schematismi et meta-schematismi […] Formae enim commenta animi humani sunt, nisi libeat leges illas actus Formas appellare.«].

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Nevertheless, we find a close intellectual kinship in these three thinkers. They are three classical witnesses to that scientific spirit which began to rise in the sixteenth century and came to its climax in the great philosophers and scientists of the seventeenth century. By its adversaries, by the defenders of the philosophical ideals of the Middle Ages, this new spirit was always denounced as a sceptical spirit. This charge is not entirely unfounded, but it is inadequate and superficial. Scepticism was, indeed, one of the necessary elements in the development of modern science and philosophy. Without scepticism the power of the philosophical tradition could not have been broken. When compared to the various sceptical schools in Greek philosophy this modern scepticism is, however, of a new and entirely different type. It is a positive, not a mere negative attitude. Descartes always emphasizes that his »universal doubt« is to be understood as a methodological, not as a metaphysical doubt. The Cartesian doubt was a constructive, not a destructive one. The same constructive doubt had, a hundred years before, marked its stamp upon Vesalius’ »De humani corporis fabrica«. Without a deep mistrust of the great medical authorities, of Galen and Avicenna, Vesalius could not have written this book. He had to begin as a heretic in medicine in order to become the founder of modern anatomy. »In anatomia,« he said, »non opinandum sed certe et ostensive sciendum est.« It would be a better description of the modern scientific mind to call it an analytical rather than a sceptical mind. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we can follow up, step by step, the great triumphs of this new analytical mind. With Vesalius it begins to conquer medicine; with Galileo it conquers physics, with Descartes geometry and philosophy. Galileo owed some of his most important results to that method which he himself described as metodo risolutivo – as the method of resolution. Descartes began his philosophical work with a great mathematical discovery, the discovery of analytical geometry. Vesalius’ »Fabrica« published in 1543, Galileo’s »Discorsi e dimostrazioni intorno a due nuove scienze« published in 1636, Descartes’ »Geometry« published in 1637 are three mile-stones set up on the road that led to our modern conception of science. | Although moving in different directions and aiming at different ends these works are inspired with one and the same tendency of thought. They are the expression of a great intellectual crisis which was felt everywhere. In the field of natural science the scholastic method had ended in a complete failure. Not a single law of nature had been discovered in the Middle Ages. In medicine the implicit faith in the authority of Galen remained unshaken for more than twelve centuries. Before Leonardo

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da Vinci nobody had the courage to see with his own eyes and to judge by himself. It became imperative to find a new approach to nature and a new method of investigation. All this is expressed in Bacon’s laconic saying; »[m]elius […] est naturam secare, quam abstrahere.«9 To dissect nature in order to study nature was, to be sure, a precarious and dangerous enterprise. But the great scientists and philosophers of the Renaissance were bold enough to defy this danger. For to all of them the dissecting of nature was only a first preparatory step. The analytical process was to be followed and to be completed by a synthetic process. In Galileo’s science the method of resolution is not opposed to the method of composition. On the contrary, the former method prepares the latter, the analytical method paves the way for the synthetic method. In the same sense Vesalius had to begin with dissecting the human body in order to find out its structure, in order to describe the fabrica humani corporis. Only by such an experimental analysis could medicine enter, to use the terms of Kant in his preface to the »Critique«, »[…]on the highway of science.«10 »Experimenta anatomica et practica,« said Vesalius, »firmissima, inconcussa et unica medicinae solidae fundamenta sunt.«

[Bacon, Novum Organum (Buch 1, Aph. 51), S. 168.] [Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, übers. v. Norman Kemp Smith, London 1929, S. 19.] 9

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Judaism and the Modern Political Myths1 (1944)

In order to understand the campaign against Judaism launched by the leaders of the new Germany it is not enough to consider the reasons usually given. In the beginning the National Socialist propaganda often asserted that its only aim was to break the influence of the Jews in Germany’s political and cultural life. But why did this propaganda persist and why did it assume a more and more violent character after this end was attained – in a period when no Jew could any longer speak or even breathe or live in Germany? For all this we must seek a deeper reason. In this struggle there is something more than meets the eye. To be sure, personal aversions and antipathies, deeply rooted prejudices, had their share in this campaign; but they cannot account for its specific character, its brutality and ferocity. We must try to understand the phenomenon not only from its emotional but also from its intellectual side. However we may object to the German political system, we cannot say that it ever underrated the power of »ideas« in political and social life. From the beginning the National Socialist leaders were convinced that the victory could not be gained by mere material weapons. They knew very well that their id eo lo g y was the strongest and, at the same time, the most vulnerable point in their whole political system. To deny or even to doubt this ideology was to them a mortal sin. It became a crimen laesae majestatis – a crime of high treason against the omnipotent and infallible totalitarian state. That the Jews were guilty of this crime was obvious. They had proved it by their whole history, by their tradition, by their cultural and religious life. In the history of mankind they had been the first to deny and to challenge those very conceptions upon which the new state was built; for it was Judaism which first made the decisive step that led from a mythi c a l to an e th ical religion. That myth is a necessary factor, a fundamental element in man’s cultural life, is undeniable. It has put its stamp upon the development | of language, art, poetry, religion. But in all our theories of myth we used to think and to speak of it as a »primitive« activity. We looked upon it as a wild and exuberant stream springing from an unknown 1

126.]

[Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Contemporary Jewish Record 7 (1944), S. 115–

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depth. In modern politics this stream was embanked and canalized. Myth was no longer a free and spontaneous play of imagination. It was regulated and organized; it was adjusted to political needs and used for concrete political ends. What formerly appeared to be an ungovernable unconscious process was subjected to a severe discipline. It was brought under control and trained to obedience and order. Myths were brought into being by the word of command of the political leaders. They could be made at will, becoming an artificial compound manufactured in the great laboratory of politics. The twentieth century is a technical century. It invented a new technique of myth and this invention proved to be decisive in the final victory of the National Socialist party in Germany. This victory was made possible because the adversaries of National Socialism never were able to understand the character and the full strength of the new weapon. In the political struggle it is always of vital importance to k n o w one’s adversary, to enter into his ways of acting and thinking, to understand his strength and his weakness. But the intellectual and political leaders of Weimar Germany were not prepared for this task. The political leaders were not only Socialists; they were in most cases determined Marxists. They were convinced that all social and political life exclusively depends upon economic conditions. Approaching the problem from this side, they made desperate efforts to improve the economic situation of the masses and to ward off the dangers of inflation and unemployment. But in their sober, empirical, »matter of fact« way of thinking and judging they had no eyes for the explosive force of the political myths. It is true, of course, that there was always in Germany a group of honest intellectuals and scientific men who had a strong aversion for the political ideals and slogans of National Socialism. But they too did not see the real danger; they could hardly be prevailed upon to take this danger seriously. They knew quite well that myth is a complicated and very interesting historical phenomenon, but they never thought of it as an actual power – as a power of political action. According to them myth was »primitive« thought – a mode of thought that long ago had faded away and lost its force and meaning. That was a great mistake, a capital error. When the political and intellectual leaders | of the German democracy began to see what was really at stake, when they began to form a clearer idea of the character of the new political myths, it was too late; the battle was in a sense decided before it had begun.

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One of the first uses made by the new political mythology was to combat Judaism. That is by no means surprising; for Judaism had from its very beginnings attacked and rejected all those mythical elements which had hitherto pervaded and governed religious thought. The classical expression of this rejection is to be found in the words: »Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, [n]or any [manner of] likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down [unto] them, nor serve them […]«2 Here we have the complete break with mythical thought. For imagery is the very core of mythical thought. To deprive myth of imagery is to insure its decay. But is not this deathblow at myth at the same time the deathblow at religion? Can religion survive myth? To answer this question it was necessary to discover a new source of religious life and religious inspiration. Ethical thought had to take precedence of mythical thought. Nobody has ever charged the Bible – the Pentateuch, the Prophetic books, the Psalms – with a lack of imagination. Herder, who in this matter was one of the best and most competent judges, who was also one of the first to feel and to analyze the specific character of great national poetry, has written a distinctive work describing and extolling »The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry« (1782–83). But in Judaism the spirit of religion is not the same as that of poetry. Just as Plato excludes poetry from his ideal state, so the Jewish prophets challenge all forms of mythical or poetical imagination. They are the first to conceive the ideal of a purely ethical religion. Poetry and myth are anthropomorphic in their very essence. But through anthropomorphism we can never find the true nature of God. Anthropomorphism leads to idolatry, not to religion. Again and again the prophets come back to this fundamental difference. Their deepest feelings and their whole religious pathos are concentrated upon and focused on this point. The nature of God is far beyond all natural and all human things; it admits of no image, no simile or likeness. All metaphorical expressions of God’s essence are to be rejected. »Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD« asks Isaiah. »Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are | counted as the small dust of the balance […] All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will 2 [Exodus 20, 4–5, zit. nach: The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: translated out of the Original Tongues; and with the former Translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty’s Special Command, London o. J., S. 59.]

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ye compare unto him? The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains. […] To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal?«3 That is the end not only of anthropomorphism, but also of nationalism. The deification of nations is the same idolatry as that of natural things. All the goodliness of these things is as the flower of the field. »The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.«4 There are, however, still other and stronger mythical elements that had to be routed out – that had to give way to the new religious ideal. Not the »ideas« or »images« are the essential elements in mythical thought. We fail to understand the full strength and significance of this thought as long as we see in myth – according to its Greek name and the etymology of the term – a mere »narrative«, a recital of the memorable deeds of gods or heroes. This e pic aspect is neither the only one nor the decisive one. Myth has a dramatic character; it expresses itself much more in actions than in mere ideas or representations. In order to grasp its meaning we must approach it from its active side. Among all students of myth and mythology it is a generally admitted methodological maxim, that in order to understand myth we must begin with a study of r it es . Rite is prior to myth; myth is only an interpretation of rites. »What a people do e s in relation to its gods,« says Miss Jane Ellen Harrison in a very interesting study on early Greek religion, »must always be one clue, and perhaps the safest, to what it thinks.«5 »Myth as it exists in a savage community, that is, in its living primitive form,« declares Bronislaw Malinowski, »is not merely a story told but a reality lived. […] it is not an intellectual explanation or an artistic imagery, but a pragmatic charter of primitive faith and moral wisdom.«6 In this »pragmatic charter« the performance of certain actions, the obedience to a strict religious ritual, always plays the leading part. Even Judaism could not evade or infringe this general law | of religious evolution. It is filled with all sorts of positive and negative demands; with ritual precepts and ritual taboos. But this was only the first and preliminary step. Even here the Isaiah 40, 13, 15, 17–19 and 25, p. 490. Isaiah 40, 7–8, ibid. 5 Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge 1903, p. VII. 6 Bronislaw Malinowski, Myth in Primitive Psychology, London 1926 (Psyche Miniatures, Vol. 6), pp. 21 and 23. 3 4

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prophets had the intellectual and moral courage to break through the fixed, traditional and inexorable order of rites and ceremonies. All this is not simply abrogated but it is eclipsed by new and higher ethical standards. In all primitive societies we find those rites that we describe as rites of »lustration«. Men expiate a sin or a crime by certain purifying acts. This purification is understood in a merely physical sense. The Indians of Peru sought to purify themselves from their sins by plunging their heads in a river; they said that the river washed their sins away. But even in highly advanced stages of human culture we meet with the same conception. In Greek culture and Greek religious life this view is still prevalent; most of the Greek »kathartic« rites are of the same primitive character. »The sea washes off all the evils of men,«7 says Euripides. This sort of »katharsis« or »purification« has nothing to do with moral standards. »[…] we might be tempted,« says Erwin Rohde, »to see in the development of Kathartic practices a fresh step in the history of Greek ethics, and to suppose that the new practices arose out of a refinement and deepening of the ›conscience‹ which now desired to be free from the taint of ›sin‹ by the help of religion. But such an interpretation […] (favourite as it is) is disposed of by a consideration of the real essence and meaning of the thing. […] In its origin and essence Katharsis had nothing whatever to do with morality or with what we should call the voice of conscience. […] Kathartic practices required and implied no feeling of offence, of personal guilt, of personal responsibility. […] the moral aspect of such cases, the guilt or innocence of the doer, is ignored or unperceived. Even in the case of premeditated murder, the remorse of the criminal or his ›will to amend‹ is quite superfluous to the efficacy of purification.«8 Prophetic religion was the first to introduce an entirely new view; a purification that had no longer a physical but rather an ethical sense. »[…] your hands are full of blood,« says Isaiah. »Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.«9 The same characteristic change may be studied in the general development of the religious cult. In its beginnings no religion, no form | 7 [Euripides, Iphigenie auf Tauris, in: Euripidis Supplices et Iphigenia in Aulide et in Tauris, Bd. II, Leipzig 1822, S. 103–189: S. 170: »λασσα κλζει πντα τ!νρ9πων κακ.«] 8 Erwin Rohde, Psyche. The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, London/New York 1925 (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy, and Scientific Method), pp. 294 f. 9 Isaiah 1, 15–17, p. 468.

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of worship, can dispense with sacrificial acts. Prayer and sacrifice are the only ways by which man can communicate with his gods. That is an elementary need and tendency of human nature which can never be completely destroyed. But the f or m of sacrifice and its meaning undergoes a slow and continuous change. In Judaism the first decisive step is the abrogation of human sacrifices. Not man, but God himself makes this step. He refuses to accept the sacrifice of Isaac and substitutes the ram, that is offered in his stead. That means an entirely new and hitherto unknown relation of man to God. The general history of religion has shown us that the human sacrifice, in its true and original significance, is by no means purely an act of cruelty. It is regarded as the highest religious duty because it expresses, in the most striking and solemn way, the communion between God and man. In his »Lectures on the Religion of the Semites« – a standard work in the modern history of religion – William Robertson Smith has shown that in almost all the religions of the world, and especially in all Semitic religions, the relationship of God and man is interpreted as a form of physical kinship. »[…] the indissoluble bond that unites men to their god,« he writes, »is the same bond of blood-fellowship which in early society is the one binding link between man and man, and the one sacred principle of moral obligation.« The bloody sacrifice of man is meant to confirm and to strengthen this consanguinity between the members of the tribe and their Gods.10 Even in this respect the slogan of »Blood and Soil« is by no means a new device. It is only a repetition and, in a sense, a caricature of a primeval mythical conception. The blood-fellowship no longer connects man with God; it connects him with his race that has become the true and only God. Here too the religious and ethical ideals of the prophets were an incessant struggle and a fierce protest against primitive mythical motives. In this struggle not only the bloody sacrifices of men or animals are declared to be null and void. The other and milder forms of the ritual are also called into question and finally swept away. »To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. […] Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me […]«11 Here the great proc10 Cf. William Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. First Series: The Fundamental Institutions (Lect. 2 and 5) (The Early Sociology of Religion, ed. by Bryan Stanley Turner, Vol. VI), Edinburgh 1889, pp. 29 ff. [Zitat S. 53] and 150 ff. 11 Isaiah 1, 11 and 13, p. 468.

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ess reaches its climax. The merely mythical creeds and purely ritual ceremonies are done away with, and only the funda | mental religious and ethical duties are enunciated by the great prophet. We are still, however, only in the precinct of prophetic religion. Before the new ethical and religious ideal could assume its definite shape and could have its full effect it was necessary to remove an obstacle that proved insurmountable to primitive thought and primitive social feeling. Even in the most primitive societies we find a very clear and sharp sense of moral obligation. The whole life of man is subject to inviolable rules. Every act is controlled by these social rules; every infringement is severely punished. But what is absent, or, at least, entirely undeveloped in primitive society – what is, so to speak, in an embryonic state – is the concept and ideal of in d iv id u al moral responsibility. What matters are the consequences of an act, not its motives. These consequences are the same quite irrespective of the intention of the offender. The violation of certain taboos always brings on the gravest dangers. And this danger is conceived as a mere physical infection; it is transmissible to others in the same sense as any other physical »uncleanness« or illness; and there is no possible limit of its propagation. In this whole system there is not a shadow of individual responsibility. If a man transgresses a taboo or perpetrates a crime it is not he himself who is »marked off«. His family, his friends, his whole tribe bear the same mark. Sometimes the infection attaches to the whole city in which the criminal lives. Even in highly developed cultures, as for instance in Greek culture, these conceptions are still in full sway. Revenge and punishment are also directed at the group as a whole. In the societies in which the blood feud is regarded as one of the highest social obligations it is not necessary to take vengeance upon the murderer himself. It is enough to kill a member of his family or his tribe, for the entire family or tribe is made liable to retaliation and reprisals. We need not say to what an extent all these conceptions that we believed to belong exclusively to the past have become a terrible reality in modern politics. Nothing is so characteristic of the German political system as the denial and complete destruction of the idea of individual responsibility. If there is any »moral« subject – the community, the nation, the race are held answerable for its actions. The acts are good or evil according as they are done by a superrace or by an inferior race. From the beginning such a conception was impossible and inadmissible in Jewish religion. Time and again the Jewish God has | been charged with being a »national« God. But from its first and elementary stages Judaism conceived an ideal of monotheism that was quite

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incompatible with a narrow nationalism. It is true that in the development of Jewish religion the conception of individual moral responsibility was not reached all at once. It had to be prepared for slowly, for it was in strict opposition to all the traditional social and religious conceptions. The idea of collective guilt and collective responsibility is deeply rooted in the human mind. It has put its stamp upon the whole development of human culture. The great Greek tragedians – Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides – had to struggle against this idea and to remold it into a new shape. In early Judaism the same idea of a curse or punishment that is not restricted to an individual but extends to posterity is expressed in the saying that the God of Israel is a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the third and fourth generations of them that hate Him, but showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Him and keep His commandments. But now this rule which seemed to be fundamental and inviolable had to be overthrown in the new prophetic religion. In this respect, more than in any other, the prophets had to create a new moral and a new religious order. »For, behold,« says Isaiah, »I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.«12 For this new world we are in need of a new spirit – and it is this spirit that is the very core of the prophetic vision and the prophetic promise. This new spirit no longer allows the punishment of a transgression or crime that has not been committed by the individual himself. The individual – not the family, the tribe or community – becomes the only »moral subject«. »In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers […] But this shall be the covenant […] I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts […]«13 If we accept this pure interior religion all the former restrictions are swept away. Even the strongest social bonds lose in a sense their bind| ing force. It is no longer blood relationship or nationality that determines the moral will. A higher and independent ideal arises. »Behold, 12 13

Isaiah 65, 17, p. 505. Jeremiah 31, 29–33, p. 530.

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all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right […] he shall surely live, saith the Lord GOD. […] The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.«14 Yet once arrived at this point we meet with a new and great surprise. The climax of religious thought reached in the individualism of the prophets is followed by a sort of anticlimax. To individualism there is opposed another force which at first sight seems to be its very reverse. Religious thought and feeling is suddenly taking a new turn; it changes from individualism to u n iv er s alis m . Nevertheless there is no real contradiction between these two views. Far from excluding each other they complement and confirm one another; they are two different expressions of one and the same ideal. If the bond that unites man and God is no longer conceived as a physical bond, a bond of consanguinity; if religious duty does no longer consist in the performance of specific rites – it becomes clear that the new approach, the approach by man’s ethical life, is open to everyone. Religion is no longer the privilege of a social class, a class of priests, nor is it the privilege of a single nation. It breaks with all traditional restrictions. In this new prophetic religion Judaism has still to fulfill a special task; but its call is a universal one, it is not confined within the limits of the life of a single nation. »I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison […]«15 When the remnant of Israel that has been saved will return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, the worship in this temple will no longer be a national worship. »At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD […]«16 From this universalism there arises the ideal of perpetual peace. In its origin that is a purely religious, not a philosophical, ideal. The great philosophers of antiquity never conceived the idea of perpetual | peace. It took more than two thousand years before this idea was de14 15 16

Ezekiel 18, 4–5, 9 and 20, p. 565. Isaiah 42, 6–7, p. 492. Jeremiah 3, 17, p. 508.

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fended and interpreted by a great philosophical thinker. At the end of the eighteenth century Kant wrote his treatise »Vom ewigen Frieden«. Greek philosophy had eternalized war instead of peace. »War,« declared Heraclitus, one of the deepest Greek thinkers, »is the father and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bondsmen and some free.«17 War is not only a human thing; it is a divine thing, and, therefore, inevitable, inexorable, eternal. The prophets reject this view – not because of philosophical reasons or ethical reflections but by virtue of the specific character of their religious inspiration. They are the first to envisage and describe a future state of mankind in which the nations shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. That is, indeed, an »impossible« ideal; a mere »utopia«. But the prophets did not fear to proclaim this utopia. »To live in the idea,« says Goethe, »means to treat the impossible as if it were possible.«18 This saying gives us the clue to the true character of prophetic religion. It was »utopian«; it was in opposition to all actual empirical facts. But it contained a great ethical and religious promise – the promise of »a new heaven and a new earth.«19 If we compare this conception of man’s ethical, social, and religious life to the »myth of the twentieth century« we feel at once the fundamental and striking difference. The prophets are inspired by the ardent wish for a perpetual peace; our modern myths tend to the perpetuation and intensification of war. The prophets dissolve the physical bond between God and man: the bond of blood relationship. The modern myths, on the other hand, acknowledge no other duty than that which arises from the community of blood. The German leaders promised to the German people the conquest of the whole world. What the prophets promised was not the glory of the Jewish nation but its decline and fall, its deepest misery. The political myths enthrone and deify a superrace; the prophets predict an age in which all the nations shall be united under the worship of one God. There is no point of contact and no possible reconciliation between these two conceptions. 17 [Heraklit, Fragm. 53, zit. nach: Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Griechisch und Deutsch, Berlin 21906, S. 69: » Πλεμος πντων μν πατ#ρ %στι, πντων δ βασιλεw, κα τοJw μν εοJw ©δειξε τοJw δ !νρ9πουw, τοJw μν δολουw %ποησε τοJw δ %λευ ρουw.«] 18 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen über Literatur und Ethik, in: Werke, hrsg. im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 1. Abt., Bd. XLII, Weimar 1907, S. 109–252: S. 142: »In der Idee leben heißt das Unmögliche behandeln, als wenn es möglich wäre.«] 19 [Revelation 21, 1, S. 838.]

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In all mythologies we meet with the concept of the »scapegoat«. In his great compendium of mythical thought, »The Golden Bough«, James George Frazer has devoted a special volume to this subject. He gives us | the full evidence by tracing the conception of the scapegoat through all ages and all cultures. We find this conception in primitive African and American tribes as well as in Greek culture; we find it in India and China, in Australia and Japan, in Christian Europe. It is to be found even in early Judaism. In Leviticus there is the description of the Jewish high priest, on the Day of Atonement, laying both his hands on the head of a live goat, confessing over it all the iniquities of the Children of Israel, and, having transferred the sins of the people to the beast, sending it away into the wilderness. In their new political mythology the leaders of Germany chose the Jew as the scapegoat, upon whom the burden of all sins and all evils could be laid. We may think that in this decision they were instigated by a blind and fanatic hatred. Or we may assume that they simply followed the line of least resistance: they decided to attack a small minority unable to offer serious resistance. All this may be true – but it is only the half of the truth. What the inventors of the myth of the German superrace feared was not the physical but the moral resistance of the Jews. And they felt by no means sure that this resistance could be broken. After the expulsion and assassination of hundreds of thousands of Jews, they were not yet satisfied with their work. They were still haunted by the same fixed idea of the Jew as the evil spirit, the Devil incarnate. Mythical thought always conceives of the world as a struggle between divine and demonic powers, between light and darkness. There is always a negative and a positive pole in mythical imagination. Even in our modern political myths the process of deification had to be completed by a corresponding process that we may describe as »devilization«. In the German pandemonium this role was assigned to the Jew. For if there was any truth in Jewish religion, in the books of the prophets, the whole myth of the twentieth century became meaningless and powerless. In spite of all its display of military power, in spite of its incomparable technique of organization and warfare, the German colossus remained, after all, a colossus with feet of clay. As soon as it was possible to doubt or to destroy its mythical foundation, its collapse was inevitable. To secure this foundation was of vital importance; and for this purpose the war against the Jews was imperative. To speak here of mere »anti-Semitism« seems to me to be a very inadequate expression of the problem. Anti-Semitism is not a new phenomenon; it had existed at all times and under all forms. But the German form |

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of persecution was something entirely new. Anti-Semitism could have led to social discrimination or to legal and political restrictions, to exceptional laws. But much more was intended here. It was a mortal combat – a life and death struggle which could only find its end in the complete extermination of the Jews. When reading Hitler’s last address marking the 11th anniversary of his National Socialist regime, we meet with a strange phenomenon. Hitler has completely changed his tone. He is no longer promising the conquest of the world to the German race. He begins to see his defeat and he feels its consequences. But what does he say at this critical moment? Does he speak of the innumerable evils which his aggression has brought to the German people, to Europe, to the whole world? Does he think of the defeat of his armies, of the destruction of German cities? Nothing of the kind. His whole attention is still fixed on one point. He is obsessed and hypnotized by o ne thing alone. He speaks of – the Jews. If I am defeated – he says – Jewry could celebrate a second triumphant Purim festival. What worries him is not the future destiny of Germany, but the »triumph« of the Jews. By this utterance he proves once more how little he knows of Jewish life and Jewish feeling. In our life, in the life of a modern Jew, there is no room left for any sort of joy or complacency, let alone of exultation or triumph. All this has gone forever. No Jew whatsoever can and will ever overcome the terrible ordeal of these last years. The victims of this ordeal cannot be forgotten; the wounds inflicted upon us are incurable. Yet amidst all these horrors and miseries there is, at least, one relief. We may be firmly convinced that all these sacrifices have not been made in vain. What the modern Jew had to defend in this combat was not only his physical existence or the preservation of the Jewish race. Much more was at stake. We had to represent all those ethical ideals that had been brought into being by Judaism and found their way into general human culture, into the life of all civilized nations. And here we stand on firm ground. These ideals are not destroyed and cannot be destroyed. They have stood their ground in these critical days. If Judaism has contributed to break the power of the modern political myths, it has done its duty, having once more fulfilled its historical and religious mission.

1

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The Concept of Group and the Theory of Perception1 (1944)

I The first attempt to apply certain mathematical speculations concerning the co n cep t o f g r o u p to psychological problems of perception was made by Helmholtz in his essay »Über die Tatsachen, die der Geometrie zugrunde liegen« (1868). To be sure, Helmholtz was not able to see the new problem which he had raised with complete precision and to realize its full importance. For, when Helmholtz wrote his essay, the concept of group was not yet recognized as that universal instrument of mathematical thought which it later turned out to be. Its application was confined to certain problems of combinatorics and algebra. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Cauchy had introduced the concept of group into these domains. In Galois’ theory of algebraic equations the concept had proved eminently fruitful. It was, however, not before the second half of the century that those studies were inaugurated through which the theory of groups was to be established as a special discipline. Very soon the theory found applications in the most varied branches of mathematics as an organizing and clarifying principle.2 Its establishment is closely connected with a general reorientation of geometrical thought. The new orientation, brought about by the discovery of the non-Euclidean geometries, succeeded in a fully satisfactory way, when Sophus Lie and Felix Klein assigned to the concept of group a central position in the system of geometrical thought. Helmholtz could not avail himself of all these advances. He therefore fails to give an explicit definition and analytical clarification of the concept of group. Nonetheless his essay contains 1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 5 (1944), S. 1–35.] This article was published in French, Le concept de groupe et la théorie de la perception, in: Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique 35 (1938), pp. 368–414. The English version was suggested by some of my American friends. The »Journal de psychologie« ceased to appear after the invasion of France and the last issues are scarcely available in this country. I wish to express my cordial thanks to Dr. Aron Gurwitsch, who has translated the article. 2 For details cf. Felix Klein, Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert, Part 1 (Die Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften in Einzeldarstellungen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Anwendungsgebiete, Vol. XXIV), Berlin 1926, pp. 334 ff.

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a great many promising concrete starting points and problems. For some errors of analytical treatment which were disclosed and corrected later, the reader is more than compensated by the breadth of Helmholtz’ general epistemological horizon and the vigor of synthesis which enables him to bring together problems pertaining to highly different fields of study. | Helmholtz avowed that it was his dealing with the fundamental problems of »Physiological Optics« that encouraged and, in a certain sense, even enabled him to undertake this synthesis. From the outset his attention was drawn to the question as to whether and to what extent experience contributes toward shaping the notion of space. He was a Kantian in so far as he endorsed the thesis of space as a »transcendental form of intuition,« and he persistently clung to this thesis. But this thesis was to him the beginning, and not the solution, of the problem. According to Helmholtz, the transcendental form merely designates the general »possibility of coexistence« – as space had been defined by Kant. As soon as we attempt to specify this possibility – and only through such specification can it be made applicable to and fruitful for the problems of physics – we find ourselves faced with a whole new set of questions. We must now introduce a metrical determination. In contradistinction to the general form of space as such, this determination is not given a priori; it may be introduced in different ways. All concrete measurement depends upon the acceptance of certain axioms of congruency between different parts of space. The examination of these axioms shows that they imply certain presuppositions as to the extent to which figures may be displaced without transformation. Thus Helmholtz tackles the problem of finding the most general form of a multidimensional manifold in which rigid bodies or systems of points may be displaced relative to one another without changing their forms. The axioms at the basis of every geometry may then be interpreted as statements concerning determinate groups of movement. The objective validity of these axioms depends not merely upon the a priori »form« of space, but upon fundamental experiments performed on »rigid bodies«. It appears that in a threedimensional space of constant curvature the possible displacements depend upon six parameters. The motions of three-dimensional space are ∞6, and form a group, say G0. This group is known to have an invariant; but the form of this invariant in terms of the coordinates x1, x2, x3, y1, y2, y3 of the points is not known a priori. The question arises whether the group of motions is fully characterized by these two properties, so that none but the Euclidean and the two non-Euclidean systems of geometry are possible. There is then here a sextuple infin-

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ity of possible movements. Their study provides us with the most illustrative example of what later was quite generally called »group of transformations«. Lie and Klein define the group as the totality of unique operations A, B, C … so that from the combination of any two operations A and B there results an operation C which also belongs to the totality A·B = C. The generalization of geometry leads to the following problem: »Given a multiplicity and a group of transformations referring to the former; the problem is to study the elements of the multiplicity with regard to those properties which are not affected by the | transformations of the group.«3 Every system of geometry is characterized by its group: it deals only with such relations of space as remain unchanged through the transformations of its group. It is from the point of view of this fundamental conception that Henri Poincaré tackles the problem of space and perception of space. But according to Poincaré the relation between conception and perception is different from what it is in Helmholtz’ »empiricistic« doctrine. After the concept of space had been defined by, and even in a certain sense reduced to, the concept of group, the epistemological solution of the »Helmholtz-Riemann« problem had to start from this point. The logical nature of the concept of group had to be formulated in detail and established. In this respect it is impossible to resort simply to »experience«. In fact, the theory of group, as Hermann Weyl says,4 is the most striking example of »pure intellectual mathematics«. To understand and logically justify this theory, we must, according to Poincaré, turn to an original law »of the human mind« and not to the nature of »external things«. Poincaré does not hesitate to recognize the concept of group as a true fundamental concept a priori. This concept derives from an original »intuition« which precedes and underlies all experience, just as that other intuition to which Poincaré 3 Idem, Vergleichende Betrachtungen über neuere geometrische Forschungen, in: Gesammelte mathematische Abhandlungen, Vol. I, Berlin 1921, pp. 460–497: p. 461 [Zitat S. 463: »Es ist eine Mannigfaltigkeit und in derselben eine Transformationsgruppe gegeben; man soll die der Mannigfaltigkeit angehörigen Gebilde hinsichtlich solcher Eigenschaften untersuchen, die durch die Transformationen der Gruppe nicht geändert werden.«]. See also idem, Lectures on Mathematics, delivered from Aug. 28 to Sept. 9, 1893 before Members of the Congress of Mathematics, held in Connection with the World’s Fair in Chicago at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. (Lecture 11: The Most Recent Researches in non-Euclidean Geometry), New York/London 1894 (The Evanston Colloquium), pp. 85–93. 4 Hermann Weyl, Philosophie der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft (Handbuch der Philosophie, rev. by Alfred Baeumler et al., ed. by Alfred Baeumler and Manfred Schröter, Sect. II: Natur/Geist/Gott, Treatise A), Munich/Berlin 1927, p. 23 [»rein intellektuelle Mathematik«].

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traces the construction of the series of the natural numbers, and also the principle of »mathematical induction«. The object of geometry is the study of a particular »group« of transformations; the general group-concept, however, »preexists« in our minds, at least potentially. It is, as Leibniz would say, a concept of intellectus ipse: »It is imposed on us, not as form of our sense, but as form of our understanding.«5 Guided by this insight into the fundamental logical importance of the concept of group, Poincaré traces the limits of every empiricistic explanation of geometry. There is an irreducible difference between axioms of geometry and empirical statements derived from observation and measurement. The two cannot be directly compared since they belong to entirely different orders of objects. »We do not make experiments on ideal lines or ideal circles; we can only make them on material objects.«6 Statements concerning the latter can never validate or invalidate the former. Their | validity is that of the creative mathematical definition, which is restricted by no other rule than that of avoiding contradictions. As to the three geometries of constant curvature – the geometries of Euclid, Lobatschevsky, and Riemann – none of them may be invalidated by experience. All that experience can do is lead the mind in a certain direction as a result of which it may construct such a system of geometrical concepts as yields the simplest and most convenient instrument for the description of physical phenomena. »In our mind the latent idea of certain number of groups preexisted […] Which shall we choose to form a kind of standard by which to compare natural phenomena? And when this group is chosen, which of the subgroups shall we take to characterize a point in space? Experience has guided us by showing us what choice adapts itself best to the properties of our body; but there its role ends.«7 5 Henri Poincaré, La science et l’hypothèse, Paris without Year [1902] (Bibliothèque de philosophie scientifique), p. 90. English translation: The Foundations of Science. Science and Hypothesis – The Value of Science – Science and Method, transl. by George Bruce Halsted, Lancaster, Pa. 1913 (Science and Education, Vol. 1), pp. 79 f. [Zitat S. 79]. 6 Idem, La science et l’hypothèse, p. 65 [»Mais on n’expérimente pas sur des droites ou des circonférences idéales; on ne peut le faire que sur des objets matériels.«] (The Foundations of Science, p. 64). 7 Idem, La science et l’hypothèse, pp. 87 f. [Zitat S. 109: »Dans notre esprit préexistait l’idée latente d’un certain nombre des groupes […] Lequel choisironsnous pour en faire une sorte d’étalon auquel nous comparerons les phénomènes naturels? Et, ce groupe choisi, quel est celui de ses sous-groupes que nous prendrons pour caractériser un point de l’espace? L’expérience nous a guidés en nous montrant quel choix s’adapte le mieux aux propriétés de notre corps. Mais son rôle s’est borné là.«].

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Poincaré resorts to the concept of group for still more concrete problems. Studying infinite groups, Lie found it necessary to postulate that besides an operation A the inverse operation A-1 must also be present in the group. He had brought into his d efi ni ti on of the group the requirement of the presence of the inverse transformation along with every admitted transformation.8 Poincaré starts from this mathematical fact and relates it in an original way to a psychological problem. What the perceiving subject immediately experiences is an almost uninterrupted flux of sense impressions. How, in the face of this fact, is that differentiation possible which we constantly make in our interpretation of these impressions, viz., the differentiation between spatial movements of an object and its qualitative alterations? The mere psychological clues are the same in both cases. Only by the alteration in the perceptual images are we informed of a change, whether the latter consist in that the object is removed from our bodily organs or in a modification of the object itself. We must then find another criterion which permits us to discriminate between the two cases. In fact, in the one case, when the object has merely been displaced, we are able to restore the original perception by making movements so as to put the object again in that position relative to our body in which it had been before it was displaced. What characterizes displacement and distinguishes it from qualitative modification is, from the psychological point of view, nothing else but this possibility of correction and »compensation«. How is such a compensation pos s i bl e ? How does it come about that two successive and independent changes neutralize each other and lead back to the same initial state? This question cannot be answered with true exactness until the elaboration of geometry has been completed and based upon certain definitions of group theory. Experience can only tell us that the correction does, | as a matter of fact, occur; thus experience may offer the occasion to create the geometrical concepts required for the intellectual representation of the fact.9 Here again experience proves not to be the source of concepts, but merely the occasional cause of their formation. That this combination of ideas is original and stimulating in its originality will readily be conceded. But both psychologists and mathematicians will refuse to take a further step and to allow that Poin8 Cf. Ludwig Maurer/Heinrich Burkhardt, Kontinuierliche Transformationsgruppen, in: Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Mit Einschluss ihrer Anwendungen, Vol. II/1/1, Leipzig 1899–1916, pp. 401–436: p. 402. 9 Poincaré, La science et l’hypothèse, pp. 74 ff.; The Foundations of Science, pp. 70 ff.

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caré was here formulating a genuine funda me nta l pr obl e m of meth o do lo g y with which both mathematics and psychology must deal, although from different sides. What we have expounded seems to be one of those ingenious aperçus characteristic of Poincaré, the thinker and the writer. But I am convinced that the present state of the psychology of perception compels us to hold a different opinion. In the following reflections I shall attempt to set forth an inner connection – epistemological in nature – between the mathematical concept of group and certain fundamental problems of the psychology of perception as the latter have been more and more distinctly formulated in the last decades. To this end, we must look far afield. For the two scientific provinces which we are trying to connect appear at first sight to be entirely disparate as to their content. Yet, we should not allow ourselves to be misled by this disparity. What we are going to set forth concerns logic only, and not ontology. Our ultimate aim is to bring out clearly a certain t y p e o f c onc e pts which has found its clearest expression in abstract creations of modern geometry. But the type in question is not confined to the geometrical domain. It is, on the contrary, of far more general validity and use. The application of concepts of this type extends both farther and deeper. Metaphorically speaking, it extends down to the very roots of perception itself. Perception too cannot be understood in its specific nature, meaning, and total structure without the assumption of organization, coordination, and synthesis. »The process of our comprehension with respect to natural phenomena,« thus Helmholtz defines his general problem in his »Treatise on Physiological Optics«, »is that we try to find g e ne r i c n o tio n s and laws o f n at u r e. Laws of nature are merely generic notions for the changes in nature. […] when we cannot trace natural phenomena to a law, and therefore cannot make the law objectively responsible as being the cause of the phenomena, the very possibility of comprehending such phenomena ceases. However, we must try to comprehend them. There is no other method of bringing them under the control of the intellect. And so in investigating them we must proceed on the supposition that they are comprehensible. Accordingly, the law of sufficient reason is really nothing more than the ur g e of our intellect to bring all our perceptions under its own control.«10 | This »comprehension of the phenomenon by thought« is the common 10 Hermann von Helmholtz, Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik, 2nd ed., rev., Hamburg/Leipzig 1896, pp. 591 f. English translation: Treatise on Physiological Optics, Vol. III: The Perceptions of Vision, transl. by James Powell Cocke Southall, without place 1925, p. 34.

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task of all knowledge and – as we shall try to show – the intermediary link between the logical system of geometrical concepts and the phenomenology of sense perception.

II In »Vergleichende Betrachtungen über neuere geometrische Forschungen«, in which he laid down the program of modern geometry, Felix Klein postulates that first of all the concept of a geometrical property of an object shall be defined in exact terms. Not every apprehension and description of a spatial object is, by this token, a geometrical characterization. If we consider the object simply in its hic et nunc, looking merely at its individuality, the latter does not reveal its geometrical character and significance. By describing a spatial form as such in its particularity and concreteness, we attain, at the utmost, to its geographical or »topographical«, but not to its »geometrical« concept. To establish the latter, a new and quite different direction of thought is required. As Klein formulates the new principle: »The geometrical properties of any figures must be describable in terms of formulae which do not change when the system of coordinates is changed […] conversely, any formula, which in this sense is invariant with respect to the group of given transformations of the coordinates, represents a geometrical property.« As the most important transformations of this kind we may consider parallel displacement, rotation through a definite angle, symmetry with regard to the x-axis, and alteration of the scale. So far as Euclidean geometry is concerned, it is characterized and distinguished from other geometries which logically are equally possible and equally justified by the fact that it considers a principal group of spatial relationships and investigates the invariant properties with respect to this group. The group in question consists of a sextuple infinity of movements, a uni-dimensional infinity of transformations by similarity, and the transformation by reflexion in the plane. Geometry deals only with those properties of spatial figures which are independent of the location of the figures and also of their absolute magnitude; it does not distinguish between the properties of a body and those of its image produced by a mirror.11 11 Klein, Vergleichende Betrachtungen. Cf. especially idem, Über die sogenannte Nicht-Euklidische Geometrie. (Zweiter Aufsatz.), in: Mathematische Annalen 6 (1873), pp. 112–145 (also in: Gesammelte mathematische Abhandlungen, Vol. I, pp. 311–343: pp. 315 ff.). See also the development of the principal

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From this definition of »geometrical properties« the conditions become immediately apparent under which two spatial concepts are »equivalent« to each other, i.e., are but different expressions of one and the same geomet | rical »essence«. The »essence« of a triangle is not altered, the logical as s er t io n s about it are not invalidated, when we change its individuality in certain ways, e.g., displace it in space or make the absolute lengths of the sides increase or decrease. We may say quite generally that two series of expressions which are transformed in this manner must be considered as geometrically equivalent, i.e., defining identical geometrical figures. To see the full significance and methodological fruitfulness of this definition, we have but to bear in mind that in the choice of the group of transformations we are entirely free and not confined to any preconceived scheme. For it appears that every change of the system of reference entails a change as to that which we have to consider as a geometrical property and as equivalent figures. According to the modern conception advocated by Klein, the characteristic properties of a multiplicity must not be defined in terms of the ele m en t s of which the multiplicity is composed, but solely in terms of the g r o u p to which the multiplicity is related. As soon as we substitute one group for another there result, therefore, quite different correspondences. What had appeared as expressions of the »same« geometrical concept may be separated; what had appeared to be specifically different may turn out to be generically identical. This becomes most apparent in the transition from metrical to pr oj e c ti v e g e ometry. That the latter, in comparison with the classical form of metrical geometry as represented by Euclid, is wider and more general, became more and more evident in the course of the development of projective geometry, introduced by Poncelet and furthered by Möbius, von Staudt, and Cayley. »Metrical geometry is […] a part of descriptive geometry, and descriptive geometry is all geometry, and reciprocally […]«,12 declares Cayley. From the standpoint of group theory this conideas in Klein’s work »Elementarmathematik vom höheren Standpunkte aus, Vol. II: Geometrie« (Die Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften in Einzeldarstellungen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Anwendungsgebiete, Vol. XV), Berlin 31925, pp. 27 f. [Zitat S. 27: »Das eine ist, daß die geometrischen Eigenschaften irgendwelcher Figuren sich stets in Formeln aussprechen müssen, die nicht geändert werden, wenn man das Koordinatensystem abändert […] und daß umgekehrt auch jede Formel, die in diesem Sinne invariant gegen die Gruppe dieser Koordinatentransformationen ist, eine geometrische Eigenschaft darstellen muß.«]. 12 [Arthur Cayley, A Sixth Memoir upon Quantics, in: ders., The Collected Mathematical Papers, Bd. II, Cambridge 1889, S. 561–592: S. 592.]

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ception is an immediate consequence. The group at the base of projective geometry is wider than that underlying metrical Euclidean geometry, since to the transformations by similarity in the usual sense there are adjoined parallel and central projections and all transformations derived from the latter.13 Says Klein: »Projective geometry developed only when one begun to consider the original form and all those forms resulting from the latter by projection as essentially identical and to formulate the properties transferred by projection so as to make appear their independence from the alteration connected with projection.«14 Thus, what in the geometrical sense must be taken as »identical« and what as »different« is by no means predetermined at the outset. On the contrary, it is decided by the nature of the geometrical investigation, viz., the choice of a determinate group of transformations. From the standpoint of metrical Euclidean geometry, e.g., the different conics appear as distinct entities, as independent geometrical individualities | which have definite and well-defined properties. This distinction disappears when the point of view is changed. If we allow for the socalled »affinitive transformations«, we can no longer maintain the distinction between »circle« and »ellipse« in the traditional sense, since by affinitive transformation circles are transformed into ellipses. This development is carried still farther in projective geometry in which quite generally an ellipse may be transformed into a parabola or a hyperbola, such that, in the final analysis, there is but one single conic. It appears from all this that the concepts of modern geometry derive their precision and true universality only from the fact that the intuited particular figures are not considered as pre-given and rigid, but rather as a kind of plastic material capable of being molded into the most varied forms. The real foundation of mathematical certainty lies no longer in the elements from which mathematics starts but in the r ule by which the elements are related to each other and reduced to a »unity of thought«. The progress achieved in the construction of the universe of geometrical concepts may be illustrated from another side. The transition from mere »topographical« to genuinely geometrical properties may be characterized as a progress from merely l oc a l to truly s pa ti a l Cf. Weyl, Philosophie der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft, p. 59. [Klein, Vergleichende Betrachtungen, S. 467: »Aber die projektivische Geometrie erwuchs erst, als man sich gewöhnte, die ursprüngliche Figur mit allen aus ihr projektivisch ableitbaren als wesentlich identisch zu erachten und die Eigenschaften, welche sich beim Projizieren übertragen, so auszusprechen, daß ihre Unabhängigkeit von der mit dem Projizieren verknüpften Änderung in Evidenz tritt.«] 13 14

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determinations. All those determinations that can be given only by »pointing«, a τδε τι in Aristotle’s sense, are »local«. These determinations refer to a simple hic et nunc which can only be pointed at; their meaning derives from a concrete intuitive situation. From this viewpoint all individual differences between figures are equal in value and importance. Every particular triangle, every particular circle is to be considered as something in and by itself. Its location in space, the lengths of the sides of the triangle or of the radii, etc., belong to its »nature«, which latter cannot be defined except with reference to particular local circumstances. Even in our geometrical concepts, this reference is not simply ignored; it is not abstracted from such as to simply disappear. But here the local determinations are comprehended in such a way that a new whole, the »system of space«, results from their synthesis. The concept of the group of transformations is, perhaps, the clearest expression of the nature and epistemological root of this systematization. Owing to this concept the particular, intuitively given figure is deprived of its hic et nunc and nevertheless retains its definiteness. This definiteness no longer depends upon what the figure is as a »this« or »that«, as a particular. The definiteness of the figure depends upon the context into which it is integrated and which it represents as a special case. The more we enlarge this context by broadening the »principal group« of spatial transformations which we started out from, and by successively »adjoining« groups of transformations each of which contains the preceding ones, the more we approximate the genuinely universal system of space, the aim of geometrical conceptualization. | III What we discussed last seems to digress far from the problems of the perceptual world. It is characteristic of perception that it can never attain to that stage which represents the beginning of geometrical thought. Perception cannot abandon the hic et nunc, since its peculiar task is just to apprehend the hic et nunc as precisely and completely as possible. If perception would cease to have an individual content, it would cease to have any content whatsoever. We do not deny the possibility of perceptual content. We do not deny, for rationalistic or intellectualistic reasons, that perception never will and never can attain to that form of universality for which geometrical thought is striving. On the other hand, the sensualistic thesis, which modern psychology started out from, cannot be maintained either. It is not the force of epistemological objections, but a simple clarification of the

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phenomenological facts involved in perception, that has refuted this thesis. When nowadays one attempts to describe these facts as they are revealed by experiment and precise analysis, one can no longer stick to the conception that perception is nothing but a bundle of sense impressions. That the perceptual world does possess a structure and that this structure cannot be reduced to a mere mosaic, an aggregate of scattered »sensations«, may be taken as an established conclusion of psychology, and it is upon this conclusion that we base our reflections in the following. We cannot, for our purpose, content ourselves with a general formulation of this idea. We must pursue it into details, into concrete facts. First of all, we are confronted with the fact of perceptual constancy. Since Helmholtz’ »Physiological Optics«, since Hering’s fundamental investigations into the sense of light, the phenomenon in question has been set forth with more and more clarity. The greater the clarity with which it was brought out, the more definite became the epistemological problem that is involved in this phenomenon. Gelb writes: »In general, when a sheet of paper appears white in ordinary daylight, we do not hesitate to recognize it as white in very dim light as well, e.g., in the light of the full moon; and a piece of velvet which looks black to us under a cloudy sky looks also ›black‹ to us in full sunshine. The same sheet of paper appears white also in the greenish shadow of foliage; and so it appears in the rays of one or the other of the usual artificial sources of light, all of which emit more or less chromatic light. Similar observations may eventually be made on colored objects, although to a lesser extent and with less clarity; a piece of paper, e.g., which looks blue in daylight looks blue also in the reddish-yellow light of a gasflame. Observations of this kind show that considerable changes of the intensity of illumination and, within certain limits, also of the color of illumination do not, in any appreciable degree, influence our ordinary vision of colors. This fact becomes a problem when we consider that every change of illumination entails a change in the radiation which the external objects | reflect on our eyes, so that every change of illumination is accompanied by a modification in the stimulation of the retina.«15 This problem of the »approximate color constancy of visible

15 [Adhémar Gelb, Die »Farbenkonstanz« der Sehdinge, in: Handbuch der normalen und pathologischen Physiologie. Mit Berücksichtigung der experimentellen Pharmakologie, hrsg. v. Albrecht Theodor Julius Bethe u. a., Bd. XII/1: Receptionsorgane II. Photoreceptoren. Erster Teil, Berlin 1929, S. 594–678: S. 596: »Wir zögern im allgemeinen nicht, ein Blatt Papier, das bei gewöhnlichem Tageslicht weiß erscheint, auch in sehr schwacher Beleuchtung, z. B. im Vollmond-

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things« (»angenäherte Farbenkonstanz der Sehdinge«),16 as Hering called it, is not unique. Besides the color constancy there is constancy of spatial shape and size. When an object is moved away from our eyes, the images on the retinae become smaller and smaller. Nonetheless, within certain distances, the perceptual size of the object is constant. Variations of shape, which result from the fact that a figure is turned out of the frontal-parallel position, are also »counterbalanced« by the eye to a high degree, so that we perceive the figure in its »true« shape. What is meant by this »truth« – a kind of truth which seems to contradict the objective facts, the real conditions of physical stimulation? In raising this question, psychological inquiry comes close to the fundamental epistemological problems of the theory of perception, even though it may try to confine itself strictly to empirical observation. It is of great interest to study this development of concepts and methods, following the excellent critical report given by Adhémar Gelb of the origin and development of the problem of »color constancy of visible things.«17 As to the explanations of the phenomenon, they cannot, so far as I can see, be reduced to a single formula. The theories advanced by Helmholtz, Hering, Johannes von Kries, Katz, Bühler, Jaensch, and others diverge on essential points. But there seems to be complete agreement as to the phenomenal fact itself and its significance. The phenomenon under discussion evidently arouses the philosophic »wonder« of psychologists more than any other phenomenon. Bühler schein, als ›weiß‹ anzuerkennen; und wir sehen ein Stück Samt, das bei bewölktem Himmel schwarz aussieht, auch im hellen Sonnenschein ›schwarz‹. Dasselbe Blatt Papier erscheint auch im grünlichen Schatten eines Laubdaches ›weiß‹, ebenso auch im Scheine einer der gebräuchlichen künstlichen Lichtquellen, die alle mehr oder weniger buntfarbiges Licht geben. An farbigen Gegenständen können wir unter Umständen analoge Beobachtungen machen, wenn auch in geringerem Umfange und in weniger prägnanter Form; so z. B. wird ein bei Tageslicht blau aussehendes Papier auch im rötlichgelben Lichte einer Gasflamme annähernd ›blau‹ gesehen. Solche Beobachtungen zeigen, daß ausgiebige Änderungen der Beleuchtungsstärke und innerhalb gewisser Grenzen auch Änderungen der Beleuchtungsfarbe keinen wesentlichen Einfluß auf unser alltägliches Farbensehen ausüben. Und gerade diese Tatsache wird zum Problem, wenn man überlegt, wie mit jedem Wechsel der Beleuchtung auch die Strahlungen wechseln, die die Außendinge unserem Auge zureflektieren, und wie dadurch mit jeder Beleuchtungsänderung eine Veränderung in den Belichtungsverhältnissen der Netzhaut hervorgerufen wird.«] 16 [Ewald Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, in: Handbuch der gesamten Augenheilkunde, hrsg. v. Theodor Axenfeld u. Anton Elschnig, 2., neubearb. Aufl., Bd. III: Physiologische Optik, Berlin 1925, S. 1–294: S. 13: »angenäherte Farbenbeständigkeit der Sehdinge«.] 17 Gelb, Die »Farbenkonstanz« der Sehdinge.

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says that the color constancy of visible things, the approximate invariance of the qualitative black-white series with respect to changes of illumination, must be reckoned among »the most astonishing perceptual achievements of the eye.«18 He emphasizes that the law in question is of decisive importance for the knowledge and recognition of visible things and hence for the possibility of intelligent human and animal behavior, as far as the optical sector is concerned.19 Katz maintains that phenomena analogous to those in the optical domain may be observed in nearly all other domains of perception. »The idea of invariance, which is an epistemological problem of validity of the foremost importance, has one of its roots, and perhaps the most nutritive one, in the psychology of perception.«20 Gelb concludes his critical report with the | statement that color constancy is but a part of a much more complex set of problems; we are confronted with the general problem of the organization and structure of the visible world.21 We cannot dwell here upon the psychological facts themselves and their phenomenological analysis,22 nor can we concern ourselves with the general epistemological consequences of these facts.23 I content myself with setting forth that particular feature which seems to 18 Karl Bühler, Handbuch der Psychologie, Part 1: Die Struktur der Wahrnehmungen, No. 1: Die Erscheinungsweisen der Farben, Jena 1922, pp. 73 f. [»den erstaunlichsten Wahrnehmungsleistungen des Auges«]. 19 Idem, Die Krise der Psychologie, Jena 1927, p. 71. 20 David Katz, Der Aufbau der Farbwelt (= 2nd ed., completely reworked, of »Die Erscheinungsweisen der Farben und ihre Beeinflussung durch die individuelle Erfahrung«), Leipzig 1930 (Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, Sect. 1: Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Suppl. Vol. 7), p. 300 [»Der Invarianzgedanke, der eine erkenntnistheoretische Geltungsfrage allerersten Ranges ist, hat eine und vielleicht die nährendste Wurzel in der Wahrnehmungspsychologie.«]. 21 Gelb, Die »Farbenkonstanz« der Sehdinge, p. 672. 22 As regards these facts and the other particular phenomena on which the following discussion is based, I refer especially to the work of David Katz, Die Erscheinungsweisen der Farben und ihre Beeinflussung durch die individuelle Erfahrung, Leipzig 1911 (Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, Sect. 1: Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Suppl. Vol. 7). In the second edition of Katz’ work (Der Aufbau der Farbwelt) all of the relevant literature up to 1930 is critically mentioned and discussed. As to later discussions I refer especially to Egon Brunswik, Wahrnehmung und Gegenstandswelt. Grundlegung einer Psychologie vom Gegenstand her, Leipzig/Vienna 1934, and to Ludwig Kardos, Ding und Schatten. Eine experimentelle Untersuchung über die Grundlagen des Farbensehens, Leipzig 1934 (Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, Sect. 1: Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Suppl. Vol. 23). 23 Cf. author’s »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Dritter Teil: Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis«, Berlin 1929, pp. 137 ff. [ECW 13, S. 131 ff.].

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be most important with regard to our earlier consideration. If one surveys the facts as they have been described by psychologists, one meets again and again with two fundamental concepts that are familiar to us from another trend of thought: the concepts of »invariance« and »transformation«. Both Helmholtz and Hering had emphasized that the objective stimuli are not simply »copied« in perception, but »transformed« in a certain direction, although they disagreed in their interpretations of the factor conditioning and determining this transformation. Helmholtz resorted to a function of judgment, Hering to a function of memory, in addition to certain physiological facts like pupilary variations and the mutual interaction of the elements of the visual field. Neither theory, however, gives a complete account and an exhaustive interpretation of the phenomenal facts.24 The causes of this »transformation« must be sought for elsewhere. The phenomenon in question must be described in terms other than those that derive from the assumption that a given »sensation« is modified by intellectual and reproductive factors. The question which I should like to raise first is, whether it is merely by accident that a concept belonging to group theory appears in the very exposition of the psychological facts. One might think that the use of this term in a psychological context is ambiguous or merely metaphorical. One ought by no means to allow oneself to indulge in the illusion of »mathematical psychology«, as such a discipline was tentatively developed by Herbart in a merely speculative way. The precision of mathematical concepts rests upon their being confined to a definite sphere. They cannot, without logical prejudice, be extended beyond that sphere into other domains. | While avoiding the error of such illegitimate extrapolation, we may nevertheless insist upon a m ed iat e connection. The latter is revealed when we consider that form of »universality« which is the ultimate logical function of mathematical concepts but which, on the other hand, may also be present in the basic phenomena of perception that are usually described in the language of »sensationism«. According to the sensationistic theory, the function and cognitive significance of perception consists in its close adaptation to the object, i.e., the bare stimuli. On the basis of this assumption, perception appears as immediate mechanical reproduction. Hobbes was the first one who clearly and explicitly expressed this view. What we call »perception« is, for Hobbes, nothing but an organism’s reaction to external stimulation. »Action« and »reaction« can be related in no other way than strict 24 Cf. Katz’ criticism in »Der Aufbau der Farbwelt«, pp. 430 ff., and Bühler, Handbuch der Psychologie, Part 1, pp. 114 ff. and 124 ff.

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equality. Hobbes anticipates, within the domain of psychology, Newton’s mechanical law of the equality of »action« and »reaction«. He goes so far as to define perception in terms of this law: »Sensio est ab organi sensorii conatu ad extra, qui generatur a conatu ab Objecto versus interna, eoque aliquandiu manente per Reactionem factum Phantasma.«25 Modern psychology developed on the basis of this assumption which, indeed, had to be modified in essential respects and was thus deprived of its classical »simplicity«. Modern psychology rested on the »constancy-hypothesis«, i.e., the hypothesis of an immediate correspondence between »stimulus« and »sensation«. From the point of view of methodology, one of the most important results of Hering’s inquiries into the »sense of light« consists in the explicit abandonment of this hypothesis. Hering raises the question with precision: »Do equal relations between light-intensities on the side of real things correspond to equal differences of brightness on the side of things as they are seen?« Hering’s answer to this question is negative.26 Thus the problem of »perceptual constancy« acquires a new meaning, and is so to speak, assigned its proper locus in the proper dimension. It henceforth appears that it is dissimilarity rather than similarity to the objective stimulus which characterizes perceptual content. This similarity may, indeed, be artificially produced and forced upon the perceptual process. But it can be actualized only under artificial experimental conditions that differ essentially from those of »normal« perception. By means of what Katz calls »reduction« we can transform the perceived »surface colors« into pure »film colors«, viz., by looking through a hole in a screen. The »film colors« which then appear in the hole look quite different from that on surfaces of the two objects as they are directly observed. The former | colors correspond to the conditions of physical stimulation in the sense that the film color which appears brighter and more closely approximates to whiteness is the one that is

25 Thomas Hobbes, Elementorum philosophiae sectio prima de corpore (Chap. 25, no. 2), in: Opera philosophica, quae latine scripsit, omnia. Ante quidem per partes, nunc autem, post cognitas omnium objectiones, conjunctim et accuratius edita, 2 vols., Amsterdam 1668, Vol. II, pp. 1–261: p. 194; cf. esp. Leviathan, sive de materia, forma, et potestate, civitatis ecclesiasticae et civilis (Chap. 1), in: Opera philosophica, Vol. I, pp. 1–82: pp. 3 f. 26 Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, p. 81 [»Entsprechen gleichen Verhältnissen der Lichtstärken der wirklichen Dinge gleichgroße Helligkeitsunterschiede der Sehdinge?«]; cf. Ludwig Kardos, Die »Konstanz« phänomenaler Dingmomente. Problemgeschichtliche Darstellung, in: Beiträge zur Problemgeschichte der Psychologie. Festschrift zu Karl Bühler’s 50. Geburtstag, Jena 1929, pp. 1–77: p. 22.

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produced by more intensive physical radiation.27 It is just the fact that in this way we do not stick to the given, the hic et nunc, the particular stimulus, and to the immediate impression produced in us by this stimulus, which constitutes the real problem of perception. We do not merely » r e- act« to the stimulus, but in a certain sense act »against« it. In free perception the sensory material which is presented to us owing to optical stimulation is »dissociated by the inner eye.«28 Helmholtz already had explicitly pointed to this »dissociation«, the permanent tendency to discriminate within the color or the visible appearance of an object what is due to the effects of illumination from what belongs intrinsically to the object. The essential conclusion hence to be drawn is that perception in general is not confined to the mere hic et nunc. Perception expands the particular datum; it is integrated into a total experience; and it is only in virtue of this integration that perception can exercise its proper function as an objective factor in knowledge. If perception were tied up with the flux of impressions, it would necessarily disintegrate; for each of these impressions presents the size, shape, and color of the object in a different way. As a matter of fact, however, perception does not stick to this kaleidoscopic succession of images but constructs true perceptual forms out of them. The »surface color« which we attribute to the »thing« as its property, in contradistinction to the mere appearance of a »film color« or a »spatial color«, represents just such a form. The »surface color« belongs invariably to the objects; it is not liable to variations produced by accidental changes of illumination; such variations would deprive it of all cognitive meaning. It is those very facts designated by us as fundamental phenomena of constancy of size, shape, and color, which preserve the cognitive value of perception. Now the question arises which are the me a ns that render this function of perception possible, and whether these means present some analogy to those of mathematical construction. The answer to this question might be indicated by the concept of »transformation« as employed in the modern psychology of perception. What is the significance of this concept with respect to the methodological foundation of geometry and with respect to psychology? As to the first question, we saw that it is just this concept which enables geometry to make the transition from the particular to the universal. Geometrical 27 Cf. Katz, Der Aufbau der Farbwelt, pp. 67 ff.; Gelb, Die »Farbenkonstanz« der Sehdinge, p. 599. 28 Eino Kaila, Gegenstandsfarbe und Beleuchtung, in: Psychologische Forschung 3 (1923), pp. 18–59: p. 33 [»vom inneren Auge […] aufgespaltet«].

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thought necessarily develops on the basis of concrete, particularized date of intuition. We mentioned the »crisis of intuition« which was | brought about by the recent development of mathematical thought. If one considers this development, one must indeed admit that intuition has lost its predominant lo g ical position and that it has sunk in importance as a m ean s of geometrical de mons tr a ti on. This, however, does not affect its significance as a point of departure. Felix Klein, e.g., to whom we owe the generalization of geometrical concepts as outlined above, maintains that we still have to look upon »naive« geometrical intuition as the source of all fundamental geometrical concepts and axioms: »It is from intuition that we derive the data which, in appropriate idealization, are subject to logical treatment.«29 »To pursue geometrical reasoning in a purely logical way, without permanently keeping in front of my eyes the figure to which that reasoning applies, is, for me at least, impossible.«30 The problem is to conceive of this necessary co n n ec ti on with intuition in such a way that nonetheless the progress of the mathematical concept toward ultimate universality is left unimpeded. The solution of this problem, as offered by geometrical thought itself, shows us how this connection may be prevented from becoming restrictive. Taking our departure from a fact given in intuition, there are altogether different directions in which we may proceed and determine that fact accordingly, i.e., according to the group of transformations to which we refer. We enjoy complete freedom in the choice of these alternative groups. Different groups will yield different invariants and hence different geometrical properties. In familiar Euclidean geometry, the diverse conics, viz., the circle, the parabola, the ellipse, the hyperbola, are not only in tu itively distinct, but also co n ceptua l l y distinct. These distinctions disappear if, instead of choosing the »principal group« of Euclidean geometry, we choose the group of »affinitive or projective transformations«. If, furthermore, higher point-transformations, the transformations by »reciprocal radii«, the transformation with change of the spatial element are permitted, it appears that there is no limit to 29 Klein, Elementarmathematik, p. 225 [»Tatsächlich ist doch die Quelle aller geometrischen Grundbegriffe und Axiome die naive geometrische Anschauung. Aus ihr schöpfen wir die Daten, die wir in geeigneter Idealisierung der logischen Behandlung zugrunde legen.«]. 30 Idem, Zur Nicht-Euklidischen Geometrie, in: Mathematische Annalen 37 (1890), pp. 544–572; cf. Zur Nicht-Euklidischen Geometrie, in: Gesammelte mathematische Abhandlungen, Vol. I, pp. 353–383: p. 381 [»Eine geometrische Betrachtung rein logisch zu führen, ohne mir die Figur, auf welche dieselbe Bezug nimmt, fortgesetzt vor Augen zu halten, ist jedenfalls mir unmöglich.«].

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that progress toward universality. For Analysis situs, e.g., there is no such thing as what is usually meant by »identity of shape«. A given shape is here regarded as the »same« in spite of all sorts of continuous distortions it may undergo. The question is no longer raised whether a given line is »straight« or »curved«, whether a given length is equal to or the double of another length.31 The nature of a given geometry is, then, defined by the r ef er en ce to a determinate group and the way in which spatial forms are related within that type of geometry. | The phenomena of perceptual constancy reveal a similar kind of reference in the domain of pure perception, which, although it exists, so to speak, »in statu nascendi« only, determines the structure of perception to a considerable extent. In perception, too, we do not confine ourselves to the particular, given hic et nunc, to be completely absorbed and, as it were, lost in it. We go beyond the particular and integrate it into a certain context. As the particular changes its position in the context, it changes its »aspect«. We do not apprehend the particular as a mere »existence«, that simple reality in which there corresponds a particular sensation to each particular stimulus. On the contrary, the apprehension of the particular qua »existence« involves apprehension of the possibilities of transformation which it contains within itself. The p er ceiv ed phenomenal color differs from that »reduced« color-experience which corresponds to the retinal image. The former is conditioned and modified by the »perspective of illumination«, in essentially the same way in which our visual perception of space is conditioned by the spatial perspective.32 One might say that each particular perception assumes, with respect to the particular perspective involved, a definite index and, owing to the latter, a new d imen sio n . Thus an achromatic color, e.g., may be seen as the same color through variation of the conditions of illumination; the latter does not effect the color as such, but only its »pronouncedness« (Ausgeprägtheit). The »same« grey or white color may appear in different degrees of pronouncedness.33 In Hering’s well-known experiment we experience the »shift« that occurs when a part of the field, being objectively darker than its environment, first appears as a spot and then as a shadow fallowing on the surface, and thus gives, while it is exposed to the same illumination as the white surroundings, first the impresFor details see idem, Elementarmathematik (Pt. 2), pp. 74 ff. With regard to the concept of »perspective of illumination,« cf. Bühler, Handbuch der Psychologie, Part 1, pp. 84 ff., and the experiments discussed by Katz, Der Aufbau der Farbwelt, pp. 112 ff. 33 Ibid. 31 32

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sion of grey and then the impression of shadowy white. Here again the typical possibility of double orientation or reference is apparent. »There is a difference of q u a lit y between the sheet of paper and the spot, and a difference of in t en s it y between the sheet of paper and the shadow: the sheet of paper is wh it e and the spot is g r e y ; the sheet of paper is light and the shadow is d a r k .« 34 Helmholtz thought that according to the kind and intensity of the actual conditions of illumination or of what we believe these conditions to be, we apply different standards to our sensations of light and, correspondingly, change our judgments about external objects. What is the nature of such a standard? If I am not mistaken it rests on the very same factor which is most ex | plicit and striking in the formation of geometrical concepts. The perceptual image as well involves that reference to certain possible groups of transformation. It changes when we refer it to a different group and determine the »invariants« of perception accordingly. In addition to Hering’s shadow-experiment and photometer-experiment, 35 we may mention all those facts that are by Gestalt psychology described in terms of the category of »figure and ground«.36 All these phenomena are remarkably analogous to the above-mentioned different possibilities of »coordination« in Euclidean, affinitive, projective, etc., geometries. Thus Katz, in referring to certain observations, asserts that under the same objective conditions perception may shift from one mode of »apprehension« to another by distributing light and shadow in a different way. At one time we see shadows falling upon a light ground, at another time we see light falling upon a dark ground; and we are free to choose either mode of apprehending.37 It is this free choice, and the perceptual structure which it determines, which represents what, on a higher level, we find in the formation of geometrical concepts, when such formation attains to a maximum of »spontaneity«. It goes without saying that this analogy between the formation of invariants in perception and in geometry ought not to make us over34 Bühler, Handbuch der Psychologie, Part 1, p. 117 [»Nein, zwischen Papier und Fleck besteht eine qualitative, zwischen Papier und Schatten eine intensive Abhebung: das Papier ist weiß und der Fleck ist grau, das Papier ist hell und der Schatten ist dunkel.«]. 35 Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, pp. 8 and 15. 36 Cf. Edgar Rubin, Visuell wahrgenommene Figuren. Studien in psychologischer Analyse, 1. part, Copenhagen et al. 1921. 37 Katz, Der Aufbau der Farbwelt, p. 202; cf. Bühler, Handbuch der Psychologie, Part 1, pp. 81 ff.

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look the thoroughgoing differences which are very important from the epistemological point of view. These differences may be characterized by an expression which Plato used to define the opposition of perception to thought. All perception is confined to the »more or less«, the μα1 λλν τε κα äττον. Only approximative, not absolute determinations are attainable in perception. This characteristic is also exhibited by perceptual co n s t an cy. Its realization is never ideally complete, but always remains within certain limits. The fixation of these limits constitutes one of the most important tasks of psychological research.38 Beyond these limits there is no further »transformation«. The relative constancy of the color tone, for example, is destroyed when the color of illumination becomes too intense; correspondingly, in the degree as one’s vision becomes more indirect, color constancy decreases to a considerable extent. In this connection Katz’ laws concerning the extension of the field are very significant; they express that there is no constancy unless the conditions of illumination can be perceived in their totality.39 There is no »total constancy of color«, no »ideal in| variance«, there is but a tendency in this direction. The constancy of size of visible objects also holds within limits only. We may again express this state of affairs in Platonic terms: the phenomenon te nds toward the idea but never reaches it and necessarily falls short of it. Both »tending« and »falling short« are characteristic traits of perception. Only the mathematical concept renders a new orientation possible, viz., the orientation toward the »idea«. Mathematical concepts are independent of any limits that might be imposed upon perception. The geometrical concept embraces and comprehends the totality and unlimited variety of modifications which a spatial figure undergoes when it is subjected to certain transformations. Once the group of transformations is specified, all the modifications that are possible with respect to this group can be determined by means of exact laws. Thus the transition from esse = percipi to esse = concipi is accomplished. This is the step which separates the »naive« idea of perception from the ideal of scientific knowledge. To perceive is to »evaluate«, and evaluation cannot go beyond a certain »more or less«; it is necessarily vague and unprecise. The mathematical concept opposes to this lack of precision the postulate of exactness and accurate determination; it 38 The investigations into the nature of perceptual objects, upon which Egon Brunswik relies for his »Grundlegung einer Psychologie vom Gegenstand her«, are for the most part concerned with just this fixation of limits; cf. idem, Wahrnehmung und Gegenstandswelt. 39 Katz, Der Aufbau der Farbwelt, pp. 50 and 343 ff.

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develops methods by which this postulate may be satisfied. On the other hand, the mathematical concepts are only the full actualization of an achievement that, in a rudimentary form, appears also in perception. Perception too involves a certain invariance and depends upon it for its inner constitution. In order to elucidate these facts, let us consider Helmholtz’ views once more. The problem with which we are confronted may be said to be almost the central problem of Helmholtz’ psychological inquiries. What characterizes these inquiries and renders them p hi l os ophi cally sign ifican t , is the fact that Helmholtz discusses successively every possible aspect of the problem of perception, thus exhibiting his perfect mastery in every field concerned. Throughout his analyses, he starts as a physiologist and psychologist, and terminates as a mathematician. We have Helmholtz’ own clear testimony concerning his development. In 1868, his attention became for the first time focused upon Riemann’s inquiries into the foundations of geometry. In a letter to Schering, Helmholtz writes: »For the last two years, I have been dealing with the same problems in connection with my research in physiological optics, but I have not finished and published my work, because I had been hoping to be able to generalize on several points. […] Now, from the few hints you give me concerning the results of Riemann’s inquiries, I see that the conclusions he has reached coincide exactly with mine.40 The following question constitutes my starting point: What must | be the nature of a multidimensional aggregate which is such as to permit everywhere continuous, monodromic, and free movements of solid bodies (i.e., bodies with constant relative size), like the movements of bodies in real space?«41 This passage reveals 40 We may mention that in Riemann’s fundamental work there is also a combination of psychological and mathematical points of view. In philosophy Riemann looked upon himself as a pupil of Herbart and was stimulated by Herbart’s theory of the psychological formation of series. 41 Hermann von Helmholtz, Letter to Ernst Schering, April 21, 1868, in: Leo Koenigsberger, Hermann von Helmholtz, Vol. II, Brunswik 1903, pp. 138 f.: p. 138 [»Ich habe selbst in den letzten zwei Jahren im Zusammenhange mit meinen Untersuchungen über physiologische Optik mich mit dem gleichen Gegenstande beschäftigt, aber die Arbeit noch nicht abgeschlossen und veröffentlicht, weil ich immer noch hoffte, einzelne Punkte verallgemeinern zu können. […] Nun erkenne ich aus den wenigen Andeutungen, die Sie über das Resultat der Arbeit geben, dass Riemann zu genau denselben Resultaten gekommen ist wie ich. Mein Ausgangspunkt ist die Frage: Wie muss eine Grösse von mehreren Dimensionen beschaffen sein, wenn in ihr feste Körper (i. e. Körper von unveränderten relativen Abmessungen) sich überall sollen continuirlich, monodrom und so frei bewegen können, wie die Körper im wirklichen Raume sich bewegen.«].

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a remarkable interconnection between various intellectual trends in Helmholtz’ doctrine of space. Helmholtz tries to be an empiricist in geometry in order to be a geometrician in empirical psychology. On the problem of space, his empiricism exhibits a decidedly mathematical character. Far from explaining our intuition of space in sensationistic terms and deriving it from mere »sensation«, he traces it, on the contrary, to a complicated tissue of »unconscious inferences« contrived by analogy to mathematical operations. According to Helmholtz, perceptual space originates from a kind of unconscious mathematics. As a variation upon the ancient theme: Cum Deus calculat, fit mundus, one might paraphrase Helmholtz’ doctrine thus: Cum homo calculat, fit spatium. Yet, this way of synthetizing mathematics and psychology is questionable from two points of view. From the psychological viewpoint it is open to the objection that it does not do justice to the phenomena as they are disclosed in simple observation. By being transferred into the unconscious, the problem becomes inaccessible to phenomenological analysis. Instead of an analysis of observable facts, we are left with a hypothesis which is, at best, amenable to indirect verification. It is on this point that criticisms were raised, especially by Hering. Hering did not grow tired of pointing out the flaws in Helmholtz’ exposition of the perceptual facts. He emphatically insists that it is not in virtue of our k n o wled g e of differences in external conditions, but in virtue of an essential difference in the very act of v i s i on, that we are able to phenomenally distinguish between film colors and the colors of objects.42 On the other hand, Helmholtz’ theory does not do full justice to the mathematical facts either. Just as Hering had to correct it from the standpoint of psychology, thus Poincaré had to correct it from the standpoint of geometry. The axioms of geometry cannot be interpreted as empirical statements; such an interpretation would fail to grasp their proper meaning and logical status. The axioms refer to determinations that are never given or realized in experience. Thus experience can neither validate nor invalidate them. The axioms cannot be derived from physical reality, but must be constructed in full independence of such reality; they refer to pos s i bi l i ti e s only. Experience cannot determine these constructions. It may, however, to some extent define the direction they take, in so far as it represents the o ccasion for the purely logical construction of such systems of axioms as correspond and are applicable to certain empirical | situations. Axioms may thus refer t o , but they do not derive fr om experience. If we reflect upon both types of objection, the psychological and the 42

Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, pp. 4 and 8.

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mathematical, we realize t ha t and wh y we must look for the synthesis of mathematics and psychology, which Helmholtz tried to achieve both as a philosopher and as a mathematician, in some other direction. The direct road which he attempted to travel cannot lead to the goal, for there cannot possibly obtain an immediate correspondence between psychological and mathematical »facts«. But we might approach our goal in an indirect way, with the help of a mediating principle of a higher order. Instead of following in the footsteps of geometrical empiricism, such as to search for the »facts which lie at the basis of geometry«,43 we may raise the question whether there are any concepts and principles that are, although in different ways and different degrees of distinctness, necessary conditions for both the constitution of the perceptual world and the construction of the universe of geometrical thought. It seems to me that the concept of group and the concept of invariance are such principles. Perhaps we can, by their instrumentality, bring certain mathematical and psychological problems under a common denominator – although in quite a different way than Helmholtz attempted to achieve such a synthesis. The very phenomenon of perceptual co n s ta nc y shows clearly that the process of perception is not a process of mere r epr oduc t io n . The theory of tabula rasa is just as inadequate to account for »reflection« as it is to account for pure »sensation«. We cannot compare perception to the reception of light by a photographic plate44 and the development of an image that is exclusively determined by the light falling on the plate. Only in rare, exceptional cases, under the artificial conditions of »reduction«, does this ever happen. There seems to be no stage, however »primitive«, of perception, at which perception constantly reacts to the »same« stimulus by producing the »same« sensation. The experiments performed by Wolfgang Köhler, Burkamp, Katz, and others on animals have revealed the existence of constancy of size or color even within animal perception.45 This shows 43 [Vgl. Bernhard Riemann, Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen, neu hrsg. u. erl. v. Hermann Weyl, Berlin 1919.] 44 In modern psychology of perception this kind of comparison has been continued and developed in Bertrand Russell’s »The Analysis of Mind«, London/ New York 1921 (Library of Philosophy), esp. pp. 99 ff. I cannot here go into Russell’s views, but refer to my detailed criticism: Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik und Denkpsychologie, in: Jahrbücher der Philosophie. Eine kritische Übersicht der Philosophie der Gegenwart (3. annual vol), ed. in connection with numerous colleagues by Willy Moog, Berlin 1927, pp. 31–92: pp. 52 ff. [ECW 17, S. 13–81: S. 35 ff.]. 45 Wolfgang Köhler, Aus der Anthropoidenstation auf Teneriffa, Vol. II: Optische Untersuchungen am Schimpansen und am Haushuhn, Berlin 1915

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that wherever there is an opposition and separation between an »ego« and the »world«, between »subject« and »object«, perception is something altogether different from mere reflection of the »external« by the »internal«. Perception is not a process of reflection or reproduction at all. | It is a process of objectification, the characteristic nature and tendency of which finds expression in the formation of invariants. It is within this process that the distinction between »reality« and »appearance« emerges. We construct the »true« color out of the appearances due to the conditions, of illumination, we construct the »true« size of the object out of the apparent size of the retinal image. This rudimentary tendency toward »objectification« reappears in conceptual, in particular mathematical, thought, where it is developed far beyond its primitive stage. When we determine the size of an object by meas u r em en t , it is owing to such »objectification« that we succeed in transcending the accidental limits of our bodily organization. It enables that elimination of »anthropomorphic elements« which is, according to Planck, the proper task of scientific natural knowledge. To geometrical invariants have to be added physical and chemical constants. It is in these terms that we formulate the »existence« of physical objects, the objective properties of things. Also Helmholtz concerned himself with this problem of the relation between different stages of objectification, in his essay »On the Origin and Meaning of Geometrical Axioms«. In this essay he endeavors to find out how the various measuring processes that enter into perception are related to geometrical measurement. »[When we perform] measur[ements], we [do but] employ the best and [most reliable] means we know of [in order] to determine, what we [habitually determine by forming an estimate] by sight[,] touch[,] or [steps. In these habitual measurements it is] our own body with its organs [which] is the [measuring] instrument we carry [around with us] in space. Now it is [our] hand[s, then our] leg[s, which] serve[s as] a compass, or [our] eye[s] turning in all direction[s, are] our theodolite for measuring arcs and angles in the visual field.«46 Geometrical concepts presuppose such measurements (Abhandlungen der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Year 1915, Physikalisch-Mathematische Klasse, No. 3); David Katz/Géza Révész, Experimentelle Studien zur vergleichenden Psychologie (Versuche mit Hühnern), in: Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie 18 (1921), pp. 307–320; Wilhelm Burkamp, Versuche über das Farbenwiedererkennen der Fische, in: Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, Sect. 2: Zeitschrift für Sinnesphysiologie 55 (1923), pp. 133–170. Cf. the final summary in Katz, Der Aufbau der Farbwelt, pp. 418 ff. 46 Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Origin and Significance of Geometrical

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by means of our body and sense organs; but they render them exact and objectively valid. Hering, too, saw himself confronted with the problem of objectification in the process of perception. He gives not only a psychological description and physiological explanation of the phenomena of constancy, but moreover undertakes to determine their teleological significance, the function they perform in our knowledge of the external world. »What matters in the visual process is not the perception of the radiations as such, but the perception of the external objects, mediated by these radiations; it is not the function of the eye to inform us about the intensity or quality of the light that is reflected from external objects, but to inform us about those very objects.« The eye could not fulfill this function unless it possessed the capacity of discriminating within the visual experience between »illumination« and »that which is illuminated«.47 Hering speaks | here the language of the scientist, i.e., of realism. He assumes the empirical reality of the objects about which our senses have to inform us. But a critical analysis of knowledge must go farther. Such an analysis reveals that the »possibility of the object« depends upon the formation of certain invariants in the flux of sense impressions, no matter whether these be invariants of perception or of geometrical thought, or of physical theory. The p o sitin g of something endowed with objective existence and nature depends on the formation of constants of the kinds mentioned. It is, then, inadequate to describe perception as the mere mirroring in consciousness of the objective conditions of things. The truth is that the search fo r co n s t an cy, the tendency toward certain invariants, constitutes a characteristic feature and immanent function of perception. This function is as much a condition of perception of objective existence as it is a condition of objective knowledge.

IV The group-theoretical interpretation of the fundaments of geometry is, from the standpoint of pure logic, of great importance, since it enables us to state the problem of the »universality« of mathematical Axioms, in: Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects. Second Series, transl. by Edmund Atkinson, London et al. 1908, pp. 27–71: p. 56. 47 Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, pp. 13 ff. [Zitat S. 13: »Nicht um ein Schauen der Strahlungen als solcher handelt es sich beim Sehen, sondern um das durch diese Strahlungen vermittelte Schauen der Außendinge; das Auge hat uns nicht über die jeweilige Intensität oder Qualität des von den Außendingen kommenden Lichtes, sondern über diese Dinge selbst zu unterrichten.«].

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concepts in simple and precise form and thus to disentangle it from the difficulties and ambiguities with which it is beset in its usual formulation. Since the times of the great controversies about the status of universals in the Middle Ages, logic and psychology have always been troubled with these ambiguities. Berkeley tried to cut the Gordian knot. He wanted to solve the problem by showing that it was an artificial pseudo-problem. If geometry were to deal with »abstract ideas«, it could yield no truth and no scientific knowledge of objective validity. An »abstract idea« is devoid of any real content to be known. It is an ens imaginarium, a mere fiction. A »universal triangle« would have to be represented as being at once right-angled, acute-angled, and obtuse-angled, and as having all at once an indefinite number of sides of different length, of possible positions in space, etc. Upon reflection on the nature of such a representation and realization of its psychological conditions, the inner contradiction involved in these conditions must spring into our eyes. The »abstract idea« thus appears once and for all as a »squared circle«; it is a verbal construct devoid of concrete reference and incapable of psychological realization. The fallacy of this argument lies in an obvious petitio principii. The principle which Berkeley takes for granted without proof is the principle of sensationistic psychology, according to which there is but one mode of psychological realization, viz., immediate »impressions« or representative images derived from those impressions as their »copies«. If, by virtue of a psychological axiom, the idea is defined as a »copy of sense impressions«, | the notion of a g e ne r a l i de a does, of course, involve a palpable absurdity. Yet, we have but to abandon this axiom, and the problem to be solved, as well as its solution, will assume an altogether different form. Kant replaces the sensationistic deduction of the concept by a »transcendental« deduction, showing that the concept cannot be represented in the form of an image, but only in the form of a rule. The rule possesses that generality to which the image cannot possibly attain. This is the conclusion which Kant reaches in the chapter on the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, and by means of which he tries to avoid Berkeley’s aporiae.48 Concepts are psychologically actualized by »schemata«, not by images. In fact, »no image could ever be adequate to the concept of a triangle in general. It would never attain that universality of the 48 In my »Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit«, Vol. II, Berlin 31922, pp. 713 ff. [ECW 3, S. 596 ff.], I tried to show that the chapter on the Schematism is closely related, both logically and historically, to Berkeley’s problem of the nature of concepts.

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concept which renders it valid for all triangles, whether right-angled, obtuse-angled, or acute-angled; it would always be limited to a part only of this sphere. The schema of the triangle can exist nowhere but in thought and signifies a rule of synthesis of the imagination, in respect to its figures in space.« The same conclusion holds true not only of the pure concepts of geometry but also of our empirical concepts. If we want to look upon the latter as genuine »concepts«, i.e., as endowed with objective validity, we cannot put them together out of mere impressions and think of them as aggregates of impressions. It is not possible to realize the thought of a perceptual object – the intended »object« of perception – in perceptual consciousness by a mere image; it cannot be represented except by a rule: »The concept ›dog‹, for instance, signifies a rule according to which my imagination can delineate the figure of a four-footed animal in a general manner, without limitation to any single determinate figure such as experience, or any possible image that I can represent in concreto, actually presents.«49 Our foregoing reflections on the concept of g r oup permit us to define more precisely what is involved in, and meant by, that »rule« which renders both geometrical and perceptual concepts universal. The rule may, in simple and exact terms, be defined as that group of transformations with regard to which the variation of the particular image is considered. We have seen above that this conception operates as the constitutive principle in the construction of the universe of mathematical concepts. If, for the definition of the triangle, the square, the ellipse, the parabola, etc., the geometrician had to depend upon constructing these figures from varying images of triangles, squares, etc., and upon having all the elements of these images blend with each other, he would, indeed, be confronted with a problem that is | logically impossible and psychologically insoluble. But it is quite a dif49 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. by Albert Görland (Werke, in connection with Hermann Cohen and others ed. by Ernst Cassirer, Vol. III), Berlin 1913, p. 143 (B 180) [»Dem Begriffe von einem Triangel überhaupt würde gar kein Bild desselben jemals adäquat sein. Denn es würde die Allgemeinheit des Begriffs nicht erreichen, welche macht, daß dieser für alle, recht- oder schiefwinklichte etc. gilt, sondern immer nur auf einen Teil dieser Sphäre eingeschränkt sein. Das Schema des Triangels kann niemals anderswo als in Gedanken existieren und bedeutet eine Regel der Synthesis der Einbildungskraft in Ansehung reiner Gestalten im Raume. […] Der Begriff vom Hunde bedeutet eine Regel, nach welcher meine Einbildungskraft die Gestalt eines gewissen vierfüßigen Tieres allgemein verzeichnen kann, ohne auf irgendeine einzige besondere Gestalt, die mir die Erfahrung darbietet, oder auch ein jedes mögliche Bild, was ich in concreto darstellen kann, eingeschränkt zu sein.«].

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ferent matter to start from the intuition of a given concrete figure and at the same time to conceive in the latter the totality of possible transformations to which it may be subjected according to certain laws of transformation. In Euclid’s classical geometry these laws were subject to some limitation in so far as they, though being conceived with perfect generality, had to satisfy the additional postulate that every phase of the process of transformation must be open to intuitive inspection. Within Euclidean geometry, a »triangle« is conceived of as a pure geometrical »essence«, and this essence is regarded as invariant with respect to that »principal group« of spatial transformations to which Euclidean geometry refers, viz., displacements, transformations by similarity. But it must always be possible to exhibit any particular figure, chosen from this infinite class, as a concrete and intuitively representable object. Greek mathematics could not dispense with this requirement which is rooted in a fundamental principle of Greek philosophy, the principle of the correlatedness of »logos« and »eidos«. It is, however, characteristic of the modern development of mathematics that this bond between »logos« and »eidos«, which was indissoluble for Greek thought, has been loosened more and more, to be, in the end, completely broken. Since Descartes’ discovery of analytic geometry, geometrical concepts have assumed an algebraic, and hence analytic, character.50 Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, a strong reaction against this »arithmetization« of geometry has set in. The founders of projective geometry offer strong resistance to the dissolution of space into number; they want to maintain the conceptual generality of the geometrical without sacrificing its proper meaning and autonomy. Poncelet was the first one to give a precise statement of this requirement. His principle of continuity, which is the basis of his method of treating geometrical problems, amounts to a methodological postulate rather than a constitutive axiom. His procedure is to start from the consideration of certain figures and to vary these figures according to certain rules while preserving certain fundamental relations. The second step is to embrace the totality of these variations with a single glance and to subject this totality, as a geometrical construction, to investigation.51 In order to lay down and fulfill this 50 With regard to this change, I refer especially to the systematic and historic exposition in the works of Pierre Boutroux, L’idéal scientifique des mathématiciens. Dans l’antiquité et dans les temps modernes, Paris 1920 (Nouvelle collection scientifique), and idem, Les principes de l’analyse mathématique. Exposé historique et critique, 2 vols., Paris 1914 and 1919. 51 Cf. Jean Victor Poncelet, Traité des propriétés projectives des figures; ouvrage utile a ceux qui s’occupent des applications de la géométrie descriptive et

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postulate, Poncelet had to break with the traditional approach to geometrical problems. He had to emancipate geometrical thought from all connection with »elements« that could be given in intuition, and to consider the r el a | t io n s between these elements as the proper and only subject matter of geometrical knowledge. Thus the construction of geometrical concepts acquired a new kind of freedom, as compared with the way geometry was handled by the ancients. In Poncelet’s work, this freedom manifests itself especially in the introduction of the imaginary and the use made of it in the construction of projective geometry. This process has come to its logical conclusion and systematic completion in the development of modern group theory. Geometrical figures are no longer regarded as fundamental, as date of perception or immediate intuition. The »nature« or »essence« of a figure is defined in terms of the operations which may be said to generate the figure. The operations in question are, in turn, subject to certain group conditions. Lie and Klein have shown that the characteristic properties of an aggregate are determined only by the group and not by the elements out of which the aggregate is constructed.52 The figures that belong to a given group constitute a unity, no matter whether and how they be representable in an intuitive way. For instance, it is characteristic of the »dualistic transformations«, which play an important role in projective geometry, that they allow figures of altogether different kinds to be transformed into one another. A theorem about points and lines is not modified, if, according to the principle of duality, the words »point« and »line« are mutually interchanged. For modern geometry, two figures related by duality are no longer different but identical. A further novelty is represented by the notion of imaginary transformations; the reason for their being introduced does not concern the group of projective and dualistic transformations, but algebraic operations.53 It is hence obvious that mathematical theories have developed in spite of the limits within which a certain psychological theory of the concept tried to confine them. Mathematical theory ascended higher and higher in order to look farther and farther. Again and again it ventured the Icarian flight which carried it into the realm of mere »abstraction« beyond whatever may be given and represented in intuition. It must be admitted that Berkeley foresaw this development. His admod’opérations géométriques sur le terrain (Introduction), Paris 1822, pp. XVII– XLVI. 52 Cf. Maurer/Burkhardt, Kontinuierliche Transformationsgruppen, pp. 401 ff. 53 Cf. Klein, Vergleichende Betrachtungen, pp. 465 ff.

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nitions against it are understandable if one considers his basic psychological and epistemological convictions. What he violently attacked in »The Analyst« was the new analytic spirit which he saw arising in Leibniz’ infinitesimal calculus and Newton’s method of fluxions. Did Berkeley’s doctrine prove adequate even within its proper domain, viz., the psychology of perception? Is his doctrine acceptable, if not for the characterization of mathematical concepts, for the description of | the phenomena of pure »perception«? For a long time it seemed as though this question had to be answered in the affirmative. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the psychology of perception was almost completely dominated by the fundamental ideas of Berkeley and Hume. Empirical psychologists hardly ever expressed any doubt as to the adequacy of the concepts of »sensation« and »associative connection« for the theoretical formulation and solution of all problems that concern the universe of immediate perception. The situation was radically changed when Ehrenfels introduced the concept of »formqualities« (Gestaltqualitäten) in his well-known essay. He illustrates this concept especially by melodies and the similarity of certain optical figures. »[…] it is characteristic of phenomenal forms (phänomenale Gestalten) that their specific properties remain unchanged when the absolute data upon which they rest undergo certain modifications. Thus a melody is not substantially altered when all of its notes are subjected to the same relative displacement; an optical spatial figure remains approximately the same when it is presented in a different or on a different scale, but in the same proportions.« It is in these terms that the phenomenon dealt with by Ehrenfels was later formulated by Wolfgang Köhler.54 However, this phenomenon is related to a much more general problem, a problem of abstract mathematics. Indeed, what else is that »identity« of the perceptual form but what, in a much higher degree of precision, we found to subsist in the domain of geometrical concepts? What we find in both cases are invariances with respect to variations undergone by the primitive elements out of which a form is constructed. The peculiar kind of »identity« that is 54 Wolfgang Köhler, Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand. Eine naturphilosophische Untersuchung, Brunswik 1920, p. 37 [»[…] ist es für phänomenale Gestalten charakteristisch, daß sie in ihren spezifischen Eigenschaften erhalten bleiben, wenn die absoluten Gegebenheiten, auf denen sie beruhen, Verschiebungen bestimmter Art erfahren. So wird eine Melodie sich nicht wesentlich ändern, deren sämtliche Töne gleicher relativer Verschiebung unterworfen werden, eine optische Raumgestalt angenähert sich gleich bleiben, wenn sie an anderem Orte und in ganz anderem Maßstab, aber in gleichen Proportionen vorliegt.«].

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attributed to apparently altogether heterogeneous figures in virtue of their being transformable into one another by means of certain operations defining a group, is thus seen to exist also in the domain of perception. This identity permits us not only to single out elements but also to grasp »structures« in perception. To the mathematical concept of »transformability« there corresponds, in the domain of perception, the concept of »transposability«. The theory of the latter concept has been worked out step by step and its development has gone through various stages.55 Whatever were the terms in which this theory was formulated, it appeared again and again that even for the very description of the novel phenomenon with which the theory of perception has confronted us it is necessary to abandon the pattern of sensation and association, laid down by the classics of sensationalism. Gestalt psychology made the attempt to | give such a description on an altogether new basis. By the acceptance of »form« as a primitive concept, psychological theory has freed it from the character of contingency which it possessed for its first founders. The interpretation of perception as a mere mosaic of sensations, a »bundle« of simple sense impressions has proved untenable. It has been laid down as a general principle of psychological research that the soul and the psychophysical organism of stimuli-reception are not »receptors« like mirrors or cameras, i.e., receive separate »stimuli« and combine them into comprehensive wholes that have the character of mere aggregates. If perception is to be compared to an apparatus at all, the latter must be such as to be capable of »grasping intrinsic necessities.«56 Such intrinsic necessities are encountered everywhere. It is only with reference to such »intrinsic necessity« that the »transformation« to which we subject a given form is well defined, inasmuch as the transformation is not arbitrary and executed at random but proceeds in accordance with some rule that can be formulated in general terms. In the domain of mathematics this state of affairs manifests itself in the impossibility of searching for invariant properties of a figure except with reference to a group. As long as there existed but one form of geometry, i.e., as long as Euclidean geometry was considered as the geometry κατ’ %ξοχ#ν this fact was somehow concealed. It was possible to assume implicitly the prin55 This development has been surveyed historically and systematically by Egon Brunswik in his essay »Prinzipienfragen der Gestalttheorie«, in: Beiträge zur Problemgeschichte der Psychologie. Festschrift zu Karl Bühler’s 50. Geburtstag, Jena 1929, pp. 78–149. 56 Cf. Max Wertheimer, Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt. II, in: Psychologische Forschung 3 (1923), pp. 301–350: p. 349 note [»Erfassen innerer Notwendigkeiten«].

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cipal group of spatial transformations that lies at the basis of Euclidean geometry. With the advent of non-Euclidean geometries, however, it became indispensable to have a complete and systematic survey of the different »geometries«, i.e., the different theories of invariancy that result from the choice of certain groups of transformation. This is the task which Felix Klein set to himself and which he brought to a certain logical fulfillment in his »Vergleichende Untersuchungen ueber neuere geometrische Forschungen«. Thus, however, we seem again to be led to a point where the analogy between the invariants of perception and those of geometry disappears. That form of logical systematization which is both possible and necessary in the domain of geometrical thought is once and for all inaccessible to perception. Here we have to take the phenomenal facts as they present themselves in experience; we cannot go beyond the simple ascertainment of these facts. It is but empirical observation that can tell us in which domains of sense perception there exist phenomena of constancy and how far their influence extends. Here no a priori judgment is possible. However, it is important not to confuse the empirical discovery of facts with their empiricistic explanation. As far as I can see, the latter has been increasingly abandoned by modern psychological theories. Katz, in his first investiga | tions into the »phenomenal aspect of color«, ascribed to the »experience of the individual« some influence on the production of the phenomenon of constancy, but later on he minimized the importance of this factor.57 The fact, moreover, that the phenomena in question extend far down into the animal realm and seem to appear at very primitive stages of evolution, does not favor their explanation in terms of the experience of the individual. »What we encounter in our own perceptions, as for instance constancy of visual appearances through variations of illumination, or constancy of size of seen objects through variations of distance,« writes Bühler, »is, according to all that we know about it, no condition restricted to human experience and only acquired by man, but a common property of at least the whole realm of vertebrates.«58 This seems to suggest a biological deduction and explanation, based 57 Cf. the preface to the second edition of Katz’ work and his discussion with Gelb: Der Aufbau der Farbwelt, pp. X ff. and 453 ff. 58 Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie, pp. 81 f. [»Was wir in unseren eigenen Wahrnehmungen z. B. als Konstanz der Sehdinge im Beleuchtungswechsel oder als Größenkonstanz der Sehdinge im Entfernungswechsel vorfinden, ist nach allem, was wir darüber wissen, keine auf das menschliche Erleben eingeschränkte, vom Menschen neu erworbene, Verfassung, sondern ein Gemeinbesitz zum mindesten des ganzen Wirbeltierstammes.«].

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on the theory of »Mneme«, which Richard Semon had introduced into biology. Even Hering was not far from such an interpretation; he explicitly pointed to memory as a general function which we have to take account of in all our explanations of biological phenomena.59 Why not interpret the phenomena of constancy as products of experience as far as the experience of the species is concerned? Could not they be conceived as accumulations and accretions of a manifold of particular impressions, inscribed in memory in the form of certain »engrammata«, to use Semon’s expression, and transmitted to the descendants? To be sure, this would not be an empirical explanation in the strict sense of the term. Obviously the function ascribed to memory is not an ascertained fact but a hypothetical inference. The latter is all the more objectionable as it involves us in all the difficulties that beset the theory of »hereditary transmission of acquired characters‚«60 one of the most difficult and most controversial problems of modern biology. The more one studies the phenomenon of perceptual constancy, the more its explanation by »experience« proves unsatisfactory, in so far, at least, as by experience is meant a juxtaposition of particular items, an accumulation of mere accidents. In order to be able to develop at all, Gestalt psychology had to abandon this conception of experience. It replaced it by the concept of original »Gestalt dispositions«, tendencies toward something like »good shape« and concrete »laws of organization«.61 We have instances of such »good shapes«, to which individual impressions are oriented, in those sense data which are grasped and retained in perception as the »true size« or as the »true color« | of an object. By their reference to such »good« points, the particular impressions receive a new kind of determination. They lose, so to speak, their atomicity, their uniqueness as mere particular items; they unite into groups and totals. As far as the perception of colors is concerned, Helmholtz stressed our capacity of correcting colors that are presented in unusual illumination; we »see« these colors as though they appeared under normal conditions of illumination. Impressions received by peripheral parts of the retina are translated into those that would result from direct perception of the 59 Cf. Ewald Hering’s work: Über das Gedächtniss als eine allgemeine Function der organisirten Materie. Vortrag, gehalten in der feierlichen Sitzung der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften am 30. Mai 1870, Vienna 21876. 60 [Vgl. John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, The Hereditary Transmission of Acquired Characters, in: Nature. A Weekly Journal of Science 129 (1932), S. 817– 819 u. 856–858.] 61 Cf., e.g., Max Wertheimer, Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt. I. Prinzipielle Bemerkungen, in: Psychologische Forschung 1 (1922), pp. 47–58: p. 53.

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object by means of the center of the retina. It is upon such translations and transformations that the existence of our »objective« intuitions depends. Reference to t y p ical configurations proves to be one of the essential conditions of the process of spatial objectification. As William James puts it in his felicitous manner: »[…] in our dealings with objects we always do pick out one of the visual images they yield, to constitute the real form or size.«62 James expressed the same idea in speaking of »The Choice of the Visual Reality.«63 In perception we are, according to him, constantly making selections from among the vast manifold of utterly heterogeneous optical impressions that strike our sense organs. These impressions differ in their value for the construction of our representation of the objective world. For this construction we give preference to a certain clas s of phenomena which hence assume a privileged position. These phenomena – for example, the spatial forms that appear in a vision by means of the central area of the retina – receive a typical value. They become centers of reference and these centers define a kind of norm, a standard of measurement which determines the objective meaning of every impression. It makes a difference whether we experience a certain phenomenon of light in this or that »mode of appearance«. It is not the same thing to see a light falling on an object as luminosity as it is to see this light as color; nor is it the same thing to perceive some darkness on the object as a shadow as it is to perceive it as a spot. When we pass from one mode of perception to the other, we experience that characteristic shift which Hering describes in his well-known »shadow-experiment«.64 One and the same phenomenon William James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, London 1902, p. 238. [A. a. O., S. 237.] 64 Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, p. 8: »If I hang up a scrap of paper by a silk thread so that by means of a fittingly placed small incandescent lamp it throws a faint shadow on my paper, I see the shadow as something dark which happens to be on the white paper. But when I draw a brand black line around that shadow such as to cover the penumbra completely, I see a grey spot inside of the black contour, just as though the white paper were here colored grey by drawing ink, or as though a grey paper with a black margin were glued on the white paper.« [»Hänge ich z. B. an einen Coconfaden ein Papierschnitzel so auf, dass es mittels einer passend angebrachten kleinen Glühlampe einen schwachen Schatten auf mein Schreibpapier wirft, so sehe ich den Schatten als ein zufällig auf dem Weiß liegendes Dunkel. Ziehe ich aber um den Kernschatten einen breiten schwarzen Strich, der den Halbschatten vollkommen deckt, so sehe ich innerhalb des schwarzen Umrisses eine graue Stelle genau so, wie wenn hier das weiße Papier mit Tusche grau gefärbt oder ein Stück grauen Papiers mit schwarzem Rande auf das weiße Papier geklebt wäre.«]. 62 63

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appears differently as far as its objective significance is concerned. The shadow is taken | as a fickle, transient phenomenon that depends upon external circumstances, whereas the spot is considered as stable and somehow connected with the »substance« of the seen object. Without discrimination between the accidental and the substantial, the transitory and the permanent, there would be no constitution of an objective reality. This process, unceasingly operative in perception and, so to speak, expressing the inner dynamics of the latter, seems to have come to final perfection, when we go beyond perception to enter into the domain of pure thought. For the logical advantage and peculiar privilege of the pure concept seems to consist in the replacement of fluctuating perception by something precise and exactly determined. The pure concept does not lose itself in the flux of appearances; it tends from »becoming« toward »being«, from dynamics toward statics. In this achievement philosophers have ever seen the genuine meaning and value of geometry. When Plato regards geometry as the prerequisite to philosophical knowledge, it is because geometry alone renders accessible the realm of things eternal; »το2 γ:ρ !ε @ντος j γεωμετρικê γν3σς %στιν.«65 Can there be degrees or levels of objective knowledge in this realm of eternal being, or does not rather knowledge attain here an absolute maximum? Ancient geometry cannot but answer in the affirmative to this question. For ancient geometry, in the classical form it received from Euclid, there was such a maximum, a non plus ultra. But modern group theory thinking has brought about a remarkable change in this matter. Group theory is far from challenging the truth of Euclidean metrical geometry, but it does challenge its claim to definitiveness. Each geometry is considered as a theory of invariants of a certain group; the groups themselves may be classified in the order of increasing generality. The »principal group« of transformations which underlies Euclidean geometry permits us to establish a number of properties that are invariant with respect to the transformations in question. But when we pass from this »principal group« to another, by including, for example, affinitive and projective transformations, all that we had established thus far and which, from the point of view of Euclidean geometry, looked like a definitive result and a consolidated achievement, becomes fluctuating again. With every extension of the principal group, some of the properties that we had taken for invariant are lost. We come to other properties that may be hierar65 [Platon, Politeia 527 B. Verifiziert nach: Opera omnia uno volumine comprehensa, hrsg. v. Gottfried Stallbaum, Leipzig/London 1899.]

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chically arranged. Many differences that are considered as essential within ordinary metrical geometry, may now prove »accidental«. With reference to the new group-principle they appear as »unessential« modifications. Thus, as mentioned already, when we pass from ordinary to affinitive geometry, the difference between circle and ellipse vanishes, both being taken as o n e figure. When we pass to projective geometry, we meet still with a further restriction upon what may be considered as an »essential« | geometrical property. Now even the difference between the circle and all other conics must be abandoned. In projective geometry there is but one single conic; for any two conics are transformable into a circle and hence also into each other. From this point of view, the difference between ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola is no longer absolute; it concerns but the accidental position with respect to some line considered as »infinite«. In the »geometry of reciprocal radii«, for instance, the concepts of a line or a plane, which are fundamental for Euclidean geometry, have no more independent meaning; the line is subordinated to the circle, the plane to the sphere as special cases.66 »The progressive separation of affinitive and projective geometry from metrical geometry,« thus Klein comments upon this procedure, »may be compared to the procedure of the chemist who, by applying more and more powerful decomposers, isolates more and more valuable elements from a substance; our decomposers are first the affinitive, then the projective transformation.«67 What is separated out by the latter kind of transformations is more »valuable« in so far as it proves invariant with respect to a wider group of possible changes. In affinitive and projective geometries, parallel and central projection is superadded to the principal group of transformations admitted in Euclidean geometry. »Analysis situs« leads us still farther in this direction. Considered from the modern point of view, »analysis situs« is the most general kind of geometry, the theory of purely topological relations, entirely independent of metrical relations. In Klein’s phrase, it »results, so to speak, from the most powerful corrosion;« it considers the »totality of properties that are invariant with respect to all possible one-to-one continuous transformations.«68 From the 66 As to details I refer to Klein, Elementarmathematik, pp. 103 ff. and 140 ff. 67 [A. a. O., S. 142: »Die schrittweise Aussonderung der affinen und projektiven Geometrie aus der metrischen können wir dem Vorgehen des Chemikers vergleichen, der aus einem Stoff durch Anwendung immer stärkerer Zersetzungsmittel immer wertvollere Bestandteile isoliert; unsere Zersetzungsmittel sind erst die affinen, dann die projektiven Transformationen.«] 68 [Ebd.: »[…] die gewissermaßen durch das schärfste Ätzungsmittel gewonnen

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point of view of modern geometrical systematization, geometrical judgments, however »true« in themselves, are nevertheless not all of them equally »essential« and necessary. Modern geometry endeavors to attain progressively to more and more fundamental strata of spatial determination. The depth of these strata depends upon the comprehensiveness of the concept of group; it is proportional to the strictness of the conditions that must be satisfied by the invariance that is a universal postulate with respect to geometrical entities. Thus the objective truth and structure of space cannot be apprehended at a single glance, but have to be p r o g r es s iv ely discovered and established. If geometrical thought is to achieve this discovery, the conceptual means that it employs must become more and more universal. There is no direct analogy between these achievements of mathematical thought and those of perception. There is no direct comparison between them possible, since no common measure applies to them. Helmholtz | made the attempt to find such a common measure. For this purpose, he intellectualizes, as it were, perception by interpreting it in terms of »unconscious inference«. But Helmholtz’ attempt must be judged unsuccessful in the face of the data of experience. Nevertheless, we must not conclude that no me di a ti on at all can obtain between these two levels. In spite of their specific differences they belong to the same g en u s , in so far as they share the f un ctio n of objective knowledge. It is this common function whence their character derives. Without the »reference of ideas to an object«, there is no perception. And even within perception we can discriminate different levels of construction. The intentional reference to an object is not, to the extent to which it is realizable at all in perception, fulfilled all at once, but gradually only. According to their positions and meaning within this series, different perceptions possess more or less »depth«.69 Different perceptions refer not only to the object in general, but, according to the degree of generality of the invariants that are seized upon under varying conditions of observation, they penetrate, so to speak, to objective strata of different depths. In this sense, the system of fundamental concepts with which Euclidean geometry presents us, has, as it were, an upward and a downward reference. If we proceed in the upward direction we come to the all-comprehensive wird […] Gesamtheit der Eigenschaften, die allen eineindeutigen, nur durchaus stetigen Transformationen gegenüber erhalten bleiben […]«.] 69 As to the concept of »perceptual depth« (Wahrnehmungstiefe: Bühler) and the »criteria of perceptual depth«, cf. Brunswik, Wahrnehmung und Gegenstandswelt, pp. 48 ff. and 101 ff.

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geometrical systematization achieved by group theory; if we proceed in the downward direction, we encounter those »schemata« that are present already in perception and immediate intuition. As to the historical aspect of our problem, the foregoing reflections lead us back to a question which we already touched upon. Is there any logical connection between the subject of our discussion and the question discussed by Kant in the chapter on the Schematism, in his »Critique of Pure Reason«? To be sure, the two problems cannot really be identified with each other, since they belong, methodologically speaking, to different dimensions. Kant’s theory has a strictly »transcendental« orientation, and this remains true even when it concerns itself with psychological problems. For Kant, the schemata belong to the »transcendental doctrine of judgment«; in discussing them, he anticipates problems that find their systematic discussion and clarification only in the »Critique of Judgment«. The fact, however, that there is nonetheless a point of contact between Kant and modern psychology has been noted and commented upon by investigators interested in the philosophical foundations of a theory of perceptual constancy. As Bühler writes in his »Sprachtheorie«, »the concept of factors of constancy in the face of variations of both external and internal conditions of perception is the realization, in modern form, of that which in principle […] was known to | Kant, the analyst, and which he stated in terms of mediating, ordering schemata.«70 What, then, is this relation, and which is its systematic foundation? Kant called the schematism »[…] an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature will hardly ever allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze.« Has modern psychology in any way advanced toward a disclosure of this »concealed art«, and in which direction is its contribution toward such a disclosure to be sought? We may venture to answer this question, reminding ourselves of Kant’s characterization of the schemata as »monogrammata of pure imagination.« »[…] the image is a product of the empirical faculty of productive imagination, the schema of sensible concepts […] is a product and, as it were, a monogram, of pure a priori imagination, through which, and in accordance with which, images themselves first become possible. These images can be connected with the concept only by means of 70 Karl Bühler, Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache, Jena 1934, p. 252 [»Die Erkenntnis der Konstanzmomente im Wechsel der äußeren und inneren Wahrnehmungsumstände ist in modernem Gewande eine Erfüllung dessen, was dem Analytiker Kant im Prinzip […] einsichtig war und wofür er die Idee vermittelnder, ordnender Schemata brauchte.«].

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the schema to which they belong. In themselves they are never completely at one with the concept.«71 The schemata are m on o grammata because they express an original function of unification. The »images« which we receive from objects, the »impressions« which sensationalism tried to reduce perception to, exhibit no such unity. Each and every one of these images possesses a particularity of its own: they are and remain discrete as far as their contents are concerned. But the analysis of perception discloses a formal factor which supersedes this particularity and disparity. Perception unifies and, as it were, concentrates the manifold of particular images with which we are supplied at every moment. Perception fits this stream of images into definite channels. It cannot be reduced to a mere manifold of impressions, the »polygrammata« of sensibility, in any more satisfactory manner than to a mere reproductive function in terms of »engrammata« of memory. Beyond these »polygrammata« and »engrammata« there appears a specific function of perception: the »monogram of imagination«. Each invariant of perception is in fact such a »monogram«, a schema toward which the particular sense experiences are orientated and with reference to which they are interpreted. Thus we are provided with an answer to a further question which has very often presented difficulties to historians of philosophy and psychology. In a well-known passage Kant writes: »Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself. This is due partly to the fact that that faculty has been limited to reproduction, partly to the belief that the senses not only supply impressions but also combine them so as to generate images of objects. For that purpose something more than the mere receptivity of impressions is undoubtedly | required, namely, a function for the synthesis of them.«72 It has been said by historians of psy71 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 144 (B 180 f.) [»[…] eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele, deren wahre Handgriffe wir der Natur schwerlich jemals abraten und sie unverdeckt vor Augen legen werden. […] das Bild ist ein Produkt des empirischen Vermögens der produktiven Einbildungskraft, das Schema sinnlicher Begriffe […] ein Produkt und gleichsam ein Monogramm der reinen Einbildungskraft a priori, wodurch und wornach die Bilder allererst möglich werden, die aber mit dem Begriffe nur immer vermittelst des Schema, welches sie bezeichnen, verknüpft werden müssen und an sich demselben nicht völlig kongruieren.«]. 72 Ibid., p. 623 note (A 120 note) [»Daß die Einbildungskraft ein notwendiges Ingredienz der Wahrnehmung selbst sei, daran hat wohl noch kein Psychologe gedacht. Das kommt daher, weil man dieses Vermögen teils nur auf Reproduktionen einschränkte, teils weil man glaubte, die Sinne lieferten uns nicht allein Eindrücke, sondern setzten solche auch sogar zusammen und brächten Bilder der

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chology that Kant has here been led into a »strange historical error.«73 Indeed, does not the whole history of psychology show that just the opposite is the case, viz., that the role of »imagination« has never been overlooked nor underrated? Attention is drawn to this role as early as in the first systematic foundations of psychology. In fact, in Aristotle’s περ cyx0w the concurrence of α σhqiw, μν#μη, and famtaqα in the construction of the perceptual world is maintained with full precision. This concurrence is most emphatically stressed by modern rediscoverers and renewers of Aristotelian psychology: Campanella, Giordano Bruno, and Vives developed theories of imagination of their own. In the eighteenth century, Tetens, whose psychological views bear a remarkable similarity to Kant’s, has pointed again and again to the significance of »Dichtungsvermögen«.74 What, then, is Kant’s discovery? Which is that factor which, according to Kant, »psychologists have hitherto failed to realize«? To answer this question we must pay attention to the point emphasized by Kant himself in the quoted passage. What is important for Kant is not that the imagination intervenes in some way or other in the production of perceptual images, but the fact that images of o b jects are formed by the imagination and can be formed only in this manner. The emphasis is not on the problem of psychological genesis but on that of objective validity. In this respect, Kant treads a new path, breaking with the whole tradition of psychological empiricism. In Hume’s theory, imagination occupies a central position. It is imagination on which rests our belief in the regularity of Nature, the connection between cause and effect‚ the continued existence of things beyond the moment of present actual perception. Hume never questioned this »belief« nor its paramount importance. He is a skeptic only in so far as he denies the objective v a l i di ty of such a belief. To Hume, the imagination is a source, not of knowledge, but of error. He sees the effects of imagination, but the latter is and remains to him altogether irrational. »I cannot conceive,« he writes in the »Treatise of Gegenstände zu Wege, wozu ohne Zweifel außer der Empfänglichkeit der Eindrücke noch etwas mehr, nämlich eine Funktion der Synthesis derselben erfordert wird.«]. 73 Cf. Max Dessoir, Abriß einer Geschichte der Psychologie (Die Psychologie in Einzeldarstellungen, ed. by Hermann Ebbinghaus and Ernst Meumann, Vol. IV), Heidelberg 1911, p. 151 [»merkwürdigen, geschichtlichen Irrtum«]. 74 Johannes Nikolaus Tetens, Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung, 2 vols., Leipzig 1777. For further details about Tetens’ concept of »Dichtungsvermögen« cf. my work »Das Erkenntnisproblem«, Vol. II, pp. 567 f. [ECW 3, S. 476 f.].

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Human Nature«,75 »how such trivial qualities of the fancy, conducted by false suppositions, can ever lead to any solid and rational system. […] ’Tis a gross illusion to suppose, that our resembling perceptions are numerically the same; and ’tis this illusion, which leads us into the opinion, that these perceptions | are uninterrupted, and are still existent, even when they are not present to the senses. This is the case with our popular system. And as to our philosophical one, ’tis liable to the same difficulties […] What then can we look for from this confusion of groundless and extraordinary opinions but error and falshood?« At this point Kant’s solution of Hume’s problem sets in. It is not only human understanding but also »imagination« which Kant attempts to rehabilitate from Hume’s doubt; he wants to show that imagination is not destructive but constructive, that it is »productive imagination«. For this purpose Kant establishes the theory of »schemata of imagination«, showing that imagination, far from falsifying the images of objects, is, on the contrary, indispensable for objective determinations to be known as such. For Hume, imagination can have but a negative significance; for imagination leads us away from immediate truth given and contained in »simple perceptions«. For Kant, truth does not lie in these simple perceptions, but in the system, in the »context« of experience in accordance with general laws. For Kant, imagination is the first and necessary step towards generality; the intuitive schemata of imagination precede and underlie the discursive concepts of the understanding. Hence Kant regards imagination as a genuine principle of objectification; in this sense he explicitly qualifies the schemata as »realizing«, conditioning the object and rendering it possible. Modern psychology of perception has presented this concept of the objectifying and realizing schema in a new light. In modern psychology it appears clearly that there exists a peculiar function to which perception owes its objectivity. The »true« color, the »true« shape, the »true« size of an object are by no means that which is given in any particular impression, nor need they be the »sum« of these impressions. For a satisfactory account, the function of memory, the reference to reproductive processes, are not sufficient either. The c ons ti tuti v e factor must be sought somewhere else; this factor manifests itself in the possibility of forming invariants. Owing to this possibility, there exist for us a »perspective of illumination« and a spatial perspective and thus the perception of »objective« reality. The factor of organization 75 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects (Bk. 1, pt. 4, sect. 2), ed. by Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge, Oxford 1896, pp. 217 f.

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possesses, then, positive, not merely negative, significance. Hering, as we saw, explains the s ig n if ican ce of »perceptual constancy« by the fact that objective knowledge and objective judgment are rendered possible by this constancy. If there were no such constancy, we would, as it were, abandon ourselves to every change in external conditions: it would be impossible to segregate »things« and »properties« from the stream of becoming. To use Heraclitus’ metaphor, we should in fact be unable to »step down twice into the same river.«76 A piece of chalk, as Hering shows, would, on a cloudy day, present the same color as a piece of coal on a sunshiny day, and in the course of one day it | would display all possible colors intermediate between black and white. »A white flower seen under green foliage would display the same color as a green leaf of a tree in the open air, and a ball of thread, white in daylight, must, in gas-light, have the color of an orange.«77 Thus psychology, as compared to its early sensationalistic beginnings, has achieved a thoroughgoing revaluation. Psychology dismisses the dogma of the strict one-to-one correspondence between physical stimuli and perceptions. It is, on the contrary, the »transformed« impression, i.e., the impression as modified with respect to the various phenomena of constancy, which is regarded as the »true« impression, since we can on these grounds construct knowledge of reality. This, it seems to me, is a momentous step; for in no other way could the traditional separation, and even opposition, between the »psychological« and the »epistemological« problem in the domain of perception be overcome. On this new basis psychology and epistemology may meet and cooperatively attack the numerous problems still to be solved.* Columbia University

76 [Heraklit, Fragm. 91, zit. nach: Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Griechisch und deutsch, Bd. I, Berlin 21906, S. 75: »ποταμ3ι γ:ρ οκ ©στιν %μβ0ναι δς τ3ι ατ3ι«.] 77 Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, p. 16 [»Ebenso würde eine unter grünem Laubdache gesehene weiße Blume dieselbe Farbe zeigen, wie ein grünes Baumblatt unter freiem Himmel, und ein bei Tageslicht weißer Zwirnknäuel müsste bei Gaslicht die Farbe einer Orange zeigen.«]. * Translation by Aron Gurwitsch.

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The Myth of the State1 (1944)

In the intellectual history of the last hundred years there is perhaps no more difficult and no more disconcerting phenomenon then the rapid and sharp ascent and the sudden decline and fall of political thought. During the nineteenth century political thought entered on entirely new paths. New sources of knowledge had been made accessible. Economists, sociologists, and philosophers vied with each other to utilize and exploit them. They were convinced that the theory of politics, when compared with former ages, was elevated to a higher level. Henceforth it was no longer groping in the dark; once and for all the »royal road of science« had been found. The different economic, sociological, and philosophical schools by no means agreed in their general views. They followed different ways of investigation and they strove for widely divergent political ideals. Nevertheless there was one point on which all seemed unanimous. They had the same conception and meaning of the task of a political theory. Such a theory, they told us, cannot indulge in mere speculations or vain desires. It must be based on empirical facts and general principles derived from them. By this method alone can we make the decisive step that leads »from utopia to science.«2 In the philosophy of the nineteenth century this new tendency found its clearest expression in the system of Auguste Comte. His ambition was to find a uniform method of scientific thought that would overcome all the artificial barriers between the different branches of knowledge. Comte’s »Positive Philosophy« leads us, in an uninterrupted progress, from astronomy to physics, from physics to chemistry, from chemistry to biology, from biology to politics and sociology. One of the principal arguments by which Comte tried to prove the profound unity of human culture was his discovery of a fundamental law prescribed by the very nature of the human mind that, according to him, holds good for all the forms of man’s cultural life: the human mind cannot reach its full scope without passing through three dif1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Fortune 29, Nr. 6 (1944), S. 165–167, 198, 201 f., 204 u. 206.] 2 [Vgl. Friedrich Engels, Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft, 5., vervollst. Aufl., Hamburg 1910 (Sammlung sozialistischer Schriften).]

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ferent stages in its approach to each branch of knowledge. It begins with a mythological stage, it develops into a metaphysical stage, and it ends in a scientific or »positive« stage. But, as Comte pointed out, it requires a much greater intellectual effort to make the final step in the field of political thought than in the field of mathematics, or physics, or natural history. In order to comprehend and organize his own world – the world of his social experience – man has first to study and to master the physical world. He has to discover the laws of nature before he can even raise the question of the existence and validity of fundamental sociological laws. »Theological and metaphysical methods, exploded in other departments,« wrote Comte, »are as yet exclusively applied, both in the way of inquiry and discussion, in all treatment of Social subjects […]«3 So, after innumerable vain attempts, this last spell is about to be broken. Even in the world of politics we need no longer live in a world of illusions.

A light that failed The philosophical ideal of the nineteenth century – an ideal shared by all the pioneers of modern political, economic, and sociological thought – seems suddenly to break to pieces. Nothing is perhaps more characteristic of the present crisis in our culture than the fact that what a few decades ago was regarded as one of the great hopes and one of the highest triumphs of human science has been abruptly abandoned. It is not only the fulfillment of the task set by Comte that is negated, it is the conception of the task itself. Since the first decades of the twentieth century political thought has slowly begun to change not only its content but its fundamental form. And the change implies the complete reversal of all the former intellectual or moral standards. Mythological thought openly takes precedence over rational thought. In his political and social life man is expected to forget all he ever learned in the development of his intellectual life; he is admonished to go back to the first stages of human culture. When viewed from a mere theoretical angle, this seems to be a complete breakdown of thought. But the phenomenon is not to be accounted for in such a simple way. In order to understand we must take into consideration its practical | motives and its practical consequences. The twentieth-century union of the disparate elements of myth 3 [Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy, übers. v. Harriet Martineau, London 1853, S. 30.]

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and politics appears at first sight to be paradoxical. But the purport of this paradox is clear. By the alliance both powers gain a new and unprecedented strength. Politics becomes a mysterious thing, highly elevated over all our common standards. Its authority is no longer open to any skeptical doubts or critical objections. And myth gains not only by invading a special province but by conquering the whole of human civilization. It is not by chance that all the new myths maintain and defend a »totalitarian« conception of the state. By this conception every appeal to any other tribunal is from the very beginning declared null and void. There is nothing in the world to restrict the power of the myth to the state. To mythicize man’s political life means at the same time to mythicize all other human activities. There exists no longer a separate sphere that has value of its own. Philosophy, art, religion, science are under the control of the new ideal. The hybrid of myth and politics becomes omnipotent and irresistible. In order to understand the strange fusion of political and mythical thought that takes place in our modern theories, we must, first and foremost, possess a clear insight into the nature of the two elements that center in the combination. I shall therefore describe some of the most important and most interesting combats that have taken place between the rational and the mythical theories of the state. I can give only a very brief and rough sketch; but perhaps even such a sketch may lead to a better understanding of our present situation.

The beginnings of reason A rational theory of the state did not come forward before the times of Greek philosophy. In this field, as in others, the Greeks were the first pioneers of rational thought. Thucydides was the first to attack the mythical conception of history and to introduce a new method of historical inquiry and psychological analysis. In the philosophy of the sophists man becomes »the measure of all things,«4 and all possible knowledge is directed to a political end. Plato added that to understand the nature of man we must begin by studying the nature of the state. Politics is the clue to psychology. 4 [Sextus Empiricus, Adversus dogmaticos libros quinque (Adv. Mathem. VII–XI) (Opera, hrsg. v. Hermann Mutschmann, Bd. II), Leipzig 1914 (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), S. 15: »πντων χρημτων μ τρον«.]

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Plato was the first thinker who introduced a »theory« of the state, not a knowledge of many, multifarious, haphazard facts, but a coherent system of thought. What was new in this theory was a postulate that has put its stamp upon the whole subsequent development of political thought. Plato began his study of the political and social order with an analysis and a definition of the concept of »justice«. The true state has no other and no higher aim than to be the administrator of justice. In Plato’s language the term »justice« does not mean the same as in common speech. It has a much deeper and more comprehensive meaning. Justice is not on the same level with other virtues of man. It is not, like courage or temperance, a special quality or property. It means a general principle of order, of regularity, of unity, and of lawfulness. Within the individual life this lawfulness appears in the harmony of all the different powers of the human soul; within the state it appears in the »geometrical proportion« between the different classes, according to which each part of the social body receives its due and cooperates in maintaining the general order. By this conception Plato became the founder and the first defender of the idea of the »legal state«. In order to attain this end Platonic theory had to overcome a dangerous and powerful adversary. From the Greek point of view philosophical thought is opposed to mythical thought. If we allow mythical thought to influence our political ideals and to intrude into the order of the state, all our hopes for a rational organization of society are lost. Here we find the approach to one of the most controversial elements of Plato’s theory. For all the commentators, Plato’s attack on Greek poetry has always been a stumbling block. We cannot think of Plato as being personally an enemy of poetry. He is the greatest poet who has appeared in the history of philosophy. But in Greek culture the bond between poetry and myth was indissoluble, and this is the point at which Plato’s attack aims. To admit poetry means to admit myth. But myth cannot be admitted without frustrating all our philosophical efforts and without undermining the very foundations of our philosophical state. It was for this reason that Plato had to banish the poets from his republic. What Plato attacks most violently are the mythical stories about the deeds of gods and heroes. Plato no longer believes in the gods of Greek popular religion. They have been dethroned by a stronger power: by the highest idea, »the idea of the Good.«5 The Divine and 5

[Platon, Politeia 509 B.]

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the Good have become synonymous. The tales of gods who quarrel with each other, who lie and commit the worst crimes, can no longer be tolerated. For Plato there was a far-yawning gulf between such myths and philosophical thought. In his theory of the state he could no longer make allowance for mythical imagination. His was a moral theory, a theory of justice that had to exclude all imaginative, all fictitious or irrational elements.

Man’s state and God’s The idea of the legal state, discovered by the Greek thinkers, became an everlasting possession of human culture. But with the beginning of the Middle Ages political problems were no longer in the center of philosophical thought. The new emphasis is best felt if we pass from Plato to St. Augustine. St. Augustine stands on the borderline of two ages. His education is rooted in the Latin and Greek classics. But all he finds there can no longer satisfy his mind. He is longing for another world – far beyond the world of learning and intellectual culture. That makes the real difference between Plato’s »Republic« and St. Augustine’s »City of God«. Both works are closely related to each other. The very title of St. Augustine’s work is borrowed from Plato.6 And St. Augustine always speaks of Plato with the greatest admiration and with a sort of religious awe. Nevertheless St. Augustine was no »Platonist«. Plato’s principal aim was to found a purely rational theory of political life. For this purpose he had to eliminate all mythical elements. Of course, St. Augustine followed him in this so far as Plato’s criticism was concerned with the gods of Greek popular religion. But there remained one essential element that could not be accounted for in a rational way and that nevertheless, from the Christian point of view, was the basic problem of both religion and politics: original sin and the fall of man. Plato’s theory of the state is philosophically true, St. Augustine conceded, but the fall of man is no philosophical fact. | Knowledge of it is based upon a special divine revelation that was denied to Plato. And since Plato’s state is derived from man’s mind, it is the outcome of the 6 In heaven, said Plato, there is laid up a pattern of that city (i.e., state) which exists in idea only, which he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own house in order.

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original sin of man and shows all its marks. It is not reason, therefore, seeking its models in the tainted mind of man, it is only the grace of God that can extinguish these marks. The medieval conception of the state has never completely abandoned this view of St. Augustine. As late as in the eleventh century, seven hundred years after St. Augustine, Gregory VII still declared that the state was a work of sin and the devil. But generally speaking, this uncompromising view could not be upheld in the political literature of the middle ages. Even St. Augustine could not forbear making a very important concession: if we cannot ascribe to the political and social order any absolute value, we must admit that, within its limits, it fulfills a positive and indispensable role. The evil of the state, lodged as it is in the original sin of man, is deep and incurable; but it is only a relative evil. When compared with the highest absolute religious truth, the state proves to be at a very low level; but it is still good in comparison to our common human standards, which, without the state, would lead us to chaos. In the further development of medieval thought this tendency to admit and to emphasize the positive value of the state and the social order wins constantly in strength, owing largely to the influence of Aristotle. According to Aristotle’s famous phrase, man is by nature a social animal. Whenever we find man, we find him in social order. The superiority of man over the other animals consists in the fact that he has developed the natural social instinct into a new rational form. The human state is at the same time a natural and a rational product. It has grown by a natural process through the gradual enlargement of the aboriginal community, the family. This theory of the origin of the state was accepted and elucidated by Thomas Aquinas. As the creator of all things God is also the creator of the state. But here he works only as a remote cause. Under the direction of God man builds up, by his own forces and natural impulses, the political and social order. Yet in this natural theory of the state the dogma of original sin is still a necessary and preponderant element. To fill the abyss between man’s primitive condition and his condition after the Fall was impossible for earlier medieval thought, but in Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine the gap is bridged. According to him there is no insuperable gulf between the temporal and the divine order. Grace, he declares, does not destroy nature; it perfects nature. The secular and the religious order are different links of one and the same chain. Despite the Fall, man has not lost the faculty of using his forces in the right way and of thus preparing his own salvation. Although, because of the Fall, salvation is not possible without a special act of

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divine grace, man plays no mere passive role in this great religious drama. His active contribution is required, and is, indeed, indispensable. By this conception not only man’s political life but the whole of his cultural life has won a new dignity. The »earthly state« and the »City of God« are no longer opposite poles; they are related to each other and complement each other.

The »new science« of politics A famous chapter in Jacob Burckhardt’s book on the civilization of the Italian Renaissance is entitled: »The State as a Work of Art«. Here Burckhardt gives a very clear description of the new forms of political life. More than ever before the state appeared to be the work of individual men or of the combined and continued efforts of the members of a special family. It was planned by these men and it was managed like a work of art. The predominance of the Medici in Florence, the rise of the Visconti in Milan, the rule of the Gonzagas in Mantova are famous examples of this phenomenon. Machiavelli, the first man to have a clear conception of the dynamics of political life, was deeply impressed by the phenomenon. But as a theoretician he wished not only to describe it but to understand it; to detect its origin and its reason. The reason for the state and the mere fact of the state are his principal and fundamental problems. If these reasons are to be sought in great individuals we are in need not only of a historical or sociological but also of a psychological interpretation of political life. We must study the psychological motives and the procedures of the great artists of the state. Machiavelli’s »Prince«, written in 1513, is an unprecedented step in this study. It analyzes political movements in the same spirit that Galileo analyzed physical movements. But the treatise does not pursue a theoretical end alone; it has a very definite practical purpose. Political analysis has to prepare and to pave the way for political action. Every artist and every craftsman needs a certain technique in order to perform his work in the right way. All the other arts are in possession of such technical rules. But in politics all this is still missing. Our actions are the results of instinct or feeling, not the outcome of methodical observation and rational thought. It is this obvious lack that Machiavelli’s book strives to fill. Like any other craftsman the politician must know both his material and his tools. His material is man; his tools are the various ways in which human nature and conduct are to be influenced.

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How much this new attitude toward political life affected all the traditional conceptions is evident. Machiavelli never attempted to refute the earlier conceptions; he simply ignored them. In his hands the secularization of politics became complete. To Machiavelli nothing in political life is wrapped in mystery. All its features have, so to speak, become permeable to human reason. We can understand the hidden motives and we can calculate the effects of political actions in the same way that we understand the effects of any natural phenomenon. If we look at the problem in this way, as Machiavelli himself did, we can exculpate the theory of Machiavelli from one of the principal charges that has been made against it: its profound immorality. Machiavelli spoke as a psychologist and as a technician of political life who did not allow himself to be influenced by any moral concerns. His theory is not immoral, but it is entirely amoral. He is concerned with the causes and effects, not with the ends of political actions. His state holds its ground against all attacks. Its sovereignty is absolute. It is freed from all moral or religious obligations. For all this the theory had to pay a heavy price. With Machiavelli the state loses some of its most essential social functions. The sharp knife of Machiavelli’s analytic thought not only severs all the bonds that connect political life with moral or religious life; it also cuts off all the threads by which the state is fastened to the organic whole of social life. In the pursuit of the interests of the state the rulers are no longer bound to any consideration for the commonweal. The state has become omnipotent; but on the other hand it is completely isolated; it has lost its connection with the rest of man’s | cultural life. It stands, so to speak, in an empty space. For power as sheer power, power for power’s sake, is, after all, a meaningless thing. It was this problem that had to be faced by all the political theorists of the following centuries. The work of Machiavelli could not be undone. Even his strongest opponents could not think of going back to the medieval conception of the state. On the other hand, even his followers and admirers very seldom admitted his radical consequences. The doctrine of the reason of the state as the ultimate reason for any social action was accepted; but in most cases there was made an express reservation for other and higher reasons; for the inviolability of Divine or natural law. But by such a compromise the problem could not be solved. It was not enough to deny the inferences drawn by Machiavelli. It became imperative to attack and refute the very premises of his theory.

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The rights of man The seventeenth century is the period of the labor pains of the modern world, and the political thought of that century is a battlefield between two opposite and irreconcilable conceptions. On the one hand the theory of the »absolute« state is represented in its full strength. In thinkers like Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes this theory is developed into its most radical consequences. On the other hand a new ideal begins to form itself, and finally wins the ascendancy. The doctrine of popular sovereignty eclipses the principle of absolute government. Nevertheless these widely divergent elements of political thought are held together by a common intellectual bond. The champions of absolutism and the defenders of the sovereignty of the people accept a common basis of thought. The doctrine of the »state-contract« becomes in the seventeenth century a self-evident axiom of political thought. In the history of our problem this fact marks a great step forward. For if we adopt this view, if we reduce the legal and social order to free individual acts, to a voluntary contractual submission of the governed, all mystery is gone. There is nothing less mysterious than a contract. A contract must be made in full awareness of its meaning and consequences; it presupposes the free consent of all the parties concerned. If we can trace back the state to such an origin, it becomes a perfectly clear and understandable fact. This rational approach is by no means a hi s tor i c a l approach. Only a few thinkers are so naive as to assume that the origin of the state, as explained in the theories of the social contract, gives us a true insight into its historical origin. We cannot assign a definite moment of history in which the state made its first appearance. But this lack of knowledge does not concern the theoreticians of the state-contract. What they are seeking is not the beginning of the state, but its principle. The thinkers of the seventeenth century are no historians; they are logicians. Thus origin, according to Hobbes, is not an origin in time but in reason. The idea of the social contract looks back at the classical distinction between »natural« and »positive« law – natural law, in contrast to positive law, is prior to the state and not subject to its rules. And it looks back especially to the doctrine of man’s natural »equality« to other men, as developed by the Stoics. The ideal of equality is not to be found in the politics of Plato or Aristotle. Plato’s ideal state is the state of justice. | But according to Plato justice does not mean the same as equality of rights. The state of justice will give to everyone and to all the social classes their allotted

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work in the life of the state; but it will not give them an equal share. And according to Aristotle slaves are slaves by nature; the abolition of slavery is no political ideal, but a mere dream. The Stoics were the first to remove all these barriers. They started from a sharp distinction between what is necessary and what is accidental in human nature. There are innumerable differences in men that are regarded as being of the highest importance, but that do not count in an ethical and philosophical estimation of human life. Whatever depends on external circumstances, on conditions that are not in our own power, is to be left out if we wish to determine the true value of our personal life. Riches, rank, social distinction, even health or intellectual gifts – all these belong to the class of irrelevant and indifferent things. There remains only one essential good: the personal value of the human soul – that value which the individual gives to himself. All the conventional barriers – the distinction between Greeks and barbarians, between social classes, between masters and slaves – are declared by the Stoic philosophers to be null and void. The history of Stoic thought confirms and elucidates this maxim: of the great Stoic thinkers one, Marcus Aurelius, was the ruler of the Roman Empire, whereas another, Epictetus, was a slave. All the Stoic thinkers are determined individualists. The autonomy and independence of the individual will is the highest principle in Stoic ethics. But this Stoic freedom does not mean the isolation of the individual will, its emancipation from all social bonds. Man finds his true individuality in the fulfillments of his social tasks and obligations. The state itself, when seen in its true light and interpreted in its right sense, is the consummation and the guaranty of human freedom. In Stoic thought the strictest individualism and the largest cosmopolitanism are fused together into an indissoluble unity. These theoretical presuppositions, pushed into the background by the medieval feudal system, were suddenly turned into most powerful practical weapons at the beginning of the modern era. In the seventeenth century they proved their full strength in the combat against the doctrine of the absolute state. According to the theory of the absolute state developed in the work of Hobbes, the social contract makes an end to all individual liberty. This contract is a contract of submission by which the individual wills are extinguished and cease to exist. In the civil state all powers are transferred to and concentrated in the ruler. As against the sovereign power of the ruler the individuals have no rights whatever. According to the opponents of Hobbes, the very concept of an

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absolute sovereignty is a contradiction in terms. If the power of the sovereign is to be not only a physical force but a legal power, it is bound to certain fundamental and inviolable rules. These rules, being universal, are not subject to the freaks and fancies of individual wills; and they cannot, therefore, be transferred from one individual will to another. In the seventeenth century the classical expression of this principle was given in the famous saying of Grotius, that even the will of an omnipotent being, the will of God, is not at liberty to change or cancel rights guaranteed by natural laws. This is neither an isolated dictum nor a mere paradox. It is a general opinion upheld by many of the most influential political writers of the seventeenth century. That might and | right coincide in God does not mean that God is exempt from all obligations; it means on the contrary that to him these obligations are no external demands imposed upon him but that they are derived from his very essence and, therefore, are necessary elements of his own being. This means at the same time that the individual will is not entirely absorbed by the universal will. It maintains and preserves a sphere of its own. There are certain inborn and indefeasible rights of the individual that the state has to respect. If man is to be truly man he can never surrender his independence; he cannot entirely submit to the rules and commands of an external power. In forming the social contract the individual has not given up his personality. The question of how far this sphere of the individual will extends was answered in different ways. Liberty and equality were regarded as the original natural rights of man, whereas the problem whether individual property is to be reckoned among these inalienable rights found no unanimous solution. We meet here with all the theoretical foundations of those practical ideals and demands which in the eighteenth century found their expression in the »Declaration of the Rights of Man«. Toward the myth of the state The German romanticism that began to flourish at the time of the Napoleonic Wars marks a new and decisive epoch. It paved – though it did not point – the way that led to the modern fascist and nationalist myths of the state. In this development romanticism played a negative, not a positive, role. Romanticism removed one of the principal barriers that hitherto seemed to be invincible and insuperable. The romantic movement completely changed the v alu at io n of myth. To all the thinkers of

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the eighteenth century, myth was a barbarous thing – a strange and uncouth mass of confused ideas and gross superstitions. Between myth and philosophy there could be no point of contact. Myth ends where philosophy begins – as darkness gives way to the rising sun. Even to look back at it would be to renounce mankind’s intellectual progress. This view undergoes a radical change as soon as we pass from the period of enlightenment to early romanticism. Myth becomes not only a subject of the highest intellectual interest, but also a subject of awe and veneration. It is regarded as the mainspring of human culture. Art, history, poetry originate in it. A system of philosophy that overlooks or neglects it is declared to be shallow and inadequate. One of the principal aims of Schelling’s philosophy was to give myth its right and legitimate place in human civilization. In Schelling’s works we find, for the first time, a p h ilo s o p hy of mythol og y – side by side with his philosophy of nature, history, art. And the more Schelling proceeds, the more important becomes this part of his system. Finally all his interest seems concentrated on it. Myth has become the very focus of philosophical thought. Romantic poetry goes the same way. Mythology was always a part of poetry; and mythical subjects have been treated, time and again, in classical literature. But all this – it is now declared – was only accidental and superficial. What is demanded in poetry is the revival and rehabilitation of the mythical spirit. Romantic poetry is no longer to speak in mere images, in the language of clear sensuous or intuitive forms. It must learn to speak a new language – a language of hieroglyphs, of secret and sacred symbols. That is the new gospel that we find in Novalis’s poetical works. To Kant’s | critical idealism, which had played such a decisive role in the formation of the aesthetic ideals of classic German literature, Novalis opposes »magic idealism«, his keystone of philosophy and poetry. The poets and philosophers of the romantic era had come full circle from Plato. The poet was now to banish the politician. To the Romanticists, politics was not the first and principal concern. They lived much more in the world of »spirit«, in the world of poetry, of art, of philosophy than in the world of hard political facts. And in this world they discovered a new province. Henceforth their whole attention was focused on this discovery, which filled them with the greatest enthusiasm. In early romanticism the interest in h is tor y overshadows all other interests. It is from this point of view that they denounce the »nature-right« theories of the state. The social compact is not a historical fact; it is a fiction. All theories of the state that start

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from such presuppositions are built on sand. Law and the state have not been »made« by men. They are no product of individual wills, and they are, therefore, not under the jurisdiction of these wills; they are not bound to and restricted by our pretended individual rights. According to the principles of the historic-right school, man could not make law any more than he could make language, myth, religion. Human culture is not an offspring of free and conscious human activities; it originates in a »higher necessity«, in the national spirit, which works and creates unconsciously. That is the real philosophical center of all the political theories developed by romantic writers. The Romanticists love the past for the past’s sake. Even here we find the deep influence of that mythical spirit that sees in the past the only justification of all forms of personal life. The Romanticists always see the past in a halo of sanctity. To them everything becomes understandable as soon as it is traced back to its origins. The romantic emphasis on history came at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent rise of national states, which continued throughout the nineteenth century until finally national history became, in the hands of Hitler and Mussolini, the material from which the mythical state was built. The early Romanticists had had no such intention. Their historical interest was universal. Before the Romanticists, Goethe had been the first to use the term »world literature«, and the Romanticists adopted the concept with enthusiasm. Ranke’s monumental work was a world history. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the greatest of the romantic theologians, developed the ideal of a universal religion comprising all sorts of creeds. But the rising national forces of the epoch diverted this historical and mythological interest to narrow and particular ends. A whole school of German political historians of the nineteenth century developed and glorified the idea of the »power state«. The most extreme among them, Heinrich von Treitschke, boasted that to avoid becoming confused in writing the history of Prussia he had avoided looking into the archives of Austria. Only one voice, that of the Swiss, Jacob Burckhardt, was raised to say that power is evil in itself. No one listened. The devotees of the »power state« had turned themselves from philosophers and historians into political pamphleteers. They had opened the way for the mythmakers of the twentieth century.

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The antidote to myth What we have learned in the hard school of our modern political life is the fact that human culture is by no means | the firmly established thing that we once supposed it to be. Modern civilization is very unstable and fragile. It is not built upon sand; but it is built upon a volcanic soil. For its first origin and basis was not rational, but mythical. Rational thought is only the upper layer on a much older geological stratum that reaches down to a great depth. We must always be prepared for violent concussions that may shake our cultural world and our social order to its very foundations. The deep and ardent desire to reconstruct our cultural world from its debris is now generally felt. But this aim cannot be reached at once. The modern political myths have intoxicated our thoughts and poisoned our feelings. It will be a long time before the social organism can overcome or eliminate this poison. I do not doubt that philosophy will have its share and do its duty in this slow process of reconstruction. And perhaps its greatest contribution can come through a reassertion of the ethical analysis made by Spinoza at the beginning of the seventeenth century. No philosophical thinker was more convinced of the power of rational thought than Spinoza. Nevertheless he was perfectly aware of the fact that a passion cannot be overcome by argument. It must be destroyed by a stronger and contrary passion. But where can we find this stranger passion? According to Spinoza our emotional life is irrational in its very principle. It is based on dim feelings and confused ideas, on imagination rather than reason or intuitive knowledge. Yet there are two passions that, in the system of Spinoza, are declared to be exempt from this flaw. They have their origin in the active, not in the passive, part of human nature. In Spinoza’s system the distinction between »active« and »passive« emotions does not follow the traditional lines of thought. According to the Spinozistic theory not only hatred but also love, not only pride but also humility, not only cruelty but even pity belong to the class of passive emotions. There remain only two active emotions: for ti tude and g ene r os ity. They are the fundamental virtues of man; for they are those affections by which alone he can reach the supreme goal: philosophical and ethical freedom. This freedom means not only freedom from violent desires and emotions. It means freedom from false conceptions, from inadequate ideas, from all sorts of prejudices and superstitions. To get

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rid of all these obstacles to true freedom a high courage is required. This courage is not the same as mere physical courage. Its true sense may be described by the words: »Sapere aude!«7 – »Dare to know!« Fortitude is the courage to be wise, to live an independent, active, and rational life. But it is not enough that we reach this goal for ourselves. We must freely communicate the good that we have acquired for ourselves to others. And to do this we need the active passion of generosity. Fortitude and generosity are the only means to attain and secure the freedom of the individual mind and of human society. By the former we win the mastery over ourselves, by the latter we build up a social, a truly human order. It was perhaps never more imperative to recall these maxims of Spinoza than at the present moment. A passion can only be overcome by a stronger passion. Only if we learn to develop, to cultivate, and to intensify our active emotions can we hope to check the wild chase of our passive emotions and to remold our social and cultural life.

7 [Immanuel Kant, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?, in: Werke, Bd. IV, hrsg. v. Artur Buchenau u. Ernst Cassirer, Berlin 1913, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, S. 167–176: S. 169 (Akad.Ausg. VIII, 35).]

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Thomas Manns Goethe-Bild. Eine Studie über »Lotte in Weimar«1 (1945)

»Ein Siegelring ist schwer zu zeichnen, Den höchsten Sinn im engsten Raum; Doch weißt du hier ein Echtes anzueignen, Gegraben steht das Wort, du denkst es kaum.«2

I Es liegt im Wesen der dichterischen Darstellung, daß sie ihre Stoffe nicht nur der Wirklichkeit des äußeren Geschehens entnimmt, sondern daß ihr die Wirklichkeit der Kunst selbst immer wieder zum Thema und Problem wird. Der Dichter will nicht nur unmittelbar aus sich selbst schöpfen, und ebensowenig ist es ihm genug, sich in Natur und Geschichte zu versenken. Was ihn stets aufs Neue anzieht, ist das Leben der Geister, die ihm gleichen und die er daher, besser und tiefer als jeder andere, begreift. Goethe verdankt diesem Impuls einige seiner herrlichsten und tiefsten Schöpfungen. In jeder Epoche seines Lebens ist der Drang in ihm lebendig gewesen, sich andere künstlerische Welten zu erschließen und sich das Wesen ihrer Bildner und Schöpfer zu vergegenwärtigen. In der Jugend wird ihm ein Blick auf einen alten Holzschnitt zum Anlaß der wundervollen Deutung von »Hans Sachsens poetischer Sendung«. Das Mannesalter bringt ihm 1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: The Germanic Review 20 (1945), S. 166–194. Dort findet sich auf S. 166 folgende Anmerkung:] »Professor Cassirer ist am 13. April dieses Jahres in New York plötzlich gestorben. Diese Abhandlung ist in Göteborg entstanden und dann zurückgelegt worden. Sie ist Thomas Mann zum 65. Geburtstag überreicht worden. In der letzten Zeit hat er sich damit weiter beschäftigt und bereitete sich vor, den Aufsatz in etwas verkürzter Form im »German Graduates Club« der Columbia Universität vorzulesen, als der Tod ihn ereilte. Trotzdem der Artikel nicht die letzte Feile erhalten hat, ist er so charakteristisch für den Gedankengang und den Stil des berühmten Philosophen, daß er dem Druck nicht vorenthalten werden sollte. Die Redaktion verdankt Frau Toni Cassirer die gütige Erlaubnis zur Veröffentlichung.« 2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Segenspfänder, in: West-östlicher Divan (Werke, hrsg. im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 4 Abt., insges. 133 Bde. in 143 Bdn., Weimar 1887–1919), 1. Abt., Bd. VI, S. 7 f.: S. 8.

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den »Tasso«, und an der Schwelle des Greisenalters findet die Begegnung mit Hafis statt, die für ihn zum Jungbrunnen des Lebens und der Dichtung wird. Aber man braucht nicht an so große Beispiele wie diese zu denken, um sich über den Reichtum dieses Stoffkreises klar zu werden und seine Sonderstellung in der Geschichte der Literatur zu verstehen. Insbesondere für die Novelle lag hier seit jeher eine | immer wieder ergiebige, reich fließende Quelle. Sie hat sich auch an die größten Gestalten und an die schwierigsten Aufgaben gewagt. Wir begegnen in Tiecks »Dichterleben« und in seinem »Fest zu Kenilworth« der Gestalt Shakespeares, wie wir in den Erzählungen Conrad Ferdinand Meyers Dante und Ariost begegnen. Das Bild Glucks ist durch E. T. A. Hoffmann, das Bild Mozarts in unvergeßlicher Weise durch Mörike festgehalten worden. Woran liegt es, daß bisher kein großer Künstler einen gleichen Versuch für G o et h e gewagt hat? Zwar hat sich nicht nur die Erzählungsliteratur, sondern auch das Theater, ja zuletzt selbst die Operette Goethes bemächtigt. Aber alles, was in dieser Hinsicht geleistet worden ist, trägt den Stempel der Mittelmäßigkeit und hinterläßt den peinlichen Eindruck des Schalen und Trivialen. Dies ist sicherlich kein Zufall, und es ist nicht nur dem subjektiven poetischen Unvermögen zur Last zu legen. Was die dichterische Gestaltung von Goethes Leben erschwert, ja was sie fast unmöglich macht, ist die Art, in der bei Goethe selbst Leben und Dichtung einander entsprechen und sich wechselseitig durchdringen. Goethe sah in all seinen Dichtungen nur »Bruchstücke einer großen Confession«.3 Die Substanz des Lebens steht bei ihm nicht ne be n der Dichtung, sondern sie ist mit dieser unmittelbar verwoben; denn »[p]oetischer Gehalt« war für ihn »Gehalt des eigenen Lebens«.4 Das Leben ist hier kein bloßer »Rohstoff«, dessen sich die Dichtung bemächtigt, sondern es ist ursprünglich und wesentlich von ihrer Form erfüllt. Wer daher den Versuch unternimmt, das Sein und Wesen Goethes künstlerisch zu gestalten, der hat hierbei den Kampf mit keinem Geringeren als mit Goethe selbst zu bestehen – und wer vermöchte sich in einem solchen Kampf zu behaupten? Der Künstler, der dieses Problem angreift, weiß daher von Anfang an, daß er sich auf einem gefährlichen Boden bewegt. Er wird sich, von seiten des Lesers und von seiten der Kritik, gewichtigen Bedenken und Einwänden ausgesetzt sehen. Er kann und darf sich nicht damit 3 [Ders., Dichtung und Wahrheit. Zweiter Theil (Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XXVII), S. 110.] 4 [Ders., Ein Wort für junge Dichter, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XLII/2, S. 106– 108: S. 107.]

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begnügen, einen bloßen U mr iß von Goethes Dasein zu zeichnen. Die Dichtung will ihre Gestalten nicht nur beschreiben oder andeuten; sie will sie unmittelbar verkörpern. Wir sollen nicht nur von Goethe hören, sondern wir sollen seine G eg en w a r t spüren. Und diese Vergegenwärtigung darf sich nicht darauf beschränken, daß wir ihn in seinem Tun und Treiben, in seinem Wirken und Handeln vor uns sehen. Der physischen Gegenwart soll die geistige zur Seite stehen: Wir sollen glauben, seine Worte zu hören, ja seine Gedanken mit ihm zu denken. Ist eine solche Illusion erreichbar, und kann sie auch nur versucht werden? Ich zweifle nicht daran, daß sich Thomas Mann, ehe er uns einen Goethe hinstellte, all dieser Schwierigkeiten in vollem | Maße bewußt gewesen ist. Er wußte, daß sich eine Aufgabe wie diese nicht bewältigen ließ, wenn nicht zuvor zu ihrer Lösung ganz neue künstlerische Mittel geschaffen würden. In Sprache und Stil, in Komposition und Aufbau mußte etwas Neues gesucht werden. Das ist der erste Eindruck, der sich dem Leser von Thomas Manns Werk aufdrängt. Weder in anderen Künstlerromanen noch in Thomas Manns eigener Produktion haben wir etwas, mit dem wir dieses Werk unmittelbar vergleichen könnten. Nur die »Joseph«-Dichtung Thomas Manns bietet bestimmte Vergleichspunkte; aber sie ist schon durch ihren Gegenstand und durch ihre Atmosphäre so weit von dem gegenwärtigen Werk getrennt, daß hier nur an eine künstlerische Entsprechung, nicht an eine unmittelbare Ähnlichkeit zu denken ist. Man muß sich diese Besonderheit der Aufgabe vor Augen halten, wenn man Thomas Manns Versuch gerecht werden will. Der Leser sowohl wie der Kritiker muß sich, wenn er in die wirklichen Absichten des Buches eindringen will, dazu entschließen, alle gewohnten ästhetischen Maßstäbe eine Zeitlang zu vergessen. Er muß sich in das Werk selbst versetzen und ihm die Normen zu entnehmen suchen, nach denen es beurteilt werden will. Das Werk nennt sich »Lotte in Weimar« – ein bescheidener Titel, der aber eben in seiner Bescheidenheit von einem ironischen Nebensinn nicht frei ist. Denn was hier von dem Besuch der 63jährigen Charlotte Kestner in Weimar und von ihrer Wiederbegegnung mit Goethe erzählt wird – das bildet keineswegs das Thema, sondern nur den Ausgangspunkt und, fast muß man sagen, nur den Vorwand des Buches. Thomas Mann hat es nicht eilig gehabt, uns in das wirkliche Thema seiner Dichtung einen Einblick zu gewähren. Er nähert sich ihm auf Umwegen, die bei der ersten Lektüre als seltsame Abwege erscheinen könnten. Aber alles in diesen Abwegen, in diesen »Digressionen«, an denen das Buch so reich ist, ist gewollt; alles dient dem Zweck der Vorbereitung. Goethe selbst tritt erst im siebenten Kapitel auf. Was

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vorangeht, gibt uns nichts als weit ausgesponnene, nicht enden wollende Be r ich t e über Goethe. Man muß weit in der Geschichte der Dichtung zurückgehen, um etwas Ähnliches zu finden: Denn was Thomas Mann hier benutzt, ist nichts anderes als die antike Form des »Botenberichtes«, wie wir sie aus dem griechischen Drama kennen. Aber der Botenbericht soll – entgegen seiner eigentlichen und ursprünglichen Aufgabe – nicht der Darstellung eines äußeren Geschehens, sondern der Darstellung eines Charakters dienen. Daraus ergeben sich alsbald neue Schwierigkeiten. In den Gesprächen, die den ganzen ersten Teil des Buches ausfüllen, | scheint uns Goethes Gestalt immer näher zu kommen, um uns alsbald wieder zu entgleiten. Dieses Kommen und Gehen, dieses sich Nähern und sich Entfernen ist gewollt; es gehört zu den eigenartigen Stil- und Kunstmitteln des Romans. Der Reigen der Gespräche wird von Riemer eingeleitet – dem Sekretär Goethes seit dreizehn Jahren. Er ist der nächste literarische Vertraute; er ist der Mann, mit dem Goethe fast jedes Werk, bevor er es der Öffentlichkeit übergab, vorbereitet und durchgesprochen hat. Und er kann sich rühmen, in Goethes Sprechund Schreibweise so eingedrungen zu sein, daß seine eigenen Briefe von den echten Goethebriefen kaum zu unterscheiden seien. Auf Riemer folgt Adele Schopenhauer. Aus ihrem Bericht sollen wir heraushören, was die Weimarer »Gesellschaft«, in Jahren des Umgangs, von Goethe gesehen und erfahren hat. Und schließlich spricht August von Goethe, sein Sohn und sein täglicher Helfer. Hier spüren wir Goethe in Haus und Familie, in Geschäften und in der Wirtschaft, im Kreis seiner amtlichen und seiner höfischen Tätigkeit, in Universitäts- und Theaterverwaltung. All das gibt ein zwar buntes und vielfältiges, aber ein bloß mittelbares und in dieser Mittelbarkeit quälendes Bild. Goethe erscheint nirgends als er selbst; er erscheint nur als aufgefangen in einem fremden Medium. Und auch sein menschlich-sittliches Bild beginnt sich unter dem Einfluß ständiger Brechung mehr und mehr zu verwirren und zu trüben. Der einzelne Erzähler kann nur aussprechen, was Goethe i h m gewesen und wozu er für i hn geworden ist. Hier aber stehen Erfüllung und Mangel sich nahe zur Seite. Die Bewunderung und Verehrung für Goethe, ja die Liebe zu ihm, wird zum Quell immer neuer Enttäuschung. Jeder, der sich in seinen Kreis aufgenommen sieht, fühlt zugleich, daß er diesen Kreis zwar berühren, aber niemals erfassen oder durchdringen kann. So wird die Anziehung selbst zur Abstoßung; die Hingabe wird zur Entsagung; und in diese Entsagung mischte sich eine tiefe Bitterkeit. Anders als diese Menschen seiner nächsten Umgebung steht Lotte Kestner, in Thomas Manns Darstellung, zu Goethe. Die anderen

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fühlen, täglich und stündlich, die Gegenwart Goethes. Sie stehen im Bannkreis dieser Gegenwart, die sie erfüllt, die sie aber auch immer wieder mit ihrer Übermacht zu erdrücken droht. Lotte aber hat sich in frühester Jugend aus diesem Zauberkreis befreit. Goethes leidenschaftliche Liebe hat sie ergriffen, aber nicht erschüttert. Dem Ansturm der Leidenschaft hat sie widerstanden: Sie hat ihrem Verlobten die Treue gehalten. So ist es denn auch nicht die Liebe zu Goethe, was sie zuletzt, nach 44 Jahren der Trennung, zu dem Wiedersehen mit ihm treibt. Ein solches Gefühl würde sie auch jetzt noch als Verrat an | Kestner, dem Guten und Wackeren, ansehen. Was sie sucht, ist die Lösung eines Zweifels, der sie all diese Zeit nicht losgelassen hat. Wer war, wer ist dieser Goethe, mit dem ihr Leben und Schicksal unlöslich verbunden ist? Was bedeutet die rätselhafte Macht, die mit ihm in ihr Leben einbrach? Und besteht diese Macht noch heute; ist sie unberührt geblieben vom Gang der Zeit, der sie, Lotte, zu einer alten Frau gemacht hat? Auf diese innerlich bedrängenden Fragen soll ihr der Besuch in Weimar die Antwort geben. Das Bild, das Lotte in ihrem Innern von Goethe hegt, ist umglänzt vom Zauberlicht der Jugend und der Erinnerung. Es ist dadurch selbst innerlicher und menschlich tiefer geworden. Und doch bleibt auch für sie die trennende Schranke, wie für die andern, unübersteiglich. Wir erfahren von ihr anderes als das, was Riemer, Adele Schopenhauer, August von Goethe zu berichten wissen; aber wir wissen im letzten Grunde nicht mehr von ihm. Seine Gestalt bleibt uns noch immer »[n]ah und fern und fern und nah«.5 Denn auch in allem, was Lotte von Goethe sagt, spricht sie nur sich selbst und ihre eigene Beziehung zu ihm aus. So entläßt uns der erste Teil des Buches fast mit einer schmerzlichen Enttäuschung. Denn was zunächst Offenbarung von Goethes Wesen zu sein schien, ist mehr und mehr zur Verhüllung geworden. Der Schleier um ihn hat sich dichter und dichter zusammengezogen, und es scheint unmöglich, durch ihn hindurchzublicken. Warum hat Thomas Mann diese mittelbare Form der Darstellung gewählt, und warum hat er an ihr so konsequent festgehalten, daß uns in seinem Buch Goethe selbst erst nach 284 Seiten der Vorbereitung begegnet? Daß dies nicht von ungefähr geschehen ist, sondern daß er hierbei von einer bestimmten und höchst bewußten künstlerischen Absicht geleitet war, liegt auf der Hand. Ich glaube, diese Absicht nicht besser bezeichnen und deuten zu können als dadurch, daß ich an ein Bild anknüpfe, das Goethe selbst geprägt hat. Als Goethe, als ein Sechzigjähriger, daran ging, die Geschichte seiner Jugend zu schreiben, 5

[Ders., Parabase, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 84.]

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da stand es für ihn fest, daß er bei diesem Versuch an keine gegebenen literarischen Vorbilder anknüpfen konnte. Die Form, die er hier als die einzig gemäße empfand, mußte er sich selbst erschaffen. Es reizte ihn nicht, schlechthin objektiv, im Stil der epischen Erzählung oder der historischen Darstellung von dem Verlauf seines Lebens zu berichten. Denn was ihm an diesem Leben aufbewahrenswert, was ihm merkwürdig und denkwürdig erschien, waren nicht die äußeren Ereignisse desselben, noch war es die Verflechtung seiner Individualität in das große allgemeine Weltgeschehen. Aber ebensowenig konnte er hier an die Stelle der objektiven Berichterstattung irgendeine Form der | bloß subjektiven Äußerung setzen. Wenn die Lebensbeschreibung die Aufgabe, die Goethe ihr stellte, erfüllen – wenn sie das Fragmentarische, das jedem Einzelleben anhaftet, austilgen und statt dessen den Sinn und die gestaltende Norm des Lebens sichtbar machen sollte, so konnte sie nicht im Stil der großen Bekenntnisbücher der Weltliteratur, im Stil Augustins, Petrarcas oder Rousseaus geschrieben werden. Denn gegen jeden solchen Versuch einer »Selbsterkenntnis« hegte Goethe ein instinktives Mißtrauen. Er glaubte, daß die wahre Selbsterkenntnis den Menschen nicht im Betrachten, sondern nur im Handeln zuteil werden könne. Er forderte eine antik-sokratische Form der Selbsterkenntnis, die er der Selbstquälerei der Modernen bestimmt entgegenstellte. »Nehmen wir […] das bedeutende Wort vor: Erken n e d ic h s elb s t , so müssen wir es nicht im ascetischen Sinne auslegen. Es ist keineswegs die Heautognosie unserer modernen Hypochondristen […] und Heautontimorumenen damit gemeint; sondern es heißt ganz einfach: Gib einigermaßen Acht auf dich selbst, nimm Notiz von dir selbst, damit du gewahr werdest, wie du zu deines Gleichen und der Welt zu stehen kommst. Hiezu bedarf es keiner psychologischen Quälereien; jeder tüchtige Mensch weiß und erfährt, was es heißen soll […]«6 Der Weg der Selbstbiographie konnte daher für Goethe nicht der der Subjektivierung, sondern er mußte der der Objektivierung sein. Er wollte das Ganze seines Daseins und Wirkens nicht nur mit dem Gefühl durchdringen, sondern er wollte es – für sich selbst und für den Leser – zur höchsten geistigen An s c ha uung erheben. Und für ihn gab es nur ein einziges Medium, in dem diese Vergegenständlichung sich vollziehen konnte: das Medium der Kunst. So knüpfte er schon im Titel seiner Lebensbeschreibung »Dichtung« und »Wahrheit« unlöslich aneinander. Er wollte kein Gemisch von beiden, kein Konglome6 [Ders., Maximen und Reflexionen über Literatur und Ethik. Aus Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren, in: Werke, 1. Abt. Bd. XLII/2, S. 165–252: S. 189 f.]

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rat von »Wirklichkeit« und »Einbildung« geben; er empfand beide als unmittelbare Einheit; er sah sie aufeinander bezogen und miteinander durchdrungen. Denn schon die Funktion der E r i nne r ung als solche ist nach Goethe auf die Funktion der Phantasie angewiesen und in sie eingewoben. Keine Erinnerung kann uns ein einfaches A bbi l d der Wirklichkeit geben; sondern jede bedeutet zugleich einen Prozeß der Bildung und Umbildung. In dieser Grundanschauung wählte Goethe seinen Titel: »[…] innigst überzeugt, daß der Mensch in der Gegenwart[,] ja vielmehr noch in der Erinnerung die Außenwelt nach seinen Eigenheiten bildend modele.«7 Hier aber drängt sich eine neue Schwierigkeit auf. Verdient dieses »bildende Modeln«, diese Gestalt, die wir uns in der Phantasie von unserem eigenen vergangenen Sein aufbauen, noch den Namen der Wahrheit? Kann es der Dichtung jemals gelingen, das | Leben nach seiner eigentlichen Substanz sichtbar zu machen? Läßt sich das, was einmal erlebte Wirklichkeit war, durch die Kunst erneuern und wieder emporheben – oder ist nicht alles, was wir auf diesem Wege gewinnen können, zuletzt doch nur ein Schatten, ein verblaßter Schemen des Daseins? Goethe hat sich selbst diese Frage beantwortet, indem er auf ein Phänomen hinwies, das ihm aus seiner »Farbenlehre« vertraut war. Diese hatte ihn die Erscheinung der »entoptischen Farben« kennen gelehrt. In ihnen handelt es sich um Farbenspiele, wie sie innerhalb gewisser Körper, insbesondere im Innern von Kristallen, zu schauen sind. Goethe hat in einer eigenen Schrift die Bedingungen genau beschrieben, unter denen solche Körper die Fähigkeit gewinnen, Figuren und Farben in ihrem Innern sehen zu lassen. Wenn wir Licht verwenden, das durch verschiedene spiegelnde Flächen hindurchgegangen ist, erscheinen im Kalkspatkristall oder in einem »entoptischen« Glase merkwürdige Figuren: abwechselnd helle und dunkle gefärbte Ringe, die von einem weißen oder schwarzen Kreuz durchschnitten sind. Goethe hat diesen Erscheinungen nicht nur ein intensives wissenschaftliches Studium gewidmet, sondern es drängte ihn auch, ihnen einen dichterischen Ausdruck zu geben: » Spiegel hüben, Spiegel drüben, Doppelstellung, auserlesen; Und dazwischen ruht im Trüben Als Krystall das Erdewesen.

7 [Ders., Tag- und Jahres-Hefte als Ergänzung meiner sonstigen Bekenntnisse, von 1807 bis 1822, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XXXVI, S. 1–220: S. 62.]

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Dieses zeigt, wenn jene blicken, Allerschönste Farbenspiele, Dämmerlicht das beide schicken Offenbart sich dem Gefühle. […] Und der Name wird ein Zeichen, Tief ist der Krystall durchdrungen: Aug’ in Auge sieht dergleichen Wundersame Spiegelungen.«8 Wenn Goethe in dieser Weise ein Naturphänomen in der Dichtung festhält, so kann man sicher sein, daß es für ihn nicht bloß eine physische, sondern eine tief symbolische Bedeutung besitzt. In der Tat fand er in den entoptischen Erscheinungen einen neuen Beleg und eine Bestätigung dafür, »[…] daß alles im Universen zusammen[…] sich auf einander bezieht, einander antwortet.«9 Was ihm das Phänomen nicht nur im Sinne der Farbenlehre, sondern auch in einem geistig-sittlichen Sinne bedeutsam machte, war vor allem der Umstand, daß die Er | scheinungen, um die es sich hier handelt, mit um so größerer Bestimmtheit, Energie und Mannigfaltigkeit hervortraten, je mehr man den Versuch durch die Einschaltung immer neuer spiegelnder Gläser variierte. An diesem Punkt setzt die symbolische Deutung ein, die Goethe dem Urphänomen gibt. Es gibt – so lehrt er – auch eine Art der geistigen Vergegenwärtigung, der inneren Widerspiegelung von Gegenständen oder Ereignissen, bei der diese nicht in verkümmerter oder verblaßter Gestalt erscheinen, sondern statt dessen wie von einem neuen und stärkeren Licht durchflutet vor uns hintreten. Kraft dieser Form der Vergegenwärtigung vermag der Künstler fremdes Leben zu sehen und zu gestalten; und durch sie allein kann es ihm gelingen, auch ein eigenes vergangenes Dasein wieder hervorzurufen und es nicht in bloß fragmentarischer Form, sondern als ein echtes Ganzes, von e i ne m Sinn durchdrungen und von ei nem Sinn belebt, darzustellen. »Bedenkt man […] daß wiederholte sittliche Spiegelungen das Vergangene nicht allein lebendig erhalten, sondern sogar zu einem höheren Leben empor steigern, so wird man der entoptischen Erscheinungen gedenken, welche gleichfalls von Spiegel zu Spiegel nicht etwa verbleichen, sondern sich erst recht entzünden, und man wird ein Symbol gewinnen [davon], was in der Geschichte der Künste und Wissenschaften, der Kirche [und] 8 9

[Ders., Entoptische Farben. An Julien, in: Werke, 1. Abt. Bd. III, S. 101.] [Ders., Zur Farbenlehre, in: Werke, 2. Abt., Bd. V/1, S. 227–318: S. 293.]

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wohl der politischen Welt sich mehrmals wiederholt hat und noch täglich wiederholt.«10 In der Fähigkeit des menschlichen Geistes, sich ein Vergangenes durch »wiederholte sittliche Spiegelung« zu neuem Leben zu erwecken, sah daher Goethe nichts Geringeres als ein geistiges O r g a non von schlechthin universeller Bedeutung. Im geistigen Leben und im Leben der Weltgeschichte beruhen auf dieser Fähigkeit alle »Renaissancen«, die wir kennen und ohne welche es für uns keine stetige Entwicklung des Kulturbewußtseins geben könnte. Keine echte Renaissance kann und will sich damit begnügen, eine frühere Form des Daseins noch einmal zu durchlaufen; jede versucht das Gewesene zu einem höheren Leben emporzusteigern. Polarität und Steigerung sah Goethe schon als Grundmomente alles natürlichen Lebens an. »Das Geeinte zu entzweien, das Entzweite zu einigen, ist das Leben der Natur; dieß ist die ewige Systole und Diastole, die ewige Synkrisis und Diakrisis, das Ein- und Ausathmen der Welt, in der wir leben, weben und sind.«11 Und wieder in einem anderen Sinne sind Polarität und Steigerung die Grundmomente alles g es ch ich t lich en Begreifens und Verstehens. Es gibt keine rein rezeptive, es gibt immer nur eine produktive Form der Erinnerung. Was man Erinnerung in rein rezeptivem und reproduktivem Sinne nennt, das ist, wie Goethe zu Kanzler von Müller | sagt, nur »[…] eine unbeholfene Art sich auszudrücken.« »Es gibt kein Vergangenes, das man zurücksehnen dürfte, es gibt nur ein ewig Neues, das sich aus den erweiterten Elementen des Vergangenen gestaltet […]«12 Eine solche Neugestaltung Goethes wollte Thomas Mann in seinem Werk geben. Und auch er fand für sie keinen anderen Weg als den der »wiederholten Spiegelung«. Nichts ist, wie mir scheint, bedeutsamer und charakteristischer für den inneren und äußeren Aufbau von Thomas Manns Roman, als die Art, wie dieses Stilmittel in ihm verwendet wird. Es wird nicht nur durchgängig festgehalten und geht gewissermaßen als Leitmotiv durch das Ganze des Buches hindurch; sondern es erfährt auch mit jeder neuen Anwendung eine neue künstlerische Steigerung. Alle anderen Gestalten seines Romans – vom Kellner Mager angefangen bis zu Lotte Kestner – hat Thomas Mann sofort in das helle und unerbittlich scharfe Tageslicht gerückt. Aber 10 [Ders., (Wiederholte Spiegelungen), in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XLII/2, S. 56 f.: S. 57.] 11 [Ders., Zur Farbenlehre. Didaktischer Teil (Werke, 2. Abt., Bd. I), S. 296.] 12 [Ders. zu Friedrich von Müller, 4. November 1823, in: Goethes Gespräche, Gesamtausgabe, unter Mitw. v. Max Morris u. a. neu hrsg. v. Flodoard von Biedermann (= Goethes Gespräche, begr. v. Woldemar von Biedermann, 2., durchges. u. stark verm. Aufl.), 5 Bde., Leipzig 1909–1911, Bd. III, S. 36 f.: S. 37.]

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Goethe konnte und wollte er nicht in dieser Weise sichtbar machen. Wir sehen ihn, bis weit über die Mitte des Buches hinaus, nicht im eigenen, sondern nur in reflektiertem Lichte. Der »Kristall« Goethe ruht, zwischen all den verschiedenen Spiegeln, die auf ihn gerichtet werden, vorerst noch wie im Trüben. Er ist von einem eigentümlichen Dämmerlicht umflossen, das sich zwar dem Gefühle offenbart, das uns aber keinen Einblick in sein Inneres verstattet. Wir ahnen seine Formen und Umrisse; aber der wirkliche innere Farbenreichtum, den er in sich birgt, hat sich unserem Auge noch nicht erschlossen. Aber nun werden allmählich den »epoptischen« Farben – den Farben, »die sich auf der Oberfläche der Körper unter verschiedenen Bedingungen flüchtig oder bleibend erweisen«13 – die »entoptischen« Farben hinzugefügt, die im Innern zu schauen sind. Und sie sollen uns eine neue und tiefere Kunde von diesem Innern selbst verschaffen. Dies geschieht erst in dem Moment, in welchem Goethe selbst im Roman auftritt. Die Weise der »wiederholten Spiegelung« wird auch jetzt nicht aufgegeben. Aber der Spiegel, in den wir blicken, ist nun nicht mehr ein fremdes Medium, sondern das Medium von Goethes eigenem Denken, Schaffen und Tun. Und damit ist der Bann gebrochen. Was uns gezeigt wird, ist zunächst freilich nichts anderes, als die frühen Morgenstunden eines einzelnen Goethischen Tages. In voller realistischer Bestimmtheit wird dieser Tag vor uns hingestellt. Er ist von keinem bedeutsamen Geschehen erfüllt; es fehlt ihm alles, was ihn in irgendeinem Sinne »interessant« oder merkwürdig machen und ihn dadurch aus dem Gleichmaß der Tage herausheben könnte. Goethe ist mitten hineingestellt in sein »Milieu«, in das Medium seiner Alltäglichkeit. Nirgends wird der Versuch gemacht, diese Alltäglichkeit | zu verschönern oder zu »idealisieren«. Keine ihrer Einzelheiten bleibt uns erspart. Wir müssen das Frühstück, die Morgentoilette, den Besuch des Friseurs über uns ergehen lassen; wir müssen an Goethes Sorgen für die Wirtschaft, für Küche und Vorratskammer, für den Speisezettel des Tages teilnehmen. Aus diesem Rahmen des Alltags steigt erst allmählich, und für den Leser fast unmerklich, das wirkliche Bild Goethes hervor. Der Schleier, in den es anfangs noch eingehüllt ist, beginnt sich langsam zu heben; der Blick wird frei für weitere und immer weitere Horizonte. Immer neuer und neuer Stoff drängt sich an; aber er bleibt fest umschlossen in der »inneren Form«, die das Sein Goethes ausmacht. Diese Form baut sich aus den mannigfachsten und divergentesten Lebens- und Daseinskreisen auf; aber keiner dieser Kreise stört den andern, weil sich keiner vom andern, als ein 13

[Ders., Zur Farbenlehre, in: Werke, 2. Abt., Bd. V/1, S. 255.]

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für sich Bestehendes, trennt und absondert. Wie wir Goethe im Kreise seines häuslichen Lebens gesehen haben, so sehen wir ihn in seinem nächsten Arbeits- und Pflichtenkreis. Die »Forderung des Tages«14 meldet sich an. Der Minister und Verwaltungsbeamte hat seine Aufgaben zu erfüllen. Die Zeitschrift »Isis«, die von Oken herausgegeben wird, hat Angriffe gegen die Weimarer Regierung gerichtet. Man ist empört, man fordert Vergeltungsmaßnahmen; der Herzog fordert einen Bericht von Goethe ein. Der Fall muß reiflich erwogen, vor übereilten Beschlüssen muß gewarnt werden. Goethe ist gegen jeden direkten Eingriff der Staatsgewalt: »Dem Staate hilfts nicht und der Kultur schadets.«15 Aber ebensowenig gestattet er einem einzelnen, selbst wenn er in ihm einen genialen Kopf sieht, an der Autorität des Staates zu rütteln. Solchen Versuchen soll man nicht durch gerichtliche Verfolgung oder Strafen, sondern durch administrative Maßnahmen einen Damm entgegensetzen. An die Tätigkeit des Ministers schließt sich die des Hofmannes an. Eine Redoute beim Prinzen soll gefeiert, ein Maskenzug soll aufgeführt werden. Goethe hat einen »artigen Mummenschanz«16 im Kopf, dessen Plan er vor August ausbreitet. Er spricht ruhig und sachlich als erfahrener Theatermann und Regisseur, der die Idee des Stückes darlegt und die notwendigen Requisiten bestimmt. Aber noch während er so spricht, sehen wir uns mit einem Schlage in eine neue und fremde Welt versetzt. Der Hof ist vergessen; eine andere und größere Bühne steht vor Goethes Augen. Auf ihr will er das Bild von florentinischen Gartenmädchen, von Fischern und Vogelstellern, das Bild von Grazien, Parzen und Furien hervorzaubern, und zuletzt soll auf dem Rücken eines Elefanten Victoria, die Meisterin aller Tätigkeiten, König Plutus und die Poesie in der Gestalt des Knaben Lenker hervortreten. Eine große Vision wird vor August, der staunend und kopfschüttelnd zuhört, | ausgebreitet: Aus der engen Stube in Weimar ist die kaiserliche Pfalz des zweiten Teiles »Faust« geworden. Aber auch all dies ist nur erste Andeutung und Vorbereitung, aus der sich ein anderes und Höheres entwickeln soll. Denn wir sollen Goethe nicht nur in der Enge seines häuslichen Lebens noch in der Weite seiner Tätigkeit begegnen. Sein Sinnen und Denken, sein Fragen und Forschen, sein Betrachten und Schauen soll für uns lebendig 14 [Ders., Maximen und Reflexionen über Literatur und Ethik. Aus Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren, S. 167.] 15 [Thomas Mann, Lotte in Weimar, Stockholm 1939 (Stockholmer Gesamtausgabe der Werke), S. 306.] 16 [A. a. O., S. 364.]

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werden. Dies soll erreicht werden, indem das Bild des N a tur forsch ers Goethe vor uns hingestellt wird. Alle verschiedenen Richtungen seiner Naturforschungen klingen an. Neben der Farbenlehre, diesem seinem eigensten Bezirk und seinem leidenschaftlich verteidigten Gebiet, steht die Osteologie, die Botanik und Morphologie, die Mineralogie, die Meteorologie. Keine seiner Lehren wird in abstracto entwickelt oder vorgetragen. Goethe hat einmal das für seine ganze wissenschaftliche Arbeit bezeichnende und erleuchtende Wort gesprochen, daß man auch in Wissenschaften eigentlich nichts wissen könne; »[…] es will immer gethan sein.«17 Den Einblick in dieses Tun will Thomas Manns Darstellung uns vermitteln. Was hier gezeichnet und was innerlich verständlich gemacht werden soll, ist nicht Goethes Th eo r ie der Natur, sondern sein ständiger, nie abbrechender Verk ehr mit der Natur. Goethes Tag beginnt damit, daß er, noch vor dem Aufstehen, sich über Wind und Wetter, über Thermometer- und Barometerstand berichten läßt. Und auf Grund dieses Berichts stellt er die Prognose des Tages – beschreibt er, noch im Bette liegend und ohne einen Blick auf den Himmel geworfen zu haben, die Gestalt der Wolken und der ganzen Reihe der atmosphärischen Erscheinungen, die sich nach ihr erwarten läßt. Das Interesse, das Goethe an die Kristallographie wendet, wird uns vergegenwärtigt in der Freude, die er über ein Geschenk empfindet, das ihm von Frankfurt gesandt worden ist. Es ist ein Hyalit, ein Glasopal; ein Prachtexemplar, das einen Stolz seiner Sammlung bilden wird. Die Betrachtungen, die Goethe an das Anschauen und an die Beschreibung dieses Kristalls knüpft, rühren an seine tiefsten naturphilosophischen Gedanken: an das, was den Unterschied des Lebendigen und Leblosen, der organischen und der anorganischen Welt ausmacht. All das wird nicht breit entwikkelt; es wird leicht hingeworfen, wie es der besondere Anlaß mit sich bringt und wie es der Augenblick eingibt. Alles bewahrt die Form der freiesten, geistreichsten Improvisation; aber diese Improvisation fördert ein Beständiges und Längstgehegtes, ein durch jahrelanges Studium Gegründetes zutage. Wir spüren die Form und Kraft von Goethes »gegenständlichem Denken«: einem Denken, das sich von den Gegen | ständen nicht sondert, sondern das die Elemente der Gegenstände, die Anschauungen in sich eingehen und mit sich auf das innigste durchdringen läßt. Aber Goethe selbst hat unmittelbar neben sein »gegenständliches

17 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Verfolg, in: Werke, 2. Abt., Bd. VI, S. 129– 245: S. 222.]

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Denken« seine »gegenständliche Dichtung«18 gestellt. Sie ist und bleibt der letzte tragende Grund, das Fundament seines geistigen Wesens. Wie hätte dieses Wesen sich vergegenwärtigen lassen, wenn es nicht gelang, die Dichtung nicht nur mitklingen zu lassen, sondern sie geradezu zum Grundton der gesamten Darstellung zu machen? Auf der anderen Seite stand freilich die Darstellung an diesem Punkte vor ihrer schwierigsten und vor einer fast unlösbaren Aufgabe. Denn wie könnte es dem Roman, wie könnte es der epischen Dichtung gelingen, das auszusprechen, was für Goethe selbst in gewissem Sinne Zeit seines Lebens Geheimnis gewesen und geblieben ist? Vom »Werther« und von vielen seiner Jugendgedichte hat er bekannt, daß er sie »ziemlich unbewußt, einem Nachtwandler ähnlich«19 geschaffen habe; vom »Wilhelm Meister« sagt er, er zähle zu den »incalculabelsten Productionen«,20 wozu schon fast selbst der Schlüssel fehle. Wie sollte ein anderer vermögen, was Goethe nicht vermocht hat? Thomas Mann hat in der Tat einen derartigen Versuch nicht gemacht. Er spricht nirgends v on der Dichtung Goethes, noch spricht er ü b er sie. Aber er wählt, um uns diese Grundkraft und Grundschicht von Goethes Sein fühlen zu lassen, ein anderes eigentümliches Stilmittel. Er wagt es, Goethes inneres Sinnen und Bilden, seine Gefühlswelt und Gedankenwelt sich aussprechen zu lassen in einem großen Selbstgespräch – in einem Gespräch, das sich unablässig fortspinnt und das auch durch die heterogensten Beschäftigungen keine Störung erfährt. Alles, was Goethe bewegt, drängt sich in diesem einzigartigen Monolog zusammen und dringt in ihm so zutage. Und hier findet auch Goethes Dichtung ihre eigentliche Stelle. Sie wird uns dargestellt in dem Prozeß der Wiederauferstehung, die sie in Goethes eigenem Ich, in seiner Erinnerung und in seiner Phantasie, erfährt. Die Erinnerung hat alle Züge des Vergangenen treu bewahrt, und sie taucht immer von neuem in den Strom der Vergangenheit ein. »Werther«, »Iphigenie«, »Pandora«: dies alles ist noch so lebendig und gegenwärtig, wie es am ersten Tage gewesen ist. Und anderes, Neues, nicht Ausgeführtes kündigt sich an. Der zweite Teil des »Faust« steht als Ganzes vor Goethes geistigem Auge; anderes, wie der Stoff der »Legende«, hat sich ihm seit Jahren unauslöschlich eingedrückt und harrt nur noch des Tages, der es zur vollen Reife bringen wird. 18 [Vgl. ders., Tag- und Jahres-Hefte als Ergänzung meiner sonstigen Bekenntnisse, von 1807 bis 1822. Lesarten, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XXXVI, S. 381–435: S. 434.] 19 [Ders., Dichtung und Wahrheit. Dritter Theil (Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XXVIII), S. 224.] 20 [Ders., Tag- und Jahres-Hefte als Ergänzung meiner sonstigen Bekenntnisse, von 1749 bis 1806, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XXXV, S. 1–273: S. 65.]

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Was uns, durch das Medium des Goethischen Selbstgesprächs, ver| mittelt und zugänglich gemacht werden soll, ist also nicht das Werden einzelner Dichtungen Goethes, sondern es ist der innere poetische Schaffensprozeß selbst. Dieser Prozeß wird von Thomas Mann nicht als ein einmaliges Geschehen, das auf Tag und Nacht und Stunden angewiesen ist, dargestellt; er erscheint als die unversiegliche, ewig flutende Quelle, aus der der Dichter in jedem Augenblick schöpft. Goethe kann und will »Gelegenheitsdichter« sein; und er fordert von sich bisweilen, daß er die Poesie kommandiere. Auch hier sehen wir ihn mit einer derartigen Aufgabe beschäftigt. Die Jubelfeier des Staatsministers von Voigt steht bevor, und Goethe hat es übernommen, ihn an diesem Tage mit einem Glückwunschgedicht zu begrüßen, das er rasch entwirft. Aber alles derartige, all das, was »an Personen und zu festlichen Gelegenheiten«21 gedichtet ist, gehört nicht der eigentlichen und tiefsten Schicht Goethischer Dichtung an. Die wahrhaft großen und unvergeßlichen Gestalten dieser Dichtung vermag Goethe nicht zu »erfinden«. Sie kann er nicht nach Willkür hervorbringen. Das Leben selbst muß sie ihm geben und muß sie langsam wachsen und reifen lassen. Es ist einer der schönsten und glücklichsten Züge in Thomas Manns Darstellung, daß sie uns beide Elemente von Goethes Dichtung vor Augen führt; Goethe erscheint zugleich als der große und fast unbeschränkte »Könner«, wie er als der Künstler erscheint, der im Grunde über alles bloße Können hinaus ist, weil für ihn der Prozeß des Schaffens und Bildens ein Muß, eine innere Notwendigkeit bedeutet. Aber wir können von Thomas Manns Goethe-Bild nicht scheiden, ohne noch einen anderen Zug hervorzuheben, der für dasselbe charakteristisch ist. Der große Monolog Goethes zeigt uns diesen nicht nur in sich selbst versunken und seinen eigenen Gedanken, seinen wissenschaftlichen Plänen und Aufgaben hingegeben. Er ist nur scheinbar allein; denn er fühlt sich umgeben von den Geistern all derer, denen er einmal im Leben genaht ist und durch deren Schaffen und Wirken er entscheidende Eindrücke erhalten hat. Diese Eindrücke sind nicht erloschen, und sie gestalten das Selbstgespräch immer wieder zum Zwieges p r äch . Erst durch dieses künstlerische Mittel konnte uns Thomas Mann Goethe nicht nur in seinem Verkehr mit der Natur, sondern auch in seiner Stellung und Haltung zur geschichtlichen Welt zeigen. Denn für Goethe gab es kein geschichtliches Erkennen und Schauen – es sei denn, daß es sich ihm in der Gestalt großer Einzel21 [Ders., Sämmtliche Werke in vierzig Bänden, Bd. VI, vollst., neugeordn. Ausg., Stuttgart/Tübingen 1853, S. III.]

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persönlichkeiten verkörperte. Für das bloß äußere Geschehen hatte er weder Sinn noch Blick. Alle Geschichte wurde ihm unwillkürlich zur Geistesgeschichte; und in der letzteren bestand die eigentliche Auf | gabe für ihn darin, nicht nur zu w i s s e n, sondern auch in das geistige Wesen anderer einzudringen und es in sein eigenes Sein zu verwandeln. So formte er sich das, was er ein »historisches Menschengefühl«22 nannte – ein Gefühl, das freilich nicht den großen geschichtlichen Gesamtbewegungen, sondern nur den einzelnen galt, die er als seine Träger und Repräsentanten empfand. Dieses Moment des Goethischen Daseins wird in Thomas Manns Darstellung am Beispiel Napoleons, Winckelmanns und Schillers sichtbar gemacht. Das Gespräch mit Napoleon, das er in Erfurt geführt, ist ihm noch unmittelbar gegenwärtig, und er liebt es, sich jeden einzelnen Zug desselben zurückzurufen und es in Gedanken weiter fortzuspinnen. Und das Schicksal des Gefangenen von St. Helena läßt ihn nicht los, wenngleich er dieses Ende als historische Notwendigkeit begriffen hat; er versucht sich auszumalen, »[…] wies so einem Stück Element zu Mute sein muß […] so einem gefesselten, an alle[n] Tat[en] gehinderten Riesen und zugeschütteten Aetna, in dem es kocht und wühlt […]«23 Winckelmann ist ihm der Mann, der ihm zuerst den Weg nicht nur zum Verständnis, sondern zum Anschauen der großen griechischen Kunst gewiesen hat: der »[t]eure[…], schmerzlich scharfsinnige[…] Schwärmer und Liebende[…], ins Sinnliche geistreich vertieft.«24 Sein Bild wird für einen Augenblick hervorgezaubert – wie Goethe selbst es in seiner Schrift »Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert« unvergänglich und unvergleichlich gezeichnet hat. Von einem noch intimeren Reiz ist die Art, wie Goethe sich die Gestalt Schillers und den Verkehr mit ihm wieder hervorruft. Wieder klingt hier eine Fülle von Einzelheiten an. Aber alle diese Einzelheiten verdichten sich zu einem großen Gesamteindruck – einem Eindruck, der in höchster Prägnanz das Gefühl Goethes gegen Schiller ausdrückt: ein Gefühl, seltsam gemischt aus Ja und Nein, aus tiefster Vertrautheit und Fremdheit, aus Verehrung und Liebe und Abstand und Widerstand. Ich habe versucht, in großen Zügen das Goethe-Bild nachzuzeichnen, das Thomas Mann, in der Darstellung des großen Goethischen Selbstgesprächs, vor unserem inneren Auge erstehen läßt. Und nun erst können wir uns, in einem allgemeinen Rückblick, die »innere Form« 22 [Ders., Maximen und Reflexionen über Literatur und Ethik. Aus Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren, S. 173.] 23 [Mann, Lotte in Weimar, S. 332.] 24 [A. a. O., S. 355.]

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des Romans zum Bewußtsein bringen. Diese Form läßt sich nicht durch Angabe einzelner, bloß »statischer« Merkmale beschreiben. Wir müssen uns in die Dynamik des Werkes versetzen und sie auf uns wirken lassen. Es ist wie eine große Wellenbewegung, in die wir eingehen und von der wir uns tragen lassen sollen, bis sie uns schließlich zu ihrem Zentrum, zu ihrem Ursprungsort und belebenden Quellpunkt zurückführt. In Lottes Gesprächen mit der englischen Zeichnerin, mit Riemer, mit Adele Schopenhauer, mit August von Goethe weitet | sich die Welle mehr und mehr; aber noch erkennen wir nicht, welcher Tiefe sie entsprungen ist. Diese Tiefe wird erst sichtbar, wenn Goethe selbst uns begegnet. Hier erst vermag die »Spiegelung« ihre eigentliche und höchste Funktion zu entfalten. Sie kann, um es mit Goethes eigenen Worten zu sagen, »[…] ein Wahrhaftes wiederher[…]stellen, aus Trümmern von Dasein und Überlieferung […] eine zweite Gegenwart […] verschaffen […]«25 Der Kristall Goethe erwies sich für alles Licht, das von außen gegen ihn entsandt wurde, in gewissem Sinne als unzugänglich und undurchdringlich; er blieb »im Trüben [ruhen]«.26 Nun aber beginnt sich aus dem Innern dieses Kristalls ein Licht von anderer Art und Herkunft zu entzünden. Und damit erhellt sich das Trübe nicht nur, sondern es wird in ihm, nach den Worten des »West-östlichen Divan«, ein »erklingend Farbenspiel«27 entwickelt. Der eigentliche poetische Stimmungsgehalt wird sich nur dem erschließen, der dieses »erklingende Farbenspiel« als solches gewahr werden kann, der es voll ausschwingen und lange in sich nachhallen läßt.

II Lessing hat in seinen »Antiquarischen Briefen« in unvergleichlicher Knappheit und Schärfe die Normen aufgestellt, die für jede literarische Kritik gelten und auf welche diese sich verpflichten sollte. »Wenn ich Kunstrichter wäre«, so sagt er, »wenn ich mir getraute, das Kunstrichterschild aushengen zu können: so würde meine Tonleiter diese seyn. Gelinde und schmeichelnd gegen den Anfänger; mit Bewunderung zweifelnd, mit Zweifel bewundernd gegen den Meister; abschreckend und positiv gegen den Stümper; höhnisch gegen den Prahler; und so bitter als möglich, gegen den Cabalenmacher.«28 Gilt diese Skala, so 25 26 27 28

[Goethe, (Wiederholte Spiegelungen), S. 57.] [Ders., Entoptische Farben, S. 101.] [Ders., Wiederfinden, in: West-östlicher Divan, S. 188 f.: S. 189.] [Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Briefe antiquarischen Inhalts (57. Brief), in:

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herrscht kein Zweifel, welcher Ton der Kritik einem Werk wie Thomas Manns »Lotte in Weimar« allein angemessen ist. Wir können von ihm nur »mit Bewunderung zweifelnd, mit Zweifel bewundernd« sprechen. Das Werk macht uns das Eindringen keineswegs leicht; ich wage zu behaupten, daß derjenige, der sich ein Urteil über dasselbe nicht zu erkämpfen hat, keinen Anspruch darauf erheben darf, es verstanden zu haben. Beim ersten Anlauf erringt man sich ein solches Verständnis nicht. Es kann nur allmählich gewonnen werden, und es setzt von seiten des Lesers nicht nur die volle Hingabe, sondern auch eine ständige geistige Mitarbeit voraus. Das wird schon sichtbar, wenn wir nur das M a te r i a l ins Auge fassen, das Thomas Mann für seine Dichtung benutzt hat. Um dieses Material zu gewinnen, dazu war nichts Geringeres erforderlich, als ein Studium des g an z en Goethischen Werks. Es genügte keineswegs, | die Reihe der großen Goethischen Dichtungen: den »Faust«, den »West-östlichen Divan«, die »Iphigenie«, den »Paria« und die »Orphischen Urworte«, die »Zahmen Xenien« usf., fast mit jedem Wort in der Erinnerung zu bewahren, um sie immer wieder an ihrer Stelle und zur rechten Zeit anklingen zu lassen. Es bedurfte dazu der vollen Kenntnis des b io g r ap h is ch en Details, wie es Goethe selbst gestaltet hat. In dieser Hinsicht hat sich Thomas Mann nicht damit begnügt, bloß die große Zusammenschau des Goethischen Lebens in »Dichtung und Wahrheit« zu benutzen. Er ist auch in alles andere eingedrungen: Wie er denn z. B. die Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, die verschiedenen Darstellungen der Rhein- und Main-Reise im Jahre 1814 und vieles andere Weitverstreute benutzt hat. Aber damit war nur ein Anfang gemacht; und all dies bezeichnet nur die erste Schicht der Vorbereitungsarbeit, die der Dichter zu leisten hatte. Goethes Stellung zu den großen Erscheinungen der Weltliteratur, seine Stellung zur bildenden Kunst, seine Naturanschauung und sein Werk als Naturforscher sollten sichtbar gemacht und in einzelnen plastischen Bildern eingeprägt werden. Dafür bedurfte es der intensivsten Versenkung in all das, was Goethe auf diesen Gebieten erstrebt, geplant, gearbeitet hat. Der Schiller-Goethische Briefwechsel, die Aufsätze aus »Kunst und Altertum«, die Schrift über Winckelmann haben hier in erster Linie den Stoff für die Darstellung hergegeben. Von den naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften waren die »Farbenlehre«, in ihrem didaktischen wie in ihrem polemischen Teil, die Arbeiten zur Osteologie und zur Metamorphose der Pflanzen, die Schriften zur Mineralogie und GeoSämtliche Schriften, hrsg. v. Karl Lachmann, 3., aufs neue durchges. u. verm. Aufl., bes. durch Franz Muncker, Bd. X, Stuttgart 1894, S. 229–438: S. 437.]

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logie, der Versuch einer Witterungslehre zu benutzen. Und all dies mußte nicht nur gekannt, es mußte in jedem Augenblicke g e g e nwärtig sein. Dazu kommt die Fülle der mittelbaren Zeugnisse, auf die sich die Darstellung stützt: die Gespräche Goethes mit Riemer, mit Eckermann, mit dem Kanzler Müller, das Tagebuch Sulpiz Boisserées, der Briefwechsel mit Schiller und Zelter. Thomas Mann hat sich alle »Erfindung« und alle bloß subjektive Zutat verboten: Sein Goethe-Bild wollte schlechthin naturgetreu und porträtähnlich sein. Aber eben hier wird vielleicht bei den meisten Lesern ein Bedenken aufsteigen. Kann eine solche photographische Treue ein wirklich k ü n stle r is ch es Bild von Goethes Wesen für uns erstehen lassen? Ist dies alles noch Dichtung – oder ist es nicht vielleicht eine freilich höchst subtile und künstlerisch sublimierte Goe the - P hi l ol og i e ? Die Technik, die Thomas Mann angewandt hat, ist der eines pointillistischen Gemäldes zu vergleichen. Tritt man zu nahe an das Gemälde heran, so geht alle klare Gestaltung verloren: Man sieht nur | noch einzelne Striche und getrennte Farbpunkte. Erst wenn man den rechten Abstand gefunden hat, verschwindet diese verwirrende Fülle. Aber für den Leser des Buches ist es – besonders bei seiner ersten Lektüre – nicht leicht, den rechten Blickpunkt zu finden. Er ist stets in der Gefahr, im einzelnen zu versinken oder aber an vielen für das Gesamtbild bedeutsamen und wichtigen Einzelheiten vorbeizusehen. Hat man freilich einmal den Punkt des »deutlichsten Sehens« gefunden, so schwindet aller Zweifel. Goethes Gestalt scheint jetzt gewissermaßen transparent zu werden; sie scheint uns einen Einblick in das Innere zu gestatten. Aber welcher mühseligen Vorbereitung bedurfte es hierfür für den Dichter des Werkes – wie es ihrer auch für den Leser bedarf. »Schlank und leicht, wie aus dem Nichts [ent]sprungen«,29 – so soll nach einer Forderung der klassizistischen Ästhetik das Bild der Kunst vor dem entzückten Blick stehen. Thomas Manns Kunstwerke sind nicht von dieser Art. In jedem Zuge spürt man die gewaltige, offenbar Jahrzehnte umfassende Arbeit, aus der dieses Goethe-Buch hervorgegangen ist. Die »Andacht zum Kleinen« ist selten weiter getrieben worden, als es hier geschieht. Goethes Gestalt soll nicht durch ihre Entfernung und Höhe wirken. Sie wird uns in eine geradezu körperliche Nähe gerückt – eine Körperlichkeit, die hie und da einen fast beklemmenden und beängstigenden Eindruck erwecken kann. 29 [Friedrich Schiller, Das Ideal und das Leben, in: Gedichte, Bd. I (Sämtliche Werke. Säkular-Ausgabe in 16 Bdn., in Verb. mit Richard Fester u. a. hrsg. v. Eduard von der Hellen, Stuttgart/Berlin 1904–1905, Bd. I), S. 191–196: S. 194.]

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Um das Eigentümliche dieser Leistung zu verstehen, müssen wir uns die Besonderheit und Eigenart von Thomas Manns Darstellungsform vergegenwärtigen. Goethe unterscheidet drei Grundformen künstlerischer Darstellung, für die nach ihm eine bestimmte Rangund Wertordnung besteht. Die beiden ersten mögen an ihrem Platze zulässig und gültig sein; aber erst in der dritten und höchsten wird das wahre Ideal, das Ideal der absoluten Kunst erreicht. Die unterste Stufe bildet die » ein f ach e N ach ah m u n g de r N a tur « , wobei der Künstler sich unmittelbar an die Gegenstände der Natur wendet, mit Treue und Fleiß ihre Gestalten, ihre Farben auffaßt und sie auf das Genaueste wiedergibt. An sie reiht sich die » M a ni e r « , die die subjektive Natur des Künstlers zu Worte kommen läßt. Sie ist eine Sprache, in welcher sich nicht nur die Beschaffenheit des Gegenstandes, sondern auch der Geist des Sprechenden unmittelbar ausdrückt und bezeichnet. Aber die eigentliche Vollendung wird erst im » S ti l « gewonnen: Denn dieser ruht »[…] auf den tieffsten Grundfesten der Erkenntniß, auf dem Wesen der Dinge, in so fern uns erlaubt ist es in sichtbaren und greiflichen Gestalten zu erkennen.«30 Versucht man diese Unterscheidung auf die Kunstform Thomas Manns anzuwenden, so gerät man in eine eigentümliche Verlegenheit. Denn die strenge So n | d eru n g der drei Momente, die Goethe voraussetzt, läßt sich hier nicht länger festhalten. Alle festen Grenzen, die die klassische Theorie zu ziehen gesucht hatte, drohen sich wieder zu verschieben. An »einfacher Nachahmung der Natur« fehlt es in Thomas Manns Werk wahrlich nicht. Ich greife ein einzelnes Beispiel heraus, dem sich indes beliebig viele andere an die Seite stellen ließen. Mit größter Anschaulichkeit wird uns, in Adele Schopenhauers Erzählung, Goethes Stellung und Benehmen in dem Weimarer Gesellschaftskreis geschildert. Wir sehen ihn, im Hause Johanna Schopenhauers, als Mittelpunkt der Gesellschaft, aber zugleich als ihren Alleinherrscher und Tyrannen. Er ist unvergleichlich in seiner Unterhaltung und unerschöpflich an Einfällen und Eingebungen, an geistreichen Improvisationen; aber er kann auch mürrisch in sich selbst versinken, sich von der Gesellschaft entfernen oder dieselbe durch eigensinniges Festhalten an irgendeiner Idee oder einem von ihm vorgeschlagenen Spiel ermüden und quälen. »Einen ganzen Abend lang«, so berichtet Adele, »plagte Goethe die Gesellschaft bis zur vollkommenen Ermüdung mit dem langgezogenen Scherz, daß er sie zwang, an der Hand einzelner Requisiten den Inhalt der neuen, niemandem bekannten Stücke zu erraten, von 30 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Einfache Nachahmung der Natur, Manier, Stil, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XLVII, S. 77–83: S. 80.]

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denen er eben Probe gehalten. Es war ganz unmöglich, eine Aufgabe mit zu vielen Unbekannten, niemand brachte einen Zusammenhang zustande, und die Gesichter wurden immer länger, das Gähnen immer häufiger. Er aber ließ nicht ab zu insistieren und hielt den ganzen Kreis immerfort auf der Folter der Langenweile […]«31 Dies alles schildert den wirklichen Goethe; es ist in jedem einzelnen Zuge eine Kopie der Wirklichkeit, wie wir sie durch Stephan Schützes eingehende Schilderung von den Donnerstagabenden bei Johanna Schopenhauer kennen. Und wie könnten wir in Thomas Manns Darstellung die »Manier« verkennen, wenn wir dieses Wort in dem Sinne verstehen, den Goethe ihm gegeben hat? Denn danach soll es die »Manier« kennzeichnen, daß sie sich selbst eine Weise erfindet und sich selbst eine Sprache macht, um dem Gegenstand eine eigene bezeichnende Form zu geben – eine Form, in der nicht nur er selbst ausgedrückt erscheint, sondern in der das »leichte[…] fähige[…] Gemüth«32 des Darstellers mitspricht und anspricht. Dieses »leichte fähige Gemüt« verleugnet sich in keiner Zeile von Thomas Manns Darstellung. In den Unterhaltungen, die er Lotte mit Riemer, mit Adele Schopenhauer, mit August von Goethe führen läßt, ja auch in dem großen Goethischen Monolog, hören wir niemals nur die einzelnen Personen selbst reden; immer steht ihnen Thomas Mann, als Betrachter, als lächelnder und ironischer Zuhörer, zur Seite. Diese seine Gegenwart ist unerläßlich; | sie bildet gewissermaßen das seelisch-geistige Fluidum, das die gesamte Darstellung durchdringt. Aber die Nachahmung sowohl wie die Manier stehen hier nicht für sich selbst. Sie zielen auf den »Stil« ab und sind bewußt zu Mitteln des Stils erhoben. Aus alledem soll zuletzt das Wesen Goethes »in sichtbarer und greifbarer Gestalt«33 aufsteigen. Es ist nicht eine Goethe-Dichtung, die hier gegeben wird; es ist Goethe - E r ke nntni s , die uns aufgeschlossen werden soll; eine Erkenntnis, die sich freilich nur den Wissenden und Verstehenden ganz erschließen kann. Daß Thomas Mann sich an eine derartige Aufgabe wagen konnte, beruht auf dem eigentümlichen Verhältnis, in welchem in seiner Dichtung An aly s e und S y n t h es e zueinander stehen. Er hat als psychologischer Analytiker begonnen, und er ist es im gewissen Sinne immer geblieben. Diesen seinen eigensten Kreis sucht er nirgends zu durchbrechen; aber er hat ihn, in seinen späteren Dichtungen, ständig von innen her erweitert. Die Kunstmittel des naturalistischen Romans werden nicht aufgegeben, aber sie werden Zielen dienstbar gemacht, 31 32 33

[Mann, Lotte in Weimar, S. 139.] [Goethe, Einfache Nachahmung, S. 80.] [S. oben, S. 285 Anm. 31.]

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die sich von der »gemeine[n] Deutlichkeit der Dinge«34 mehr und mehr entfernen. Und damit müssen diese Kunstmittel allmählich in sich selbst einen Stil- und Bedeutungswandel erfahren. Der »Realismus« Thomas Manns will auf kein Gebiet menschlichen Daseins und Fühlens verzichten. Er dringt, in der »Joseph«-Dichtung, in die Welt des My th o s ein, um sie nicht als eine entlegene und versunkene, sondern als eine noch mitten unter uns seiende und für uns nachfühlbare Welt darzustellen. Dies ist nur dadurch möglich, daß der realistische Stil, ohne aufgegeben zu werden, zugleich einen s ymbol isch en Charakter erhält. Denn ebendies ist der Sinn des Symbols, wie Goethe ihn zu verstehen gelehrt hat. »Das ist die wahre Symbolik, wo das Besondere das Allgemeinere repräsentirt, nicht als Traum und Schatten, sondern als lebendig-augenblickliche Offenbarung des Unerforschlichen.«35 Thomas Manns Goethe-Roman wagt abermals den Vorstoß in ein neues Gebiet. Wie im »Joseph« urtümlicher Glaube für uns sichtbar werden sollte, so sollen wir jetzt in die Welt der Poesie, in die Welt des Dichters und Bildners Goethe eindringen. Aber auch hierbei wird die Poesie nicht in eine ideelle Form gerückt. Sie soll nicht als etwas »Unwirkliches« oder »Überwirkliches« wirken; sie soll die stets gegenwärtige Atmosphäre sein, in der die Wirklichkeit nicht nur eingehüllt ist, sondern in der sie lebt und atmet. Diese allgegenwärtige und alldurchdringende Atmosphäre der Poesie, nicht aber sie selbst, als ein besonderer Bezirk und Umkreis menschlichen Schaffens und Wirkens, sollte uns in dem Goethe-Bild, das hier gegeben wird, so nahe kommen, | daß wir ihren unmittelbaren Hauch zu fühlen glauben. Erst dieses Ziel macht es verständlich, daß uns in diesem Bilde vieles neu und andersartig, ja daß es fremd und seltsam erscheinen kann. Das Fremdartige mag auf den ersten Blick fast wie ein Sakrileg wirken. Denn Thomas Mann wollte nicht nur aufbauen; sondern er mußte auch manche Götterbilder, die wir in und mit uns tragen, umstürzen. Jeder von uns liest seinen eigenen Goethe; und jeder hat sich im Lauf der Jahre ein bestimmtes Goethe-Bild geformt, an das er nur ungern rühren läßt. Thomas Manns Darstellung verlangt von uns, daß wir dies Bild für einen Augenblick vergessen und aufopfern, um statt dessen einer anderen und neuen künstlerischen Wiedergeburt Goethes zuzusehen. Sie erfolgt in seinem eigenen Geist, der der Geist eines 34 [Friedrich Schiller, Wallensteins Tod (5. Aufzug, 3. Auftritt), in: Sämtliche Werke, Bd. V, S. 183–372: S. 351.] 35 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen über Literatur und Ethik. Aus Kunst und Alterthum, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XLII/2, S. 111–164: S. 151 f.]

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unermüdlichen Beobachters und eines unerbittlichen Analytikers ist. Der Beobachter kann und darf auf keine noch so unscheinbare Einzelheit verzichten. Er verbietet sich jede »Abstraktion«, jedes A bs e he n vom einzelnen – er kennt nur ein immer erneutes und immer gesteigertes H in s eh en . Wenn Goethe von einer großen Persönlichkeit sprach, so liebte er es, sie eine »Natur« zu nennen – eine »Natur« ohne jedes nähere Prädikat und ohne jedes einschränkende Beiwort. Als eine solche »Natur« soll Goethe hier erscheinen und wirken. Aber im Naturbetrachten gilt die Forderung, daß wir »[i]mmer eins wie alles achten«36 müssen. Gegen das Wort vom »Innern der Natur« hat Goethe eine instinktive, oft bekundete Abneigung. Er ließ, der Natur gegenüber, weder Kern noch Schale gelten: »Denn das ist der Natur Gehalt, / Daß außen gilt was innen galt.«37 »Es ist nichts in der Hand / Was nicht im Knochen ist«38 – so liebte er mit Bezug auf seine anatomischen Studien zu sagen. Auch in Thomas Manns Darstellung sollte der Unterschied von »Innen« und »Außen«, von »Hand« und »Knochen« bewußt verwischt, ja geradezu aufgehoben werden – nicht weil das Äußere, die Oberfläche ihn als solche reizte, sondern weil er auch die letzte, scheinbar unbedeutendste Äußerlichkeit noch als Manifestation, als »lebendig-augenblickliche Offenbarung« des Wesens empfinden lassen wollte. Sein Goethe erscheint daher nirgends im Lichte der Heroenverehrung. Er wirkt nicht nur menschlich, sondern allzu menschlich; er ist nicht nur an das Irdische gebunden, sondern nach allen Seiten hin in dasselbe verstrickt. Mit all seinen physischen und mit all seinen menschlich-sittlichen Einschränkungen soll er vor uns hingestellt werden. Wir sollen seine körperlichen Leiden mit ihm ertragen, wie wir seine menschlichen Grenzen spüren sollen, und seine sozialen Hemmungen und Schranken werden uns in Thomas Manns Darstellung mit einer Deutlichkeit bewußt, die sich fast zum Schmerz steigert. Goethe hat sich an einem Worte | Hamanns, des »Magus in Norden«, erfreut, das Deutlichkeit als »eine gehörige Vertheilung von Licht und Schatten«39 erklärt. Er sah in ihm, ins Geistige gewandt, eine Bestätigung seiner »Farbenlehre«, daß die Farbe aus einer Wechselwirkung des Hellen und Dunkeln entstehe. Thomas Manns Schilderung verweilt mit gleicher Eindringlichkeit bei dem Dunkeln wie bei dem Hellen in Goethes Wesen, um aus diesem Wechselspiel den [Ders., Epirrhema, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 88.] [Ders., Zahme Xenien VI, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 350–369: S. 355.] 38 [Ders., Typus, a. a. O., S. 119: »Es ist nichts in der Haut/Was nicht im Knochen ist«.] 39 [Ders., Maximen und Reflexionen über Literatur und Ethik. Aus Kunst und Alterthum, S. 139.] 36 37

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inneren Farbenreichtum desselben sichtbar zu machen. Und wenn der Beobachter sich in jedes dieser Momente vertieft, so ruht der Analytiker Thomas Mann nicht, ehe er sie nicht bis in ihre letzten psychologischen Ursprünge zurückverfolgt hat. Jeder Zug soll in seiner Herkunft verständlich gemacht werden, soll nicht nur individuell beschrieben, sondern genetisch begriffen werden – aus körperlicher und geistiger Disposition, aus Familie und Abstammung, aus all den »Elementen«, die aus dem Komplex nicht zu erkennen sind. Aber bei alledem wird das eigentliche Ziel, das Ziel der dichterischen Sy n th ese nicht aus den Augen verloren; es bleibt uns nahe, auch wenn es noch so sehr in die Ferne gerückt erscheint. Goethe hat gesagt, daß nur Analyse und Synthese zusammen, wie Aus- und Einatmen, das Leben der Wissenschaft ausmachen. Thomas Mann würde diesen Satz auch für die Dichtkunst gelten lassen. Es ist in künstlerischer Hinsicht vielleicht das Merkwürdigste in Thomas Manns Darstellung, wie ihr mitten i n der Entzweiung, ja d ur c h sie, die Einigung gelungen ist. Aus all den mit Absicht gesuchten und mit Absicht betonten Eigenheiten und Einzelheiten, aus allen Partikularitäten und Idiosynkrasien des Menschen und des Künstlers Goethe wird zuletzt sein schlechthin universelles, weltumfassendes und weltbewegendes Wesen sichtbar gemacht. Das ist eine große Phantasieleistung; aber jede Phantasie wäre gegenüber dieser Aufgabe erlahmt, wenn sie nicht zugleich durch eine andere Kraft beflügelt worden wäre. Der Kraft der Phantasie, der ideellen »Zusammenschau«, mußte sich die Kraft des Eros gesellen. Nur der großen, nie ablassenden Liebe zu Goethe konnte es gelingen, in dieser Weise das Weitverstreute zu sammeln und es durch den Anhauch des eigenen Gefühls zu beleben: » Was auch als Wahrheit oder Fabel In tausend Büchern dir erscheint, Das alles ist ein Thurm zu Babel, Wenn es die Liebe nicht vereint.«40

III Der Leser, der an Thomas Manns Werk mit der Erwartung herantritt, in ihm einen »Roman« im üblichen Sinne zu finden, wird das | Buch nach kurzer Zeit enttäuscht aus der Hand legen. Alles, was man sonst in Romanen zu suchen pflegt, ist hier ferngehalten; alle Hoffnungen, 40

Ders., Zahme Xenien III, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 268–285: S. 279.

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die man auf einen solchen setzt, werden durchkreuzt und geflissentlich vereitelt. Es fehlt an jedem Versuch, eine »Handlung« einzuleiten und fortzuspinnen: Und wo eine solche in Gang kommt, wird sie immer wieder unterbrochen und abgelenkt. Das innere Geschehen scheint fast stillzustehen; was sich bewegt, ist nur das Gespräch, in dessen Wellen wir gleichsam zu versinken drohen. Auch wo die Spannung sich lösen soll, wo Goethe und Lotte sich endlich wiederbegegnen, ändert sich das Bild nicht; es kommt zu keinem eigentlichen Wiederfinden, sondern alles verläuft in den Bahnen gesellschaftlicher Konvention und löst sich in eine zwar geistreiche, aber durchaus unpersönliche Konversation auf. Aber der besonnene Kritiker wird sich nicht damit begnügen, diesen Mangel festzustellen, sondern er wird nach seinem Grunde fragen. »[Es gibt] Kunstrichter«, so sagt L es s i ng in seiner Abhandlung über das Wesen der Fabel, »welche einen [so] enge[…]n und […] materiellen Begriff mit dem Worte H a n d lu ng verbinden, daß sie nirgends Handlung sehen, als wo die Körper so thätig sind, daß sie eine gewisse Veränderung des Raumes erfordern. Sie finden in keinem Trauerspiele Handlung, als wo der Liebhaber zu Füssen fällt, die Prinzessin ohnmächtig wird, die Helden sich balgen; und in keiner Fabel, als wo der Fuchs s p r in g t , der Wolf z er r ei sse t, und der Frosch die Maus sich an das Bein b in d et . Es hat ihnen nie beyfallen wollen, daß auch jeder innere Kampf von Leidenschaften, jede Folge von verschiedenen Gedanken, wo eine die andere aufhebt, eine Handlung sey; vielleicht weil sie viel zu mechanisch denken und fühlen, als daß sie sich irgend einer Thätigkeit dabey bewußt wären.«41 Nur diesen Lessingschen Begriff der poetischen Handlung darf man an Thomas Manns Werk als Maßstab anlegen. In ihm handelt es sich nirgends um die Darstellung eines äußeren, sondern eines rein innern Geschehens. Wo das Äußere mitspielt, da dient es nur dazu, ein Inneres, einen Wechsel von Gefühlen und Stimmungen oder eine »Folge von Gedanken« anzuregen und ans Licht zu heben. So umschließt Thomas Manns Roman eine doppelte Handlung: die eine, die er sichtbar vor uns hinstellt, und die andere, gleichsam unsichtbare, die wir hinter der ersten gewahr werden sollen. Was hier an Ereignissen geschildert wird, ist reizvoll und interessant; aber es ist nur wie das leichte Kräuseln der Oberfläche eines Wasserspiegels. Unter diesem leicht bewegten Spiegel spielen sich erst die eigentlichen Bewegungen ab, die der Tiefe angehören und 41 [Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Fabeln. Drey Bücher. Nebst Abhandlungen mit dieser Dichtungsart verwandten Inhalts, in: Sämtliche Schriften, Bd. VII, S. 413–479: S. 434 f.]

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aus ihr empordringen. Diese Bewegungen sollen wir ahnen, ohne sie unmittel | bar sehen zu können – und nur aus solchen Ahnungen steigt allmählich das künstlerische Bild empor, das Thomas Mann vor uns hinstellen will. Die äußere Handlung des Romans läßt sich rasch und in wenigen Worten erzählen. Lotte Kestner entschließt sich, nach 44jähriger Trennung von Goethe, zur Reise nach Weimar, um endlich einem langgehegten Wunsch zu genügen. Was sie von diesem Wiedersehen erhofft, ist ihr selbst nur dunkel bewußt; sie fühlt nur, daß ohne dasselbe der Mensch Goethe für sie ein quälendes Rätsel bleiben muß. Aber dieses Rätsel wird ihr nicht gelöst. Sie wird von Goethe zur Tafel eingeladen und von ihm zu Tisch geführt. Aber das Gespräch gilt nicht ihr, sondern greift beständig über sie hinweg. Eine tiefe Enttäuschung befällt sie. Den Goethe der »Werther«-Zeit hat sie nicht wiedergefunden; sie hat nur »[die] neue Bekanntschaft von einem alten Manne«42 gemacht. Goethe macht keinen Versuch, diesen Eindruck zu verwischen; er bleibt ihr während ihres weiteren Weimarer Aufenthalts fern. All dies entfaltet sich vor unserem Blick in völliger Ruhe. Der epische Stil, der Stil des Gleichmaßes und der epischen Breite, wird nirgends verlassen. Nichts deutet auf verborgene Konflikte hin, und nirgends läßt der Erzähler irgend etwas von seiner eigenen leidenschaftlichen Arbeit an den Ereignissen spüren. Die Schilderung der Heldin wird mit großer Liebe und mit feiner Ironie durchgeführt. Das Bild Lotte Kestners, wie der Roman es zeichnet, ist nicht ohne Größe und nicht ohne Würde. Ihre Größe besteht in der inneren Sicherheit, mit der sie, von früher Jugend an, sich selbst erkannt und die ihr gemäße Daseinsund Lebensform gewählt hat. Sie ist ein »resoluter« Charakter, der aller Poesie und aller Romantik zum Trotz seinen eigenen Weg gegangen ist. Goethes »ziellose[r] Werbung«43 hat sie sich nicht hingegeben. Sie ist der Wirklichkeit, i h r er Wirklichkeit, treu geblieben; sie steht fest in ihrer bürgerlichen Existenz, in ihrem Arbeits- und Pflichtenkreis. Aber hinter all dem spürt man ihre feinsten menschlichen Schwächen; ihre leise Koketterie und ihre weibliche Eifersucht. Dem geistig-literarischen Ruhm hat sie nicht entsagt, und seinen Besitz will sie sich nicht schmälern oder verkümmern lassen. Mit einer gewissen Herablassung blickt sie auf die anderen herab, auf die arme Friderike, der es an Resolutheit gebrach, sich zu einem Leben ehrbaren Glückes aufzuraffen, auf Lili Schönemann, der zwar »[e]inige Lieder, aber kein 42 [Charlotte Kestner an ihren Sohn August, 25. September 1816, in: Goethes Gespräche, Bd. II, S. 368 f.: S. 368.] 43 [Mann, Lotte in Weimar, S. 124.]

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weltbewegendes Werk« zuteil geworden sei, auf Minna Herzlieb, da die »Wahlverwandtschaften« »ein solches weltbewegendes Aufsehen denn doch nicht gemacht ha[ben] wie ›Werthers Leiden‹.«44 In dieser Schilderung scheint nichts anderes zu | walten, als der freieste und leichteste Humor. Wir spüren den Ernst, aber der Ernst selbst ist in Spiel verwandelt; alles bleibt geistig und heiter, auch wo es an tiefe Lebensprobleme rührt. Aber in diesen Grundton des Werkes mischen sich andere, dunklere und schwerere Töne. Es liegt über dem Werk eine einheitliche Stimmung, die jedoch in ihrer Einheitlichkeit nicht gleichförmig ist. Wir müssen, um seinem Aufbau zu folgen, fast die ganze Skala durchlaufen, die vom Komischen zum Tragischen führt. Mit einer entschiedenen und fast derben Komik setzt das Werk ein. Der erste, der uns im »Gasthof zum Elephanten« in Weimar begegnet, ist der Kellner Mager. Er ist Weimaraner; aber als solcher fühlt er sich zugleich als »Weltbewohner« und als Goethe-Enthusiast. Dieser Enthusiasmus begleitet ihn, wo er steht und geht; auch die Ausübung seiner täglichen Berufspflichten liebt er mit Goethe-Worten auszuschmücken. Eine ganz andere Atmosphäre umfängt uns von dem Augenblicke an, in dem Mager den ersten Gast bei Lotte Kestner, Dr. Riemer, angekündigt hat. Auch in Riemers Schilderung hat Thomas Mann eine Fülle komischer Einzelzüge verwoben. Aber es liegt in dieser Schilderung etwas, was uns das Lachen verwehrt. In dem Gemisch von Verfallenheit an Goethe und von innerer Abwehr gegen diesen, von naiver Selbstüberhebung und Unsicherheit, von Stolz und Gedrücktheit, ist Riemer alles andere als eine komische Gestalt. Und vollends fühlen wir uns aus diesem Kreise herausversetzt, sobald August von Goethe uns begegnet. Hier beginnt sich das Bild plötzlich zu umdüstern; und am Schluß von Lottes Gespräch mit August fühlen wir die echt tragischen Affekte von »Mitleid und Furcht«.45 So findet hier ein allmählicher Umschwung der Stimmung statt, eine Bewegung, die uns unmerklich von einem Pol zum andern leitet. Man muß sich dieser Bewegung hingeben, und man muß alle ihre Einzelphasen innerlich miterleben, wenn man den Stimmungsgehalt des Werkes wahrhaft erfassen will. Dies alles stellt uns nicht nur vor ein individuelles Problem; sondern es weist auch auf ein allgemeines ästhetisches Problem hin. Der erste, der dieses Problem gesehen und scharf bezeichnet hat, ist Platon gewesen. Am Schluß des »Symposion« führt er uns Sokrates in einem Gespräch mit Aristophanes vor, in welchem Sokrates die These 44 45

[A. a. O., S. 249 u. 242.] [Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit. Zweiter Theil, S. 372.]

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verficht, daß es »desselben Mannes Sache«46 sei, Komödien und Tragödien zu schreiben. Dies ist ein Satz, der gleich sehr im Gegensatz zur antiken Praxis und zur antiken Kunsttheorie steht. Für die antike Auffassung stellen Komödie und Tragödie zwei streng getrennte Gattungen dar: getrennt sowohl nach ihren Gegenständen wie nach ihrem Stimmungsgehalt. Beide gehören ihrem Ursprung nach dem Kreis des Religiös-| Sakralen an; aber innerhalb desselben haben sie völlig verschiedene Funktionen zu erfüllen. So muß das Wort Platons innerhalb der antiken Kultur fast wie ein Rätsel wirken. Seine Erläuterung und seine eigentliche Lösung hat dieses Rätsel erst in der modernen Literatur gefunden. Hier erst sind die Künstler aufgetreten, die uns zeigen, daß Platons Gedanke keine bloße ästhetische Utopie war. Im Gebiet des Dramas ist es Shakespeare, im Gebiet des Romans ist es Cervantes, der diesen Umschwung bezeugt. Und an ihrem großen Beispiel kann man sich auch den Sinn näherbringen, in welchem Platon seine Forderung verstanden hat. Das Platonische Wort findet seine Aufhellung erst, wenn man vom Schluß des »Symposion« zum Anfang des »Phaidon« weitergeht. »Symposion« und »Phaidon« gehören unmittelbar zusammen: Die Darstellung des Lebens des Sokrates und die seines Todes fließt für Platon zu einem einzigen künstlerisch-philosophischen Bilde zusammen. Zu Beginn des »Phaidon« wird uns Sokrates im Gefängnis und in dem Augenblick vorgeführt, in dem ihm soeben die Ketten abgenommen worden sind. Er knüpft an diesen Augenblick die Reflexion, wie seltsam im Leben des Menschen sich Lust und Unlust miteinander mischen. Beide scheinen einander zu widersprechen, und doch vermag keines ohne das andere zu bestehen: Ein Gott hat sie derart zusammengeschmiedet, daß sie untrennbar miteinander verwoben bleiben, daß wir niemals die Lust a n s i c h s e l bs t oder die Unlust an sich selbst spüren, sondern uns nur des Ü be r g a ng s vom einen zum andern bewußt werden. Und alles, was wir Leben nennen, ist ein solcher Übergang. Das Leben als solches ist daher weder Leid noch Lust, weder Tragödie noch Komödie. Sondern es ist beides in einem: »û το2 βου […] τραγωδα κα κωμωδα«,47 wie Platon im »Philebos« sagt. Die großen Tragiker und die großen Komiker der modernen Zeit: Shakespeare, Cervantes, Molière, bezeugen die Wahrheit und die Tiefe dieser Grundanschauung um so mehr, je weniger sie sich damit begnügen, einzelne Szenen oder Motive aus dem Ganzen 46 [Platon, Symposion 223 D: »το2 αôτο2 !νδρς«. Die Verifizierung sowie die Beifügung des orginalsprachlichen Textes erfolgt nach: Opera omnia uno volumine comprehensa, hrsg. v. Gottfried Stallbaum, Leipzig/London 1899.] 47 [Ders., Philebos 50 B.]

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des Lebens herauszugreifen und zu gestalten, sondern uns statt dessen ein Gesam t b ild desselben ahnen lassen oder ausprägen wollen. In diesem Gesamtbild kann es keine starren Absonderungen, sondern nur fließende Grenzen zwischen Leid und Lust geben. So wird es für die Dichtung um so schwieriger, die Schranken, die die ästhetische Theorie zieht, die Schranken zwischen dem »Komischen« und »Tragischen«, innezuhalten, je universeller der Gegenstand ist, den sie darstellen will. Es ist daher verständlich, daß in einem Goethe-Roman sich die Töne anders mischen müssen, als wir es sonst gewohnt sind und als wir es anderen Themen zubilligen würden. Goethe selbst | kann nicht anders denn als eine »coincidentia oppositorum« sichtbar gemacht werden; und diese Koinzidenz der Gegensätze muß sich nicht nur im Objekt, sondern auch in den Darstellungsmitteln, nicht nur im Inhalt, sondern auch im Stil bemerkbar machen. Dies alles wird dem nachdenkenden und nachfühlenden Leser des Romans freilich erst dann deutlich, wo dieser in der Darstellung Goethes selbst seinen eigentlichen Höhepunkt erreicht. Hier, in dem großen Selbstgespräch Goethes, werden die verschiedenen Strahlen, die auf andere von ihm übergegangen sind und die wir in den Erzählungen Riemers, Adele Schopenhauers, August von Goethes spüren sollten, erst in ein em Brennpunkt vereinigt. Und diese Wiedervereinigung soll nicht nur, im theoretischen oder künstlerischen Sinne, das Goethe-Bild abrunden und vollenden. Auch das Ge fühl für das Ganze von Goethes Dasein soll jetzt in einem neuen Sinne in uns erweckt werden, und es soll, je weiter sich dieses Ganze vor uns ausbreitet, immer mehr an Stärke und Tiefe gewinnen. Je mehr sich uns indes diese Tiefe erschließt, um so mehr offenbart sich uns das Tragische in Goethes Sein und Wirken. Zwar mischt sich kein leidenschaftlicher Affekt in die Schilderung ein. Jedes pathetische, ja jedes laute Wort wird ferngehalten. Der ruhige Fluß der Gedanken und die Fülle der Gesichte wird nur selten gestört oder getrübt, und wo eine solche Trübung einsetzt, ist sie rasch wieder geheilt. Goethe selbst empfand sein Dasein und Wirken als einen ständig erneuten Prozeß der inneren Selbstwiederherstellung. Weil er dieser Selbstwiederherstellung sicher war, gab es für ihn im Grunde keine unlöslichen, keine tragischen Konflikte. »Ich bin nicht zum tragischen Dichter geboren«, so schreibt er noch gegen Ende seines Lebens an Zelter, »da meine Natur conciliant ist; daher kann der rein-tragische Fall mich nicht interessiren, welcher eigentlich von Haus aus unversöhnlich seyn muß […]«48 48 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Brief an Karl Friedrich Zelter vom 31. Oktober 1831, in: Werke, 4. Abt., Bd. IL, S. 126–129: S. 128.]

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Goethe wollte immer wieder diese Versöhnung, und er forderte sie von sich. Aber in dem Bilde, das Thomas Mann in seinem Roman entwirft, fühlen wir mit fast schmerzlicher Deutlichkeit, daß und warum dieses Ziel im Grunde unerreichbar blieb. Goethe ist hier mitten in seine nächste Umwelt versetzt, und er ist mit ihr durch hundert und tausend Fäden verknüpft. Aber im G an z en seines menschlichen und geistigen Seins bleibt er nichtsdestoweniger allein. Er steht für sich, in tragischer Größe und Einsamkeit. Es ist nicht sein Wil l e , der diese Einsamkeit geschaffen hat. Hier herrscht eine schlichte und strenge, eine unerbittliche Notwendigkeit. Goethe selbst hat diese Notwendigkeit oft empfunden und deutlich ausgesprochen. »Erst war ich den Menschen unbequem durch | meinen Irrthum«, so hat er in einem biographischen Rückblick einmal gesagt, »dann durch meinen Ernst. Ich mochte mich stellen wie ich wollte, so war ich allein.«49 Auch Lottes Begegnung mit Goethe bei ihrem Besuch in Weimar bedeutet daher in der Form, in der sie von Thomas Mann erzählt wird, kein bloß einzelnes Erlebnis. Sie soll keine bloße »Episode«, kein schnell Vorübergehendes sein; sondern wir sollen an ihr ein Bleibendes, in Goethes Dasein immer Wiederkehrendes gewahr werden. Erst am Schluß des Buches wird freilich dem Leser diese Einsicht ganz zuteil. Als Lotte, in einem Moment erhöhten und gesteigerten Gefühls, in Goethes Wagen von der Theatervorstellung zurückkehrt, da hat sie plötzlich die Empfindung von Goethes unmittelbarer körperlicher Nähe. Sie sieht ihn neben sich sitzen, und sie führt mit ihm das letzte, große Abschiedsgespräch. Hier endlich fällt jede Maske und jede trennende Schranke. Das Gespräch, das hier geschildert wird, soll kein wirkliches Gespräch zwischen wirklichen Menschen sein. Es ist wie eine große Vision, die der Dichter vor uns hinstellt – eine letzte Deutung des Geschehens, an der uns der eigentliche Sinn dieses Geschehens fühlbar werden soll. Was uns geschildert wird, ist die große Wandlung, die seelische Peripetie, die in Lottes Geist eintritt. Wir sollen diese Peripetie nicht nur nachfühlen; wir sollen sie mit ihr vollziehen. In dem letzten Zwiegespräch, das Lotte mit Goethe führt, beginnt sie ihn zum ersten Mal zu verstehen. Sie sieht ihn nicht nur von außen, und sie sieht ihn nicht nur für sich, sie fängt an, gewissermaßen hellsichtig zu werden für sein Wesen und für seine Lebensform. Sie erk en n t, was sie bisher nur dumpf gefühlt hat. Und kraft dieser Erkenntnis empfindet sie das, was ihr geschehen ist, nicht mehr als etwas Zufälliges und Willkürliches, wogegen sie sich aufbäumt. Sie 49 [Ders., Biographische Einzelnheiten, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XXXVI, S. 221– 299: S. 231.]

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begreift die Notwendigkeit, die hier waltet, und sie beugt sich vor dieser Notwendigkeit. Sie scheidet von Goethe in tiefer Trauer; aber diese Trauer enthält nichts mehr von persönlicher Bitterkeit. Auch der Leser soll – wenn ich Thomas Manns Absicht recht deute – dieses Gefühl des Ver s t eh en s in sich emporwachsen und langsam reifen lassen. Dann erst läßt sich für ihn der eigentliche, der »geistige« Sinn des Romans ausschöpfen. Was Goethe von Lotte trennt und trennen muß, das ist die besondere Art, in der der Dichter, a l s Dichter, nicht nur zum Leben der anderen, sondern auch zu seinem eigenen Leben steht. In den letzten Worten, die Goethe spricht, soll uns eine Ahnung von dieser Besonderheit des di c hte r i s c he n L e be ns - und Zeitgefü h ls ergreifen. Die Zeit hat für den Dichter nicht dieselbe Struktur, wie es im Leben des Alltags der Fall | ist. Ihr Kommen und Gehen, ihr Beharren und Verweilen folgt anderen, schwer deutbaren und verstehbaren Gesetzen. »Was wir von Natur sehen«, so schreibt Goethe in seiner Jugend in einer Anzeige von Sulzers Werk über die schönen Künste, »ist Kraft, die Kraft verschlingt, nichts gegenwärtig, alles vorübergehend, tausend Keime zertreten, jeden Augenblick tausend geboren, groß und bedeutend, mannichfaltig in’s Unendliche; schön und häßlich, gut und bös, alles mit gleichem Rechte neben einander existirend. Und die Kunst ist gerade das Widerspiel; sie entspringt aus de[m] Bemüh[en] des Individuums sich gegen die zerstörende Kraft des Ganzen zu erhalten.«50 Wie gelingt dem Künstler dieses Erhalten, wie vermag er der zerstörenden Gewalt der Zeit zu entgehen und dem Augenblick Dauer zu verleihen? Den Fluß des realen Geschehens vermag er nicht zu hemmen, und über das Alter, als physisch-organischen Prozeß, hat er keine Gewalt. Aber er steht in einer anderen Sphäre, in der diese Macht der Zeit ihm nichts anzuhaben vermag: Er hält die Vergangenheit fest, indem er sie in ein B il d bannt und ihr dadurch eine feste und dauernde Gestalt verleiht. »Vergangnes in ein Bild [zu] verwandeln«,51 das Leben selbst zum Bild werden zu lassen: das erschien Goethe als der eigentliche Sinn seiner Dichtung. Dieser Prozeß der Bildwerdung ist für den Dichter nichts Willkürliches, über das er frei verfügen kann. Er kommt und geht nach seinen eigenen, für den Schaffenden selbst kaum faßbaren Gesetzen. Was einmal in diesen Prozeß eingegangen und durch ihn gestaltet worden ist, das bleibt und beharrt für immer; was außerhalb desselben 50 [Ders., (Rezension von:) Die schönen Künste in ihrem Ursprung, ihrer wahren Natur und besten Anwendung, betrachtet von J. G. Sulzer. Leipzig 1772, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XXXVII, S. 206–214: S. 210.] 51 [Ders., Pandora. Lesarten, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. L, S. 450–460: S. 458.]

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steht, das unterliegt der objektiven Gewalt der Zeit und muß dahinschwinden. So wird für den echten Dichter zuletzt das Ganze seines Daseins und Lebens zu diesem rastlosen inneren Bild und Gestaltenwandel. Es ist vergänglich, und es kann in dieser Vergänglichkeit nur ein Gleichnis sein. Sobald das Gleichnis physisch-dingliche Existenz anzunehmen, sobald es zu handeln und zu sprechen beginnt, hat es seinen eigentlichen und tiefsten Sinn verloren. Das ist es, was Goethe, in Thomas Manns Dichtung, an dem Wiedererscheinen Lottes erfährt. Als Goethe von August das Billet überbracht wird, das ihm Lottes Besuch ankündigt, da lehnt er sich im ersten Moment schroff und hart gegen diesen Besuch auf. Einen Augenblick lang verläßt ihn alle Schonung und Duldsamkeit und selbst alles menschliche Mitgefühl. Diese Vermischung von Vergangenheit und Gegenwart hat für ihn einen spukhaften Charakter. »Das wirkt wohl recht schön im Gedicht, hat in der Wirklichkeit aber doch was Apprehensives.«52 Im Gedicht herrscht eine Art der Wiederholung, die dem wirklichen Leben versagt ist. Hier gibt es echte Wiederaufer | stehung, die allen Gegensatz der Lebensepochen aufhebt und überwindet. In diesem Sinne ist die Werther-Zeit niemals erloschen und erstorben. Er hat noch eben im »West-östlichen Divan« eine unendlich beglückende Erneuerung dieser Zeit in sich erlebt. »Divan« und »Werther« sind ihm Geschwister: »[…] dasselbe auf ungleichen Stufen, Steigerung, geläuterte Lebenswiederholung.«53 Immer wieder ist im Verlauf von Goethes Leben die Gestalt Werthers in diesem Sinne wiedergekehrt, und sie hat ihn bis ins höchste Alter begleitet. Als er, fünfzig Jahre nach dem »Werther«, die »Marienbader Elegie« dichtete, da stieg noch einmal Werthers »vielbeweinter Schatten« vor ihm auf, und er fühlte sich tief und innig zu ihm hingezogen. » Es ist als ob du lebtest in der Frühe, Wo uns der Thau auf Einem Feld erquickt, Und nach des Tages unwillkommner Mühe Der Scheidesonne letzter Strahl entzückt; Zum Bleiben ich, zum Scheiden du erkoren, Gingst du voran – und hast nicht viel verloren.«54 Das ist die ewige Wiederkunft, die dem Reich der Dichtung, nicht [Mann, Lotte in Weimar, S. 369.] [A. a. O., S. 319 f.] 54 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, An Werther, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 19 f.: S. 19.] 52 53

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dem des Lebens angehört. Das Leben muß nicht nur die Kraft der Erinnerung, es muß auch die Kraft des Vergessens haben. Was wäre der Mensch, wenn ihm nicht die Gabe zuteil geworden wäre, die Last des Vergangenen von sich zu wälzen; wenn nicht – wie Goethe an Zelter schreibt – »mit jedem Athemzug ein ätherischer Lethestrom [sein] ganzes Wesen durchdr[änge]« An diesem »ätherischen Lethestrom« mußte Goethe fort und fort trinken; denn nur so vermochte er sich lebendig und produktiv zu erhalten. »Diese hohe Gottesgabe«, so schreibt er, »habe ich von jeher zu schätzen, zu nützen und zu steigern gewußt.«55 Lottes Wiedererscheinen droht ihm diese Gottesgabe zu verkümmern; denn die physische Wiederkehr unterbricht und hemmt den Prozeß der geistig-ideellen Erneuerung. So muß er sich gegen diese Wiederkehr innerlich zur Wehr setzen – nicht aus Laune oder Willkür, sondern aus einem inneren Muß heraus. Thomas Manns Roman schließt damit, daß er die Heldin und daß er den Leser dieses Muß verstehen lehrt und daß er damit das einmalige Begebnis in die Sphäre des Allgemeinen rückt; daß er, um es in Goethes orphischen »Urworten« auszusprechen, »Tyche« in »Ananke«, Zufall in Notwendigkeit wandelt. Columbia University

55 [Ders., Brief an Karl Friedrich Zelter vom 15. Februar 1830, in: Werke, 4. Abt., Bd. XLVI, S. 241–244: S. 243.]

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Structuralism in Modern Linguistics1 (1945)

In the great family of human knowledge linguistics is one of the youngest members. Grammatical questions have always been studied with keen interest both by linguists and by philosophers. They can be traced back to Panini’s Sanskrit grammar and to those Greek scholars who, in the fifth century B.C., laid the foundations for a scientific treatment of grammar and rhetoric. Yet all this was suddenly eclipsed by the new form of linguistics that developed in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the whole history of science there is perhaps no more fascinating chapter than the rise of the »new science« of linguistics. In its importance it may very well be compared to the new science of Galileo which, in the seventeenth century, changed our whole concept of the physical world. There is, however, one great difference between the two phenomena. When studying Galileo’s dynamics, we are under the impression that its genesis may be compared to the legend of the birth of the goddess Athene. It is, in a sense, ready from the first beginning; it leaps, in full armor, out of the head of its father. To be sure, there were still many and great progresses to be made; but these progresses concerned the results much more than the method of the new science. With linguistics it was different. Its progress was rapid and astounding. One discovery followed the other. The greatest things were done in a few decades; the greatest names stand side by side. But as regards its method, linguistics was not in the same favorable condition as natural science. It could not follow the example of modern physics which, to use the terms of Kant, had entered upon the safe way and the sure method of a science by a sort of intellectual revolution. It had to grope its way; it had to proceed hesitatingly and tentatively. It was natural that, in these first attempts, linguists looked for the help and guidance of other branches of knowledge that, long before, had established their methods and principles. History, physics, psychology | could be used for this purpose. The thesis that linguistics is a historical science was generally accepted. But history alone is not enough. As Hermann Paul pointed out in his »Prinzipien der Sprach1 [Zuerst erschienen in: Word. Journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York 1 (1945), S. 99–120.] Professor Cassirer died very suddenly a few days after delivering this lecture which was read before the Linguistic Circle of New York on February 10th 1945.

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geschichte«,2 every branch of historical knowledge is in need of a systematic complement and counterpart. Where was this counterpart to be found? Some Neogrammarians had sought for it in mechanics and physics. On the other hand, Paul emphasized that human speech is a mental phenomenon; and that we cannot hope to penetrate into its nature as long as we depend on mere physical methods. Psychology, not physics, is the true »Prinzipienwissenschaft«; it is only by the help of psychology that we can build up a coherent and systematic theory of language. The physicalism of the first Neogrammarians and Paul’s psychologism seem to be two divergent methodological attitudes. This divergency had, however, no decisive influence upon the general course of linguistic studies in the second half of the nineteenth century. In their answers to the question of the character of human speech, scholars like Osthoff, Brugmann, and Paul were not opposed to each other. In some fundamental points there was still complete agreement. That is easily to be accounted for if we bear in mind the general tendency of physics and psychology in the nineteenth century. The Neogrammarians had formed their ideals of scientific method according to the great model of classical physics. Physics seemed to have found its definitive form in Newton’s »Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica« and in Lagrange’s »Mécanique analytique«. It was generally acknowledged that in the study of every complex phenomenon we must begin with reducing it to a mechanical phenomenon. And mechanics itself was conceived as »Punktmechanik«; as the study of the movements of material points. In psychology we find the same trend of thought. Most of the linguists who recommended and used psychological methods were deeply influenced by Herbart. It had been the ambition of Herbart to create a new type of psychology – a mathematical psychology. This was possible only by following the examples of Newton and Lagrange. To reduce all psychological activities to what he called »die Mechanik des Vorstellungslebens« was one of the principal aims of Herbart. We find the same view not only in Paul’s work, but also in other linguists of the same period. In Heymann Steinthal’s »Einleitung in die Psychologie und | Sprachwissenschaft«3 Herbart’s theory of apperception was made the cornerstone of general linguistics. All this became, however, highly questionable as soon as physics Hermann Paul, Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, Halle on the Saale 51920. Heymann Steinthal, Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft, Part 1: Die Sprache im Allgemeinen), Berlin 1871. 2 3

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and psychology began to see their own problems in a new light. In both fields it was not easy to break the power of the classical tradition. Eminent physicists of the nineteenth century, like Sir William Thomson, still declared that to understand a physical phenomenon means the same as to construct a mechanical model of the phenomenon. But these descriptions became more and more intricate. Innumerable and tremendous efforts were made to give a mechanical model of the ether – the supposed medium for the transmission of lightwaves and electromagnetic waves. But all these attempts were doomed to failure. The ether became, to put it in the words of Max Planck, »[das] Schmerzenskind[…] der mechanischen [Physik]«.4 The solution came from quite a different side. The hope to explain electromagnetic phenomena in terms of matter had failed; but it was perhaps possible to change the whole problem: to define matter in terms of electricity. In this case, physics could, however, no longer be described as the study of the movements of material points. The electromagnetic field – in the sense of Faraday and Maxwell – is no aggregate of material points. We may, and must, indeed, speak of parts of the field; but these parts have no separate existence. The electron is, to use the term of Hermann Weyl, no element of the field; it is, rather, an outgrowth of the field (»eine Ausgeburt des Feldes«).5 It is embedded in the field and exists only under the general structural conditions of the field. An electron is nothing but a part in which the electromagnetic energy is condensed and assumes a peculiar strength. In the development of psychology we meet with the same tendency of thought. According to Hume or Mach, there was no other way to understand a complex psychic phenomenon than to disintegrate it into its first elements; into simple sense data. Even our self, our personality, is nothing but a »bundle […] of […] perceptions«.6 In modern »Gestalt psychology« all this was transposed into its very opposite. Psychical phenomena – it was declared – have a definite structure; and it is impossible to understand this structure by treating it as a loose conglomerate – a mere mosaic of sense data. I need not dwell here upon these well-known problems. But from 4 [Max Planck, Die Stellung der neueren Physik zur mechanischen Naturanschauung. Vortrag, gehalten am 23. September 1910 auf der 82. Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte in Königsberg i. Pr., Leipzig 1910, S. 13.] 5 [Hermann Weyl, Raum – Zeit – Materie. Vorlesungen über allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, 4., erw. Aufl., Berlin 1921, S. 184.] 6 [David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects (Buch 1, Teil 4, Abschn. 6), hrsg. v. Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge, Oxford 1896, S. 252.]

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a philosophical point of view we have to raise another question. What had become of the lo g ical aspect of human speech? | Strange as it may sound, it was precisely the great and incomparable progress of linguistic studies that, in the nineteenth century, had led to an almost complete neglect of this aspect. The pioneers of modern linguistics had attained their great results by historical methods. The founders of the comparative grammar of German languages and Indo-European languages – Jacob Grimm, Rask, Bopp, Pott, Schleicher – seemed to have proved by their example that the historical approach to human speech is the only scientific approach. The historical interest was so predominant that it completely overshadowed the logical interest. To be sure, there were still many linguists who insisted upon the rational character of human speech. Friedrich Max Müller wrote two books: the one entitled »The Science of Language«, the other entitled »The Science of Thought«.7 Both of them tried to prove the same thesis: the thesis of the fundamental identity of speech and thought. Reason, declared Max Müller, cannot become real without speech. Like the other works of Max Müller, these two books enjoyed a great popular success, but on the general course of linguistic studies they had very little influence. Their defects were obvious. They were full of arbitrary assumptions and fantastic constructions. William Dwight Whitney wrote a special essay, »Max Müller and the Science of Language«,8 in which he gave a crushing criticism of Müller’s theory. Max Müller’s expressions – he said – though sometimes betraying an inkling of the truth, are confused, indistinct, and inconsistent; they have no scientific value. A work like that of Max Müller was, therefore, not likely to revivify and to strengthen the logical interest in human speech. But the spell was suddenly broken from another side. In 1900 Edmund Husserl published at Halle the first volume of his »Logische Untersuchungen«.9 This work gave a new and powerful impulse to the study of logic. What had become of logic in the first half of the nineteenth century? One of the standard works of this period was the work of John Stuart Mill. Mill started from the presupposition that logic, if 7 Friedrich Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language. Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in April, May, and June, 1861, 2nd ed., rev., London 1862; idem, Lectures on the Science of Language. Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in February, March, April, and May, 1863, London 1864; idem, The Science of Thought, 2 vols., New York 1887. 8 William Dwight Whitney, Max Müller and the Science of Language: A Criticism, New York 1892. 9 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2 vols. in 3 vols., Halle on the Saale 31922.

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it is a science at all, must be an empirical science. Like all other laws, logical laws can be reached only by inductive generalization. Logic cannot indulge in fruitless scholastic discussions about the »forms« of thought; it has to analyze the facts of thought. Like all other facts, these facts are variable. It is, therefore, useless to speak of universal laws of | thought. What we call »truth« can never be more than the mental reproduction of our physical environment. A man living on Sirius or any other remote fixed star would have a truth far different from our earthly truth – he would not develop the same logic, the same geometry and arithmetic as we do. All this was vigorously attacked by Husserl. As he pointed out, logical truth is formal, not material, truth. It does not depend on special empirical conditions, it is universal and necessary. The process of empirical generalization can never lead us to an insight into the pure forms of thought. An inductive logic in the sense of John Stuart Mill was declared by Husserl to be a wooden iron – a contradiction in terms. In the philosophical world Husserl’s work had the effect of a great thunderstorm. It dispelled the clouds and clarified the whole intellectual atmosphere. I need not enter here on the long and vehement struggles between »formalists« and »psychologists« that followed the publication of Husserl’s book. But what was the role of linguistics in this conflict? The decision was by no means easy. The linguist seemed to be caught on the horns of a difficult dilemma. He could not desert the cause of logic. Since the times of the Greeks there was always a sort of solidarity, of open or hidden alliance between grammar and logic. On the other hand, there was no doubt that linguistics could not do without the help of psychology or even of psychopathology. Recent research in the field of psychopathology of language – the study of aphasia and kindred disorders of speech – has done very much to clarify our concepts of the general function of speech. The sharp scalpel of Husserl’s analysis had suddenly cut off all connections and communications between logic and psychology. But without these communications, without a constant cooperation of the logician and the psychologist, it was extremely difficult to build up a coherent theory of language. We can perhaps best illustrate this point by referring to the general theory of truth that had been developed by the great rationalistic thinkers. Leibniz made a sharp distinction between two different kinds of truth. There is a formal or logical and an empirical or factual truth. Logical truth is eternal and inviolable; factual truth is changeable and modifiable. When dealing with facts, with phenomena in space and time, we cannot hope to find a necessary connection. Necessary con-

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nection is restricted to the ideal world – to logic, arithmetic, algebra, geometry. In all | other fields – in physics, astronomy, history – we cannot reach more than a contingent truth. If from the logical or formal sphere – the sphere of the possible — we pass to the empirical sphere, to the actual world, we have to change our standards. The »vérités de fait« are not of the same type as the »vérités de raison«; the »vérités contingentes« are incommensurable with the »vérités nécessaires«. If we accept this clear-cut division between »vérités de raison« and »vérités de fait« – what is the role of linguistics? Can we deny that what we are studying in linguistics are facts – and nothing but facts? No language can be constructed in an a priori way. Whatever we know of a language we know from empirical sources – from our usual methods of descriptive or historical analysis. Can such an analysis give us more than »vérités contingentes«? This question became one of the starting points of modern linguistic structuralism. The new movement started with a great paradox. It contained a certain revaluation of our former logical and epistemological value. If the adherents and defenders of the program of linguistic structuralism are right, then we must say that in the realm of language there is no opposition between what is »formal« and what is merely »factual«. »[…] dans un état de langue donné,« says Viggo Brøndal, »tout est systématique; une langue quelconque est constituée par des ensembles où tout se tient: systèmes de sons (ou phonèmes), systèmes de formes et de mots (morphèmes et sémantèmes). Qui dit système, dit ensemble cohérent: si tout se tient, chaque terme doit dépendre de tout autre. Or on voudrait connaître les modalités de cette cohérence, les degrés possibles et variables de cette dépendance mutuelle, en d’autres termes il faudrait étudier les conditions de la structure linguistique, distinguer dans les systèmes phonologiques et morphologiques ce qui est possible de ce qui est impossible, le contingent du nécessaire.«10 The same conviction appears in Saussure’s »Cours de linguistique générale«,11 in the works of Trubezkoy, of Roman Jakobson, and of the other members of the »Cercle Linguistique de Prague«. Obviously the necessity which is claimed here for a linguistic system has no metaphysical connotation. It is | no absolute but a relative or hypothetical necessity. Roman Jakobson has expressed the character of this necessity by the formulae: 10 Viggo Brøndal, Structure et variabilité des systèmes morphologiques, in: Scientia 57 (1935), pp. 109–119: p. 109. 11 Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale, ed. by Charles Bally, Albert Sechehaye, and Albert Riedlinger, Paris 21922.

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»1. si a existe, b existe aussi. […] 2. si a existe, b manque. […] 3. si a manque, b manque aussi.« »Ces rapports,« he says, »qui ont infailliblement valeur de loi, constituent un des facteurs les plus importants des changements phonologiques.«12 When speaking about these things to linguists I must, however, be prepared for the objection that what I am doing here means »to carry coals to Newcastle«. Let me, therefore, try another and more indirect approach to the problem which I wish to treat in this paper. The term »morphology« is now quite familiar to us. But who was the first to use this term? It is perhaps worth notice that this term, which has now become an integral part of our scientific terminology – of biological as well as of linguistic terminology – was not introduced by a scientist, but by a great poet. Goethe used the word »morphology« as a general title for his doctrine of the metamorphosis of plants and for his studies in comparative anatomy. The first pupils of Darwin in Germany, especially Ernst Haeckel, often credited Goethe with being the precursor of Darwin. This is, however, a very inadequate and superficial description of his theory. When Goethe spoke of morphology – of »Bildung und Umbildung organischer Naturen« – he meant something far different from and even incompatible with Darwinism. Darwin saw the first impulse to the origin of new species in accidental or fluctuating variations. These variations are made at random; they have no definite direction. But they are enough to explain the whole variety of organic forms. That was the real problem of Darwinism: to make conceivable how forms could arise from the formless, how a definite structure could be brought into being by mere accidental variations of an amorphous material. But in Goethe’s theory we find neither the one nor the other. Metamorphosis, in Goethe’s sense, does not change one organic type into another; it leads only to new formations w it h i n the same type. | Goethe did not stand alone in this concept of the organic world. His theory of metamorphosis was rich in new and original ideas. In order to defend these ideas he had to challenge the greatest scientific thinkers of his age. In the famous controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire he passionately sided with the latter. But his polemics with Cuvier are not to be compared with what we find in the polemical part of his »Farbenlehre«. 12 Roman Jakobson, Remarques sur l’évolution phonologique du russe comparée à celle des autres langues slaves, Prague 1929 (Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague, Vol. 2), pp. 17 f.

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Between Goethe’s »Farbenlehre« and Newton’s »Optics« there was a far-yawning gulf. No compromise and no conciliation between the two adversaries was possible. With Cuvier it was quite different. Cuvier advocated a static view of organic nature; Goethe, a genetic or dynamic view. The former laid the stress upon the constancy, the latter on the modifiability, of organic types. Yet, when going into the details of their discussion,13 we find that Goethe, even in his genetic views, was much nearer to Cuvier than to Darwin. In his »Geschichte der biologischen Theorien«14 Emanuel Rádl describes the biology of Goethe, of Cuvier, and of Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire as a »morphological idealism«. That seems to me to be a very good and happy term. It expresses the common basis that remained unshaken in the controversy. Cuvier, Goethe, and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire were unanimous in emphasizing that there are no mere accidental things in an organism. If we have found one of its characteristics, we have all the others; we can reconstruct the organism in its entirety. »C’est dans cette dépendance mutuelle des fonctions,« says Cuvier, »et dans ce secours qu’elles se prêtent réciproquement, que sont fondées les lois qui déterminent les rapports de leurs organes, et qui sont d’une nécessité égale à celle des lois métaphysiques et mathématiques […]«15 This principle became the cornerstone of Cuvier’s whole theory. He was not only the founder of our modern comparative anatomy, but also of our scientific paleontology; and without his general methodological principle he could not have performed his task as a paleontologist. In paleontology we study the form of extinct | organisms. This form is not accessible to immediate observation. What is left to us are only scanty remnants, the scattered fragments of a living organism. Nevertheless, the naturalist is able to build up out of these scattered limbs the whole body of an animal. Give me the feather of a bird of an unknown and extinct species, said Cuvier, and I shall describe to you its whole structure; I shall, for instance, tell you the character of its skeleton. How is this possible? How can we use in biology, an inductive or empirical science, a deductive method? Let us hear Cuvier’s own answer to this question. »Heureusement l’anatomie comparée possédait un principe qui, bien développé, était capable de faire éva13 See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Principes de philosophie zoologique, in: Werke, ed. by order of the Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 4 sects., 133 vols. in 143 vols., Weimar 1887–1919, Sect. 2, Vol. VII, pp. 165–214. 14 Emanuel Rádl, Geschichte der biologischen Theorien seit dem Ende des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Leipzig 1905/1909. 15 Georges Leopold de Cuvier, Leçons d’anatomie comparée (Lect. 1, art. 4), 2nd ed., rev. and augm., Paris 1835, p. 50.

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nouir tous les embarras: c’était celui de la corrélation des formes dans les êtres organisés, au moyen duquel chaque sorte d’être pourrait, à la rigueur, être reconnue par chaque fragment de chacune de ses parties. Tout être organisé forme un ensemble, un système unique et clos, dont les parties se correspondent mutuellement, et concourent à la même action définitive par une réaction réciproque. Aucune de ces parties ne peut changer sans que les autres changent aussi; et par conséquent chacune d’elles, prise séparément, indique et donne toutes les autres. […] la forme de la dent entraîne la forme du condyle, celle de l’omoplate, celle des ongles […] de même l’ongle, l’omoplate, le condyle, le fémur, et tous les autres os pris chacun séparément, donnent la dent ou se donnent réciproquement; et en commençant par chacun d’eux, celui qui possèderait rationnellement les lois de l’économie organique pourrait refaire tout l’animal.«16 I have quoted this passage at some length, for, I think, we may use it for making a very interesting mental experiment, we may exchange every biological term of Cuvier for a linguistic term. In this case we should have, before our very eyes, the program of modern linguistic structuralism. Of course, the subject matter of Cuvier is very different from that of the linguist, but what matters here are not the objects that are studied in biology and linguistics, but the connections and relations which we can ascertain between these objects. As to these relations, they show us the same characteristic form. »[…] chaque fait linguistique,« says Antoine Meillet, »fait partie d’un ensemble où tout se tient. Il ne faut pas rapprocher un fait de détail d’un autre fait de détail, mais un système linguistique d’un autre système.« »[…] dans l’état de | vie,« says Cuvier, »les organes ne sont pas simplement rapprochés, mais qu’ils agissent les uns sur les autres, et concourent tous ensemble à un but commun. D’après cela les modifications de l’un d’eux exercent une influence sur celles de tous les autres. Celles de ces modifications qui ne peuvent point exister ensemble, s’excluent réciproquement, tandis que d’autres s’appellent, pour ainsi dire, et cela non-seulement dans les organes qui sont entre eux dans un rapport immédiat, mais encore dans ceux qui paraissent, au premier coup d’œil, les plus éloignés et les plus indépendants.«17 But here I must be prepared for a serious objection. Structuralism is one of the most characteristic tendencies in modern linguistic thought. 16 Idem, Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe, et sur les changements qu’elles ont produits dans le règne animal, Paris 51828, pp. 95 ff. 17 Antoine Meillet, La méthode comparative en linguistique historique, Oslo and others 1925 (Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Series A, Vol. 2), pp. 12 f.; Cuvier, Leçons d’anatomie comparée, p. 49.

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Is it possible to compare such a tendency to those scientific ideals that prevailed about one hundred and fifty years ago? To be sure, Cuvier was one of the greatest naturalists. But has not modern biology outgrown his methods; have not his ideas become antiquated? Most, if not all, of the biologists of the second half of the nineteenth century were apt to answer this question in the affirmative. The champions and hotspurs of Darwinism often spoke of Cuvier’s work with a certain disdain. They could not forgive him his criticism of the theory of Lamarck and other systems of transformism. They charged him with having obstructed the progress of biological thought. But this was a very unjust judgment that had to be revised and corrected. Our modern historians of biology speak and judge in quite a different vein. Cuvier, says Emanuel Rádl, has not only discovered new facts and he has not only developed new and very important theories. His greatest merit lies in the fact that he was one of the first to cultivate the logic of science. He was more than a great biologist; among the moderns he was the first who examined the principles of exact science.18 This judgment of a historian of biology was, later on, confirmed by the systematic development of biological thought. This development did not lead to a denial or reversal of the theory of evolution. Yet the whole problem of evolution was restated; the character and the cause of evolution were explained in a way far different from early Darwinism.19 The program of this new biological movement | was developed and explained by the English physiologist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane in a Presidential Address to the Physiological Section of the British Association in Dublin (1908). Haldane suggested for this movement the name »holism«; others preferred to call it »organicism«. To my mind this new holism or organicism bears a close relationship to linguistic structuralism; the methodological views and ideals that we find on both sides are very much akin.20 But I cannot enter here into a discussion of this point; I must content myself with referring to the literature on the subject: for instance to Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s »Theoretische Biologie«21 and to Adolf Meyer’s »Ideen und Ideale der biologischen Erkenntnis«.22 Rádl, Geschichte der biologischen Theorien, Vol. I, pp. 206 ff. For more details see John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, The Causes of Evolution, London/New York/Toronto 1932. 20 See Roman Jakobson, Sur la théorie des affinités phonologiques des langues, in: Actes du quatrième congrès international des linguistes. Tenu à Copenhague du 27 Août au 1er Septembre 1936, Copenhague 1938, pp. 48–58. 21 Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Theoretische Biologie, Vol. I: Allgemeine Theorie, Physikochemie, Aufbau und Entwicklung des Organismus, Berlin 1932. 22 Adolf Meyer-Abich, Ideen und Ideale der biologischen Erkenntnis. Beiträge 18 19

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When drawing a parallel between the method of linguistics and the method of biology, I wish, however, not to be misunderstood. We must be on our guard against a mistake that threatens to obscure our problem and to confuse our ideas. When dealing with linguistic questions, the philosopher and the logician are, from the very beginning, confronted with two great and puzzling questions. The first is, Is language an organism?; the second, Is linguistics a natural science or is it a »Geisteswissenschaft«? Let us begin with the first question. The comparison of language with an organism is very old. It has especially appealed to all romantic writers. But before giving a definite answer we must first explain what the simile means and what it does not mean. We may understand the term »organism« in an ontological or in a formal or methodological sense. In the first case, we are immediately involved in the most intricate metaphysical questions. In 1863 August Schleicher published at Weimar his book »Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft«. What we find here is a strange mixture of naturalism and mysticism. It is a romantic theory based on Darwinian principles. Human language is described as a living being; it springs up and fades away; it has its hour of birth and its hour of death. »Languages,« said Schleicher, »are natural organisms which, without being determinable by the will of man, grew and developed in accordance with | fixed laws, and then again grow old and die out: to them, too, belongs that succession of phenomena which is wont to be termed life. Glottics, the science of language, is, accordingly, a natural science; its method is, on the whole and in general, the same as that of the other natural sciences.«23 It is obvious that what is given here is an entirely metaphysical description of language under the cover of a scientific and empirical theory. To speak of language as a thing that comes into being and withers, that

zur Theorie und Geschichte der biologischen Ideologien, Leipzig 1934 (Bios. Abhandlungen zur theoretischen Biologie und ihrer Geschichte, sowie zur Philosophie der organischen Naturwissenschaften, Vol. 1). 23 [August Schleicher, Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft. Offenes Sendschreiben an Herrn Dr. Ernst Häckel, a. o. Professor der Zoologie und Director des zoologischen Museums an der Universität Jena, Weimar 1863, S. 6 f.: »Die Sprachen sind Naturorganismen, die, ohne vom Willen des Menschen bestimmbar zu sein, entstunden, nach bestimmten Gesetzen wuchsen und sich entwickelten und wiederum altern und absterben; auch ihnen ist jene Reihe von Erscheinungen eigen, die man unter dem Namen ›Leben‹ zu verstehen pflegt. Die Glottik, die Wissenschaft der Sprache, ist demnach eine Naturwissenschaft; ihre Methode ist im Ganzen und Allgemeinen dieselbe, wie die der übrigen Naturwissenschaften.«]

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has its youth, its prime of life, its senility, and its death is to speak in a mere metaphor. Such a metaphor is admissible if we understand it in the right way and use it with all the necessary critical reservations and limitations. Biologists and linguists are often engaged in the same battle against a common adversary, a battle that may be described by the slogan: structuralism versus mechanism; morphologism against materialism. In this combat they may allege similar arguments; they may make use of the same logical weapons. But that does not prove that there is any identity in their subject matter, that, in an ontological sense, we can put human language on the same level as plants or animals. Language is neither a mechanism nor an organism, neither a dead nor a living thing. It is no thing at all, if by this term we understand a physical object. It is – language, a very specific human activity, not describable in terms of physics, chemistry, or biology. The best and most laconic expression of this fact was given by Wilhelm von Humboldt, when he declared that language is not an ©ρ γον but an ïν ρ γεια. To put it shortly, we may say that language is »organic«, but that it is not an »organism«. It is organic in the sense that it does not consist of detached, isolated, segregated facts. It forms a coherent whole in which all parts are interdependent upon each other. In this sense we may even speak of a poem, of a work of art, of a philosophic system as »organic«. Dante’s »Divina Commedia«, a tragedy of Aeschylus, Kant’s »Critique of Pure Reason« are »organic«. What we find here are not »disjecta membra«, scattered limbs of a poet, an artist, or a thinker. Everything hangs together: nothing is accidental or superfluous. In a tragedy of Shakespeare or in a lyric poem of Goethe we can hardly remove one word without destroying the character and the beauty of the whole. Lessing said of Shakespeare that it is just as impossible to steal a verse of Shakespeare as to steal the club of Hercules. Yet obviously that does not mean that a Shakespearean play, a symphony of | Beethoven, or a Platonic dialogue are natural things of metaphysical entities. When linguists or philosophers were speaking of the organism of language, they were, however, always liable to this fallacy. In Max Müller’s »Lectures on the Science of Language« the development of human speech is described as if it were a physical necessity or a sort of metaphysical fatality. It is not in the power of man to influence this development. »We might think as well,« says Max Müller, »of changing the laws which control the circulation of our blood […] as of altering the laws of speech, or inventing new words according to our own pleasure.«24 24

[Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language (1861), S. 37.]

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It is hardly necessary to criticize this strange theory. In his book »Language and the Science of Language«25 William Dwight Whitney has relentlessly brought into the open all the hidden ambiguities and errors contained in these words of Max Müller. Speech, he declared, depends entirely upon human activity; to eliminate this activity means the end of speech. But let us now proceed to our second question. Is linguistics a natural science or is it a »Geisteswissenschaft«? Here, too, we have to begin by clarifying our terms. There is perhaps no other problem that, in these last decades, has attracted the attention of scientists and philosophers to such a high degree as the relation between »Natur-« and »Geisteswissenschaft«. The question has been discussed eagerly, incessantly, and – unsuccessfully. The most divergent answers were given to it. Philosophers remained divided into two camps. The adherents of the natural sciences and the spokesmen for the »Geisteswissenschaften« could hardly understand each other. But, when studying this discussion, we meet with a strange phenomenon. So far as I see, the fact that there is such a thing as human speech and that there is such a thing as linguistics was never mentioned in this methodological struggle. Neither in Wilhelm Dilthey’s »Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften«26 nor in Heinrich Rickert’s »Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung«27 do we find a chapter on human speech. To my mind this was a very regrettable lack, a sin of omission that could not fail to have its consequences. A theory of knowledge should be a sort of map of | our »globus intellectualis«. But this map is, as yet, very incomplete. In our modern theory of knowledge linguistics is entirely neglected; it is treated as a stepchild. Yet how can we hope to get a clear picture of our »globus intellectualis« if such an important province is left out? Many excellent books have been written on the logic of science, of mathematics, physics, and biology. But a book on the logic of linguistics is still missing. If we had such a book, it could help us very much; it could lead to an escape from a dilemma that, in contemporary thought, has become, more and more, the »crux philosophorum«. 25 William Dwight Whitney, Language and the Study of Language: Twelve Lectures on the Principles of Linguistic Science (Lecture 2), London 1867, pp. 34 ff. 26 Wilhelm Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. Versuch einer Grundlegung für das Studium der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte, Vol. I, Leipzig 1883; latest ed.: (Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I), Leipzig/Berlin 1922. 27 Heinrich Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. Eine logische Einleitung in die historischen Wissenschaften, 5th ed., improved and augm., Tübingen 1929.

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Linguistics can, indeed, show us the right way and the wrong way. The wrong way consists in speaking of »Geisteswissenschaften« as if »Geist« were the name for a substantial thing. As soon as we accept this definition, we find ourselves immediately involved in all the well-known metaphysical antinomies. In one of his dialogues Plato describes Greek thought as a γιγαντομαχα, a continuous struggle between two parties which he terms the partisans of matter and the »friends of ideas«.28 The former are not content until they have reduced everything to matter and movement; the latter try to convince us that spiritual reality is the only true reality. This description holds for the whole history of metaphysics. Since the times of Anaxagoras, all metaphysicians have seen in the νο2ς the great moving force of the universe. Nus, Spirit, Geist is the first actor in the great metaphysical drama. But, side by side, we always find its fierce adversary, its deuteragonist. The battle between the adherents of matter and the »friends of ideas« never comes to an end. »[The former],« says Plato, »drag down everything from heaven and the invisible to earth […] they lay their hands on all […] things and maintain stoutly that that alone exists which can be touched and handled; for they define existence and body, or matter, as identical, and if anyone says that anything else, which has no body, exists, they despise him utterly, and will not listen to any other theory than their own. […] Therefore those who contend against them defend themselves very cautiously with weapons derived from the invisible world above, maintaining forcibly that real existence consists of certain ideas which are only conceived by the mind and have no body. […] There is always […] a tremendous battle being fought about these questions between the two parties.«29 | To quote Plato when dealing with the problems of modern linguistics sounds strange and arbitrary. I have, however, deliberately chosen this quotation; for it shows us, in a striking way, that there are some fundamental philosophical problems and some problems of scientific methodology which never lose their importance. They never grow obsolete; they reappear, in a modified form, at all ages and under the most various conditions. As a matter of fact, we could use Plato’s description of the great γιγαντομαχα as a very good formula for the struggle between the materialists and formalists in modern linguistics. The former »maintain stoutly that that alone exists which can 28 [Platon, The Sophist (248 A), in: Plato. With an English Translation by Harold North Fowler, London/Cambridge, Mass. 1921 (The Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 123), S. 259–459: S. 379.] 29 Ibid. (246 A), p. 373.

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be touched and handled«. And the only things in human speech that can be grasped in this way are sounds. Language consists of sounds. If we have found the mechanical laws that govern the phenomena of sound shift, of phonetic change, we have found the laws of language. The adversaries of this thesis – the structuralists – defend themselves »with weapons derived from the invisible world above«. They emphasize that sounds, as mere physical occurrences, have no interest for the linguist. The sounds must have a meaning; the phoneme itself is a »unit of meaning«. And meaning is not a visible or tangible thing. »Ce qui saute aux yeux avant tout,« says the late Nikolaj Trubezkoy in his article »La phonologie actuelle«,30 »c’est la profonde différence entre la phonologie et la phonétique. Consciente de cette différence fondamentale, la phonologie actuelle ne cesse de l’accentuer avec toute l’énergie possible. La phonétique actuelle se propose d’étudier les facteurs matériels des sons de la parole humaine: soit les vibrations de l’air qui leur correspondent, soit les positions et les mouvements des organes qui les produisent. Par contre, ce que veut étudier la phonologie actuelle, ce ne sont pas les sons, mais les phonèmes, c’est-à-dire les éléments constitutifs du signifiant linguistique, éléments incorporels, puisque le signifiant lui-même est incorporel […]« Here, I think, we have found a good answer to the question whether linguistics is a natural science or a »Geisteswissenschaft«. It is indeed a »Geisteswissenschaft«; but in this case we must not understand the term »Geist« or spirit as designating a metaphysical entity opposed to another entity called »matter«. If we accept the radical dualism between body and soul, matter and spirit, between »substantia extensa« and »substantia cogitans«, language becomes, | indeed, a continuous miracle. In this case, every act of speech would be a sort of transubstantiation. Speech is meaning – an incorporeal thing – expressed in sounds, which are material things. The term »Geist« is correct; but we must not use it as a name of a substance – a thing »quod in se est et per se concipitur«.31 We should use it in a functional sense as a comprehensive name for all those functions which constitute and build up the world of human culture. It is one of the first and principal tasks of a philosophy of human culture to analyze these various functions, to show us their differences 30 Nikolaj Trubezkoy, La phonologie actuelle, in: Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique 30 (1933), pp. 227–246: pp. 231 f. 31 [Baruch de Spinoza, Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (Teil 1, 3. Definition), in: Opera quae supersunt omnia, hrsg. v. Karl Hermann Bruder, Bd. I, Leipzig 1843, S. 149–416: S. 187.]

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and their mutual relations, their opposition and their collaboration. If we do not content ourselves with such a critical analysis, if we begin to hypostatize them, if we look upon them as if they were separate, independent, absolute entities, we cannot avoid the strange conclusions drawn by Schleicher or Max Müller. Of all things in the world, speech is perhaps the best known and most familiar to us. It is our eternal companion; it is the atmosphere in which we live, move, and have our being. Nevertheless, we find many theories of human speech in which it appears as a very strange and mysterious thing. And we must not forget that, in this respect, the materialists and the spiritualists are in the same predicament. It is true that the former profess, in most cases, a resolute empiricism or positivism. They make a scorn of metaphysics and laugh at their romantic adversaries. But, when studying their works, we are often tempted to ask: »quid rides? […] de te Fabula narratur.«32 To my mind, the answer to our question whether linguistics is a natural science is, in a sense, very simple. What is a natural science? It is a science that deals with physical objects. The physicist or chemist describes the properties of these objects, he studies their changes and tries to discover the causal laws of these changes. Linguistic phenomena may be studied in the same way. We may regard sounds as mere vibrations of the air; or we may, in the physiology of speech, describe the movements of our organs by which various kinds of sounds are produced. But with all this we have not yet crossed the borderline that separates human language from the physical world. Language is a »symbolic form«. It consists of symbols, and symbols are no part of our physical world. They belong to an entirely different universe of discourse. | Natural things and symbols cannot be brought to the same denominator. Linguistics is a part of semiotics, not of physics. On the other hand, this dissimilarity of the o bj e c ts of natural science and linguistics does not exclude a correspondence in the structure of the j u d g m en t s that we find in both sciences. I have myself emphasized this correspondence. When studying Cuvier’s »Leçons d’anatomie comparée« we find, over and over again, the same typical statements as in the works of modern linguists: »Si a existe, b existe aussi; si a existe, b manque; si a manque, b manque aussi.« But, as I pointed out, this formal or logical analogy does not prove a material or ontological similarity in the subject matter of linguistics and biology. The linguist lives in a world of his own. His is a symbolic universe, a 32 [Horaz, Sermonum liber I, in: Q. Horatius Flaccus, hrsg. v. Richard Bentley, Berlin 1869, S. 338–422: S. 342.]

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universe of meaning. We cannot analyze meaning in the same way and according to the same methods that we use in a chemical laboratory for analyzing a chemical compound. I wish to conclude these remarks by asking a historical question. Is it by mere chance that we find such a close agreement between widely different scientific problems? Can we connect these problems; can we show the way that could lead from Goethe’s and Cuvier’s morphological idealism to our modern linguistic structuralism? I think we can. The first attempt to create a philosophy of language, in our modern sense of this term, was made by Wilhelm von Humboldt in the introduction to his great work on the Kawi language.33 Humboldt felt not only the deepest personal friendship and admiration for Goethe; he owed to his work the best part of his intellectual and moral education. In his youth he had published, in Schiller’s »Horen«, an interesting essay on problems of natural philosophy, in which he made use of Goethe’s idea of polarity. But natural philosophy was not his real subject. His was a different scientific and philosophical interest. »Im Grunde ist alles was ich treibe […] Sprachstudium,« he wrote in a letter to the famous philologist Friedrich August Wolf. »Ich glaube die Kunst entdeckt zu haben, die Sprache als ein Vehikel zu brauchen, um das Höchste und Tiefste, und die Mannigfaltigkeit der ganzen Welt zu durchfahren […]«34 In this journey round the world, Goethe’s ideas remained Humboldt’s intellectual compass. He could not use them for his own subject. The problems treated in his work on the Kawi language | were entirely unknown to Goethe. But Humboldt transferred Goethe’s idea to a new field of investigation. Goethe had given his theory of organic types; he spoke of »Bildung und Umbildung organischer Naturen«. Humboldt spoke of linguistic types. »Alle Gestalten sind ähnlich, und keine gleichet der andern; Und so deutet das Chor auf ein geheimes Gesetz […],« said Goethe in his poem »Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen«.35 If in these verses we substitute for plants the different types of human speech, we have a clear and concise expression of Humboldt’s 33 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java. Nebst einer Einleitung über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaus und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts, 3 vols., Berlin 1836–1839. 34 [Wilhelm von Humboldt, Brief an Friedrich August Wolf vom 16. Juni 1804, in: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. V, Berlin 1846, S. 264–267: S. 266 f.] 35 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. I, S. 290–292: S. 290, sowie in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 85–87: S. 85.]

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problem: »Alle Sprachen sind ähnlich, und keine gleichet der andern; Und so deutet das Chor auf ein geheimes Gesetz.« Goethe sought for this hidden law in the natural world; Humboldt tried to discover it in the cultural world, in the world of human speech. But Humboldt was not only a friend and admirer of Goethe’s; he was also a student of Kant and a pupil of Kant’s philosophy. No other philosophical work had made such a deep impression upon his mind as Kant’s »Critique of Pure Reason«. In his essay »Ueber Schiller und den allgemeinen Gang seiner Geistesentwicklung« Humboldt gave a general characterization of Kantian philosophy that, in spite of all the things that have been said and written about Kant, is in many respects still unsurpassed. But even in the work of Kant, Humboldt could not find an immediate inspiration for his own work. Kant was interested in mathematics, in physics, in ethics; but he was not interested in the problems of human speech. When Kant’s »Critique of Pure Reason« appeared, Herder complained bitterly that, in this work, the problem of human speech seemed to be entirely neglected. How is it possible, he asked, to criticize human reason without becoming a critic of human language? That was one of the principal objections raised by Herder. He became a fierce opponent of Kant; he wrote in 1799 his »Metakritik der reinen Vernunft«. Humboldt went the opposite way. He accepted Kant’s theory of knowledge, but he tried to complete it; he applied the principles of Kant’s critical philosophy to the study of human language.36 | There was a time in which Humboldt’s ideas seemed to be entirely forgotten in linguistics. The positivistic schools of the nineteenth century looked upon his theories with a certain suspicion. At best, they saw in them mere metaphysical speculations without empirical purport and value. In this respect, too, modern structuralism has done very much to revise and correct our historical judgment. »[…] je me trouve d’accord,« says Viggo Brøndal in his article »Structure et variabilité des systèmes morphologiques,« »avec l’universalisme exigé et pratiqué il y a cent ans par le grand maître de linguistique générale qu’était Guillaume de Humboldt.«37 And the program of structuralism developed by Brøndal is, indeed, very near to Humboldt’s ideas. »Our science,« he declared in an address delivered before the Second International Congress of Pho36 See Die Kantischen Elemente in Wilhelm von Humboldts Sprachphilosophie, in: Festschrift für Paul Hensel – Erlangen, ed. by Julius Binder, Greiz i. Vogtl. 1923, pp. 105–127 [ECW 16, S. 105–133]. 37 [Brøndal, Structure et variabilité, S. 119.]

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netic Sciences, »should not be a mere storehouse of facts and figures […] Our experience should not be confined to mere ear and eye and hand-experience.«38 If this statement had been in need of a philosophical authority, Brøndal could have quoted Kant. Kant was neither an empiricist in the sense of Locke or Hume nor was he a rationalist in the sense of Leibniz. In his »Critique of Pure Reason« he drew the borderline between experience and thought, between a posteriori and a priori, in a new and different way. Leibniz, he declared, had intellectualized phenomena just as Locke had sensualized all concepts of the understanding.39 Both ways are inadequate. There is no opposition, no gulf between experience and reason. They are correlative the one to the other and must interpenetrate each other. In Kant’s critical or formal idealism we no longer find the same contrast between »vérités nécessaires« and »vérités contingentes«, »vérités de raison« and »vérités de fait« as in Leibniz’s metaphysical idealism. Nor do we find here the Humian conception – that experience is a bundle of sense perceptions. Experience, declared Kant, is a system; it is not a mere »Rhapsodie von Wahrnehmungen«. Without systematic | unity there can be no experience and no science; experience is possible only by the idea of a necessary connection: »Erfahrung ist nur durch die Vorstellung einer notwendigen Verknüpfung der Wahrnehmungen möglich.«40 Since I am speaking before a circle of linguists, I may perhaps be allowed to end with the analysis of a word – of the German word Gestalt. Of course, I cannot speak as an expert and I do not wish to encroach on your territory. What I can give you is only a rough and insufficient sketch; but I think such a sketch can help us to understand that general trend of thought which I have tried to describe in the paper. According to Grimm’s »Deutsches Wörterbuch« and Friedrich Kluge’s »Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache«, G e s talt is an old German word. Originally it occurred only in its adjectival form, and mostly in its negative form as ungestalt. It is a participle 38 Idem, Sound and Phoneme, in: Daniel Jones/Dennis Butler Fry (eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Held at University College, London, 22–26 July 1935, Cambridge 1936, pp. 40–45: p. 44. Cf. Vilém Mathesius, La place de la linguistique fonctionelle et structurale dans le ˆ développement général des études linguistiques, in: Casopis pro moderní filologii 18 (1931), pp. 1–7. 39 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. by Albert Görland (Werke, in connection with Hermann Cohen and others ed. by Ernst Cassirer, Vol. III), Berlin 1913, p. 231 (B 327). 40 Ibid., pp. 152 and 166 (B 195 and 218).

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derived from the verb stellen. The substantive Gestalt does not appear before the end of the thirteenth century. In most cases, it is used in a concrete sense; it designates the visible or tangible form of a material body, especially of a human body. A more abstract meaning comes to the fore in the great religious struggles of the German reformation. »Das Abendmahl in beiderlei Gestalt« is here in the focus of religious interest. Here we are very near to the symbolic meaning of the term. Grimm’s »Wörterbuch« quotes Clemens Brentano’s verses: » brod und wein, die zwei gestalten, sind nur zeichen, sie enthalten gottes volle wesenheit.«41 Besides this religious development, we find another one that may be described as the philosophical history of the word »Gestalt«. Curiously enough, this philosophical history does not begin with the philosophers themselves. When Kant, in his »Critique of Pure Reason«, approaches those problems that in our modern scientific terminology we should call »Gestaltprobleme«, he does not use the German word. He goes back to the Greek term σχ0μα and writes his chapter on the schematism of the pure understanding. | The new philosophical and speculative sense of the term »Gestalt« appears first in German poetry. In his poem »Das Ideal und das Leben« Schiller uses the word for designating the ideal world, the Platonic κσμος νοητς: » Nur der Körper eignet jenen Mächten, Die das dunkle Schicksal flechten; Aber frei von jeder Zeitgewalt, Die Gespielin seliger Naturen, Wandelt oben in des Lichtes Fluren Göttlich unter Göttern die Ge sta l t. Wollt Ihr hoch auf ihren Flügeln schweben, Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch, Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben In des Ideales Reich!«42

41 [Art. »Gestalt«, in: Jacob Grimm/Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, Bd. IV, 1. Abt., 2. Teil, bearb. v. Rudolf Hildebrand u. Hermann Wunderlich, Leipzig 1897, Sp. 4178–4190: Sp 4188.] 42 [Friedrich Schiller, Das Ideal und das Leben, in: Sämtliche Werke. SäkularAusgabe in 16 Bdn., in Verb. mit Richard Fester u. a. hrsg. v. Eduard von der Hellen, Bd. I, Stuttgart/Berlin 1905, S. 191–196: S. 192.]

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In Goethe’s morphology the term »Gestalt« has a different meaning. Even Goethe is a Platonist; he strives to find the typical features in natural phenomena. But according to Goethe, it is in nature itself, not beyond nature, that we have to seek for these typical features. The true »ideal method« – die »ideelle Denkweise« – consists in discovering the durable in the transient, the permanent in the changeable.43 The naturalist must be able to unite these two elements. Even in the most irregular phenomena he must make us see a rule that remains fixed and inviolable. In nature »Gestalt« and »Ungestalt« are bound together; the former appears only in the latter. Sometimes the norm appears in its clearest shape if we look at the so-called abnormal phenomena. Nothing in nature is arbitrary or lawless. Even the most accidental and haphazard changes obey a hidden law. »Hier möchte nun der Ort sein zu bemerken,« says Goethe in his remarks on the great dispute between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, »daß der Naturforscher auf diesem Wege am ersten und leichtesten den Werth, die Würde des Gesetzes, der Regel erkennen lernt. Sehen wir immerfort nur das Geregelte, so denken wir, es müsse so sein, von jeher sei es also bestimmt und deswegen stationär. Sehen wir aber die Abweichungen, Mißbildungen, ungeheure Mißgestalten, so erkennen wir: daß die Regel zwar fest und ewig, aber zugleich lebendig sei; daß die Wesen, zwar nicht aus derselben | heraus, aber doch innerhalb derselben sich in’s Unförmliche umbilden können, jederzeit aber, wie mit Zügeln zurückgehalten, die unausweichliche Herrschaft des Gesetzes anerkennen müssen.«44 Later on, at the end of the nineteenth century, we find a corresponding development in a new field, in that of psychology. When psychologists began to break away from the Humian tradition, when they became aware that psychic life is not a mere aggregate of sense data or »simple ideas«, they could find no better term for this new tendency than the term »Gestalt«. The article of Christian von Ehrenfels, who was the first to call the attention of psychologists to the new structural problems, bears the title »Über ›Gestaltqualitäten‹«. Gestalt psychology did not go back to former speculative methods. It did not develop a »psychologia rationalis« in the sense of Christian Wolff or other pre-Kantian thinkers. It remained an empirical science, using empirical methods. But in this field, too, we now meet with a new concept and a new description of empirical knowledge. When studying the 43 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leben und Verdienste des Doctor Joachim Jungius, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. VII, pp. 105–129: p. 120. 44 Idem, Principes de philosophie zoologique, pp. 189 f.

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phenomena of sense perception, the Gestalt psychologists had become aware of the fact that sense perception has a definite structure. It is not a piecemeal of »simple ideas«; it is not, as Wertheimer said, a mere »Und-Verbindung«. If we take all these various features together, the term »Gestalt« can do us an important service. It can help us to see the connection between problems that, at first sight, seem to be far remote the one from the other. What I wished to make clear in this paper is the fact that structuralism is no isolated phenomenon; it is, rather, the expression of a general tendency of thought that, in these last decades, has become more and more prominent in almost all fields of scientific research. Columbia University

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Albert Schweitzer as Critic of Nineteenth-Century Ethics1

Albert Schweitzer’s work covers a vast field. It extends over the whole range of human culture. Schweitzer began as a theologian and as a historian of religion. His early books are concerned with the quest of the historical Jesus, with the mysticism of Paul the Apostle, with a critical history of the interpretation of the Pauline epistles. At the same time, Schweitzer began to publish his works on the history of music. He wrote his book about Johann Sebastian Bach and gave his interpretation of Bach’s preludes and fugues. Subsequently, all this was in a sense superseded and eclipsed by a new practical interest. Schweitzer became a missionary and a physician. He built a hospital in Lambaréné for the natives of French Africa! and he devoted his whole life to the administration, extension, and final development of this hospital. But Schweitzer’s philosophical work never was impeded by these practical activities. On the contrary, it was enlarged and deepened. In an introductory note to his book »The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization«, Schweitzer tells us that the ideas developed in his book have been finally ripened in the stillness of the primeval forest of equatorial Africa. Nevertheless mere many-sidedness is not the true character of Schweitzer’s personality and of his work. All who met him or read his books must have obtained quite a different impression. What strikes us most is not the multifariousness, the mobility, | and versatility of his thought, but its simplicity. When dealing with the most variegated and widely divergent subjects, Schweitzer the man and thinker, always remains the same. His whole intellectual and moral energy is directed toward, and concentrated upon, one point. His various activities are never dispersed; they do not only complement each other, they are actually interwoven. This applies especially to Schweitzer’s theory of civilization. What we find here is not what we usually call a »philosophy«. Schweitzer never speaks in a technical philosophical language. His work is not encumbered with a complicated and obscure terminology, and it does not contain any subtle and sophisticated modes of reasoning. 1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: The Albert Schweitzer Jubilee Book, hrsg. v. Abraham Aaron Roback, Julius Seelye Bixler u. George Sarton, Cambridge, Mass. o. J., S. 239–257.]

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Schweitzer’s thought is a straightforward and ingenious thought. He avoids all scholasticism. To put it paradoxically, we would say that the man who speaks here is rather a physician than a philosopher. That is no mere logical analysis but a medical analysis of our cultural life. Schweitzer sees all the inherent evils and the impending danger of modern culture. His book was written more than twenty-five years ago, during the first World War. But in no other book of this period do we find such a strong presentiment of the crisis to come and such a clear insight into the character of this crisis. »We are living to-day,« he says, »under the sign of the collapse of civilization. […] Just below a mighty cataract we are driving along in a current full of formidable eddies, and it will need the most gigantic efforts to rescue the vessel of our fate from the dangerous side channel into which we have allowed it to drift, and bring it back into the main stream, if, indeed, we can hope to do so at all.«2 Schweitzer’s »Olaus-Petri Lectures«, given in 1922 at the University of Uppsala, contain a diagnosis, a symptomatology, and an aetiology of this illness of modern culture. According to Schweitzer, the first and most alarming symptom was the ascendancy of | that new form of thought that is described by him as »collective thought«. »To-day it is the rule – and no one questions it – always to take into account the views which prevail in organized society. The individual starts by taking it for granted that both for himself and his neighbours there are certain views […] which are determined by nationality, creed, political party, social position, and other elements in one’s surroundings. These views are protected […] and are not only kept sacred from criticism, but are not a legitimate subject of conversation. This kind of intercourse, in which we mutually abjure our natural quality as thinking beings, is euphemistically described as respect for other people’s convictions, as if there could be any convictions at all where there is no thought. […] Where the collective body works more strongly on the individual than the latter does upon it, the result is deterioration, because the noble element on which everything depends, viz., the spiritual and moral worthiness of the individual, is thereby necessarily constricted and hampered. Decay of the spiritual and moral life then 2 In the following, I am quoting from the English translation of Schweitzer’s Lectures on »The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization« (The Philosophy of Civilization, Part I), transl. by Charles Thomas Campion, London 1923 (The Dale Memorial Lectures, 1922), pp. 1 f., and »Civilization and Ethics« (The Philosophy of Civilization, Part II), transl. by John Naish, London 1923 (The Dale Memorial Lectures, 1922).

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sets in, which renders society incapable of understanding and solving the problems which it has to face. Thereupon, sooner or later, it is involved in catastrophe.«3 Another symptom of the same disease is the ever-increasing spirit of natio n alism. Even in this respect the picture drawn by Schweitzer, more than twenty-five years ago, gives us the most telling description of all those things that we nowadays see before our very eyes. »What is nationalism?« asks Schweitzer. »It is an ignoble patriotism, exaggerated till it has lost all meaning, which bears the same relation to the noble and healthy kind as the fixed idea of an imbecile does to normal conviction. […] When civilization began to decline, its other ideals all fell also, but the idea of nationality maintained | itself because it had transferred itself to the sphere of reality. It incorporated henceforward all that remained of civilization, and became the ideal which summed up all others. […] But with the decay of civilization the character of the idea of nationality changed. The guardianship exercised over it by the other moral ideals to which it had hitherto been subordinate now ceased, since these were themselves on trial, and the nationalist idea began a career of independence. […] That reason and morality shall not be allowed to contribute a word to the formation of nationalist ideas and aspirations is demanded by the mass of men to-day as a sparing of their holiest feelings. If in earlier times the decay of civilization did not produce any such confusion in the sentiments of the various nations, this was because the idea of nationality had not then been raised in the same way to be the ideal of civilization. It was, therefore, impossible that it should insinuate itself into the place of the true ideals of civilization, and through abnormal nationalist conceptions and dispositions bring into active existence an elaborate system of uncivilization.«4 It was, however, not enough to study the symptoms of the illness of modern culture. The symptomatology was to be followed by aetiology. Which are the reasons for the present crisis? Schweitzer refuses to accept those reasons which are commonly alleged for the explanation of the phenomenon. He rejects the historical and economic materialism of the nineteenth century; and he does not expect the real help from an improvement of the social and economic conditions. Of course he does not underrate the importance of these factors. But according to him they are rather necessary than sufficient conditions. »The best planned improvements in the organization of our soci3 4

Idem, The Decay and the Restoration, pp. 29 and 74. Ibid., pp. 48–50.

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ety,« he declares, »(though we are quite right in trying to secure them) cannot help us at all until we become at the | same time capable of imparting a new spirit of our age. The difficult problems with which we have to deal, even those which lie entirely in the material and economic sphere, are in the last resort only to be solved by an inner change of character. The wisest reforms in organization can only carry them a little nearer solution, never to the goal. The only conceivable way of bringing about a reconstruction of our world on new lines is first of all to become new men ourselves under the old circumstances, and then as a society in a new frame of mind so to smooth out the opposition between nations that a condition of true civilization may again become possible. […] In the sphere of human events which decide the future of mankind reality consists in an inner conviction, not in given outward facts. Firm ground for our feet we find in reasoned ethical ideals. […] The true sense for reality is that insight which tells us that only through ethical ideas about things can we arrive at a normal relation to reality. Only so can man and society win all the power over events that they are able to use. Without that power we are, whatever we may choose to do, delivered over into bondage to them.«5 Which was the principal ground of this loss of »the true sense of reality« that, according to Schweitzer, is a characteristic of our modern cultural life? His answer to this question is clear and uncompromising. It is the p h ilo s o p h y of the nineteenth century that is responsible for this loss. We must annul the whole work of this philosophy in order to find the way back: the way to those ethical standards that in former times governed and determined the life of men. Schweitzer’s philosophy is consciously and deliberately »out of date«. He speaks as a thinker of the eighteenth century, of the period of Enlightenment. »It is […] with complete confidence,« he says in the Preface to his book »Civilization and Ethics«,6 »that I step forward to press the claims | of unprejudiced rational thought. I know well that our times have no affinity whatever for anything that is branded as rationalistic, and would like to dismiss everything of the sort as an eighteenth century aberration. But it will soon become evident that we shall be obliged to take up the same position which the eighteenth century defended so stoutly. The period which lies between those times and the present is an intermezzo of thought, an intermezzo which had extraordinarily rich and interesting motifs, but yet was all the same a fatal intermezzo. Its inevitable end was that we should founder absolutely in a total lack 5 6

Ibid., pp. 60 f. Idem, Civilization and Ethics, p. XVII.

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of any world-view of civilization at all, and it is the latter state which is responsible for all the spiritual and material misery amid which we languish at present.« Schweitzer does not underrate the great achievements of the philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. New problems have come to the fore; new solutions were attempted, new methods were developed. But all this is no compensation for what was pushed away and was finally lost. Now we have a generation which is squandering the precious heritage it has received from the past, and is living in a world of ruins, because it cannot complete the building which that past began. With the disappearance of the influence exerted by the Aufklärung, rationalism, and the serious philosophy of the early nineteenth century, the seeds were sown to the World War to come. »In a great deal of the opposition which it offered to rationalism the reaction of the early nineteenth century was right. Nevertheless it remains true that it despised and distorted what was, in spite of all its imperfections, the greatest and most valuable manifestation of the spiritual life of man that the world has yet seen. Down through all circles of cultured and uncultured alike there prevailed at that time a belief in thought and a reverence for truth. For that reason alone that age stands higher than any which preceded it, and much higher than our own.«7 | Theological and ethical thinkers have often charged the nineteenth century with a lack of religious and moral sense. The various schools of materialism, the »egoism« of Stirner, the »immoralism« of Nietzsche were alleged as reasons for this charge. But that is not the point of Schweitzer. He does not think of these systems; he does not even mention them. His accusation has a much more general and, therefore, a much graver and more serious import. He does not criticize or attack particular philosophic schools. His attack is directed against the very c h aracter of philosophic thought during the nineteenth century. What matters in philosophy is not so much the answers to certain questions as the questions themselves. And it is here that, according to Schweitzer, the philosophy of the nineteenth century has missed the point. This philosophy could no longer live up to its principal task; it had almost forgotten that universal f u n ct io n that philosophy has to fulfill is man’s social, political, and cultural life. Can we accept this radical solution, this hard and rigorous verdict? Can we forget and obliterate all the great achievements of the philosophy of the nineteenth century? Is it fair to condemn all the great 7

Idem, The Decay and the Restoration, p. 87.

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thinkers of this period in a body indiscriminately? Is there no point of contact between Schweitzer’s ethical thought and the systems of these thinkers? According to Schweitzer, the strongest, nay the only, influences in man’s cultural life are r a ti ona l i s m and opti mi s m. Without these influences all hope for a restoration of civilization is lost. »Rationalism« is much more than a movement of thought which realized itself at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. It is the everlasting and inexhaustible source of all true cultural life. All real progress in the world is in the last analysis produced by rationalism. »It is true that the intellectual productions of the period which we designate historically as the rationalistic are incomplete and unsatisfactory, but the principle, which was then established, of basing our views of the universe on thought and | thought alone, is valid for all time. Even if the tree’s earliest fruit did not [fully] ripen […] the tree itself remains […] the tree of life for the life of our spirit.« But rationalism does not mean a merely theoretical ideal. It is no mere intellectualism; it must be complemented and perfected by another impulse, by the force of optimism. »[…] of what character must the theory be if ideas and convictions […] are to be based on it? [It must be optimistic and ethical.] That theory of the universe is optimistic which gives existence the preference as against non-existence and thus affirms life as something possessing value in itself. From this attitude to the universe and to life results the impulse to raise existence, in so far as our influence can affect it, to its highest level of value. Thence originates activity directed to the improvement of the living conditions of individuals, of society, of nations and of humanity, from which spring the external achievements of civilization, the lordship of spirit over the powers of nature, and the higher social organization.«8 All this is clear and convincing – but can we really say that this judgment does justice to the fundamental tendencies of the philosophy of the nineteenth century? The objections to this view seem to be obvious. One of the predominant metaphysical systems of the nineteenth century was the system of Hegel. No other thinker has exerted such a deep influence upon our modern moral, political, and social ideas. This influence was not confined within the limit of a special field or a special school. It extended over the whole sphere of modern cultural life. By its adversaries, Hegelianism was often said to be definitely dead. But this sentence was always belied by its further development. The Hegelian system proved to be a phoenix which, after being consumed 8

Ibid., pp. 93 ff. [Zitate S. 89 u. 93 f.].

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by the flames, arose from the ashes in a rejuvenated state. All the great currents of philosophic thought in the nineteenth century attest to this unbroken and enduring power of Hegel’s system. There were Hegelian »materialists« as well as Hegelian »spiritualists«; there were Hegelian theists, pantheists, and even athe | ists. Nor was Hegel’s influence felt only in German thought. It extended over all nations. There was a »Hegel-Renaissance« in the Netherlands, in Italy, in England, in America. It is enough to mention the names of Bowne, Howland, of Benedetto Croce, of Bradley, and Bosanquet, of Emerson, of Josiah Royce, and William Ernest Hocking to measure the extent and the depth of this Renaissance. But if this is true how can we charge the philosophy of the nineteenth century and our own contemporary philosophy with a lack of »rationalism« and »optimism«? Were not rationalism and optimism the strongest and predominant powers in Hegel’s thought? His optimism was almost unbounded. Schopenhauer spoke of the Hegelian optimism as being not only absurd but even nefarious. It was the principal aim of Hegel’s philosophy of history »to justify the […] despised Reality,« to give a »theodicy« widely superior to that of Leibniz. »Our intellectual striving,« he said in the introduction to his »Lectures on the Philosophy of History«, »aims at realizing the conviction that what was in t en d e d by eternal wisdom, is actually accomplished in the domain of existent, active Spirit, as well as in that of mere Nature. Our mode of treating the subject is, in this aspect, a Theodicæa, – a justification of the ways of God, – […] so that the ill that is found in the World may be comprehended, and the thinking Spirit reconciled with the fact of the existence of evil.«9 On the other hand, the Hegelian system proved to be the firmest stronghold of rationalism. What Hegel tried to prove was not only the h armo n y, but the i d en t it y of reason and reality. The Rational is the Real, the Real i s the Rational. The Real is not and never has been so feeble as merely to have a right or an oug ht to exist without actually existing.10 »The only Thought which Philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of History, is the simple conception of R e a so n; | that Reason is the Sovereign of the World; that the history of the world, therefore, presents us with a rational process. This conviction and intuition is a 9 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, transl. by John Sibree, London 1857, pp. 38 and 16. 10 Idem, Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. Erster Theil: Die Logik, ed. by Leopold von Henning (Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten, Vol. VI), Berlin 1840, S. 10.

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hypothesis in the domain of history as such. In that of Philosophy it is no hypothesis. It is there proved by speculative cognition, that Reason […] is Substance, as well as Infinite Power; its own Infinite Material underlying all the natural and spiritual life which it originates, as also the Infinite Form, – that which sets this Material in motion.«11 Schweitzer’s judgment about the general character of the philosophy of the nineteenth century is, therefore, a great paradox. Here we are caught on the horns of a real dilemma. Even if we subscribe to the judgment itself, we cannot accept its historical pr e mi s e s . On this point the analysis of Schweitzer seems to break down. Schweitzer’s accusation and condemnation is absolute and uncompromising. It does not admit of any exception. As regards the principal and fundamental question all the various schools and systems are in the same predicament. None of them lived up to its essential task; none of them had a true conception of what philosophy is and ought to be. »The decisive element,« says Schweitzer, »was philosophy’s renunciation of her duty. In the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth it was philosophy which led and guided thought in general. She had busied herself with the questions which presented themselves to mankind at each successive period, and had kept the thought of civilized man actively reflecting upon them. [But] [s]ince that time the ethical ideas on which civilization rests have been wandering about the world, poverty-stricken and homeless. No theory of the universe has been advanced which can give them a solid foundation; in fact, not one has made its appearance which can claim for itself solidity and inner consistency. […] In spite of all her learning [philosophy] had become a stranger to the world, and the | problems of life which occupied men and the whole thought of the age had no part in her activities. Her way lay apart from the general spiritual life, and just as she derived no stimulus from the latter, so she gave none back. […] philosophy philosophized about everything except civilization. She went on working undeviatingly at the establishment of a theoretical view of the universe, as though by means of it everything could be restored, and did not reflect that this theory, even if it were completed, would be constructed only out of history and science, and would accordingly be unoptimistic and unethical, and would remain for ever an ›impotent theory of the universe,‹ which could never call forth the energies needed for the establishment and maintenance of the ideals of civilization. So little did philosophy philosophize about civilization that she did not even notice that she herself and the age along with her were 11

Idem, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, p. 9.

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losing more and more of it. In the hour of peril the watchman who ought to have kept us awake was himself asleep, and the result was that we put up no fight at all on behalf of our civilization.«12 In order to understand this judgment, we must bear in mind the s p ecific character of Schweitzer’s »rationalism« and »optimism«. Hegel’s rationalism was an h is t o r ical rationalism, his is an e t hi c a l rationalism. Hegel identified rationality with r e a l i ty; Schweitzer thinks of reason, first and foremost, as a practical power to organize the human world. Following the way of Kant he accepts the principle of the »primacy of practical reason.«13 It follows from this conception that Schweitzer, in spite of his rationalism and optimism, emphasizes much more the t en s io n between »reason« and »reality« than their harmony or »identity«. By virtue of this alleged identity, Hegel had been led to his theory of the historical world. »That this ›Idea‹ or ›Reason‹ is the True, the Eternal, the absolutely powerful essence,« says Hegel in the Introduction to his »Lectures on the Philosophy of History«, »that it reveals itself in the World, and that in that World nothing else is revealed but this and its honour and glory – | is the thesis which […] has been proved in Philosophy, and is here regarded as demonstrated.«14 Here we grasp the fundamental difference between Hegel’s and Schweitzer’s conception of man’s ethical life. Their »rationalism« is not on the same level. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the use of the term »Reason«. In Hegel’s system »reason« means a metaphysical, not an ethical principle. It is a substantial power which does its work and performs its task regardless of the thought, the wishes, the demands, or actions of the individual men. The individuals are not the real actors. They suppose themselves to be the propellers; but they are themselves pushed forward by another and more powerful force. Individual desires and passions, individual merits and failures, noble deeds and crimes are nothing but the means of which the World-Spirit avails itself in order to execute its design. »Against the doctrine that the idea is a mere idea,« says Hegel in the preface to his »Philosophy of Right«, »philosophy preserves the more profound view that nothing is real except the idea. Hence arises the effort to recognize in the tem12

Schweitzer, The Decay and the Restoration, pp. 8 ff. [Zitat S. 4–6, 10 u.

13 f.]. 13 [Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, hrsg. v. Benzion Kellermann, in: Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, Bd. V, hrsg. v. Otto Buek, Berlin 1914, S. 1–176: S. 130 ff. (Akad.-Ausg V, 119 ff.): »Primat der reinen praktischen Vernunft«.] 14 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, p. 10.

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poral and transient the substance, which is immanent, and the eternal, which is present. The rational is synonymous with the idea, because in realizing itself it passes into external existence. It thus appears in an endless wealth of forms, figures and phenomena. It wraps its kernel round with a robe of many colours, in which consciousness finds itself at home. Through this varied husk the conception first of all penetrates, in order to touch the pulse, and then feel it throbbing in its external manifestations.«15 In Hegel’s philosophy, »reason« is far above the sphere of the mere human world. Its true manifestations are not to be found in the sphere of the »subjective« but in the sphere of the »objective mind« and of the »absolute mind«. This »more profound view« is entirely rejected by Schweitzer. According to him, the | metaphysical, the Hegelian, depth is only an apparent depth. To him there is no greater depth than the depth of individual life and individual consciousness. It is here that we have to seek the very center of our cultural life. If we give up this center we have not only lost ourselves, we have also lost our hold of reality. The most striking expression of this fundamental difference is to be found in a terminological distinction that first was introduced by Hegel. Hegel makes a sharp and clear-cut distinction between what he calls »Moralität« and what he calls »Sittlichkeit«. Up to this time, the two terms had been used as synonyms: there was no difference between the »moral« and the »ethical« order. But according to Hegel that was a grave mistake. »Morality« (Moralität) belongs to the sphere of the individual will and the individual consciousness, whereas Sittlichkeit (ethicalness) belongs to the sphere of the objective mind, that objective mind which is represented by and embodied in the life of the state. Both spheres cannot be judged and measured by the same standards. They are incommensurate with one another. As to the rank and dignity of the two spheres, there can be no doubt in the Hegelian system. Morality has no right of its own; it is inferior and subordinate to the only universal will, the will of the state. Hegel emphatically denies that there are such things as the so-called inviolable and inalienable rights of the individuals. As against the state, individuals have no rights and no claims whatever. »All right,« says Hegel in his treatise on the German constitution, »originates from the state. It is the state that has to decide, not chance, not documents nor other legal titles.« Since the rules of morality apply only to private life and pri15 Idem, Philosophy of Right, transl. by Samuel Waters Dyde, London 1896, pp. XXVII f.

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vate conduct, they are not applicable to political life, to the conduct of states.16 By this conception, »custom« (»Sitte«) becomes a necessary and predominant element in man’s ethical life. Hegel has maintained this view consistently from the initial stages of his philosophy up to its finale. It is clearly and unmistakably expressed | in one of his earliest works, in the treatise concerning the scientific modes of treating »natural right«, written in 1802. »[…] the striving for a morality of one’s own,« declares Hegel, »is futile, and by its very nature impossible of attainment; in regard to morality, the saying of the wisest man of antiquity is the only true one – to be moral is to live in accordance with the moral traditions of one’s country […]«17 According to Schweitzer, such a traditionalism is the very deathblow of ethics. And it becomes so much the more dangerous if we bear in mind the special conditions of our modern social life. One of the most serious symptoms of modern civilization is the predominance of the collective spirit. Our feelings and opinions are under a constant pressure. We no longer think our own thoughts; we think the thoughts of others. Not only our life but even our judgments are regulated and canalized. »Our whole spiritual life nowadays has its course within organizations. From childhood up the man of to-day has his mind so full of the thought of discipline that he loses the sense of his own individuality and can only see himself as thinking in the spirit of some group or other of his fellows. […] The modern man is lost in the mass in a way which is without precedent in history, and this is perhaps the most characteristic trait in him. […] He is like a rubber ball which has lost its elasticity, and preserves indefinitely every impression that is made upon it. […] Yet this abnormal subjection to external influences does not strike him as being a weakness. He looks upon it as an achieve16 [Ders., Die Verfassung Deutschlands, in: Schriften zur Politik und Rechtsphilosophie (Sämtliche Werke, Bd. VII), hrsg. v. Georg Lasson, Leipzig 1913, S. 1–154: S. 63 Anm.: »[…] alles Recht geht von ihm (aus), er hat zu entscheiden, nicht Zufall, nicht Urkunden, u. andre Rechtstitel.«] 17 Idem, Ueber die wissenschaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts, seine Stelle in der praktischen Philosophie, und sein Verhältniß zu den positiven Rechtswissenschaften, in: Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten, Vol. I: Philosophische Abhandlungen, ed. by Karl Ludwig Michelet, Berlin 21845, pp. 313–412: p. 389 [»[…] daß das Bestreben um eine eigenthümliche positive Sittlichkeit etwas Vergebliches und an sich selbst Unmögliches ist; und in Ansehung der Sittlichkeit das Wort der weisesten Männer des Alterthums allein das Wahre ist: sittlich sey, den Sitten seines Landes gemäß zu leben […]«].

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ment, and in his unlimited spiritual devotion to the interests of the community he thinks he is preserving the greatness of the modern man. […] During the war the control of thought was made complete. Propaganda definitely took the place of truth. […] If we find among men of to-day only too few whose human and moral sensibility is still undamaged, the chief reason is that the | majority have offered up their personal morality on the altar of their country, instead of remaining at variance with the mass and acting as a force which impels the latter along the road to perfection. […] And so we wander hither and thither in the gathering dusk formed by lack of any definite theory of the universe like homeless, drunken mercenaries, and enlist indifferently in the service of the common and the great without distinguishing between them. And the more hopeless […] the condition of the world [becomes] in which this adventurous impulse to action and progress ranges to and fro, the more bewildered becomes our whole conception of things and the more purposeless and irrational the doings of those who have enlisted under the banner of such an impulse.«18 What has the philosophy of the nineteenth century done to avoid this danger and to struggle against it? As Schweitzer points out, it marks the greatness of the eighteenth century that fear of public opinion was then unknown. All ideas had then to justify themselves to individual reason. This great heritage was lost during the nineteenth century; and, curiously and paradoxically enough, it was not the materialism of the nineteenth century but rather the very i d e a l i s ti c systems that were responsible for this loss. For in these systems the center of gravity was shifted. H is t o r ical thought definitely took precedence over ethical thought. Ethics itself abdicated its inherent rights; it submitted to the verdict of historical reality. To say that Hegel was simply the »philosopher of the Prussian State« would not do full justice to his political and philosophical system. He did not mean to stabilize or perpetuate any p ar ti c ul a r stage of history. But his system became an apotheosis of the historical process taken as a whole. To him the history of the world was the judgment of the world. To contest this judgment is vain and futile; for there is no higher Court of Appeal than the Reason of history. Even for philosophy the decision of this | court is indisputable and irrevocable. That follows from the very definition of philosophy given in Hegel’s system. Philosophy is nothing but »its time apprehended in thoughts.« It is foolish to think that any philosophy can transcend its present 18 Schweitzer, The Decay and the Restoration, pp. 29 ff. and 97 f. [Zitat S. 28– 30, 32 f. u. 97 f.].

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world. The clearest and most striking expression of this view is given in Hegel’s famous words in the introduction to his »Philosophy of Law«. »To understand wh at is , is the task of philosophy; for what i s , that is Reason. […] One word more concerning the information what the word ought to be; f o r t h at en d p h ilo s ophy a l w a ys c ome s t o o late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process and made itself ready. What is thus thought by the nation, history also shows to be necessary; only in the ripeness of reality does the ideal appear over against the actual, and builds up for itself that same world, apprehended in its substance into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey in grey, it cannot be rejuvenated but only known. The veil of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.«19 This conception of philosophy is in flagrant contradiction with Schweitzer’s »ethical optimism«. He assigns to philosophic thought the very opposite rôle. He does not admit that, for the reconstruction of our social, our ethical, and cultural life, philosophy »always comes too late.« It only comes too late when it begins to forget its mission and its principal duty, when it yields to the pressure of external forces instead of using its own powers and confiding in these powers. »The beginning of all spiritual life of any real value,« says Schweitzer, »is courageous faith in truth and open confession of the same.«20 To be sure, it would be absurd to charge the Hegelian System with a lack of this »courageous faith in truth.« No thinker before Hegel had ever put philosophy on such a high pedestal as he did. It is described by him as a culmination, the very zenith of man’s cultural life. It is all19 [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse, hrsg. v. Eduard Gans (Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten, Bd. VIII), Berlin 1833, S. 19–21: »Das, was ist, zu begreifen, ist die Aufgabe der Philosophie, denn das was ist, ist die Vernunft. […] Um noch über das Belehren, wie die Welt seyn soll, ein Wort zu sagen, so kommt dazu ohnehin die Philosophie immer zu spät. Als der Gedanke der Welt erscheint sie erst in der Zeit, nachdem die Wirklichkeit ihren Bildungsproceß vollendet und sich fertig gemacht hat. Dieß, was der Begriff lehrt, zeigt nothwendig ebenso die Geschichte, daß erst in der Reife der Wirklichkeit das Ideale dem Realen gegenüber erscheint und jenes sich dieselbe Welt, in ihrer Substanz erfaßt, in Gestalt eines intellektuellen Reichs erbaut. Wenn die Philosophie ihr Grau in Grau mahlt, dann ist eine Gestalt des Lebens alt geworden, und mit Grau in Grau läßt sie sich nicht verjüngen, sondern nur erkennen; die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.«] 20 Schweitzer, The Decay and the Restoration, p. 102.

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comprehensive; it embraces and preserves all the | former steps of the dialectic process, it is higher than art and religion. When Hegel, after a long interruption of his academic work, resumed his philosophical lectures in Heidelberg, he expressed this conviction in the most impressive manner. »The courage of truth,« he said, »the belief in the power of spirit is the first condition of philosophy. Man, being spirit, must esteem himself and ought to deem himself worthy of the highest rank; he cannot esteem too highly the greatness and power of his spirit, and in this belief, nothing will be so hard and unyielding as not to be open to him. The essence of the universe at first hidden and closed, has no power by which it would be able to withstand the courage of knowledge: it must become manifest; it must show its wealth and its depth and surrender them to the enjoyment of knowledge.«21 But the »courage of truth« and the »enjoyment of knowledge« are not the same in Hegel and in Schweitzer. Hegel purported to understand, to interpret, and justify his »present world«. But he never meant to turn the tide of history. To swim against the tide was to him an impossible thought. If a theory transgresses its time, he declared, and builds up a world as it ought to be, it has an existence merely in the unstable element of opinion, which gives zoom to every wandering fancy. It needed a great intellectual and moral courage to attack this philosophical quietism. What Schweitzer demands of philosophy is much more. He assigns to it the leading rôle in the great process of the reconstruction of modern civilization. But to this end, it must first reconstruct and regenerate itself. It must recognize its fundamental duties before it can regain its place in modern cultural life.

21 [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, hrsg. v. Karl Ludwig Michelet, Bd. I (Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten, Bd. XIII), Berlin 1833, S. 6: »Der Muth der Wahrheit, der Glaube an die Macht des Geistes ist die erste Bedingung der Philosophie. Der Mensch, da er Geist ist, darf und soll sich selbst des Höchsten würdig achten, von der Größe und Macht seines Geistes kann er nicht groß genug denken; und mit diesem Glauben wird nichts so spröde und hart seyn, das sich ihm nicht eröffnete. Das zuerst verborgene und verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine Kraft, die dem Muthe des Erkennens Widerstand leisten könnte; es muß sich vor ihm aufthun, und seinen Reichthum und seine Tiefen ihm vor Augen legen und zum Genusse geben.«]

[277]–279

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I Was Galileo a Platonist? The question has often been raised and in recent literature it has been warmly debated. But we are still very far from a generally admitted solution. Strong arguments could be alleged for a positive and a negative answer.2 That is not to be wondered at. We cannot expect to find a clear and unambiguous answer to a problem which in itself is vague and ill-defined. And if we use the term »Platonism« as a slogan and watchword in the struggle between different philosophical schools the term becomes, indeed, very obscure. It threatens to lose any definite meaning. In ancient philosophy we find a sceptical Platonism – the Platonism of the later Academy – side by side with the mystical Platonism of Plotinus and the other representatives of the Neo-Platonic school. In the Middle Ages we find the religious Platonism of St. Augustine and the logical Platonism of Scotus Eriugena and the medieval realists. If we proceed to the modern ages we meet with the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, of Malebranche and the Cambridge Platonists. Finally, we find a romantic Platonism as described in Schelling’s dialogue »Bruno« and in his oration on the relation of the fine arts to nature. Obviously, all these doctrines are not only widely divergent; they are, in many respects, in flagrant opposition. And even if we should succeed in finding a common bond between the sceptical, the mystical, the Christian and the romantic type of Platonism it would not help us to solve our problem. For Gali1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Montague Francis Ashley Montagu (Hrsg.), Studies and Essays of Science and Learning. Offered in Homage to George Sarton on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday 31 August 1944, New York o. J. (1946), S. 277– 297.] 2 In the American literature on the subject we find diametrically opposed answers in the books of Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. A Historical and Critical Essay, London/New York 1925 (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy, and Scientific Method), and Edward William Strong, Procedures and Metaphysics. A Study in the Philosophy of Mathematical-Physical Sciences in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Berkeley, Cal. 1936. For a critical discussion of these two books see Ernst Cassirer, Mathematische Mystik und mathematische Naturwissenschaft. Betrachtungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der exakten Wissenschaft, in: Lychnos (1940), pp. 248– 265 [ECW 22, S. 284–303].

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leo’s Platonism if there is such a thing, has nothing to do with all these types; it belongs to an entirely different universe of discourse. There is no doubt whatever that Galileo felt himself deeply indebted to Plato’s philosophy. In all his life and throughout his works he professed the greatest admiration for Plato’s philosophical genius. In the great schism that divided the thinkers of the Ren | aissance, in the conflict between Platonism and Aristotle, he openly took sides with Plato. He finds in him the first champion and the great classical model of his own mathematical philosophy. »[…] giudicate [Sig. Rocco],« says Galileo in his reply to the »Philosophical Exercitations« of Antonio Rocco, »qual de’ dua modi di filosofare cammini più a segno, o il vostro, fisico puro e semplice bene, o il mio, condito con qualche spruzzo di matematica; e nell’ istesso tempo considerate chi più giustamente discorreva, o Platone, nel dire che senza la matematica non si poteva apprender la filosofia, o Aristotile, nel tassare il medesimo Platone per troppo studio nella geometria.«3 Hence if »Platonism« simply means »mathematicism«, our problem would be solved. But can we accept this definition, and can we think it to be exhaustive? »It is obvious,« said Alexander Koyré in an excellent recent article on the subject, »that for the disciples of Galileo just as for his contemporaries and elders mathematicism meant Platonism. Therefore when Torricelli tells us ›that among the liberal disciplines geometry a lo n e exercises and sharpens the mind and renders it able to be an ornament of the City in time of peace and to defend it in time of war,‹ and that ›c a et er is p a r i bus, a mind trained in geometrical gymnastics is endowed with a quite particular and vi r i l e strength,‹ not only does he show himself an authentic disciple of Plato, he acknowledges and proclaims himself to be one. And in doing it he remains a faithful disciple of his master Galileo […]« On the strength of this argument Koyré does not hesitate to call Galileo a Platonist. He even adds: »[…] I believe that nobody will doubt that he is one.«4 On the other hand, there have always been considerable doubts about this very point. How was this possible – and how could these doubts persist in the minds of so many modern readers and students of Galileo’s works? In order to understand this fact we must bear in mind that Gali3 Galileo Galilei, Esercitazioni filosofiche di Antonio Rocco, in: Le opere. Edizione nazionale, sotto gli auspicii di sua maestà il re d’Italia, 20 vols., Florence 1890–1909, Vol. VII, pp. 569–750: p. 744. 4 See Alexandre Koyré, Galileo and Plato, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943), pp. 400–428: pp. 424 f.

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leo’s Platonism was, indeed, of a new and very paradoxical nature. Never before had such a Platonism been maintained in the history of philosophy and science. Galileo did not simply continue the classical Platonic tradition, nor did he accept the Platonism of the Renaissance, of the Florentine Academy. His was not a metaphysical but a physical Platonism. But a physical Platonism was a thing unheard of. To all those who saw the problem from a mere | speculative or dialectic angle, it appeared as a contradiction in terms. Had not Plato, over and over again, declared that it is impossible to find a real and reliable truth in the domain of physical things? Truth is restricted to the realm of eternal and unchangeable objects. To seek for truth and certainty in those transitory, mutable, ever changing phenomena that we call physical things is an idle hope. As Plato pointed out in his famous simile of the prisoner in the cave the man who acts in this way is to be compared to a man who tries to catch a shadow. He mistakes fugitive shadows for realities. It was one of the principal tasks of Plato’s dialectic to free the human mind from this delusion. For Plato the gulf between the sensible and the intelligible world, between the world of Becoming and Being, was insurmountable. Physical truth, if there is any truth in our judgments about physical things, is incomparable to and incommensurate with mathematical truth. What we find here is mere opinion (doxa); not knowledge (episteme). As Plato says in »Timaeus«, »as Being is to Becoming, so is Truth to Belief«.5 If this means »Platonism« Galileo never was a Platonist. His whole theory of nature tended to the very opposite direction. If he had accepted the Platonic theory of the sensible world he would have lost the fruit of his whole scientific work. He would have barred to himself the only way that could lead to his greatest discovery, to the discovery of the »two new sciences«.6 For what means the term »science« in Galileo’s system? It never means mere probability, it means necessity. It means no mere aggregate of empirical facts or haphazard observations; it implies a deductive theory. Such a theory must be capable of demonstration; it cannot be based upon mere opinion or probability. If it is not possible to attain such a deductive truth about physical phenomena, then Galileo’s scientific ideal, the ideal of modern dynamics, 5 Plato, Timaeus 29 C, in: Plato. With an English Translation by Robert Gregg Bury, London/Cambridge, Mass. 1929 (The Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 234)‚ pp. 1–253: p. 53. 6 See Galileo Galilei, Dialogues concerning Two New Sciences, transl. by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio, Evanston/Chicago, Ill. 1939.

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breaks down. Not only in »abstract« mathematics, in arithmetic or geometry, it must be possible to come to firm, indubitable and necessary conclusions; to constant and invariable relations. According to Galileo there is not only a »logic« of abstract quantities, of numbers and figures. There is a physical logic, a logic of motion. In physics too we must go far beyond probable opinions; we must come to conclusions that are »natural, necessary, and eternal«.7 | In all this we find, paradoxically enough, a fundamental agreement and a fundamental dissension between Plato’s and Galileo’s thoughts. They agree in their concept, in the very definition of science and scientific truth. But they are fundamentally opposed in their views about the possible o b ject s of science. Galileo declared that philosophy is written in that great book that constantly lies before the eyes of everyone: in the book of Nature. But nobody can decipher this book and understand its language if he is not familiar with the characters in which it is written. These characters are not our ordinary sense qualities. They are mathematical characters: triangles, circles and other geometrical figures. Without knowing them it is impossible to understand a single word of the book of Nature.8 Plato could never have spoken in this way. To him too mathematical knowledge was the necessary prerequisite, the precinct of philosophical knowledge. Yet he would never have admitted that philosophy is written in the sense world, in the book of Nature. What Nature, what sensible experience gives us is, at best, mere opinion, and in most cases it is sheer illusion. We know from a passage of Plato’s »Phaedo« that he himself began as a natural philosopher, and that in his youth, he still cherished the hope of finding the »reasons« of things in natural phenomena. But he was deeply disappointed; and after this disillusionment he had to seek for a second and better way. »[…] I decided that I must be careful not to suffer the misfortune which happens to people who look at the sun and watch it during an eclipse. For some of them ruin their eyes unless they look at its image in water or something of the sort. I thought of that danger, and I was afraid my soul would be blinded if I looked at things with my eyes and tried to grasp them with any of my senses. So I thought I must have recourse to conceptions (λγοι) and examine in them the truth of realities. […] that is the way I began. I assume in each 7 For a detailed account see Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, Vol. I, 2nd ed., rev., Berlin 1911, pp. 380 ff. [ECW 2, S. 317 ff.]. 8 Galileo Galilei, Il saggiatore, in: Le opere. Edizione nazionale, Vol. VI, pp. 197–372: p. 232.

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case some principle which I consider strongest, and whatever seems to me to agree with this […] I regard as true, and whatever disagrees with it, as untrue.«9 It is true that Plato not always speaks in this uncompromising way. He was not only a dialectician; he was also a Pythagorean, a friend and pupil of Archytas and the other Pythagorean thinkers. As a dialectician he could despise the sense world and warn against its delusions and fallacies. He could rely on the power of pure thought. »[…] when the soul makes use of the body for any inquiry, | either through seeing or hearing or any of the other senses […] then it is dragged by the body to things which never remain the same, and it wanders about and is confused and dizzy like a drunken man because it lays hold upon such things? […] But when the soul inquires alone by itself (αôτ= κα’ α£τ=ν), it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and the changeless, and being akin to these it dwells always with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith. And this state of the soul is called wisdom.«10 The »Phaedo« gives us, however, not the whole of Plato’s thought. When studying his later works it seems as if his attitude towards the sensible world, towards physical phenomena had changed. Nature is no longer condemned; its study has become a subject worthy of the philosophic mind. From his Pythagorean friends and teachers Plato had learned that there is not only an intelligible but also a sensible beauty; that there is an admirable order and harmony in sense phenomena, in musical sounds or in the movements of the celestial bodies. But all this was not enough to overcome the Platonic »chorismos«, to overbridge the gulf between the sensible and the intelligible world, between the phenomena and the noumena, between the realms of becoming and being. Plato admitted that there is no c ompl e te severance between the phenomenal world and the world of ideas. The phenomena »participate« in the nature of the ideas; but participation (methexis) does not mean identification nor does it mean any real similarity. Between the idea, the eternal archetype, and the fleeting world of sense perception there always remains a fundamental discrepancy. The phenomena strive for perfection, they »aim[…] at being,« but 9 Plato, Phaedo 99 D ff., in: Plato. With an English Translation by Harold North Fowler, London/Cambridge, Mass. 1914 (The Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 36)‚ pp. 193–403: p. 343. 10 Ibid. 79 C f., p. 277.

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they never attain their end; they fall short and are unable to be like their archetypes.11 On the strength of this conception Plato could undertake to develop a theory of physics. He declares, in his dialogue »Timaeus«, that such a theory was impossible as long as natural philosophy was arguing upon the principle that the sense world must be described in terms of sense perception. Sense perception al one will always prove to be a source of illusion, not a source of truth, not even of a relative truth. As long as we are moving in this sphere we are always liable to all sorts of errors and fallacies; we cannot even form a probable opinion about the physical world. We have to change | the starting point of our theory of nature. We shall not find the constitution of physical nature in those things that formerly had been declared by natural philosophers to be the true elements: in fire or earth, in water or air. We must replace these sensible elements by mathematical elements: by triangles, by tetraëders, hexaëders, octaëders, dodecaëders, icosaëders. In this case we shall come to a better insight into natural phenomena; we shall at least describe them in an intelligible language. At first sight all this may appear very near to Galileo’s views. It was without doubt the first step made towards a mathematical physics and a very important and indispensable step. It took, indeed, many centuries until the Platonic-Pythagorean theory of the physical world could be replaced by a more adequate conception. When studying the work of Kepler we feel the tension and the constant struggle between the two conceptions. In his first work, in his »Mysterium Cosmographicum«, Kepler is still under the spell of the Platonic theory. He tries to explain the cosmic order according to that pattern that had been created by Plato in his doctrine of the five regular solids. But Kepler had to give up these first attempts, he had to break the spell of Platonic thought in order to become the founder of modern astronomy. As to Galileo we find in his work very little of these intellectual conflicts. His position towards the Platonic theory is clear and unmistakable from the first beginning. For he had to build up a general Dyna mi c s , a deductive theory of the movements of bodies. For this task he could find no immediate help in Plato’s work. Plato’s view of the physical universe was a static, not a dynamic view. He thought in numbers and geometrical forms. But according to Galileo we cannot hope to understand and to master the fundamental fact of nature, the phenomenon of motion, by the mere study of these constant, invariable, eternal forms. In order to attain his end Galileo had to introduce entirely new ele11

Ibid. 74 D, pp. 259 ff. [Zitat S. 259].

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ments of thought. He had to discover a new language, the language of our modern analysis, that allowed him to deal with variable quantities and the relations, the mutual interdependence of these quantities. All this is implied in the saying of Galileo’s that philosophy is written in the great book of nature. For Plato philosophy was not written in nature. It was written in the minds of men. And it was by the method of dialectic, of arguing and reasoning, that philosophical truth had to be elicited from this source. In Galileo’s works we find still many allusions to Plato’s »Timaeus«. And, what is | more, the whole structure of Galileo’s physics seems to bear a close analogy to the general scheme of Plato’s thought. There remains, however, a radical difference. Plato never could ascribe to his physical theory the same logical v a l ue , the same certainty and objective validity as Galileo. Plato did not only admit the study of physical phenomena; he recommended it. In his system of education this study has its definite place. In his curriculum for the philosophers, for the future rulers of the state, we find all the »liberal arts«, we find astronomy and harmonics side by side with dialectic, arithmetic, geometry.12 But these different studies are not on the same level. Geometry is the gateway to philosophy, physics is a pastime. Physical problems may occupy the philosopher’s mind; but they cannot fill it; they cannot engross his thoughts. They are a matter of recreation, destined for noble minds that disdain the trivial pleasures of the senses and are in need of a more worthy entertainment.13 Galileo could not feel or speak in this way. To him his »new science« was no mere intellectual entertainment. As his fate has proved, it was to him a matter of life and death; it stood in the center not only of his intellectual but also of his personal and moral life. In his conflict with the Church Galileo had not only to defend the Copernican theory; he had to stand his ground for his new ideal of scientific truth.14

II Galileo’s interest did not extend over the whole field of Platonic philosophy. There are many and important Platonic dialogues that he never mentions in his writings. His was not a scholarly but a philo12 Plato, The Republic (Bk. 7, 528 E ff.), transl. by Francis Macdonald Cornford, Oxford 1941, pp. 241 ff. 13 See Plato, Timaeus 27 E ff. and 59 C, pp. 49 ff. and 147. 14 See Ernst Cassirer, Wahrheitsbegriff und Wahrheitsproblem bei Galilei, in: Scientia 62 (1937), pp. 121–130 and 185–193 [ECW 22, S. 51–72].

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sophical and scientific interest. He concentrated upon those points that he could connect with his own work; with the foundation of a mathematical science of nature. Under these circumstances we must find it rather surprising that the »Timaeus« was by no means in the center of Galileo’s interest. If he speaks of Plato he usually speaks of another dialogue that has nothing to do with the problems of natural philosophy. It is the dialogue »Meno«. This little masterwork of Plato’s is repeatedly quoted in Galileo’s »Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo«. Galileo was especially fascinated by the episode in the »Meno«, in which Socrates by virtue of his »maieutic« proves that a young slave who had never | been taught geometry before, was able, by the use of his own reason, to solve a difficult problem and to discover an important geometrical truth. Galileo seems to accept all the consequences drawn by Plato from this fact. He declares that truth, being necessary and eternal, cannot be attained and cannot be proved by experience alone. Experience gives us accidental facts; but it cannot teach us any necessary truth. The necessary things, that is to say those for which it is impossible to be otherwise, the human mind either knows »by itself« (»da per sè«) or it is impossible for it ever to learn them.15 Can we find a special reason for the fact that the Platonic »Meno« always remained in the focus of Galileo’s interest? What was there in this little dialogue to arouse such a keen attention and such a high admiration? Obviously Galileo could not accept the me ta phys i c a l presuppositions and implications of the Platonic doctrine of reminiscence. He could not subscribe to Plato’s theories about the preexistence of the human soul, about its fall, about the imprisonment of the soul in the body, about the supercelestial place in which the soul has seen the eternal archetypes of things. If he ever thought of these things he thought of them not as scientific truths but as Platonic myths. If in spite of this he always returns to this aspect of Platonic philosophy he must have found in the »Meno« another element that constantly attracted his attention and that gave to this dialogue a special and paramount importance. Can we describe this element and can we trace it down to its historical and systematic origin? The »Meno« is not concerned with problems of natural philosophy nor is it, fundamentally and primarily, interested in the theory of knowledge. The episode of the slave is only a digression; it does not affect the principal theme of the dialogue. This theme, as it is formu15 Galileo Galilei, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, in: Le opere. Edizione nazionale, Vol. VII, pp. 21–520: p. 183.

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lated in the very beginning of the dialogue, is an ethical theme. It is the old Socratic question: the question whether virtue is teachable. This time Socrates does not venture to give a direct answer to the question. His answer is tentative and hypothetical. He declares that, instead of making a direct and dogmatic statement, he prefers »to argue upon a hypothesis«. And he explains his view by referring to the method of geometry. »[Will you] allow the question,« he asks, »– whether virtue comes by teaching or some other way – to be examined by means of hypothesis. I mean by hypothesis what the geometricians often do in dealing with a ques | tion put to them; for example, whether a certain area is capable of being inscribed as a triangular space in a […] circle: they reply – ›I cannot […] tell [you] whether it has that capability; but I think, if I may put it so, that I have a certain helpful hypothesis for the problem, and it is as follows: If this area is such that when you apply it to the given line of the circle you find it falls short by a space similar to that which you have just applied, then I take it you have one consequence, and if it is impossible for it to fall so, then some other.«16 This passage is highly characteristic and illuminating. What Plato says here about the h y p o t h et ical m et h o d of g e ome tr y, may seem to us to be very simple and even trivial. It is a commonplace thing that all of us have learned in school. But we must not forget that there was a time in which this commonplace thing had to be discovered by the common efforts of the Greek philosophers and the Greek geometers. What Plato describes here in a few words and in a very simple and unassuming way was, as a matter of fact, the beginning of a new epoch of mathematical thought. It was pregnant with the most important consequences both for the logic of science in general and for the historical development of Greek geometry. We can follow up, step by step, the different phases of this development. The Platonic method of »arguing upon a hypothesis« (»σκοπε1ν %ξ £πο σεως«) became the kernel of that procedure that later on was called »problematical analysis«. The nature and character of this problematical analysis is best described in the thirteenth book of Euclid. A critical analysis of the Euclidean text has led to the conclusion that this book has not been written by Euclid himself; it is a passage that was interpolated in Euclid’s work. The real author in all probability is Eudoxus, the great mathematician of the Platonic Academy and one of the greatest

16 Plato, Meno 86 E ff., in: Plato. With an English Translation by Walter Rangeley Maitland Lamb, London/Cambridge, Mass. 1924 (The Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 165)‚ pp. 259–371: p. 325.

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of Plato’s pupils.17 So the historical evidence allows us to connect the words of Euclid with the thoughts of Plato himself. We have, let us suppose, to construct a figure satisfying a certain set of conditions. If we are to proceed at all methodically and not by mere guesswork, it is first necessary to »analyse« those conditions. To enable this to be done we must get them clearly in our minds which is only possible by assuming all the conditions to be actually ful | filled, in other words, by supposing the problem solved. Then we have to transform those conditions, by all the means which practice in such cases has taught us to employ, into other conditions which are necessarily fulfilled if the original conditions are, and to continue this transformation until we at length arrive at conditions which we are in a position to satisfy. In other words, we must arrive at some relation which enables us to co n st r u ct a particular part of the figure, which, it is true, has been hypothetically assumed and even drawn, but which nevertheless requires to be found in order that the problem may be solved. From that moment the particular part of the figure becomes one of the da ta and a fresh relation has to be found which enables a fresh part of the figure to be determined by means of the original data and the new one together. When this is done, the second new part of the figure also belongs to the data; and we proceed in this way until all the parts of the required figure are found.18 The next step to be made was to prove that this method of »problematical analysis« is not restricted to the domain of »pure« mathematics but that it may be used for the solution of physical problems. Here too Plato proved to be the first pioneer. In his commentary on Aristotle’s »De Caelo« Simplicius tells us that Plato set to his pupils, to the mathematicians and astronomers of the Academy, a definite task. He argued upon the principle that the movements of the celestial bodies, in spite of their seeming irregularity, are reducible to simple and entirely regular forms of motion. Therefore, he asked the astronomers to answer the following question: »Which are those circular uniform and perfectly regular motions which, supposing them to be 17 For the history of the method of »problematic analysis« see Hermann Hankel, Zur Geschichte der Mathematik in Alterthum und Mittelalter, Leipzig 1874, pp. 137–150, and Hieronymus Georg Zeuthen, Geschichte der Mathematik im Altertum und Mittelalter. Vorlesungen, Copenhague 1896, pp. 92–104; JeanMarie-Constant Duhamel, Des méthodes dans les sciences de raisonnement, Part I, Paris 31885, pp. 39–68. 18 See Euclid, The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements. Translated from the Text of Heiberg, transl. by Thomas Little Heath, 2nd ed., rev., Vol. I, Cambridge 1926, pp. 140 f.

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true, account for all the appearances of the movements of the planets?«19 In the course of time different and more and more complicated answers have been given to this Platonic question. But epistemologically they are all of the same type; they are as many offsprings of the hypothetical method. The enormous fertility of this method is proved by the whole history of astronomy. For more than two thousand years it was the cornerstone of scientific astronomy. It has occupied the minds of astronomers from Greek astronomy up to our modern era, from Eudoxus to Kepler. Kepler still wrote a | classical treatise in which he gave an excellent description of the nature, the use, the meaning of astronomical hypotheses.20 Yet the hypothetical method in astronomy had not only a scientific but also a fundamental philosophical significance. If it was possible to solve geometrical and astronomical problems by a uniform way of arguing and reasoning, then the chasm between geometrical ideas and physical phenomena, between the »intelligible« and the »sensible« world, was, in a sense, filled. The Platonic »severance« was, if not completely overcome, at least mitigated. Yet here we must bear in mind that Plato himself drew quite a different conclusion from his general principle. If this principle could be admitted s cien t if ically and if, in this respect, it proved, indeed, to be necessary and indispensable, it did not follow that it had an o n t o lo g ical value and purport. In this regard Plato’s conviction of the radical heterogeneity of physical phenomena and mathematical ideas remained unshaken. To confuse both things meant to him a dangerous error – a μετβασις εBς Hλλο γ νος. There is a famous passage in Plato’s »Republic« in which he warns us against this error. Astronomy, he tells us, cannot be the gateway to the intelligible world. It has to content itself with a much more modest task. The hope to find a perfect harmony, a complete regularity in material things and in physical motions is vain and futile. »These intricate traceries in the sky,« says Plato in his »Republic«, »are, no doubt, the loveliest and most perfect of material things, but still part of the visible world, and therefore they fall […] short of the true realities – the real 19 See Cilicius Simplicius, In Aristotelis De caelo commentaria (Bk. 2, comm. 43 and 46), ed. with support of the Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften by Johan Ludvig Heiberg (Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca, Vol. VII), Berlin 1894, pp. 488 and 493: p. 488 [»[…] τνων -ποτεεισ3ν Gμαλ3ν κα τεταγμ νων κιν#σεων διασωT0 τ: περ τ:ς κιν=σεις τ3ν πλανωμ νων φαινμενα.«]. 20 See Johannes Kepler, Apologia Tychonis contra Nicolaum Raymarum Ursum, in: Opera omnia, ed. by Christian Frisch, Vol. I, Frankfort on the Main/ Erlangen 1858, pp. 215–287.

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relative velocities, in the world of pure number and all perfect geometrical figures […] These, you will agree, can be conceived by reason and thought, not seen by the eye. […] Accordingly, we must use the embroidered heaven as a model (παρδειγμα) to illustrate our study of those realities, just as one might use diagrams exquisitely drawn by some consummate artist like Daedalus. An expert in geometry, meeting with such designs, would admire their finished workmanship, but he would think it absurd to study them in all earnest with the expectation of finding in their proportions the exact ratio of any one number to another.«21 By this doctrine of Plato’s the way that could lead to a mathematical science of nature, in the modern sense of this term, was barred. If physical things were described by mathematical formulae, a certain mental reservation was always necessary. The as | tronomer could not ascribe to his hypotheses an exact truth. He could use them for the description, even for the prediction of the phenomena in the heavens, but he could not claim for them an objective validity, an ontological value. Almost all the great astronomers accepted this decision. They built up a very ingenuous and complicated system of celestial spheres, and they tried, by these constructions to account for all the known facts, to »save the phenomena«.22 But that does not mean that these hypothetical things were »real« things. In this regard no mistake was possible for astronomers and philosophers who had been trained in Plato’s school and Plato’s thoughts. The ancient astronomers, Eudoxus or Kallippus, could use their crystal spheres as a working hypothesis, but they were not under the obligation to demonstrate the physical existence of these spheres. Even in the beginning of the modern era this was still the generally accepted, the »orthodox« view. When Andreas Osiander, after the death of Copernicus, published the book »De revolutionibus« he spoke in the same vein. »Neque enim necesse est […] hypotheses esse veras, imo ne verisimiles quidem, sed sufficit hoc unum, si calculum observationibus congruentem exhibeant.«23 Through these historical considerations we are in a better position to understand the character of Galileo’s science. Galileo, too, was convinced of the necessity of a hypothetical method. Without this method he could not have found and he could not have demonstrated his prinPlato, The Republic (Bk. 7, 529), pp. 242 f. For further details see Pierre Duhem, Σ9ζειν τ: φαινμενα. Essai sur la notion de théorie physique de Platon à Galilée, Paris 1908. 23 [Andreas Osiander, Praefatio ad lectorem, in: Nikolaus Kopernikus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI, Nürnberg 1543, fol. Ib f.: fol. Ib.] 21 22

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cipal theorems. He began with his statement of the »law of inertia«. He »conceived in his mind« the conditions of a physical body that was free from any influences of an external force.24 Of course, he knew that such a body is not »given« in nature. It is no actual fact; it is not even a possible physical fact. All physical movements are interconnected and interdependent. It is impossible to think of a body that is entirely isolated. The very idea of such a body was one of the greatest paradoxes in the history of science. Yet Galileo had to face this paradox; without challenging in this point the current opinion he would never have become the founder of modern dynamics. There was, of course, at least one great and classical model for Galileo’s physics. The applicability of the Platonic analytical method to physical problems had | been proved, about nineteen centuries before, by Archimedes. It is of great systematic and historical interest that in this very point Galileo appealed to the authority of Archimedes. As he points out in a letter to Carcaville; he had to begin in his theory of mechanics with certain assumptions and postulates that could not be directly verified. From these postulates he deduced certain inferences the truth of which could be proved by experiments. In the same way, declares Galileo, Archimedes’ theorems about motions in a spiral were true and important, although there is no natural body that moves in a spiral.25 But even Archimedes had to pay his tribute to classical Greek thought. He studied statical problems; but he hesitated to make the last and decisive step. He stopped in the middle of his way, he did not build up a science of dynamics. It is easily to be understood, that the Peripatetic adversaries of Galileo completely failed to see his point. They acted in good faith; they could see in Galileo’s first principles nothing but a sheer absurdity. How can we explain natural phenomena if, instead of observing and describing nature, we assume something that has never been seen or found in nature? »Let us think it over,« says Alexandre Koyré, »and perhaps we will not be too harsh on the Aristotelian who felt himself unable to grasp and to accept this unheard-of 24 Cf. Galileo Galilei, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze attenenti alla meccanica ed ai movimenti locali. Altrimenti dialoghi delle nuove scienze (4th day) (Le opere. Prima edizione completa condotta sugli autentici manoscritti Palatini, 15 vols., ed. by the Società editrice Fiorentina, Florence 1842–1856, Vol. XIII), pp. 221 f.: »Mobile quoddam super planum horizontale projectum mente concipio omni secluso impedimento: jam constat […] illius motum aequabilem et perpetuum super ipso plano futurum esse […]«. 25 Idem, Letter to Pietro Carcaville, June 5, 1637, in: Le opere. Prima edizione completa, Vol. VII, pp. 154–160; see Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem, Vol. I, p. 386 [ECW 2, S. 322].

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notion, the notion of a persistent, substantial relation-state […] No wonder that the Aristotelian felt himself astonished and bewildered by this amazing attempt to explain the real by the impossible – or, which is the same thing, to explain real being by mathematical being, because […] these bodies moving in straight lines in infinite empty space are not real bodies moving in real space, but mathematical bodies moving in mathematical space.«26 Nevertheless, when making this bold assumption Galileo still acted and spoke as a faithful disciple of Plato’s. He followed the same method that Plato had used in his »Meno«. Now we understand why Galileo, in his interpretation of Plato’s theory, could assign to this little dialogue that seemed to be rather an ethical than a physical dialogue, such an important and unique place. What he found here was an integral part of his own theory; and it was explained and vindicated by the greatest thinker of antiquity. Galileo simply transferred the method of »problematical analysis« that had stood its ground in the history of geometrical and astronomical thought | to physical thought. Yet he could not have done so if he had not first changed the m ea ni ng of this analysis. That the movements of terrestrian bodies could be reduced to the same simple laws as we find in the movements of the stars, that they possess the same uniformity and regularity as those of the celestial bodies was a concept that was quite alien both to Aristotelian and to Platonic philosophy of nature. In Greek thought there always remained an ineradicable difference between the »eternal« movement of the heavenly bodies and the changing and transient phenomena of the sublunar world. Terrestrian and celestial mechanics had nothing in common; they could not be treated according to the same principles. Galileo was the first thinker who broke this spell. In the Renaissance we meet with many p h ilo s o p h ica l attempts to deny the difference between the »lower« and the »higher« world. But nobody before Galileo could give a convincing experimental and deductive proof of the homogeneity of matter and the universality of the principles of mechanics. In his two new sciences Galileo created a system of physics that held for all movements whatever, that was the same for the world above and below the moon. Yet Galileo could not have attained this end if he had not possessed the intellectual courage to defy, in one essential point, the two greatest philosophical authorities. He had to deviate both from the principles of Platonism and Aristotelianism. He accepted Plato’s hypothetical meth o d but he gave to this method a new ontol og i c a l status; 26

Koyré, Galileo and Plato, pp. 418 f.

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a status that it never had possessed before. In Galileo’s science we find no longer a clean-cut distinction between the physical and the mathematical world. The barriers that hitherto separated »applied« mathematics from »pure« mathematics are removed. The principles of mechanics have the same »reality«, that is to say the same objective validity, as the principles of geometry and arithmetic. To make a difference between the truth of these principles would be quite artificial. If we find an »abstract« mathematical concept that is contradicted by our sense experience, by our knowledge of concrete empirical facts, we may be sure that in this case there is no opposition between the »ideal« and the »real« world, between »thought« and »nature«. The fault is our own: we have failed to apply the right method of analyzing and questioning natural phenomena. Plato declared that the art of dialectic contains two elements. The dialectician is the man who knows how to divide things and how to unite things in the right way. He must have the power of | separation and unification, of δικρισις and σγκρισις. The dialectician, the philosopher, cannot accept those divisions and subdivisions that he finds, readymade in common experience and in the forms of our ordinary language. He does not content himself with classifying things according to superficial similarities or dissimilarities. Nor can he, in his divisions of things, proceed at random and without firm logical principles. In our divisions and subdivision of things we are not allowed to break the world to pieces. »[…] every discourse,« says Plato in »Phaedrus«, »must be organised, like a living being, with a body of its own, as it were, so as not to be headless or footless, but to have a middle and members, composed in fitting relation to each other and to the whole.« The true philosopher is the man who understands how to divide things by classes where the natural joints are (»κατ’ ®ρρα, T\ π ψυκε«) and not trying to break any part, after the manner of a bad carver.27 But if the dialectician has to respect the natural joints of things – where can he find these »natural joints«? To think that they are immediately »given« would be a very naïve assumption. They must be discovered by a constant effort of philosophic and scientific thought. In this effort we cannot simply follow the traditional ways of thinking. Dialectic is an art (techné); it is not a mere routine. There is no readymade answer; we have to find our way and to pave our way. In this philosophic and scientific task Plato, Aristotle, and Galileo 27 See Plato, Phaedrus 264 C and 265 E, in: Plato. With an English Translation by Harold North Fowler, London/Cambridge, Mass. 1914 (The Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 36)‚ pp. 405–579: pp. 529 ff. [Zitate S. 529 u. 534].

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proceed on different lines. For Plato the first, the most fundamental and unmistakable distinction was the distinction between »matter« and »form«. It is impossible to overlook the difference between material things and pure forms. The former have only a shadowy existence; the latter possess a firm and undeniable reality, an eternal truth. Aristotle denied and attacked this Platonic view. There is no ontological cleft, no chasm between matter and form; they are both integral parts of reality. Yet in the physical universe of Aristotle there appears a new dualism. It is true that nature is a continuous system, an unbroken chain of causes and effects. But the different realms of nature are not on the same level. We cannot accept the same standards of judgment for the eternal movements of the celestial bodies as for the movements of our terrestrial elements. Galileo had to overcome both the Platonic and the Aristotelian dualism. To him the question was no longer a question of »matter« and »form«, but a question of »facts« and »principles«. | Facts and principles do not belong to the same order. Facts are either given in sense experience or discovered by experimental methods. Principles are not capable of an immediate inductive proof, they are parts of a complicated deductive system, and this system can only be verified as a whole by comparing the conclusions drawn from its axioms and postulates with the empirical data. The logical and epistemological difference between facts and principles is, therefore, obvious. Nevertheless, there is no opposition or antithesis between the two realms. They are interdependent one upon another. The principle of inertia, for instance, is not the expression of an empirical fact; there is no body that fulfills the conditions of this law. On the other hand, it would not be possible without the assumption of this principle to deduce the laws of motion. We must combine and interrelate facts and principles if we wish to understand the language of the book of Nature. To attain this end we must use all methods of empirical and mathematical knowledge, of observation and experimentation, of deductive thought and reasoning. We cannot miss one of them; they are all necessary and indispensable. It is a mere philosophical prejudice to ascribe to some of these methods a higher truth or a higher ontological value. Physics and mathematics, arithmetic, geometry, mechanics are indissolubly united; they form a sole coherent body of truth. There is a passage in Galileo in which he says that he has spent more years on the study of philosophical problems than months on the investigation of physical problems. That may be exaggerated; but as a matter of fact we cannot do full justice to Galileo’s work if we neglect its logical aspects. Galileo had to create a new logic of sci-

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ence before he became the founder of modern dynamics. And in this case too he proved his great originality and his independence of judgment. He could not break away from the general logical tradition. It is easy to connect Galileo’s thought with the great logical tradition that had stamped its mark upon the development of ancient and medieval thought. In my history of the problem of knowledge I tried to show that there is a close analogy between Galileo’s compositive and resolutive method (metodo compositivo e metodo risolutivo) and the method of Zabarella, a logician and philosopher of the school of Padua.28 In a recent article of John Herman Randall this view has been confirmed and enlarged. Randall could show that Zabarella is only a single link in a great chain of thought | that extended over many centuries and was of great influence upon the general development of Italian philosophy. From Pietro d’Abano at the beginning of the fourteenth century up to Cremonini at the beginning of the seventeenth century the physicians, the logicians, and the physicists of Padua devoted their energies to the perfection of the technique and methodology of scientific investigation. When Galileo began his investigations he could make use of this work of his forerunners.29 I accept all the results of the very interesting and instructive article of Randall; but I cannot subscribe to his conclusions. »[…] the thought of the Italian universities,« he concludes, »forms the immediate background of the sixteenth-century scientific movement that culminated in Galileo […] In the thirteenth and fourteenth century schools, there had been worked out the idea of an experimentally grounded and mathematically formulated science of nature […] History has fallen into error in accepting uncritically the estimate the pioneer thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century made of their […] turning away from the heritage of the past. Their consciousness of fresh discovery and radical reorientation obscured the countless bonds of continuity, in materials, methods, and even achievements […] to their predecessors in the late middle ages.«30 Yet even if we could consent to this judgment about the value of the logical work of the school of Padua, o n e question would still remain unanswered. How was it that all the great efforts made by logicians, by natural philosophers and physicists during many centuries completely failed to attain the desired end? None of these thinkers ever See Das Erkenntnisproblem, Vol. I, p. 136 [ECW 2, S. 113]. See John Herman Randall, Jr., The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940), pp. 177–206. 30 [A. a. O., S. 177–179.] 28 29

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succeeded in discovering and formulating a single »law of nature«. Galileo’s law of falling bodies, Kepler’s three laws of the motion of the planets are the first examples of what we nowadays call laws of nature; and they will always remain the classical examples, because they first introduced a new t y p e of natural investigation. This type was unknown both to the philosophers of the Padua school and to the »Parisian forerunners of Galileo«, in whose works Pierre Duhem tried to trace the origins of modern mechanics. All these former attempts to find a new theory of the »impetus«, however interesting in a historical sense, remained sterile in a systematic sense, they proved to be a blind alley.31 If we think of the history of medicine we are led to the same result. During the Middle Ages medicine remained almost | stagnant. Galenus remained the only uncontested authority. Before the times of Vesalius nobody dared to see with his own eyes.32 I think it to be very likely that Galileo’s conception of the »compositive and resolutive method« was influenced by the logical treatises of the thinkers of the Padua school. He could not very well ignore these thinkers that had such a great and persistent influence on Italian university life. But what Galileo could find here were rather the ter ms in which he expressed his theory than the theory itself. For even if he read Zabarella’s work »De regressu« or another work of this type, he did not read it in the spirit in which it was written. All the philosophers of the school of Padua were resolute Aristotelians. From the fourteenth until the sixteenth century the University of Padua was regarded as the very bulwark of Aristotelianism. It was not here that Galileo could find the inspiration for his scientific work. He stood not alone in his methodological conceptions and ideals. He had his forerunners; but as far as his new science was based upon tradition, it was not that tradition which he could find in the scholars of the University of Paris or Padua. His thought is, directly and immediately, connected with Plato, with Eudoxus and Euclid, not with Jean Buridan or Nicolas d’Oresme. In Euclid he found the first clear and sharp distinction between »analysis« and »synthesis«. Analysis is an assumption of that which is sought as if it were admitted and the passage through its consequences admitted to something admitted to be true. Synthesis is an assumption of that which is admitted and the passage through its consequences to the finishing or attainment of what is sought. An even See Koyré, Galileo and Plato, p. 416 [Zitat S. 406]. See Ernst Cassirer, The Place of Vesalius in the Culture of the Renaissance, in: Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 16 (1943), pp. 109–119 [In diesem Band, S. 185–195]. 31 32

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clearer statement had been given by Pappus. »[…] in analysis,« said Pappus, »we assume that which is sought as if it were (already) done […] and we inquire what it is from which this results, and again what is the antecedent cause of the latter, and so on, until by […] retracing our steps we come upon something already known or belonging to the class of first principles, and such a method we call analysis as being solution backwards (!νπαλιν λσιν).«33 These words of Pappus fit admirably well in with Galileo’s general method. It was the clarity and acuity of his analytical mind that enabled him to make his most important discoveries: the discovery of the law of falling bodies, of the parabola as curve of projection; of the isochronism of the pendulum. As a matter of | fact, Pappus gives us a much more adequate description of Galileo’s procedure than we usually find in our modern textbooks. The writers of these books professed in most cases an uncompromising »positivism«. They saw in Galileo the keen observer of natural phenomena and the skilled experimentalist. But they had no eyes for one of his fundamental merits, for the theoretical and deductive side of his science. They entirely failed to see the real meaning of his hypothetical method. In this regard these modern writers are in the same predicament as Galileo’s Aristotelian adversaries. They feel themselves widely superior to those scholastic opponents and are in the habit of deriding the simplicity of their arguments. But if we read a book like Hans Vaihinger’s »Philosophie des Als Ob« in which the principles of Galileo’s science are always treated as if they were ordinary fictions we are inclined to apply to these modern critics the words: »quid rides? […] de te fabula narratur.«34 Galileo gave to the Greek classical method of »problematical analysis« a new breadth and a new depth. He applied it to a subject in which it had never been used before. He proved its fertility not only for mathematical but also for physical thought. In this respect he went far beyond Plato. But if Plato could have seen his work he would not have failed to see in it the work of a kindred spirit. »[…] I myself,« says Plato, in his dialogue »Phaedrus«, »am a lover of these processes of division and bringing together (τ3ν διαιρ σεων κα συναγωγ3ν), as aids to speech and thought; and if I think any other man is able to see things that can naturally be collected into one and divided into many, 33 Pappus of Alexandria, Liber VII, in: Collectionis quae supersunt, ed. by Friedrich Otto Hultsch, Vol. II, Berlin 1877, pp. 634–1020: pp. 634–636, see Euclid, The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements, Vol. I, p. 138 [Danach zitiert]. 34 [Horaz, Sermonum liber I, in: Q. Horatius Flaccus, hrsg. v. Richard Bentley, Berlin 1869, S. 338–422: S. 342.]

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him I follow after and ›walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.‹«35 Galileo was not only one of the greatest scientists; he was also one of the great »dialecticians« in the Platonic, not in the Hegelian sense of the term. He possessed to the highest degree the gift of διαρεσις and συναγωγ#. He introduced sharp distinctions between things that had been confused and he united and brought together natural phenomena that hitherto had been regarded as disparate and heterogeneous.

35

Plato, Phaedrus 266 B, pp. 534 f., cf. Homer, Odyssey (V. 193).

ZUR LOGIK DER KULTURWISSENSCHAFTEN FÜNF STUDIEN1 (1942)

1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht: Göteborg 1942 (Göteborgs högskolas årsskrift 48 [1942:1] ).]

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erste studie Der Gegenstand der Kulturwissenschaft [1.] Platon hat gesagt, daß das Staunen der eigentlich philosophische Affekt sei und daß wir in ihm die Wurzel alles Philosophierens zu sehen haben. Wenn dem so ist, so erhebt sich die Frage, welche Gegenstände es waren, die zuerst das Erstaunen des Menschen erweckt und ihn damit auf die Bahn des philosophischen Nachdenkens geführt haben. Waren es »physische« oder »geistige« Gegenstände, war es die Ordnung der Natur, oder waren es die eigenen Schöpfungen der Menschen, denen hier die Führung zufiel? Als die nächstliegende Annahme mag es erscheinen, daß die astronomische Welt als die erste aus dem Chaos emporzusteigen begann. Der Verehrung der Gestirne begegnen wir in fast allen großen Kulturreligionen. Hier zuerst vermochte der Mensch sich aus dem dumpfen Bann des Gefühls zu befreien und sich zu einer freieren und weiteren Anschauung über das Ganze des Seins zu erheben. Die subjektive Leidenschaft, die danach strebt, die Natur durch magische Kräfte zu bezwingen, trat zurück; statt ihrer regt sich die Ahnung einer universellen objektiven Ordnung. Im Lauf der Gestirne, im Wechsel von Tag und Nacht, in der regelmäßigen Wiederkehr der Jahreszeiten fand der Mensch das erste große Beispiel eines gleichförmigen Geschehens. Dieses Geschehen war unendlich weit über seine eigene Sphäre erhoben und aller Macht seines Wollens und Wünschens entzogen. Ihm haftete nichts von jener Launenhaftigkeit und Unberechenbarkeit an, die nicht nur das gewöhnliche menschliche Tun, sondern auch das Wirken der »primitiven« dämonischen Kräfte kennzeichnet. Daß es ein Wirken und somit eine »Wirklichkeit« gibt, die in feste Grenzen eingeschlossen und an bestimmte unveränderliche Gesetze gebunden ist: das war die Einsicht, die hier zuerst aufzudämmern begann. Aber dieses Gefühl mußte sich alsbald mit einem anderen verbinden. Denn näher als die Ordnung der Natur steht dem Menschen die Ordnung, die er in seiner eigenen Welt findet. Auch hier herrscht keines | wegs bloße Willkür. Der einzelne sieht sich von seinen ersten Regungen an bestimmt und beschränkt durch etwas, worüber er keine Macht hat. Es ist die Macht der S it t e, die ihn bindet. Sie bewacht jeden seiner Schritte, und sie gestattet seinem Tun kaum einen Augenblick lang freien Spielraum. Nicht nur sein Handeln, sondern auch sein Fühlen und Vorstellen, sein Glauben und Wähnen ist durch sie beherrscht. Die Sitte ist die ständig gleichbleibende Atmosphäre, in

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der er lebt und ist; er kann sich ihr so wenig entziehen wie der Luft, die er atmet. Kein Wunder, daß sich auch in seinem Denken die Anschauung der physischen Welt von der der sittlichen Welt nicht lösen kann. Beide gehören zusammen; und sie sind in ihrem Ursprung eins. Alle großen Religionen haben sich in ihrer Kosmogonie und in ihrer Sittenlehre auf dieses Motiv gestützt. Sie stimmen darin überein, daß sie dem Schöpfergott die doppelte Rolle und die zweifache Aufgabe zusprechen, der Begründer der astronomischen und der sittlichen Ordnung zu sein und beide den Mächten des Chaos zu entreißen. Im Gilgamesch-Epos, in den Veden, in der ägyptischen Schöpfungsgeschichte finden wir die gleiche Anschauung. Im babylonischen Schöpfungsmythos führt Marduk den Kampf gegen das gestaltlose Chaos, gegen das Ungeheuer Tiamat. Nach seinem Siege über dasselbe richtet er die ewigen Denk- und Wahrzeichen der kosmischen Ordnung und der Rechtsordnung auf. Er bestimmt den Lauf der Gestirne; er setzt die Zeichen des Tierkreises ein; er stellt die Folge der Tage, Monate, Jahre fest. Und zugleich setzt er dem menschlichen Tun die Grenzen, die es nicht ungestraft überschreiten kann; er ist es, der »[…] ins Innerste blickt, der den Übeltäter nicht entrinnen lässt […] der […] die Unbotmässigen [beugt und] das Recht gelingen lässt […]«2 An dieses Wunder der sittlichen Ordnung aber schließen sich andre, nicht minder große und geheimnisvolle an. Denn all das, was der Mensch schafft und was aus seiner eigenen Hand hervorgeht, umgibt ihn noch wie ein unbegreifliches Geheimnis. Er ist weit davon entfernt, wenn er seine eignen Werke betrachtet, sich selbst als deren Schöpfer zu ahnen. Sie stehen hoch über ihm; sie sind weit erhaben nicht nur über das, was der einzelne, sondern auch über all das, was die Gattung zu leisten vermag. Wenn der Mensch ihnen einen Ursprung zuschreibt, so kann es kein anderer als ein mythischer Ursprung sein. Ein Gott hat sie geschaffen; ein Heilbringer hat sie vom Himmel auf die Erde herab | geholt und die Menschen ihren Gebrauch gelehrt. Solche Kulturmythen durchziehen die Mythologie aller Zeiten und Völker.3 Was das technische Geschick des Menschen im Laufe der Jahrhunderte und Jahrtausende hervorgebracht hat: das sind nicht Taten, die ihm gelungen sind, sondern es sind Gaben und Geschenke von oben. Für jedes 2 Näheres s. in meiner »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Zweiter Teil: Das mythische Denken«, Berlin 1925, S. 142 ff. [ECW 12, S. 132 ff. Zitat: Hermann Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit. Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung über Gen 1 und Ap Joh 12. Mit Beiträgen von Heinrich Zimmern, Göttingen 1895, S. 416]. 3 Vgl. das Material bei Kurt Breysig, Die Entstehung des Gottesgedankens und der Heilbringer, Berlin 1905.

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Werkzeug gibt es eine solche überirdische Abstammung. Bei manchen Naturvölkern, wie z. B. bei den Ewe in Süd-Togo, werden noch heute bei den jährlich wiederkehrenden Erntefesten den einzelnen Gerätschaften, der Axt, dem Hobel, der Säge Opfer dargebracht.4 Und noch weiter von ihm selbst entfernt als diese materiellen Werkzeuge müssen dem Menschen die geistigen Instrumente erscheinen, die er sich selbst erschaffen hat. Auch sie gelten als Äußerungen einer Kraft, die der seinen unendlich überlegen ist. In erster Linie gilt dies von Sprache und Schrift, den Bedingungen alles menschlichen Verkehrs und aller menschlichen Gemeinschaft. Dem Gott, aus dessen Händen die Schrift hervorgegangen ist, gebührt in der Hierarchie der göttlichen Kräfte stets ein besonderer und bevorzugter Platz. In Ägypten erscheint der Mondgott Thoth zugleich als der »Schreiber der Götter« und als der Richter der Himmel. Er ist es, der Götter und Menschen wissen läßt, was ihnen gebührt; denn er bestimmt das Maß der Dinge.5 Sprache und Schrift gelten als der Ursprung des Maßes; denn ihnen vor allem wohnt die Fähigkeit inne, das Flüchtige und Wandelbare festzuhalten und es damit dem Zufall und der Willkür zu entziehen. In alledem spüren wir, schon im Kreise des Mythos und der Religion, das Gefühl, daß die menschliche Kultur nichts Gegebenes und Selbstverständliches, sondern daß sie eine Art von Wunder ist, das der Erklärung bedarf. Aber zu einer tieferen Selbstbesinnung führt dies erst, sobald der Mensch sich nicht nur dazu aufgefordert und berechtigt fühlt, derartige Fragen zu stellen, sondern statt dessen dazu übergeht, ein eigenes und selbständiges Verfahren, eine »Methode« auszubilden, mittels deren er sie b e an t wo r t en kann. Dieser Schritt geschieht zum ersten Mal in der griechischen Philosophie – und hierin bedeutet sie die große geistige Zeitenwende. Jetzt erst wird die neue Kraft entdeckt, die allein zu einer Wissenschaft der Natur und zu einer Wissen | schaft von der menschlichen Kultur führen kann. An die Stelle der unbestimmten Vielheit der mythischen Erklärungsversuche, die sich bald auf dieses, bald auf jenes Phänomen richten, tritt die Vorstellung von der durchgängigen Einheit des Seins, der eine ebensolche Einheit des Grundes entsprechen muß. Diese Einheit ist nur dem reinen Denken zugänglich. Die bunten und vielfältigen Schöpfungen der mythenbildenden Phantasie werden jetzt der Kritik des Denkens unterworfen und damit entwurzelt. Aber an diese kritische Aufgabe schließt sich die neue positive Aufgabe. Das Denken muß, aus eigener Kraft und 4 Vgl. Jakob Spieth, Die Religion der Eweer in Süd-Togo, Leipzig 1911 (Religions-Urkunden der Völker, Abt. 4, Bd. 2), S. 8. 5 Vgl. Alexandre Moret, Mystères Egyptiens, Paris 1913, S. 132 ff.

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aus eigener Verantwortung, wieder aufbauen, was es zerstört hat. An den Systemen der Vorsokratiker können wir verfolgen, mit welch bewunderungswürdiger Folgerichtigkeit diese Aufgabe in Angriff genommen und Schritt für Schritt durchgeführt wird. In Platons Ideenlehre und in Aristoteles’ Metaphysik hat sie eine Lösung gefunden, die auf Jahrhunderte hinaus bestimmend und vorbildlich geblieben ist. Eine solche Synthese wäre nicht möglich gewesen, wenn ihr nicht eine gewaltige Einzelarbeit vorangegangen wäre. An ihr sind viele, dem ersten Anschein nach diametral entgegengesetzte Tendenzen beteiligt, und sie schlägt, in Problemstellung und Problemlösung, sehr verschiedenartige Wege ein. Dennoch läßt sich für uns diese ganze gewaltige Gedankenarbeit, wenn wir ihren Ausgangspunkt und ihr Ziel betrachten, gewissermaßen in e in en Grundbegriff zusammenfassen, den die griechische Philosophie zuerst gefunden und den sie nach allen seinen Momenten durchgebildet und ausgebaut hat. Es ist der Logosbegriff, dem diese Rolle in der Entwicklung des griechischen Denkens zufällt.6 Schon in der ersten Ausprägung, die er in der Philosophie Heraklits erfahren hat, spüren wir diese seine Bedeutung und seinen künftigen Reichtum. Heraklits Lehre scheint auf den ersten Blick noch ganz auf dem Boden der ionischen Naturphilosophie zu stehen. Auch er sieht die Welt als ein Ganzes von Stoffen, die sich wechselseitig ineinander umsetzen. Aber dies erscheint ihm nur als die Oberfläche des Geschehens, hinter der er eine Tiefe sichtbar machen will, die sich bisher dem Denken nicht erschlossen hat. Auch die | Ionier wollten sich nicht mit der bloßen Kenntnis des »Was« begnügen; sie fragten nach dem »Wie« und nach dem »Warum«. Aber bei Heraklit wird diese Frage in einem neuen und in einem viel schärferen Sinn gestellt. Und indem er sie in dieser Weise stellt, ist er sich bewußt, daß die Wahrnehmung, in deren Grenzen sich die bisherige naturphilosophische Spekulation bewegte, sie nicht mehr zu beantworten vermag. Nur das D enke n kann uns die Antwort geben: Denn hier und hier allein wird der Mensch von der Schranke seiner Individualität frei. Er folgt nicht mehr der »eigenen Meinung«, sondern er erfaßt ein Allgemeines und Göttliches. An die Stelle der δη φρνησις, der »privaten« Einsicht, ist ein univer6 Näher ausgeführt habe ich diese Auffassung in meiner Darstellung der älteren griechischen Philosophie, die ich in Dessoirs Lehrbuch der Philosophie gegeben habe: Die Philosophie der Griechen von den Anfängen bis Platon, in: Lehrbuch der Philosophie, hrsg. v. Max Dessoir, Bd. I: Die Geschichte der Philosophie, dargestellt v. Ernst von Aster u. a., Berlin 1925, S. 7–138 [ECW 16, S. 313–467]. Vgl. jetzt auch meinen Aufsatz »Logos, Dike, Kosmos in der Entwicklung der griechischen Philosophie«, in: Göteborgs högskolas årsskrift 47 (1941:6), S. 1–31 [In diesem Band, S. 7–35].

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Der Gegenstand der Kulturwissenschaft

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selles Weltgesetz getreten. Damit erst ist der Mensch nach Heraklit der mythischen Traumwelt und der engen und begrenzten Welt der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung entronnen. Denn ebendies ist der Charakter des Wachens und Erwachtseins, daß die Individuen eine gemeinsame Welt besitzen, während im Traum jeder nur in seiner eigenen Welt lebt und in ihr befangen und versenkt bleibt. Damit war dem gesamten abendländischen Denken eine neue Aufgabe gestellt und eine Richtung eingepflanzt, von der es fortan nicht wieder abweichen konnte. Seit dieses Denken durch die Schule der griechischen Philosophie hindurchgegangen war, war alles Erkennen der Wirklichkeit gewissermaßen auf den Grundbegriff des »Logos« – und damit auf die »Logik« im weitesten Sinne – verpflichtet. Das änderte sich auch dann nicht, als die Philosophie wieder aus ihrer Herrscherstellung verdrängt und das »Allgemeine und Göttliche« an einer anderen, ihr unzugänglichen Stelle gesucht wurde. Das Christentum bestreitet den griechischen Intellektualismus; aber zum bloßen Irrationalismus kann und will es damit nicht zurückkehren. Denn auch ihm ist der Logosbegriff tief eingepflanzt. Die Geschichte der christlichen Dogmatik zeigt den beharrlichen Kampf, den die Grundmotive der christlichen Erlösungsreligion gegen den Geist der griechischen Philosophie zu führen hatten. In diesem Kampf gibt es, geistesgeschichtlich betrachtet, weder Sieger noch Besiegte; aber ebensowenig konnte es in ihm jemals zu einem wirklichen inneren Ausgleich der Gegensätze kommen. Es wird immer ein vergeblicher Versuch bleiben, den Logosbegriff der griechischen Philosophie und den des Johannes-Evangeliums auf e in en Nenner zu bringen. Denn die Art der Vermittlung zwischen dem Individuellen und dem Allgemeinen, dem Endlichen und dem Unendlichen, dem Menschen und Gott ist in beiden Fällen durch | aus verschieden. Der griechische Seinsbegriff und der griechische Wahrheitsbegriff sind, nach dem Gleichnis des Parmenides, einer »wohlgerundeten Kugel«7 zu vergleichen, die fest in ihrem eigenen Mittelpunkt ruht. Beide sind in sich selbst vollkommen und abgeschlossen; und zwischen ihnen besteht nicht nur eine Harmonie, sondern eine wahrhafte Identität. Der Dualismus der christlichen Weltansicht macht dieser Identität ein Ende. Keine Anstrengung des Wissens und des reinen Denkens vermag fortan den Riß zu heilen, der durch das Sein hindurchgeht. Freilich hat auch die christliche Philosophie dem Streben nach Einheit, das im Begriff der Philosophie 7 [Parmenides, Fragm. 8, zit. nach: Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Griechisch und deutsch, Bd. I, Berlin 21906, S. 121: »ε κκλου σφαρης ναλγκιον ¨γκωι«.]

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liegt, keineswegs entsagt. Aber sowenig sie die Spannung zwischen den beiden Gegenpolen aufzuheben vermag, so versucht sie doch, sie innerhalb ihres Kreises und mit ihren Denkmitteln auszugleichen. Aus solchen Versuchen sind alle die großen Systeme der scholastischen Philosophie erwachsen. Keines von ihnen wagt es, den Gegensatz zu bestreiten, der zwischen Offenbarung und Vernunft, zwischen Glauben und Wissen, zwischen dem regnum gratiae und dem regnum naturae besteht. Die Vernunft, die Philosophie kann aus eigenen Kräften kein Weltbild aufbauen; alle Erleuchtung, deren sie fähig ist, stammt nicht aus ihr selbst, sondern aus einer anderen und höheren Lichtquelle. Aber wenn sie den Blick fest auf diese Lichtquelle gerichtet hält, wenn sie sich, statt dem Glauben eine selbständige und selbsttätige Kraft entgegenzustellen, vielmehr von ihm führen und leiten läßt, so erreicht sie damit das ihr zugemessene Ziel. Die Urkraft des Glaubens, die dem Menschen nur durch einen unmittelbaren Gnadenakt, durch die göttliche »illuminatio«‚ zuteil werden kann, bestimmt ihm zugleich den Inhalt und Umfang des Wissens. In diesem Sinne wird das Wort fides quaerens intellectum zum Inbegriff und zum Wahlspruch der gesamten christlich-mittelalterlichen Philosophie. In den Systemen der Hochscholastik, insbesondere bei Thomas von Aquino, kann es scheinen, als sei die Synthese gelungen und die verlorene Harmonie wiederhergestellt. »Natur« und »Gnade«‚ »Vernunft« und »Offenbarung« widersprechen einander nicht; die eine weist vielmehr auf die andere hin und führt zu ihr empor. Der Kosmos der Kultur scheint damit wieder geschlossen und auf einen festen religiösen Mittelpunkt bezogen. Aber dieser kunstvoll gefügte Bau der Scholastik, in welchem der christliche Glaube und das antike philosophische Wissen sich gegenseitig stützen und halten sollten, bricht zusammen vor jenem neuen | Erkenntnisideal, das wie kein anderes den Charakter der modernen Wissenschaft bestimmt und geprägt hat. Die m athe ma ti s c he N atu rwis s en s ch af t kehrt wieder zu dem antiken Ideal des Wissens zurück. Kepler und Galilei können unmittelbar an Pythagoreische, an Demokritische und Platonische Grundgedanken anknüpfen. Aber in ihrer Forschung nehmen diese Gedanken zugleich einen neuen Sinn an. Denn sie vermögen die Brücke zwischen dem Intelligiblen und Sinnlichen, zwischen dem κσμος νοητς und dem κσμος ρατς in einer Weise zu schlagen, die der antiken Wissenschaft und Philosophie versagt geblieben war. Vor dem mathematischen Wissen scheint jetzt die letzte trennende Schranke zwischen »Sinnenwelt« und »Verstandeswelt« zu fallen. Die Materie als solche erweist sich als durchdrungen von der Harmonie der Zahl und als beherrscht durch die Gesetz-

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lichkeit der Geometrie. Vor dieser universellen Ordnung schwinden alle jene Gegensätze, die in der aristotelisch-scholastischen Physik ihre Fixierung gefunden hatten. Es gibt keinen Gegensatz der »niederen« und »höheren«‚ der »oberen« und »unteren« Welt. Die Welt ist eins, so wahr die We lt er k en n t n is , die Weltmathematik nur eine ist und sein kann. In Descartes’ Begriff der M athe s i s uni v e r s a l i s hat dieser Grundgedanke der modernen Forschung seine durchgreifende philosophische Legitimation gefunden. Der Kosmos der universellen Mathematik, der Kosmos von Ordnung und Maß, umschließt und erschöpft alle Erkenntnis. Er ist in sich völlig autonom; er bedarf keiner Stütze, und er kann keine andere Stütze anerkennen als diejenige, die er in sich selbst findet. Nun erst umfaßt die Vernunft, in ihren klaren und deutlichen Ideen, das Ganze des Seins, und nun erst kann sie dieses Ganze mit den ihr eigenen Kräften vollständig durchdringen und beherrschen. Daß dieser Grundgedanke des klassischen philosophischen Rationalismus die Wissenschaft nicht nur befruchtet und erweitert, sondern daß er ihr einen ganz neuen Sinn und ein neues Ziel gegeben hat: das bedarf keiner näheren Ausführung. Die Entwicklung der Systeme der Philosophie von Descartes zu Malebranche und Spinoza, von Spinoza zu Leibniz bietet hierfür den fortlaufenden Beweis. An ihr läßt sich unmittelbar aufzeigen, wie sich das neue Ideal der Universalmathematik fortschreitend immer neue Kreise der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis unterwirft. Descartes’ endgültiges System der Metaphysik ist seiner ursprünglichen Konzeption einer einzigen allumfassenden Me | thode des Wissens insofern nicht gemäß, als das Denken, im Fortgang seiner Bewegung, zuletzt auf bestimmte radikale Unterschiede des Seins hingeführt wird, die es als solche einfach hinzunehmen und anzuerkennen hat. Der Dualismus der Substanzen schränkt den Monismus der Cartesischen Methode ein und setzt ihm eine bestimmte Grenze. Es scheint zuletzt, als sei das Ziel, das diese Methode sich setzt, nicht für die Wirklichkeitserkenntnis als Ganzes, sondern nur in bestimmten Teilen derselben erreichbar. Die Körperwelt untersteht ohne jegliche Einschränkung der Herrschaft des mathematischen Denkens. In ihr gibt es keinen unbegriffenen Rest; keine dunklen »Qualitäten«, die, gegenüber den reinen Begriffen von Größe und Zahl, etwas Selbständiges, Irreduzibles sind. All dies ist beseitigt und ausgelöscht: Die Identität der »Materie« mit der reinen Ausdehnung sichert die Identität von Naturphilosophie und Mathematik. Aber neben der ausgedehnten Substanz steht die denkende Substanz; und beide müssen zuletzt aus einem gemeinsamen Urgrund, aus dem Sein Gottes, abgeleitet werden. Wo Descartes daran geht, diese Urschicht der Wirklich-

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keit bloßzulegen und zu erweisen, da verläßt ihn der Leitfaden seiner Methode. Hier denkt er nicht mehr in den Begriffen seiner Universalmathematik, sondern in den Begriffen der mittelalterlichen Ontologie. Nur indem er die Gültigkeit dieser Begriffe voraussetzt, indem er von dem »objektiven« Sein der Ideen ausgeht, um von hier aus auf die »formale« Realität der Dinge zu schließen, kann ihm sein Beweis gelingen. Die Nachfolger Descartes’ sind immer energischer und immer erfolgreicher bemüht, diesen Widerstreit zu beseitigen. Sie wollen das, was Descartes für die substantia extensa geleistet hatte, in gleicher und in gleich überzeugender Weise für die substantia cogitans und für die göttliche Substanz leisten. Auf diesem Wege wird Spinoza zu seiner Ineinssetzung von Gott und Natur geführt; auf diesem Wege gelangt Leibniz zum Entwurf seiner »allgemeinen Charakteristik«. Beide sind überzeugt, daß erst auf diese Weise der vollständige Beweis für die Wahrheit des Panlogismus und des Panmathematizismus erbracht werden kann. Jetzt zeichnet sich der Umriß des modernen Weltbildes in aller Schärfe und Deutlichkeit gegenüber dem antiken und dem mittelalterlichen Weltbild ab. »Geist« und »Wirklichkeit« sind nicht nur miteinander versöhnt, sondern sie haben sich wechselseitig durchdrungen. Zwischen ihnen besteht kein Verhältnis bloß äußerer Einwirkung oder äußerer Entsprechung. Hier | handelt es sich um etwas anderes als um jene adaequatio intellectus et rei, die sowohl die antike wie die scholastische Erkenntnislehre als Maßstab des Wissens aufgestellt hatten. Es handelt sich um eine »prästabilierte Harmonie«, um eine letzte Identität zwischen Denken und Sein, zwischen dem Ideellen und dem Reellen. Die erste E in s ch r än k u n g , die dieses panmathematische Weltbild erfuhr, stammt aus einem Problemkreis, der für die Anfänge der neueren Philosophie noch kaum als solcher bestand oder der doch nur in seinem ersten Umriß gesehen wurde. Erst die zweite Hälfte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts stellt hier eine neue große Grenzscheide dar, indem sie diesen Problemkreis immer mehr in seiner Eigenart erkennt und ihn zuletzt geradezu in den Mittelpunkt der philosophischen Selbstbesinnung rückt. Der klassische Rationalismus hatte sich nicht mit der Eroberung der Natur begnügt; er hatte auch ein in sich geschlossenes »natürliches System der Geisteswissenschaften« aufbauen wollen. Der menschliche Geist sollte aufhören, einen »Staat im Staate« zu bilden; er sollte aus den gleichen Prinzipien erkannt werden und derselben Gesetzlichkeit unterliegen wie die Natur. Das moderne Naturrecht, wie es von Hugo Grotius begründet wird, beruft sich auf die durchgreifende Analogie, die zwischen Rechtserkenntnis und mathematischer Erkenntnis besteht – und Spinoza schafft eine neue

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Form der Ethik, die sich am Vorbild der Geometrie orientiert und sich von ihm ihre Ziele und ihre Wege vorzeichnen läßt. Damit erst schien der Kreis geschlossen zu sein; der Ring des mathematischen Denkens konnte in gleicher Weise die körperliche und die seelische Welt, das Sein der Natur und das Sein der Geschichte umfassen. Aber an diesem Punkte setzt nun der erste entscheidende Zweifel ein. Ist die Geschichte der gleichen Mathematisierung wie die Physik oder die Astronomie fähig – ist auch sie nichts anderes als ein Sonderfall der »Mathesis universalis«? Der erste Denker, der diese Frage in aller Schärfe gestellt hat, ist Giambattista Vico gewesen. Das eigentliche Verdienst von Vicos »Geschichtsphilosophie« liegt nicht in dem, was sie inhaltlich über den historischen Prozeß und den Rhythmus seiner einzelnen Phasen lehrt. Die Unterscheidung der Epochen der Geschichte der Menschheit und der Versuch, in ihnen eine bestimmte Regel der Abfolge, einen Übergang vom »göttlichen« zum »heroischen«‚ vom »heroischen« zum »menschlichen« Zeitalter zu erweisen: das alles ist bei Vico noch mit rein phantastischen Zügen durchmischt. | Aber was er klar gesehen und was er mit aller Entschiedenheit gegen Descartes verfochten hat, ist die methodische Eigenart und der methodische Eigenwert der historischen Erkenntnis. Und er zögert nicht, diesen Wert über den des rein mathematischen Wissens zu stellen und erst in ihm die wahrhafte Erfüllung jener »sapientia humana« zu finden, deren Begriff Descartes, in den ersten Sätzen seiner »Regulae ad directionem ingenii«, als Ideal aufgestellt hat. Nicht die Naturerkenntnis, sondern die menschliche Selbsterkenntnis bildet nach Vico das eigentliche Ziel unseres Wissens. Wenn die Philosophie, statt sich hierbei zu bescheiden, ein göttliches oder absolutes Wissen verlangt, so überschreitet sie damit ihre Grenzen und läßt sich auf einen gefährlichen Irrweg verlocken. Denn als oberste Regel der Erkenntnis gilt für Vico der Satz, daß jegliches Wesen nur das wahrhaft begreift und durchdringt, was es selbst h ervo rb r in g t . Der Kreis unseres Wissens reicht nicht weiter als der Kreis unseres Schaffens. Der Mensch versteht nur insoweit, als er schöpferisch ist – und diese Bedingung ist in wirklicher Strenge nur in der Welt des Geistes, nicht in der Natur erfüllbar. Die Natur ist das Werk Gottes, und sie ist demgemäß nur für den göttlichen Verstand, der sie hervorgebracht hat, völlig durchsichtig. Was der Mensch wahrhaft begreifen kann, das ist nicht die Wesenheit der Dinge, die für ihn niemals vollständig erschöpfbar ist, sondern die Struktur und Eigenart seiner eigenen Werke. Auch die Mathematik verdankt diesem Umstand das, was sie an Evidenz und Sicherheit besitzt. Denn sie bezieht sich nicht auf physisch-wirkliche Gegenstände, die sie abbilden will, sondern auf ideale Gegenstände, die das Denken in freiem

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Entwurf hervorbringt. Aber freilich bezeichnet dieser ihr eigentümliche Wert zugleich die Grenze, die sie nicht überschreiten kann. Die Objekte, von denen die Mathematik handelt, besitzen kein anderes Sein als jenes abstrakte Sein, das der menschliche Geist ihnen geliehen hat. Das ist daher die unvermeidliche Alternative, vor die sich unsere Erkenntnis gestellt sieht. Sie kann sich entweder auf »Wirkliches« richten; aber in diesem Fall kann sie ihren Gegenstand nicht vollständig durchdringen, sondern ihn nur empirisch und stückweise, nach einzelnen Merkmalen und Kennzeichen beschreiben. Oder aber sie erlangt einen vollständigen Einblick, eine adäquate Idee, die ihr die Natur und das Wesen des Gegenstandes bezeichnet; aber sie tritt damit aus dem Kreis ihrer eigenen Begriffsbildungen nicht heraus. Das Objekt besitzt in diesem Fall für sie nur diejenige Be | schaffenheit, die die Erkenntnis ihm kraft willkürlicher Definition zugeschrieben hat. Aus diesem Dilemma gewinnen wir nach Vico erst dann einen Ausweg, wenn wir den Bereich des mathematischen Wissens wie den der empirischen Naturerkenntnis überschreiten. Die Werke der menschlichen Ku lt u r sind die einzigen, die in sich die beiden Bedingungen vereinen, auf denen die vollkommene Erkenntnis beruht; sie haben nicht nur ein begrifflich erdachtes, sondern ein durchaus bestimmtes, ein individuelles und historisches Sein. Aber die innere Struktur dieses Seins ist dem menschlichen Geist zugänglich und aufgeschlossen, weil er selbst ihr Schöpfer ist. Der Mythos, die Sprache, die Religion, die Dichtung: das sind die Objekte, die der menschlichen Erkenntnis wahrhaft angemessen sind. Und auf sie blickt Vico in erster Linie im Aufbau seiner »Logik« hin. Zum ersten Mal wagt es die Logik, den Kreis der objektiven Erkenntnis, den Kreis der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft, zu durchbrechen, um sich statt dessen als Logik der Kulturwissenschaft, als Logik der Sprache, der Poesie, der Geschichte zu konstituieren. Vicos »Scienza nuova« trägt ihren Namen mit Recht. In ihr war ein wahrhaft Neues gefunden; aber dieses Neue bekundet sich freilich weniger in den Lösungen, die das Werk darbietet, als in den Problemen, die es gestellt hat. Den Schatz dieser Probleme ganz zu heben, war Vico selbst nicht vergönnt. Erst durch Herder wird das, was bei Vico noch in halb mythischer Dämmerung ruht, in das Licht des philosophischen Bewußtseins gehoben. Auch Herder ist kein strenger systematischer Denker. Sein Verhältnis zu Kant zeigt, wie wenig er zu einer »Erkenntniskritik« im eigentlichen Sinne des Wortes gestimmt ist. Er will nicht analysieren, sondern er will schauen. Alles Wissen, das nicht durchgängig bestimmt und konkret, das nicht mit anschaulichem Gehalt gesättigt ist, gilt ihm als leer. Dennoch ist Herders Werk

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nicht nur durch seinen Inhalt, nicht nur durch das bedeutsam, was es im Gebiet der Sprachphilosophie, der Kunsttheorie, der Geschichtsphilosophie an neuen Einsichten enthält. Was wir an diesem Werk studieren können, ist zugleich das Heraufkommen und der endgültige Durchbruch einer neuen Erkenntnis f o r m , die sich freilich von ihrer Materie nicht ablösen läßt, sondern nur in der freien Gestaltung dieser Materie und in ihrer geistigen Beherrschung und Durchdringung sichtbar wird. Wie Vico sich gegen Descartes’ Panmathematik und gegen den Mechanismus seiner Naturansicht gewandt hatte, | so wendet sich Herder gegen das Wolffische Schulsystem und gegen die abstrakte Verstandeskultur der Aufklärungszeit. Was er bekämpft, ist der tyrannische Dogmatismus dieser Kultur, die, um der »Vernunft« zum Siege zu verhelfen, alle anderen seelischen und geistigen Kräfte im Menschen knechten und unterdrücken muß. Dieser Tyrannei gegenüber beruft er sich auf jene Grundmaxime, die ihm zuerst durch seinen Lehrer Hamann eingepflanzt worden war. Was der Mensch zu leisten hat, muß aus der Zusammenfassung und der ungebrochenen Einheit seiner Kräfte entspringen; alles Vereinzelte ist verwerflich. In den Anfängen seiner Philosophie erscheint Herder diese Einheit noch im Lichte eines historischen Faktums, das am Beginn der Menschengeschichte steht. Sie ist ihm ein verlorenes Paradies, von dem die Menschheit sich im Fortschritt der vielgepriesenen Zivilisation mehr entfernt hat. Nur die Poesie hat, in ihrer ältesten und ursprünglichen Form, noch eine Erinnerung an dieses Paradies für uns bewahrt. Sie gilt demnach Herder als die eigentliche »Muttersprache des menschlichen Geschlechts«8 – ebenso wie sie Hamann und Vico dafür gegolten hatte. An ihr sucht er sich jene urtümliche Einheit zu vergegenwärtigen und lebendig zu machen, die in den Anfängen der Menschengeschichte Sprache und Mythos, Geschichte und Dichtung zu einer echten Totalität, zu einem ungeschiedenen Ganzen gestaltet hat. Aber diese Rousseausche Sehnsucht nach dem »Primitiven« und Uranfänglichen wird bei Herder um so mehr überwunden, je weiter er auf seinem Wege fortschreitet. In der endgültigen Gestalt, die seine Geschichts- und Kulturphilosophie in den »Ideen« gewonnen hat, liegt das Ziel der Totalität nicht mehr hinter uns, sondern vor uns. Damit verschiebt sich der gesamte Akzent seiner Lehre. Denn jetzt gilt die Differenzierung der geistigen Kräfte nicht mehr schlechthin als Abfall von der ursprünglichen Einheit und als eine Art von Sündenfall der Erkenntnis, sondern sie hat einen posi8 [Johann Georg Hamann, Aesthetica in nuce. Eine Rhapsodie in Kabbalistischer Prose, in: Schriften, hrsg. v. Friedrich Roth, Bd. II, Berlin 1821, S. 255–308: S. 258.]

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tiven Sinn und Wert gewonnen. Die wahre Einheit ist diejenige, die die Trennung voraussetzt und die sich aus der Trennung wiederherstellt. Alles konkret-geistige Geschehen, alle echte »Geschichte« ist nur das Bild dieses sich ständig erneuernden Prozesses der »Systole« und »Diastole«, der Scheidung und Wiedervereinigung. Erst nachdem Herder sich zu dieser universalen Konzeption erhoben hat, können die einzelnen Momente des Geistigen für ihn ihre wahrhafte Selbständigkeit und Autonomie erlangen. Keines von ihnen ist jetzt dem anderen einfach untergeordnet, sondern jedes | greift als gleichberechtigter Faktor in das Ganze und seinen Aufbau ein. Auch im rein historischen Sinne gibt es kein schlechthin »Erstes« oder »Zweites«, kein absolutes »Früher« oder »Später«. Die Geschichte ist, als geistiges Faktum betrachtet, keineswegs eine bloße Folge von Begebenheiten, die in der Zeit einander ablösen und verdrängen. Sie ist, mitten in der Veränderung, ein ewig Gegenwärtiges; ein μο2 πα1 ν. Ihr »Sinn« ist in keinem der einzelnen Augenblicke a llein – und doch ist er andererseits ganz und ungebrochen in jedem von ihnen. Damit aber ist das historische »Ursprungsproblem«‚ das in den ersten Untersuchungen Herders, insbesondere in seiner »Preisschrift über den Ursprung der Sprache«, noch eine so bedeutsame Rolle spielt, verwandelt und auf eine höhere Stufe der Betrachtung emporgehoben. Der geschichtliche Blick p unkt wird niemals aufgehoben; aber es zeigt sich, daß gerade der historische Horizont nicht in seiner ganzen Weite und Freiheit sichtbar werden kann, wenn man das historische Problem nicht mit einem systematischen verbindet. Was jetzt gefordert wird, ist keine bloße Entwicklungsgeschichte, sondern eine »Phänomenologie des Geistes«. Herder versteht diese Phänomenologie nicht in dem Sinne, in dem Hegel sie verstanden hat. Für ihn gibt es keinen festen, durch die Natur des Geistes vorherbestimmten und vorgeschriebenen Gang, der in einem regelmäßigen Rhythmus, im Dreischritt der Dialektik, mit immanenter Notwendigkeit von einer Erscheinungsform zur anderen hinführt, bis endlich nach Durchlaufen aller Formen das Ende wieder zum Anfang zurückkehrt. Herder macht keinen Versuch, in dieser Weise das ewig flutende Leben der Geschichte in den Kreislauf des metaphysischen Denkens einzufangen. Aber statt dessen tritt bei ihm ein anderes Problem hervor, das freilich in seinem Werk nur im ersten und noch unbestimmten Umriß sichtbar ist. Indem er immer tiefer in die eigentümliche »Natur« der Sprache, in die Natur der Dichtung, in die Welt des Mythos und in die der Geschichte eindringt, nimmt die Frage der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis eine immer komplexere Gestalt an und erfährt eine immer reichere Gliederung. Jetzt wird deutlich und unverkennbar, daß diese Frage

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nicht nur nicht gelöst, sondern in ihrem eigentlichen und vollen Sinne nicht einmal gestellt werden kann, solange die »physischen« Gegenstände das einzige Thema und das einzige Ziel der Betrachtung bilden. Der physische Kosmos, das Universum der Naturwissenschaft, bildet nur noch einen Sonderfall und ein Paradigma für eine viel allgemeinere Problemstellung. Diese Pro | blemstellung ist es, die jetzt allmählich an die Stelle jenes Ideals der Panmathematik, der Mathesis universalis tritt, das seit Descartes das philosophische Denken beherrscht hatte. Der mathematische und der physikalisch-astronomische Kosmos ist nicht der einzige, in dem die I d ee des Kosmos, die Idee einer durchgreifenden Ordnung, sich darstellt. Diese Idee ist nicht auf die Gesetzlichkeit der Naturphänomene, auf die Welt der »Materie« eingeschränkt. Sie tritt uns überall entgegen, wo an einem Mannigfaltigen und Verschiedenen ein bestimmtes einheitliches Strukturgesetz sichtbar wird. Das Walten eines solchen Strukturgesetzes: das ist der allgemeinste Ausdruck für das, was wir im weitesten Sinne mit dem Namen der »Objektivität« bezeichnen. Um dies für uns zu voller Deutlichkeit zu erheben, brauchen wir nur an jene Grundbedeutung des Begriffs des »Kosmos« anzuknüpfen, die schon das antike Denken festgestellt hatte. Ein »Kosmos«‚ eine objektive Ordnung und Bestimmtheit, ist überall dort vorhanden, wo verschiedene Subjekte sich auf eine »gemeinsame Welt« beziehen und denkend an ihr teilhaben. Dies ist nicht nur dort der Fall, wo wir uns durch das Medium der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung das physische Weltbild aufbauen. Was wir als »Sinn« der Welt erfassen, das tritt uns überall dort entgegen, wo wir uns, statt uns in die eigene Vorstellungswelt zu verschließen, auf ein Überindividuelles, Allgemeines, für alle Gültiges richten. Und nirgends tritt diese Möglichkeit und diese Notwendigkeit der Durchbrechung der individuellen Schranke so fraglos und so deutlich hervor wie im Phänomen der Sprache. Das gesprochene Wo r t geht niemals im bloßen Schall oder Laut auf. Es will etwas bedeuten; es fügt sich zum Ganzen einer »Rede« zusammen, und diese Rede »ist« nur, indem sie von einem Subjekt zum andern hingeht und beide im Wechselgespräch miteinander verknüpft. So wird für Herder, wie schon für Heraklit, das Sprachverstehen zum eigentlichen und typischen Ausdruck des Weltverstehens. Der Logos knüpft das Band zwischen dem einzelnen und dem Ganzen; er versichert den einzelnen, daß er, statt in den Eigensinn seines Ich, in die δη φρνησις eingeschlossen zu sein, ein allgemeines Sein, ein κοινíν καë ε1ον, erreichen kann. Von der Vernunft, die in der Sprache investiert ist und die sich in ihren Begriffen ausdrückt, führt der Weg zur wissenschaftlichen Vernunft weiter. Die Sprache kann mit den ihr eigentümlichen Mitteln die

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wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis nicht erzeugen oder auch nur erreichen. | Aber sie ist eine notwendige Etappe auf dem Wege zu ihr; sie bildet das Medium, in dem allein das Wissen um die Dinge entstehen und sich fortschreitend ausbauen kann. Der Akt der Benennung ist die unentbehrliche Vorstufe und die Bedingung für jenen Akt der Bestimmung, in dem die eigentümliche Aufgabe der Wissenschaft besteht. Es ergibt sich hieraus, daß und warum die Sprachtheorie ein notwendiges und integrierendes Moment im Aufbau der Erkenntnistheorie bildet. Wer die Kritik der Erkenntnis erst mit der Wissenschaftstheorie, mit der Analyse der Grundbegriffe und Prinzipien der Mathematik, der Physik, der Biologie, der Geschichte beginnen läßt, der setzt den Hebel gewissermaßen zu hoch an. Aber ebenso verfehlt derjenige den richtigen Ansatz, für den das Wissen nichts anderes als eine einfache Konstatierung dessen ist, was uns in den Elementen der Sinnesempfindung unmittelbar gegeben ist. Auch die psychologische Analyse läßt, sofern sie ohne erkenntnistheoretische Vorurteile getrieben wird, diesen Sachverhalt klar hervortreten. Denn sie zeigt uns, daß die Sprache durchaus nicht der einfache Abdruck von Inhalten und Beziehungen ist, die uns die Empfindung unmittelbar darbietet. Ihre Ideen sind keineswegs, wie es das sensualistische Dogma verlangt, die bloßen Kopien von Impressionen. Die Sprache ist vielmehr eine bestimmte Grundrichtung des geistigen Tuns: ein Inbegriff psychisch-geistiger Akte, und in diesen Akten erst schließt sich uns eine neue Seite der Wirklichkeit, der Aktualität der Dinge auf. Wilhelm von Humboldt, der zugleich der Schüler Herders und der Schüler Kants ist, hat für diesen Sachverhalt den Ausdruck geprägt, daß die Sprache Funktion, nicht Affektion sei. Sie ist kein einfaches Produkt, sondern ein kontinuierlicher, sich ständig erneuernder Prozeß; und in dem Maße, als dieser Prozeß fortschreitet, zeichnen sich für den Menschen auch die Umrisse seiner »Welt« immer klarer und bestimmter ab. Der Name wird somit nicht einfach an die fertige und vorhandene gegenständliche Anschauung, als ein äußeres Kennz e i c he n, angefügt, sondern in ihm drückt sich ein bestimmter Weg, eine Weise und Richtung des Kennen ler n en s aus. Alles, was wir über die Entwicklung der Kindersprache wissen, bestätigt in der Tat diese Grundansicht. Denn es ist offenbar nicht so, daß in dieser Entwicklung einem bestimmten Stadium der schon erworbenen gegenständlichen Anschauung ein anderes Stadium sich anreiht, in welchem dieser gegebene Besitz nun auch benannt, in welchem er bezeichnet und in Worte gefaßt wird. Es ist vielmehr das Sprach | bewußtsein, das erwachende Symbolbewußtsein, das in dem Maße, wie es selbst erstarkt und wie es sich erweitert und klärt, auch der Wahrneh-

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mung und Anschauung seinen Stempel aufdrückt. Beide werden insoweit »gegenständlich«, als es der Energie der Sprache gelingt, das dumpfe und ungeschiedene Chaos von einfachen Zuständlichkeiten zu lichten, zu unterscheiden, zu organisieren. Die sprachliche Symbolik erschließt eine neue Phase des seelisch-geistigen Lebens. An die Stelle des bloß triebhaften Lebens, des Aufgehens im unmittelbaren Eindruck und in den jeweiligen Bedürfnissen, tritt das Leben in »Bedeutungen«. Diese Bedeutungen sind ein Wiederholbares und Wiederkehrendes; ein Etwas, das nicht am bloßen Hier und Jetzt haftet, sondern das in unzählig vielen Lebensmomenten und in der Aneignung und dem Gebrauch von seiten noch so vieler verschiedener Subjekte als ein sich selbst Gleiches, Identisches gemeint und verstanden wird. Kraft dieser Identität des Meinens, die sich über der Buntheit und Verschiedenheit der momentanen Eindrücke erhebt, tritt, allmählich und stufenweise, ein bestimmter »Bestand«, ein »gemeinsamer Kosmos« hervor. Was wir das »Erlernen« einer Sprache nennen, ist daher niemals ein bloß rezeptiver oder reproduktiver, sondern ein im höchsten Maße produktiver Prozeß. In ihm gewinnt das Ich nicht nur Einblick in eine bestehende Ordnung, sondern es baut an seinem Teil diese Ordnung auf; es gewinnt Anteil an ihr, nicht indem es sich ihr einfach, als einem Gegebenen und Vorhandenen, einfügt, sondern indem jeder einzelne, jedes Individuum sie für sich erwirbt und in und kraft dieser Erwerbung an ihrer Erhaltung und Erneuerung mitwirkt. Auch vom genetischen Gesichtspunkt aus dürfen wir daher sagen, daß die Sprache die erste »gemeinsame Welt« ist, in die das Individuum eintritt, und daß sich ihm erst durch ihre Vermittlung die Anschauung einer gegenständlichen Wirklichkeit erschließt. Selbst in weit vorgeschrittenen Phasen dieser Entwicklung zeigt sich immer wieder, wie eng und unlöslich Sprachbewußtsein und Objektbewußtsein aneinander gebunden und miteinander verflochten sind. Auch der Erwachsene, der eine neue Sprache erlernt, hat damit nicht lediglich einen Zuwachs an neuen Klängen oder Zeichen gewonnen. Sobald er in den »Geist« der Sprache einzudringen, sobald er in ihr zu denken und zu leben beginnt, hat sich ihm damit auch ein neuer Kreis des gegenständlichen Anschauens erschlossen. Das Anschauen hat jetzt nicht nur an Weite, sondern auch an Klarheit und Bestimmtheit gewonnen; die neue Symbolwelt wird | zum Anlaß, die Erlebnisinhalte und die Anschauungsinhalte in neuer Weise zu gliedern, zu artikulieren und zu organisieren.9 9 Ich habe in den vorstehenden Betrachtungen diesen Sachverhalt nur kurz anzudeuten gesucht; zur näheren Begründung muß ich auf die eingehende Darstellung des Problems verweisen, die ich in meinem Aufsatz »Le langage et la con-

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Erst auf Grund solcher Erwägungen kann man sich den Gegensatz, der zwischen dem Gegenstandsproblem der Philosophie und dem der besonderen Wissenschaften besteht, zu voller Deutlichkeit bringen. Aristoteles ist der erste, der diesen Gegensatz auf eine scharfe Formel gebracht hat. Er erklärt, daß die Philosophie allgemeine Seinslehre ist, daß sie vom »Seienden als Seiendem« handelt. Die Einzelwissenschaften fassen je ein besonderes Objekt ins Auge und fragen nach seiner Beschaffenheit und Bestimmtheit; die Metaphysik, die πρτη φιλοσοφα, richtet sich auf das Sein schlechthin, auf das ν ä ν. Diese Sonderung der Erkenntnisarten und der Erkenntnisziele aber führt bei Aristoteles und bei allen, die ihm gefolgt sind, zu einer Sonderung im Gegenständlichen selbst. Dem logischen Unterschied entspricht ein ontologischer Unterschied. Was philosophisch erkannt wird, das rückt, kraft der Form dieser Erkenntnis, über den Kreis des empirisch Erfaßbaren hinaus. Es wird im Gegensatz zu dem empirisch Bedingten ein Unbedingtes, ein Ansichseiendes, ein Absolutes. Die kritische Philosophie Kants hat diesem Absolutismus der Metaphysik ein Ende bereitet. Aber dieses Ende war zugleich ein neuer Anfang. Auch die Kritik Kants will sich vom Empirismus und Positivismus der Einzelwissenschaften unterscheiden; auch sie strebt nach einer universellen Fassung und nach einer universellen Lösung des Problems der »Objektivität«. Kant konnte diese Lösung nur durchführen, indem er die besonderen Wissenschaften selbst befragte und sich eng an ihre Gliederung anschloß. Er geht von der reinen Mathematik aus, um von ihr zur mathematischen Naturwissenschaft fortzuschreiten, und er erweitert in der »Kritik der Urteilskraft« abermals den Kreis der Betrachtung, indem er nach den Grundbegriffen fragt, die eine Erkenntnis der Lebenserscheinungen ermöglichen. Eine Strukturanalyse der »Kulturwissenschaften« hat er nicht mehr in gleichem Sinne zu geben versucht, wie er sie für die Naturwissenschaften gegeben hat. Aber dies bedeutet keineswegs eine immanente und notwendige Schranke des Problems | der kritischen Philosophie. Es zeigt sich hierin lediglich eine geschichtliche und insofern zufällige Schranke, die sich aus dem Stand der Wissenschaft im achtzehnten Jahrhundert ergab. Indem diese Schranke fiel, indem seit der Romantik eine selbständige Sprachwissenschaft, Kunstwissenschaft, Religionswissenschaft entstand, sah sich damit auch die allgemeine Erkenntnislehre vor neue Aufgaben gestellt. Zugleich aber zeigt uns die heutige Gestaltung der Einzelwissenschaften, daß wir den Schnitt zwischen Philosophie und struction du monde des objets«, in: Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique 30 (1933), S. 18–44 [ECW 18, S. 265–290], gegeben habe.

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Einzelwissenschaft nicht mehr in der gleichen Weise führen können, wie er von seiten der empirischen und positivistischen Systeme des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts geführt worden ist. Wir können nicht mehr die besonderen Wissenschaften auf die Gewinnung und Sammlung der »Tatsachen« verweisen, während wir der Philosophie die Untersuchung der »Prinzipien« vorbehalten. Diese Trennung zwischen dem »Faktischen« und »Theoretischen« erweist sich als durchaus künstlich; sie zerstückelt und zerschneidet den Organismus der Erkenntnis. Es gibt keine »nackten« Fakta – keine Tatsachen, die anders als im Hinblick auf bestimmt begriffliche Voraussetzungen und mit ihrer Hilfe feststellbar sind. Jede Konstatierung von Tatsachen ist nur in einem bestimmten Urteilszusammenhang möglich, der seinerseits auf gewissen logischen Bedingungen beruht. »Erscheinen« und »Gelten« sind demgemäß nicht zwei Sphären, die sich gewissermaßen räumlich voneinander scheiden lassen und zwischen denen eine feste Grenze verläuft. Sie sind vielmehr Momente, die korrelativ zueinander gehören und die erst in dieser Zusammengehörigkeit den Grund- und Urbestand alles Wissens ausmachen. Es ist die wissenschaftliche E mpi r i e selbst, die in dieser Hinsicht die bestimmteste Widerlegung gewisser Thesen des dogmatischen Em p ir is m u s enthält. Auch im Kreis der exakten Wissenschaften hat sich gezeigt, daß »Empirie« und »Theorie«, daß faktische und prinzipielle Erkenntnis miteinander solidarisch sind. Im Aufbau der Wissenschaft gilt das Heraklitische Wort, daß der Weg nach oben und der Weg nach unten derselbe ist: »δς νω κ!τω μ[η]«.10 Je höher das Gebäude der Wissenschaft wächst und je freier es sich in die Lüfte erhebt, um so mehr bedarf es der Prüfung und der ständigen Erneuerung seiner Grundlagen. Dem Zustrom neuer Tatsachen muß die »Tieferlegung der Fundamente«11 entsprechen, die nach Hilbert zum Wesen jeder Wissenschaft gehört. Ist dem so, so ist klar, daß und warum die Arbeit an der Auffindung und Sicherung der Prinzipien der Einzelwissenschaf | ten nicht abgenommen und auf eine besondere »philosophische« Disziplin, auf die »Erkenntnistheorie« oder Methodenlehre, übertragen werden kann. Aber welcher Anspruch und welches besondere Gebiet bleibt der Philosophie noch, wenn ihr auch dieser Umkreis von Fragen von seiten der Einzelwissenschaften mehr und mehr streitig gemacht wird? Müssen wir jetzt nicht den alten Traum der Metaphysik und den alten Anspruch der 10 [Heraklit, Fragm. 60, zit. nach: Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Griechisch und deutsch, Bd. I, Berlin 21906, S. 70.] 11 [David Hilbert, Axiomatisches Denken, in: Mathematische Annalen 78 (1918), S. 405–415: S. 407.]

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Philosophie, eine Lehre vom »Seienden als Seiendem« aufzustellen, endgültig aufgeben und es statt dessen jeder Einzelwissenschaft überlassen, ihr e Auffassung des Seins durchzuführen und i hr e n Gegenstand auf eigenem Wege und mit eigenen Mitteln zu bestimmen? Aber selbst wenn die Zeit gekommen wäre, in der die Philosophie sich zu einer neuen Auffassung ihres Begriffs und ihrer Aufgabe entschließen müßte – so stünde damit das Problem der »Objektivität« noch immer als ein Rätsel vor uns, dessen Lösung den Einzelwissenschaften allein nicht aufgebürdet werden könnte. Denn dieses Problem gehört, wenn man es in seiner vollen Allgemeinheit nimmt, einer Sphäre an, die selbst von der Wissenschaft als Ganzem nicht erfaßt und ausgefüllt werden kann. Die Wissenschaft ist nur ein Glied und ein Teilmoment im System der »symbolischen Formen«. Sie mag in gewissem Sinne als der Schlußstein im Gebäude dieser Formen gelten; aber sie steht nicht allein, und sie könnte ihre spezifische Leistung nicht durchführen, wenn ihr nicht andere Energien zur Seite stünden, die sich mit ihr in die Aufgabe der »Zusammenschau«, der geistigen »Synthesis« teilen. Auch hier gilt der Satz, daß Begriffe ohne Anschauung leer sind. Der Begriff will das Ganze der Erscheinungen umfassen; und er erreicht dieses Ziel auf dem Wege der Klassifikation, der Subsumtion und Subordination. Er ordnet das Mannigfaltige unter Arten und Gattungen, und er bestimmt es durch allgemeine Regeln, die ihrerseits ein festgefügtes System bilden, in dem jedem einzelnen Phänomen und jedem besonderen Gesetz seine Stelle zugewiesen ist. Aber in dieser Art der logischen Gliederung muß er überall an anschauliche Gliederungen anknüpfen. Es ist keineswegs so, daß die »Logik«, daß die begrifflich-wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis ihre Arbeit gleichsam im Leeren vollzieht. Sie findet nicht einen schlechthin amorphen Stoff vor, an dem sie ihre formbildende Kraft ausüben kann. Auch die »Materie« der Logik, auch jenes Besondere, das sie voraussetzt, um es zum Allgemeinen zu erheben, ist nicht schlechthin strukturlos. | Das Strukturlose könnte nicht nur nicht gedacht, es könnte auch nicht wahrgenommen oder objektiv angeschaut werden. Für diese vorlogische Strukturierung, für diese »geprägte Form«, die der Arbeit des Begriffs voraus und zum Grunde liegt, bietet uns die Welt der Sprache und die Welt der Kunst den unmittelbaren Beweis. Sie zeigt uns Weisen der Zuordnung, die andere Wege gehen und anderen Gesetzen gehorchen als die logische Unterordnung der Begriffe. Am Beispiel der Sprache haben wir uns dies bereits klargemacht; aber es gilt auch für den Organismus der Künste. Plastik, Malerei, Architektur scheinen einen gemeinsamen Gegenstand zu haben. Es scheint die allbefassende »reine Anschauung« des Raumes zu sein, die in ihnen

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zur Darstellung gelangt. Und doch ist der malerische, der plastische, der architektonische Raum nicht »derselbe«; sondern in jedem von ihnen drückt sich je eine spezifisch eigene Art der Auffassung, des räumlichen »Sehens« aus.12 Alle diese mannigfachen »Perspektiven« gilt es auf der einen Seite voneinander zu sondern, auf der anderen Seite in ihrem wechselseitigen Verhältnis zu erkennen und sie dadurch unter einem höheren Gesichtspunkt miteinander zu vereinen. Diese Sonderung und Vereinigung, diese δι!κρισις und σγκρισις ist dasjenige, was Platon als die Aufgabe der »Dialektik«, der eigentlichen philosophischen Grundwissenschaft, ansah. Das antike Denken hat, gestützt auf die Platonische Dialektik, ein metaphysisches Weltbild aufgebaut, das durch zwei Jahrtausende die gesamte geistige Entwicklung beherrscht und ihr seinen Stempel aufgedrückt hat. Die »Revolution der Denkart«,13 die mit Kant einsetzt, erklärt dieses Weltbild für wissenschaftlich unbegründbar. Aber indem Kant in dieser Weise dem Anspruch jeder metaphysischen Seinslehre entsagte, wollte er damit keineswegs die Einheit und die Universalität der »Vernunft« preisgeben. Diese sollte durch seine Kritik nicht erschüttert, sie sollte vielmehr gesichert und auf einer neuen Basis begründet werden. Jetzt besteht die Aufgabe der Philosophie nicht länger darin, an Stelle des besonderen Seins, das den Einzelwissenschaften allein zugänglich ist, ein allgemeines Sein zu erfassen, an Stelle des empirischen Wissens eine »Ontologia generalis« als Erkenntnis vom »Transzendenten« zu begründen. Auf diese Form des Wissens vom ν ä ν, auf diese Hypostase zu einem ab s o lu t en Objekt wird verzichtet. Die »Ver | nunfterkenntnis« scheidet sich auch bei Kant noch streng und scharf von der bloßen »Verstandeserkenntnis«. Aber statt jenseits derselben ein eigenes Objekt zu suchen, das von den Bedingungen der Verstandeserkenntnis frei ist, sucht sie das »Unbedingte« vielmehr in der systematischen Totalität der Bedingungen selbst. An die Stelle der Einheit des Objekts ist hier die Ein h eit d er Fu n k t io n getreten. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, braucht die Philosophie mit den besonderen Wissenschaften nicht mehr auf deren eigenem Gebiet zu wetteifern. Sie kann diesen ihre volle Autonomie, ihre Freiheit und Selbstgesetzgebung lassen. Denn sie will keines dieser Sondergesetze beschränken oder unterdrücken; sondern sie will statt dessen ihre Gesamtheit zu einer 12 Vgl. hierzu besonders Adolf Hildebrand, Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst, Straßburg 1893. 13 [Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, hrsg. v. Albert Görland (Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, 11 Bde., Berlin 1912–1921, Bd. III), S. 15 (B XI).]

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systematischen Einheit zusammenfassen und sie als solche erkennen. An Stelle eines »Dinges an sich«‚ eines Gegenstandes »jenseits« und »hinter« der Erscheinungswelt, sucht sie die Mannigfaltigkeit, die Fülle und die innere Verschiedenheit des »Erscheinens selbst«. Diese Fülle ist dem menschlichen Geist nur dadurch erfaßbar, daß er die Kraft besitzt, sich in sich selbst zu differenzieren. Er bildet für jedes neue Problem, das ihm hier entgegentritt, eine neue Form der Auffassung aus. In d i es er Hinsicht kann eine »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen« den Anspruch auf Einheit und Universalität festhalten, den die Metaphysik in ihrer dogmatischen Gestalt aufgeben mußte. Sie kann nicht nur die verschiedenen Weisen und Richtungen der Welterkenntnis in sich vereinen, sondern darüber hinaus jedem Versuch des Weltverständnisses, jeder Auslegung der Welt, deren der menschliche Geist fähig ist, ihr Recht zuerkennen und sie in ihrer Eigentümlichkeit begreifen. Erst auf diese Weise wird das Problem der Objektivität in seiner ganzen Weite sichtbar, und, so gefaßt, umspannt es nicht nur den Kosmos der Natur, sondern auch den der Kultur.14

2. Nach unzähligen, immer wieder erneuten Ansätzen und nach unablässigen Kämpfen zwischen den philosophischen Schulen schien die Wissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts dem Problem der »philosophischen Anthropologie« endlich seinen rechten Standort zuzuweisen. Die | Frage: Was ist der Mensch? hatte immer wieder auf unlösbare Aporien und Antinomien geführt, solange man den Menschen – in Übereinstimmung mit den Grundlehren des Platonismus, des Christentums und der Kantischen Philosophie – zu einem »Bürger zweier Welten« machen mußte. Erst in der Wissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts schien diese Schranke endgültig beseitigt. Sie konnte an der Sonderstellung des Menschen festhalten, ohne darum genötigt zu sein, ihn der Natur entgegenzusetzen und ihn über sie hinauszuheben. Der Begriff » E ntwick lu ng « wurde als der Schlüssel erklärt, der alle bisherigen Rätsel der Natur und alle »Welträtsel« aufschließen sollte. Von diesem Standpunkt aus gesehen mußte auch die Antithese »Kultur« und »Natur« jegliche dialektische Schärfe verlieren. Diese Antithese war gelöst, 14 Die hier vertretene Auffassung vom Wesen und von der Aufgabe der Philosophie ist in der Einleitung zu meiner »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Erster Teil: Die Sprache«, Berlin 1923, S. 1 ff. [ECW 11, S. 1 ff.], eingehender dargelegt und begründet worden.

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sobald es gelang, das Problem vom Boden der Metaphysik auf den der Biologie zu versetzen und es unter rein biologischen Gesichtspunkten zu betrachten und zu behandeln. Der Begriff der Entwicklung als solcher konnte hierbei freilich nicht als eine Errungenschaft des modernen naturwissenschaftlichen Denkens gelten. Er geht vielmehr bis in die ersten Anfänge der griechischen Philosophie zurück – und er erscheint, auf dem Höhepunkt dieser Philosophie, als eines der wichtigsten Mittel, um die Herrschaft des Platonischen »dualistischen« Weltbildes zu brechen. Mit vollem Bewußtsein wird diese Aufgabe bei Aristoteles gestellt. Aber in seiner Aristotelischen Form ist der Entwicklungsbegriff dieser Aufgabe noch nicht gewachsen. Denn er versagt gerade vor der letzten, entscheidenden Frage, an der er seine Probe bestehen müßte. Aristoteles schildert uns die organische Natur und die Reihe der Lebewesen als eine aufsteigende Entwicklung, die von einer Form zur anderen führt. Auch die menschliche Seele ist ihm innerhalb eines weiten Bereiches – wenn wir sie lediglich als »vegetative« oder »sensitive« Seele verstehen – nichts anderes als eine Naturform, die als solche an einen bestimmten Körper gebunden ist. Sie ist die »Entelechie« eines organischen Körpers. Dennoch ließ sich die Aristotelische Psychologie a l s Ga nz e s nicht in die Biologie auflösen. Denn hier blieb ein Rest stehen, der weder von Aristoteles selbst noch von einem seiner Schüler und Nachfolger ganz getilgt werden konnte. Die »denkende« Seele trotzte allen Versuchen, sie auf die elementare Funktion der ernährenden oder empfindenden Seele zurückzuführen. Sie behauptete ihre Eigenstellung und Ausnahmestellung; und ihr mußte daher zuletzt | auch ein anderer selbständiger Ursprung zugewiesen werden. Wenn wir, in der Aristotelischen Psychologie, von der Wahrnehmung zum Gedächtnis, von diesem zur Vorstellung (φαντασα) und von hier zum begrifflichen Denken fortgehen, so bewährt sich bei jedem dieser Fortschritte das Prinzip der stetigen Entwicklung. Dann aber sehen wir uns plötzlich an einen Punkt geführt, an dem der Sprung unvermeidlich wird. Denn die »Denkkraft« in ihrer höchsten und reinsten Betätigung ist auf diesem Wege nicht zu erreichen. Sie ist und bleibt eine Leistung für sich. Der »aktive Intellekt« gehört der Welt des Seelischen an, ohne daß es gelingt, ihn aus den Elementen des organischen Lebens zu erklären. Der Dualismus bricht also hier wieder durch – und er erhält seinen unzweideutigen Ausdruck, wenn Aristoteles erklärt, daß die Denkkraft, der νο2ς, sich von außen her (ραεν) auf die Welt des Lebens herabsenke. Daß die Aristotelische Metaphysik und Psychologie die Lücke, die sie hier vorfand, nicht zu schließen vermochte, ist begreiflich. Denn

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der Aristotelische Formbegriff gründet sich auf den Platonischen Ideenbegriff, und er bleibt, auch dort, wo er sich am weitesten von ihm zu entfernen scheint, an wesentliche Voraussetzungen desselben gebunden. Erst der moderne Entwicklungsbegriff will hier die letzte Konsequenz ziehen. Er macht mit der Forderung der Stetigkeit Ernst, und er erstreckt sie auf alle Gebiete. Wie die höheren Lebensformen durch fließende Übergänge mit den elementaren Formen verbunden sind, so kann es auch in ihnen keine Leistung geben, die die Dimension des organischen Daseins als solche verläßt. Was immer über diese Dimension hinauszuragen und einer »anderen Welt« anzugehören scheint, das ist und bleibt ein bloßes Luftgebilde, sofern sich nicht zeigen läßt, in welcher Weise es aus der Grund- und Urschichte des Lebens entsprungen ist und dauernd mit ihr zusammenhängt. Hier muß ein wahrhaft biologisches Weltbild den Hebel einsetzen. Was dem spekulativen Entwicklungsbegriff – auch bei Aristoteles, auch bei Leibniz und Hegel – nicht gelungen war: das soll und wird dem empirischen Entwicklungsbegriff gelingen. Erst durch ihn schien der Weg für eine streng »monistische« Auffassung eröffnet; erst jetzt schien die Kluft zwischen »Natur« und »Geist« gefüllt. So betrachtet versprach die Darwinsche Lehre nicht nur die Antwort auf die Frage nach der Abstammung des Menschen, sondern auch die Antwort auf alle Fragen nach dem Ursprung der menschlichen Kultur zu enthalten. Als Dar | wins Lehre zuerst hervortrat, schien in ihr, nach jahrhundertelangen vergeblichen Bemühungen, endlich das vereinigende Band gefunden, das »Naturwissenschaft« und »Kulturwissenschaft« umschlingt. Im Jahre 1863 ließ August Schleicher sein Werk »Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft« erscheinen. Das neue Programm einer Kulturwissenschaft auf darwinistischer Grundlage ist hier vollständig gezeichnet. Schleicher selbst war ursprünglich von Hegels Lehre ausgegangen. Jetzt glaubte er zu sehen, daß und warum in ihr das Heil nicht liegen könne. Er forderte eine prinzipielle Umgestaltung der Methode der Sprachwissenschaft, die sie erst zu einer den Naturwissenschaften ebenbürtigen Erkenntnis erheben werde.15 Damit schien endlich für die Physik, für die Biologie und für die Sprachwissenschaft – und damit mittelbar für alles, was sich »Geisteswissenschaft« nannte – ein gemeinsames Fundament erreicht. Ein und dieselbe Kausalität war es, die alle drei Gebiete umschlang und alle Wesensunterschiede zwischen ihnen auslöschte. Ein erster Rückschlag gegen diese Auffassung trat ein, als, in den 15 Näheres über Schleichers Theorie s. »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Erster Teil«, S. 106 ff. [ECW 11, S. 106 ff.].

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letzten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts, in der Biologie selbst die Zweifel an der Gültigkeit der Darwinschen Lehre stärker und stärker wurden. Man begann jetzt nicht nur auf die empirischen Grenzen dieser Lehre hinzuweisen, sondern man richtete, in weit stärkerem Maße als zuvor, seine Aufmerksamkeit auf die Sicherheit ihres philosophischen Fundaments. Und hier erlebte plötzlich der Formbegriff eine neue Auferstehung. Der Vitalismus griff unmittelbar auf diesen Begriff zurück; und er versuchte, auf ihn gestützt, seine These von der »Autonomie des Organischen« und der Autonomie des Lebens durchzuführen. Wir verfolgen hier diese Bewegung nur, sofern sie auf die Frage nach der Grundlegung der Kulturwissenschaften und nach ihrer logischen Eigenart eingewirkt hat. Den eigentlichen Vorkämpfern des Vitalismus lag diese Frage als solche fern. Driesch bleibt, auch als Metaphysiker, reiner Naturforscher. Eine Logik der Geisteswissenschaften hat er niemals aufzubauen versucht; ja er mußte seinen systematischen Voraussetzungen nach bezweifeln, daß es eine solche geben könne. Denn der Wissenschaftswert der Geschichte wird von ihm aufs schärfste bestritten. Dennoch hat – in einer freilich nur mittelbaren | Weise – die Neuorientierung des Denkens, die durch den Vitalismus eingeleitet wurde, auch auf unser Problem eingewirkt. Es ist lehrreich, diese Einwirkung zu verfolgen; denn sie hat der späteren Arbeit, die ihre eigentlichen und wesentlichen Impulse aus ganz anderen Motiven und Problemkreisen erhielt, in wirksamer Weise vorgearbeitet und ihr in vieler Hinsicht den Boden bereitet. Uexküll hat einmal gesagt, daß der Materialismus des 19. Jahrhunderts, indem er lehrte, daß alle Wirklichkeit aus Kraft und Stoff bestehe und sich hierin erschöpfe, einen dritten wesentlichen Faktor völlig übersehen habe. Er habe sich damit blind gemacht gegen die F or m, die doch das Entscheidende und Bestimmende sei.16 Uexküll will in seiner »Theoretischen Biologie« diesen Faktor wieder in sein Recht einsetzen; aber er will andererseits alle metaphysischen und psychologischen Nebenvorstellungen von ihm fernhalten. Er spricht rein als Anatom; als objektiver Naturforscher. Aber eben das Studium der Anatomie ist nach ihm dazu geeignet, den strikten Beweis dafür zu erbringen, daß jeder Organismus eine in sich geschlossene Welt darstellt, in der alles »sich zum Ganzen webt«.17 Der Organismus ist kein Aggregat von 16 Jakob von Uexküll, Die Lebenslehre, Potsdam/Zürich 1930 (Das Weltbild. Bücher des lebendigen Wissens, Bd. 13), S. 19. 17 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Eine Tragödie. Erster Theil (Werke, hrsg. im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 4 Abt., insges. 133 Bde. in 143 Bdn., Weimar 1887–1919, 1. Abt., Bd. XIV), S. 30.]

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Teilen, sondern ein System von Funktionen, die einander bedingen. Die Art dieser Verknüpfung können wir am »Bauplan« jedes Tieres unmittelbar ablesen. »Die Lehre von den lebenden Wesen«, so erklärt Uexküll, »ist eine reine Naturwissenschaft und hat nur ein Ziel – die Erforschung der Baupläne der Lebewesen, ihre Entstehung und ihre Leistung.«18 Kein Organismus läßt sich als ein für sich bestehendes, von seiner »Umwelt« abgelöstes Wesen denken. Was seine spezifische Natur ausmacht, ist die besondere Beziehung, in der er zu dieser Umwelt steht: die Art, wie er von ihr Reize empfängt und wie er diese Reize in sich verwandelt. Das Studium der Baupläne zeigt uns, daß in dieser Hinsicht kein Unterschied zwischen den niederen Lebewesen und den höchstentwickelten besteht. An jedem noch so elementaren Organismus können wir ein bestimmtes »Merknetz« und ein bestimmtes »Wirknetz« feststellen; an jedem können wir uns klarmachen, wie seine verschiedenen »Funktionskreise« ineinander eingreifen. Dieses Verhältnis ist nach Uexküll der Ausdruck und das Grundphänomen des Lebens selbst. Die Reize der äußeren Welt, die ein Tier auf Grund seines Bauplanes aufzunehmen vermag, sind die Wirklichkeit, die für | dasselbe allein vorhanden ist, und kraft dieser physischen Schranke schließt es sich gegen alle übrigen Daseinskreise ab.19 Diese Problematik der modernen Biologie, die in den Schriften Uexkülls in sehr eigenartiger Weise aufgewiesen und in höchst fruchtbarer Weise durchgeführt worden ist, vermag uns auch einen Weg zu weisen, in dessen Verfolgung wir zu einer klaren und bestimmten Grenzsetzung zwischen »Leben« und »Geist«, zwischen der Welt der organischen Formen und der der Kulturformen gelangen können. Man hat immer wieder versucht, den Unterschied, der hier besteht, als rein physischen Unterschied zu beschreiben. Man suchte nach bestimmten äußeren Merkmalen, durch die der Mensch als solcher charakterisiert und aus der Reihe der übrigen Lebewesen herausgehoben sein sollte. Welche phantastischen Konstruktionen man bisweilen an derartige Merkmale, z. B. an die Tatsache des aufrechten Ganges des Menschen, geknüpft hat, ist bekannt. Aber der Fortschritt der empirischen Erkenntnis hat all die Scheidewände niedergerissen, die man zwischen dem Menschen und der organischen Natur zu errichten suchte. Immer deutlicher und immer siegreicher behauptete hier der Monismus das Feld. Goethe sah in seiner Entdeckung des Zwischenkieferknochens eine der schönsten und wichtigsten Bestätigungen dafür, daß keine Gestalt der Natur von [Uexküll, Die Lebenslehre, S. 9.] Vgl. ders., Theoretische Biologie, Berlin 1920; 2., gänzl. neu bearb. Aufl., Berlin 1928; ders., Die Lebenslehre. 18 19

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der anderen schlechthin losgelöst und abgeschieden ist. Die Differenz, nach der wir hier allein suchen und die wir mit Sicherheit aufweisen können, ist keine physische, sondern eine f u nkti one l l e Differenz. Das Neue, das in der Kulturwelt hervortritt, ist durch die Aufzeigung bestimmter Einzelmerkmale nicht faßbar und beschreibbar. Denn die entscheidende Änderung liegt nicht in dem Auftreten neuer Kennzeichen und Eigenschaften, sondern in dem eigentümlichen F unkt io n swan d el, den alle Bestimmungen erfahren, sobald wir aus der Welt des Tieres in die des Menschen übergehen. Hier, und hier allein, läßt sich eine wirkliche μετ!βασις ες ®λλο γ#νος feststellen. Die »Freiheit«, die der Mensch sich zu erringen vermag, bedeutet nicht, daß er aus der Natur heraustreten und sich ihrem Sein oder Wirken entziehen kann. Die organische Schranke, die ihm wie jedem anderen Lebewesen gesetzt ist, kann er nicht überwinden und durchbrechen. Aber innerhalb derselben, ja auf Grund ihrer, schafft er sich eine Weite und eine Selbständigkeit der Bewegung, | die nur ihm zugänglich und erreichbar ist. Uexküll sagt einmal, daß der Bauplan jedes Lebewesens und das durch ihn bestimmte Verhältnis zwischen seiner »Merkwelt« und »Wirkwelt« dieses Wesen so fest umschließt wie die Mauern eines Gefängnisses. Diesem Gefängnis entrinnt der Mensch nicht dadurch, daß er die Mauern niederreißt, sondern dadurch, daß er sich ihrer bewußt wird. Hier gilt das Hegelsche Wort, daß der, der um eine Schranke weiß , bereits über diese Schranke hinaus ist. Die Bewußtwerdung ist der Anfang und das Ende, ist das A und O der Freiheit, die dem Menschen vergönnt ist; das Erkennen und Anerkennen der Notwendigkeit ist der eigentliche Befreiungsprozeß, den der »Geist« gegenüber der »Natur« zu vollbringen hat. Für diesen Prozeß bilden die einzelnen »symbolischen Formen«: der Mythos, die Sprache, die Kunst, die Erkenntnis, die unentbehrliche Vorbedingung. Sie sind die eigentümlichen Medien, die der Mensch sich erschafft, um sich kraft ihrer von der Welt zu trennen und sich in ebendieser Trennung um so fester mit ihr zu verbinden. Dieser Zug der Vermittlung charakterisiert alles menschliche Erkennen, wie er auch für alles menschliche Wirken bezeichnend und typisch ist. Auch Pflanze und Tier bestehen nur dadurch, daß sie von ihrer Umwelt nicht nur beständig Reize empfangen, sondern dieselben auch in bestimmter Art »beantworten«. Und jeder Organismus vollzieht diese Antwort in anderer Weise. Hier sind, wie Uexküll in seiner Schrift »Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere«20 gezeigt hat, die mannigfachsten und feinsten 20

1921.

Ders., Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere, 2., verm. u. verb. Aufl., Berlin

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Abstufungen möglich. Im Ganzen aber besteht für die tierische Welt ein bestimmter, einheitlicher Typus des Handelns, der überall denselben Bedingungen folgt. Die Antwort muß sich dem Reiz in unmittelbarer zeitlicher Folge anschließen, und sie muß immer in derselben Weise vonstatten gehen. Was wir tierische »Instinkte« nennen, das sind nichts anderes als derartige feste Handlungsketten, deren einzelne Glieder in einer durch die Natur des Tieres im voraus bestimmten Weise ineinandergreifen. Eine einzelne Situation wirkt als Handlungsimpuls, der gewisse Bewegungen auslöst; an diesen ersten Impuls schließen sich andere und wieder andere Antriebe an, bis schließlich eine bestimmte »Impulsmelodie« in stets gleichartiger Weise abläuft. Das Lebewesen spielt diese Melodie; aber es kann nicht willkürlich in sie eingreifen. Der Weg, den es zu durchschreiten hat, um eine bestimmte Aufgabe zu lösen, ist gebahnt; der Organismus folgt | ihm, ohne ihn suchen zu müssen und ohne ihn in irgendeiner Weise abändern zu können. Dies alles verändert sich grundlegend, sobald wir in den Kreis des menschlichen Handelns eintreten. Dieses ist, selbst in seinen einfachsten und primitivsten Formen, durch eine Art der »Mittelbarkeit« gekennzeichnet, die der Weise, in der das Tier reagiert, scharf entgegengesetzt ist. Am deutlichsten stellt sich diese Wandlung des Handlungstypus dar, sobald der Mensch zum Gebrauch des Werkzeugs übergeht. Denn um das Werkzeug als solches zu erfinden, muß der Mensch über den Kreis des unmittelbaren Bedürfnisses hinausblikken. Indem er es schafft, handelt er nicht aus dem Impuls und aus der Not des Augenblicks heraus. Statt unmittelbar durch einen wirklichen Reiz bewegt zu werden, blickt er auf »mögliche« Bedürfnisse hin, zu deren Befriedigung er die Mittel im voraus bereitstellt. Die Absicht, der das Werkzeug dient, schließt also eine bestimmte Voraussicht in sich. Der Antrieb entstammt nicht allein dem Drang der Gegenwart, sondern er gehört der Zukunft an, die, um in dieser Weise wirksam zu werden, in irgendeiner Weise »vorweggenommen« werden muß. Diese »Vorstellung« des Künftigen charakterisiert alles menschliche Handeln. Wir müssen ein noch nicht Bestehendes im »Bilde« vor uns hinstellen, um sodann von dieser »Möglichkeit« zur »Wirklichkeit«, von der Potenz zum Akt überzugehen. Noch deutlicher tritt dieser Grundzug hervor, wenn wir uns von der praktischen Sphäre der theoretischen Sphäre zuwenden. Zwischen beiden besteht insofern kein prinzipieller Unterschied, als auch alle unsere theoretischen Begriffe den Charakter des »Instrumentalen« an sich tragen. Sie sind zuletzt nichts anderes als die Werkzeuge, die wir uns für die Lösung bestimmter Aufgaben geschaffen haben und immer aufs neue schaffen müssen. Begriffe beziehen sich nicht gleich der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung auf

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ein einzelnes Gegebenes, auf eine konkrete gegenwärtige Situation; sie bewegen sich vielmehr im Kreis des Möglichen und wollen gewissermaßen den Rahmen des Möglichen abstecken. Je mehr der Horizont menschlichen Vorstellens, Meinens, Denkens und Urteilens sich erweitert, um so komplexer wird das System der Mittelglieder, deren wir bedürfen, um ihn überschauen zu können. Die Symbole der Wortsprache sind das erste und wichtigste Glied in dieser Kette. Aber an sie schließen sich Gestalten von anderer Art und Herkunft: die Gestalten des Mythos, der Religion, der Kunst, an. Ein und dieselbe Grund f un k tio n , | die Funktion des Symbolischen als solche, entfaltet sich in ihren verschiedenen Hauptrichtungen und schafft innerhalb derselben immer neue Gebilde. Die Gesamtheit dieser Gebilde ist es, was die spezifisch menschliche Welt kennzeichnet und auszeichnet. Der tierischen »Merkwelt« und »Wirkwelt« hat sich im Kreise des Menschen ein Neues: die »Bildwelt«, zugesellt; und sie ist es, die fortschreitend eine immer größere Macht über den Menschen gewinnt. Aber hier entsteht freilich eine der schwierigsten Fragen: eine Frage, mit der die Menschheit im Laufe der Entwicklung ihrer Kultur immer wieder zu ringen hatte. Ist der Weg, der hier eingeschlagen wird, nicht ein verhängnisvoller Irrweg? D ar f sich der Mensch in dieser Weise von der Natur losreißen und sich von der Wirklichkeit und Unmittelbarkeit des natürlichen Daseins entfernen? Sind das, was er hierfür eintauscht, noch Güter, oder sind es nicht die schwersten Gefahren für sein Leben? Wenn die Philosophie ihrer eigentlichen und höchsten Aufgabe eingedenk blieb, wenn sie nicht nur eine bestimmte Art des Wissen s von der Welt, sondern auch das G ew i s s e n der menschlichen Kultur sein wollte, so mußte sie im Lauf ihrer Geschichte stets aufs neue auf dieses Problem hingeführt werden. Statt sich einem naiven Fortschrittsglauben zu überlassen, mußte sie nicht nur fragen, ob das Ziel dieses angeblichen »Fortschritts« erreichbar, sondern ob es erstrebenswert sei. Und ist der Zweifel hieran einmal erwacht, so scheint er nicht mehr zu beschwichtigen zu sein. Am stärksten erweist er sich, wenn wir das praktische Verhältnis des Menschen zur Wirklichkeit ins Auge fassen. Durch den Werkzeuggebrauch hat sich der Mensch zum Herrscher über die Dinge aufgeworfen. Aber diese Herrschaft ist ihm selbst nicht zum Segen, sondern zum Fluch geworden. Die Technik, die er erfand, um sich die physische Welt zu unterwerfen, hat sich gegen ihn selbst gekehrt. Sie hat nicht nur zu einer steigenden Selbstentfremdung, sondern zuletzt zu einer Art Selbstverlust des menschlichen Daseins geführt. Das Werkzeug, das zur Befriedigung menschlicher Bedürfnisse bestimmt schien, hat statt dessen unzählige künstliche Bedürfnisse geschaffen. Jede Vervollkommnung der tech-

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nischen Kultur ist und bleibt in dieser Hinsicht ein wahres Danaergeschenk. Die Sehnsucht nach dem primitiven, ungebrochenen, unmittelbaren Dasein muß daher immer wieder hervorbrechen, und der Ruf »Zurück zur Natur!« muß um so stärker werden, je mehr Gebiete des Lebens die Technik sich erobert. Uexküll sagt | mit Hinblick auf die niederen Tiere einmal, daß jedes Tier seiner Umwelt so völlig angepaßt sei, daß es in ihr so ruhig und sicher ruht wie ein Säugling in seiner Wiege. Mit dieser Ruhe ist es endgültig dahin, sobald wir in die Sphäre des Menschen eintreten. Jede tierische Gattung ist in den Umkreis ihrer Bedürfnisse und Triebe gleichsam festgebannt; sie hat keine andere Welt als diejenige, die ihr durch ihre Instinkte vorgezeichnet ist. Aber innerhalb dieser Welt, für die das Tier geschaffen ist, gibt es kein Schwanken und keine Verfehlung: Die Schranke des Instinkts gewährt zugleich die höchste Sicherheit. Kein menschliches Wissen und kein menschliches Tun kann jemals wieder den Weg zu dieser Art fraglosen Daseins und fragloser Gewißheit zurückfinden. Denn gegen die geistigen Werkzeuge, die der Mensch sich geschaffen hat, kehrt sich der Zweifel in noch höherem Maße als gegen die technischen Werkzeuge. Die S p r ach e ist immer wieder überschwenglich gepriesen worden; man sah in ihr den eigentlichen Ausdruck und den unverkennbaren Beweis jener »Vernunft«‚ die den Menschen über das Tier erhöht. Aber sind all die Argumente, die man in dieser Hinsicht angeführt hat, echte Beweisgründe – oder sind sie nicht vielleicht nur eine leere Selbstvergötterung, in der die Sprache sich gefiel? Haben sie mehr als bloß rhetorischen, haben sie einen p hi l os ophi s c he n Wert? In der Geschichte der Philosophie hat es niemals an bedeutenden Denkern gefehlt, die nicht nur vor dieser Vermischung von »Sprache« und »Vernunft« gewarnt haben, sondern die in der Sprache den eigentlichen Widersacher und Gegenspieler der Vernunft gesehen haben. Sie war ihnen nicht die Führerin, sondern die ewige Verführerin der menschlichen Erkenntnis. Die Erkenntnis, so erklärten sie, werde ihr Ziel erst erreichen, wenn sie der Sprache entschlossen den Rücken kehre und sich von ihrem Inhalt nicht mehr verlocken lasse. »Vergeblich erweitern wir unsern Blick in die himmlischen Räume und erspähen das Innere der Erde«, so sagt Berkeley, »vergeblich ziehen wir die Schriften gelehrter Männer zu Rate und verfolgen die dunklen Spuren des Altertums; wir brauchten nur den Vorhang von Worten wegzuziehen, um klar und rein den Baum der Erkenntnis zu erblicken, dessen Frucht vortrefflich und unserer Hand erreichbar ist.«21 21 Zu Berkeleys Sprachkritik vgl. »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Erster Teil«, S. 76 ff. [ECW 11, S. 74 ff. Zitat: George Berkeley, A Treatise concern-

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Berkeley selbst hat keinen anderen Ausweg aus diesem Konflikt finden können als dadurch, daß er die Philosophie nicht nur von der | Herrschaft der Sprache, sondern auch von der Herrschaft des »Begriffs« lossprach. Denn daß der Begriff, als ein »Abstraktes« und »Allgemeines«, mit jenem Allgemeinen, das sich im Namen und Wort bekundet, nicht nur verwandt, sondern daß er unlöslich mit ihm verbunden ist, ist ihm nicht entgangen. Hier konnte demnach nur eine radikale Lösung helfen: Die Wirklichkeit mußte auch dem Begriff, sie mußte auch der »Logik« entzogen und auf die reine Wahrnehmung, auf die Sphäre der »Perzeption« eingeschränkt werden. Wo wir diese letztere Sphäre verlassen, wo wir vom percipi zum concipi fortzuschreiten suchen, da sehen wir uns wieder der Macht der Sprache verfallen, der wir entfliehen wollten. Alles logische Erkennen vollzieht sich in Akten des Urteilens, der theoretischen Reflexion. Aber schon der Name der Reflexion deutet auf die Mängel hin, die ihr unvermeidlich anhaften. Der »reflektierte« Gegenstand ist niemals der Gegenstand selbst – und jede neue spiegelnde Fläche, die wir einschalten, droht uns mehr und mehr von der ursprünglichen, der originalen Wahrheit des letzteren zu entfernen. Derartige Erwägungen haben sich seit alters her den eigentlichen Nährboden des theoretischen Skeptizismus gebildet. Und nicht nur die Sprachtheorie, sondern auch die Theorie der Kunst hat im Verlauf ihrer Geschichte fort und fort mit ähnlichen Problemen zu ringen gehabt. Platon entsagt der Kunst, und er verwirft sie. Denn er wirft ihr vor, daß sie in dem Kampf zwischen Wahrheit und Schein nicht auf seiten der Philosophie, sondern auf seiten der Sophistik stehe. Der Künstler erschaut nicht die Ideen, die ewigen Urbilder der Wahrheit; er treibt sich statt dessen im Kreise der Abbilder umher und wendet alle seine Kraft darauf, diese Abbilder so zu gestalten, daß sie dem, der sie betrachtet, die Wirklichkeit selbst vortäuschen. Der Dichter und der Maler ist, gleich dem Sophisten, der ewige »Bildermacher« (εδωλοποις). Statt das Sein als das, was es ist, zu begreifen, schieben beide uns eine Illusion des Seins unter. Solange die Ästhetik auf dem Boden der »Nachahmungstheorie« stehenblieb, hat sie vergeblich versucht, diesen Platonischen Einwand prinzipiell zu entkräften. Man versuchte, um die Nachahmung zu rechtfertigen, statt einer theoretischen oder ästhetischen Begründung ing the Principles of Human Knowledge, in: Works, hrsg. v. Alexander Campbell Fraser, Bd. I, Oxford 1901, S. 211–347: S. 255: »In vain do we extend our view into the heavens and pry into the entrails of the earth, in vain do we consult the writings of learned men and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity. We need only draw the curtain of words, to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our hand.«].

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ihres Wertes eine andere, hedonistische Begründung. Auch der ästhetische Rationalismus ist oft diesen Weg gegangen. Er betonte, daß die Nachahmung freilich das Wesen nicht erschöpfe, daß der »Schein« die »Wirklichkeit« nicht erreichen könne. Aber er wies statt dessen auf | den Lustwert hin, der der Nachahmung innewohne und der um so stärker werde, je mehr sie sich ihrem Vorbild annähere. Boileaus »Art poétique« enthält schon in ihren Anfangsversen diesen Gedankengang in klassischer Prägnanz und Deutlichkeit. Selbst ein Monstrum – so erklärt sie – kann in der künstlerischen Darstellung gefallen, weil das Gefallen nicht dem Gegenstand als solchem, sondern der Vortrefflichkeit der Nachbildung gilt. Damit schien sich wenigstens die Möglichkeit zu ergeben, die eigentümliche Dimension des Ästhetischen als solche zu bestimmen und ihr einen selbständigen Wert zuzugestehen, wenngleich dieses Ziel nur auf einem seltsamen Umweg erreicht werden konnte. Aber auf dem Boden des strikten Rationalismus und des metaphysischen Dogmatismus ließ sich eine endgültige Lösung des Problems nicht gewinnen. Denn ist man einmal davon überzeugt, daß der logische Begriff die notwendige und hinreichende Bedingung für die Erkenntnis des Wesens der Dinge ist, so bleibt zuletzt doch alles, was sich von ihm spezifisch unterscheidet und was an seine Klarheit und Deutlichkeit nicht heranreicht, wesenloser Schein. Der Illusionscharakter derjenigen geistigen Formen, die außerhalb des Kreises des bloß Logischen stehen, kann in diesem Falle nicht bestritten, er kann nur als solcher aufgewiesen und insofern erklärt und gerechtfertigt werden, als man der psychologischen Entstehung der Illusion nachgeht und ihre empirischen Bedingungen an der Struktur des menschlichen Vorstellens und der menschlichen Phantasie aufzuzeigen versucht. Eine ganz andere Wendung aber gewinnt die Frage, wenn man, statt das Wesen der Dinge als ein von Anfang an Feststehendes zu behandeln, in ihm vielmehr gewissermaßen den unendlich fernen Punkt sieht, auf den alles Erkennen und Verstehen abzielt. Das »Gegebene« des Objekts wandelt sich in diesem Fall in die »Aufgabe« der Objektivität. Und an dieser Au f g ab e ist, wie sich zeigen läßt, die theoretische Erkenntnis nicht allein beteiligt; sondern an ihr nimmt jede Energie des Geistes in ihrer eigenen Weise teil. Jetzt läßt sich auch der Sprache und der Kunst ihre eigentümliche »objektive« Bedeutung zuweisen – nicht weil sie eine an sich bestehende Wirklichkeit nachbilden, sondern weil sie sie vorbilden, weil sie bestimmte Weisen und Richtungen der Objektivierung sind. Und dies gilt ebensowohl für die Welt der inneren Erfahrung, wie es für die Welt der äußeren Erfahrung gilt. Für die metaphysische Weltansicht und die Zwei-Substanzen-Lehre bedeuten »Seele« und »Körper«, das »Innere« und | das »Äußere«,

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zwei voneinander streng geschiedene Seinskreise. Sie mögen aufeinander einwirken können, wenngleich die Möglichkeit dieses Einwirkens immer dunkler und problematischer wird, je weiter die Metaphysik ihre eigenen Konsequenzen zieht; aber der radikale Unterschied zwischen ihnen ist nicht zu überwinden. »Subjektivität« und »Objektivität« bilden je eine Sphäre für sich; und die Analyse einer bestimmten geistigen Form scheint erst dann gelungen und abgeschlossen zu sein, wenn wir darüber ins Klare gekommen sind, welcher der beiden Sphären sie angehört. Hier gilt ein Entweder-Oder; ein »Hüben« oder »Drüben«. Die Bestimmung wird nach Art einer räumlichen Festlegung gedacht, die einem Phänomen seinen Platz im Bewußtsein oder im Sein, in der Innen- oder Außenwelt zuweist. Für die kritische Auffassung aber löst sich ebendiese Alt er n at iv e in einen dialektischen Schein auf. Sie zeigt, daß die innere und die äußere Erfahrung nicht fremde und getrennte Dinge sind, sondern daß sie auf gemeinsamen Bedingungen beruhen und daß sie sich nur miteinander und in stetem Bezug aufeinander bilden können. An Stelle der substantiellen Scheidung tritt hier die korrelative Beziehung und Ergänzung. Diese charakteristische Wechselbestimmung aber gilt keineswegs nur im Bereich der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis. Sie bleibt auch dort bestehen, wo wir über den Kreis des Wissens und des theoretischen Begreifens hinausblicken. Auch in der Sprache, auch in der Kunst, ja selbst im Mythos und in der Religion herrscht nicht ein einfaches Gegenüber von »Ich« und »Welt«. Auch hier bildet sich die Anschauung beider in ein und demselben Prozeß aus, der zu einer ständig fortschreitenden »Auseinandersetzung« der beiden Pole führt. Diese Auseinandersetzung würde um ihren eigentlichen Sinn gebracht, wenn sie die Beziehung aufheben, wenn sie zu einer Isolierung des Subjekt- oder Objektpoles führen könnte. Die Zweiteilung: Symbol od er Gegenstand, erweist sich auch hier als unmöglich, da die schärfere Analyse uns lehrt, daß eben die Fu n k ti on des Symbolischen es ist, die die Vorbedingung für alles Erfassen von »Gegenständen« oder Sachverhalten ist.22 Mit dieser Einsicht nimmt auch der Gegensatz zwischen Wirklichkeit und Schein einen anderen Charakter und eine andere Bedeutung an. An der Kunst wird es unmittelbar ersichtlich, daß sie, wenn sie auf den »Schein« schlechthin verzichten wollte, damit | auch die »Erscheinung«, auch den Gegenstand des künstlerischen Anschauens und Bildens, verlieren würde. Am »farbi-

22 Vgl. hierzu »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Erster Teil« (Einleitung), S. 1 ff. [ECW 11, S. 1 ff.].

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gen Abglanz«23 und an ihm allein hat sie das ihr gemäße und das ihr eigentümliche Leben. Kein Künstler kann die Natur darstellen, ohne daß er, in dieser Darstellung und durch sie, sein eigenes Ich zum Ausdruck brächte; kein künstlerischer Ausdruck des Ich ist möglich, ohne daß Gegenständliches, in voller Objektivität und Plastizität, sich vor uns hinstellt. Subjektives und Objektives, Gefühl und Gestalt müssen ineinander übergehen und völlig ineinander aufgehen, wenn ein großes Kunstwerk entstehen soll. Daraus aber ergibt sich, daß und warum das Werk der Kunst niemals eine bloße Abbildung des Subjektiven oder Objektiven, der seelischen oder der gegenständlichen Welt sein kann, sondern daß sich hier eine echte Entdeckung beider vollzieht: eine Entdeckung, die in ihrem allgemeinen Charakter hinter keiner theoretischen Erkenntnis zurückbleibt. In dieser Hinsicht konnte Goethe mit Recht sagen, daß der S t i l auf den tiefsten Grundfesten der Erkenntnis ruhe, auf dem Wesen der Dinge, insofern uns erlaubt ist, es in sichtbaren und greiflichen Gestalten zu erkennen. In der Tat bliebe es eine höchst fragwürdige und in jedem Fall eine sehr kümmerliche Leistung, wenn die Kunst nichts anderes vermöchte, als ein äußeres Dasein oder ein inneres Geschehen einfach zu wiederholen. Wäre sie in diesem Sinne ein Abdruck des Seins, so bestünden alle Vorwürfe, die Platon gegen sie gerichtet hat, zu Recht: Man müßte ihr jegliche »ideelle« Bedeutung absprechen. Denn die echte Idealität, die Idealität des theoretischen Begriffs wie die der anschaulichen Gestaltung, schließt stets ein produktives, nicht ein rezeptives oder imitatives Verhalten in sich. Sie muß Neues finden, statt Altes unter einer anderen Form zu wiederholen. Die Kunst bleibt eine müßige Unterhaltung des Geistes, ein leeres Spiel, sofern sie nicht dieser ihrer höchsten Aufgabe gerecht wird. Man braucht nur einen Blick auf die wahrhaft großen Kunstwerke aller Zeiten zu werfen, um dieses ihres Grundcharakters innezuwerden. Jedes dieser Werke entläßt uns mit dem Eindruck, daß wir hier einem Neuen, zuvor nicht Bekannten begegnen. Es ist nicht bloße Nachahmung oder Wiederholung, was uns hier entgegentritt; sondern immer scheint uns die Welt auf einem neuen Wege und von einer neuen Seite her erschlossen zu werden. Wenn das Epos nichts anderes vermöchte, als vergangenes Geschehen festzuhalten und es im Gedächtnis der | Menschen zu erneuern, so wäre es damit von der bloßen Chronik nicht unterschieden. Aber es genügt, an Homer, an Dante oder Milton zu denken, um sich davon zu überzeugen, daß uns in jedem großen 23 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Eine Tragödie. Zweiter Theil (Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XV/1), S. 7.]

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Epos der Weltliteratur etwas völlig anderes entgegentritt. Hier handelt es sich nirgends um bloßen Bericht über Vergangenes; sondern hier werden wir, am Faden der epischen Erzählung, in eine Weltansicht versetzt, die das Ganze des Geschehens und das Ganze der Menschenwelt in einem neuen Licht erscheinen läßt. Auch der scheinbar »subjektivsten« Kunst, auch der Lyr ik ist dieser Zug eigentümlich. Mehr als jede andere Kunstgattung scheint die Lyrik dem Augenblick verhaftet zu sein. Das lyrische Gedicht will eine einmalige, flüchtige, nie wiederkehrende Stimmung gewissermaßen im Fluge erhaschen und festhalten. Es entspringt einem einzelnen Moment, und es blickt über diesen schöpferischen Moment nicht hinaus. Und doch beweist sich auch in der Lyrik, und vielleicht in ihr am stärksten, jene Art von »Idealität«‚ die Goethe mit den Worten bezeichnet hat, daß es das Eigentümliche der ideellen Denkweise sei, das Ewige im Vorübergehenden sehen zu lassen. Indem sie sich in den Augenblick versenkt und indem sie nichts anderes versucht, als ihn in seinem ganzen Gefühls- und Stimmungsgehalt auszuschöpfen, verleiht sie ihm damit Dauer und Ewigkeit. Wenn das lyrische Gedicht nichts anderes täte, als momentane und individuelle Gefühle des Dichters in Worte zu fassen, so würde es sich damit von jeder anderen sprachlichen Äußerung nicht unterscheiden. Alle Lyrik wäre lediglich Sprachausdruck, wie alle Sprache Lyrik wäre. Benedetto Croce hat in seiner Ästhetik diese Folgerung in der Tat gezogen. Dennoch müssen wir auch hier neben dem »Genus proximum« des Ausdrucks überhaupt die spezifische Differenz des lyrischen Ausdrucks im Auge behalten. Die Lyrik ist keine bloße Steigerung oder Sublimierung des sprachlichen Empfindungslautes. Sie ist nicht lediglich die Verlautbarung einer augenblicklichen Stimmung, und sie will nicht bloß die Skala all der Töne durchmessen, die zwischen den beiden Gegenpolen des Affekts, zwischen Leid und Lust, Schmerz und Freude, Erhebung und Verzweiflung liegen. Wenn es dem lyrischen Dichter gelingt, dem Schmerz »Melodie und Rede«24 zu geben, so hat er damit nicht nur eine neue Hülle um ihn geworfen; er hat ihn damit innerlich gewandelt. Durch das Medium des Affekts läßt er uns in eine seelische Tiefe hineinblicken, die ihm selbst und uns bisher verschlossen und unzugänglich war. Wiederum | braucht man sich nur die eigentlichen Wendepunkte und Höhepunkte in der Entwicklung des lyrischen Stils zu vergegenwärtigen, um dieses seines Grundcharakters gewiß zu werden. Jeder große Lyriker lehrt uns, indem er lediglich sein Ich aussprechen will, ein neues Weltgefühl ken24 [Ders., Torquato Tasso. Ein Schauspiel, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. X, S. 103–244: S. 243.]

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nen. Er zeigt uns Leben und Wirklichkeit in einer Gestalt, in der wir es niemals zuvor gesehen zu haben glauben. Ein Sapphisches Lied oder eine Pindarische Ode, Dantes »Vita nuova« und Petrarcas Sonette, Goethes »Sesenheimer Lieder« und sein »West-östlicher Divan«, Hölderlins oder Leopardis Gedichte: dies alles gibt uns nicht nur eine Reihe einzelner verschwebender Stimmungen, die vor uns auftauchen, um alsbald wieder zu verschwinden und sich ins Nichts zu verlieren. All dies »ist« und »besteht«; es erschließt uns eine Erkenntnis, die sich nicht in abstrakte Begriffe fassen läßt, die aber nichtsdestoweniger als Offenbarung eines Neuen, bisher nicht Gewußten und Gekannten, vor uns steht. Es gehört zu den größten Leistungen der Kunst, daß sie hierzu fähig ist, daß sie noch im Individuellen das Objektive erfühlen und erkennen läßt, während sie andererseits alle ihre objektiven Gestaltungen konkret und individuell vor uns hinstellt und sie damit mit dem stärksten und intensivsten Leben erfüllt. |

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zweite studie. Dingwahrnehmung und Ausdruckswahrnehmung Die innere Krise, in der sich die Philosophie und die Wissenschaft in den letzten hundert Jahren, in der Zeit seit Goethes und Hegels Tod, befunden hat, tritt vielleicht in keinem anderen Zug so deutlich hervor wie in dem Verhältnis, das hier zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Kulturwissenschaft bestand. In beiden Gebieten bedeutete der Fortgang der Forschung einen einzigen ununterbrochenen Siegeszug. Nicht nur in inhaltlicher, sondern auch in methodischer Hinsicht, nicht nur in Bezug auf die ständige Ausdehnung des Stoffes, sondern auch in Bezug auf seine geistige Formung und Durchdringung steht diese Epoche fast einzig da. Die exakte Naturwissenschaft hat nicht nur ihr Gebiet fortschreitend erweitert, sondern sie hat sich auch ganz neue Instrumente der Erkenntnis geschaffen. Die Biologie hat den Zustand der bloßen Deskription und Klassifikation der Naturformen überschritten und ist zu einer echten Theorie der organischen Formen geworden. Was die Kulturwissenschaften betrifft, so standen sie vor einer fast noch größeren Aufgabe. Denn hier galt es erst jenen »sicheren Weg der Wissenschaft«1 zu finden, von dem noch Kant geglaubt hatte, daß er nur der Mathematik und der mathematischen Naturwissenschaft vorbehalten sei. Seit den Tagen der Romantik hat die Geschichtswissenschaft, die klassische Philologie und Altertumskunde, die Sprachwissenschaft, die Literatur- und Kunstwissenschaft, die vergleichende Mythologie und Religionswissenschaft immer neue Ansätze hierzu gemacht. Sie hat ihre Aufgabe immer schärfer erfaßt und ihre spezifischen Denk- und Forschungsmittel immer feiner ausgebildet. Aber allen diesen Triumphen, die das Wissen im Laufe eines einzigen Jahrhunderts zu erreichen vermochte, stand ein schwerer Mangel und ein innerer Schaden gegenüber. Wenn die Forschung in jedem Teilgebiet unaufhaltsam fortschreiten konnte, so wurde doch ihre innere Einheit immer fragwürdiger. Die Philosophie konnte diese Einheit nicht behaupten, und sie vermochte der wachsenden Zersplitterung | nicht Einhalt zu tun. Hegels System ist der letzte große Versuch, das Ganze des Wissens zu umfassen und kraft eines beherrschenden Gedankens zu organisieren. Aber Hegel konnte dieses Ziel nicht erreichen. Denn das Gleichgewicht der Kräfte, das er herstellen wollte, besteht bei ihm nur zum Schein. Hegels Streben und sein philosophischer Ehrgeiz ging dahin, die »Natur« mit der »Idee« zu versöhnen. Aber statt dieser Versöhnung kommt es bei ihm nur zu einer 1

[Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 14 (B IX).]

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Unterwerfung der Natur unter die absolute Idee. Die Natur behält kein Eigenrecht; sie besitzt nur eine scheinbare Selbständigkeit. Sie trägt all ihr Sein von der Idee zu Lehen; denn sie ist nichts als die Idee selbst, sofern diese letztere nicht in ihrem absoluten Sein und in ihrer absoluten Wahrheit, sondern in der Entfremdung von sich selbst, in ihrem »Anderssein« betrachtet wird. Hier lag die eigentliche Achillesferse des Hegelschen Systems. Den Angriffen, die sich mit wachsender Wucht gegen diese Stelle richteten, konnte es auf die Dauer nicht widerstehen. Die Naturwissenschaft und die Geisteswissenschaft als solche schienen freilich durch dieses Schicksal der Hegelschen Lehre nicht unmittelbar berührt zu werden. Beide konnten ihren Besitz aus dem Schiffbruch des Hegelschen Systems retten, und sie glaubten ihn um so eher behaupten und sichern zu können, je mehr sie fortan ihren eigenen Weg, ohne jegliche philosophische Bevormundung, gingen. Aber immer weiter führte sie dieser Weg auseinander; die Trennung schien jetzt ein für allemal besiegelt zu sein. Die Entwicklung der Philosophie im 19. Jahrhundert hat diese Kluft zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Geisteswissenschaft nicht beseitigt, sondern mehr und mehr erweitert. Denn immer mehr trat jetzt die Philosophie selbst in die beiden feindlichen Lager des Naturalismus und Historismus auseinander. Der Kampf zwischen beiden hat sich ständig verschärft. Zwischen Naturalismus und Historismus ließ sich nicht nur keine Vermittlung oder Versöhnung finden; es schien nicht einmal ein gegenseitiges Verständnis zwischen ihnen möglich zu sein. In der ausgezeichneten Darstellung, die Ernst Troeltsch von der Entwicklung des Historismus gegeben hat, kann man den Kampf in all seinen einzelnen Phasen verfolgen.2 Und es schien sich hierbei weniger um ein Problem der Erkenntniskritik und Methodenlehre als um einen Gegensatz der »Weltanschauungen« zu handeln, der rein wissenschaftlichen Argumenten kaum zugänglich | war. Nach einem kurzen Versuch, die Sachlage logisch zu klären, ziehen sich die Gegner auf gewisse metaphysische Grundpositionen zurück, aus denen sie nicht vertrieben werden können, in denen aber freilich jeder nur sich selbst behaupten kann, ohne den anderen überzeugen oder widerlegen zu können. Die Entscheidung zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Kulturwissenschaft, zwischen Naturalismus und Historismus scheint damit fast dem Gefühl und dem subjektiven Geschmack des einzelnen Forschers anheimgegeben zu sein; die Polemik gewinnt mehr und mehr das Übergewicht über die objektive Beweisführung. 2 Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme. Das logische Problem der Geschichtsphilosophie (Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. III), Tübingen 1922.

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Die kritische Philosophie ist in diesem Streit der allgemeinen Aufgabe treu geblieben, die ihr von Kant gestellt worden war. Sie hat vor allem versucht, das Problem auf seinen eigentlichen Boden zurückzuversetzen; sie wollte es der Gerichtsbarkeit der Metaphysik entziehen und es lediglich sub specie der Erkenntniskritik betrachten. Hier liegt die wichtige Leistung, die Windelband in seiner Rede »Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft« (1894) vollbracht hat. Windelbands Theorie sieht in dem Gegensatz zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Geschichte keinen Gegensatz der Weltanschauung, sondern einen solchen der Methoden. Sie kann sich daher nicht einseitig dem Naturalismus oder Historismus verschreiben; sie muß Naturerkenntnis und Geschichtserkenntnis als gleich notwendige und gleichberechtigte Momente des Wissens ansehen, die in ihrem wechselseitigen Verhältnis zu bestimmen sind. Windelbands Unterscheidung zwischen den »nomothetischen« Begriffen der Naturwissenschaft und den »idiographischen« der Geschichte versucht dieses Verhältnis zu fixieren. Aber so einfach und einleuchtend sie auf den ersten Blick auch erscheinen mag, so wird sie doch gerade in dieser Einfachheit dem höchst komplexen Tatbestand, den sie beschreiben will, nicht gerecht. Platon hat vom Dialektiker verlangt, daß er sich nicht bei beliebigen begrifflichen Einteilungen beruhige. Wenn er ein Ganzes nach Arten und Gattungen sondere, so dürfe er hierbei seine Struktur nicht verletzen: Er dürfe nicht zerschneiden, sondern müsse gemäß den »natürlichen Gelenken« (κατ’ ®ρρα $% π#φυκεν) teilen. Daß Windelbands Unte r s c he i dung diese Forderung nicht wirklich erfüllt hat, tritt besonders an der Ausführung und Durchführung seines Gedankens bei Rickert hervor. Auch Rickert trennt durch einen scharfen Schnitt das Naturwissenschaftlich-Allgemeine vom Historisch-Individuellen ab. Aber er sieht sich sofort genötigt zuzugeben, | daß die Wissenschaft selbst, in ihrer konkreten Arbeit, dem Gebot des Logikers keineswegs folgt, sondern daß sie es ständig durchkreuzt. Die Grenzen, die die Theorie zu ziehen genötigt ist, werden in dieser Arbeit immer wieder verwischt; statt der beiden klar gesonderten Extreme finden wir zumeist nur irgendwelche Misch- und Übergangsformen. Mitten in der Naturwissenschaft tauchen Probleme auf, die sich nur mit historischen Begriffsmethoden behandeln lassen, und andererseits hindert nichts, auf historische Gegenstände naturwissenschaftliche Betrachtungsweisen anzuwenden. Jeder wissenschaftliche Begriff ist in der Tat Allgemeines und Besonderes in einem; seine Aufgabe besteht eben darin, die Synthesis zwischen beiden herzustellen. Auch nach Rickerts Theorie schließt jede Erkenntnis des Historisch-Individuellen seine Beziehung auf ein Allgemeines ein. Aber an Stelle des Allgemeinen der naturwissen-

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schaftlichen Gattungsbegriffe und Gesetzesbegriffe tritt in der historischen Erkenntnis nach ihm ein anderes Bezugssystem: das System der Wertbegriffe. Eine Tatsache historisch verstehen und historisch einordnen, heißt sie auf allgemeine Werte beziehen. Nur durch eine solche Beziehung gelingt es der geschichtlichen Erkenntnis, die unabsehbare Fülle des einzelnen, die als solche niemals erfaßbar ist, nach bestimmten Richtlinien zu durchschreiten und sie kraft dieses Prozesses innerlich zu gliedern. Damit aber steht die Theorie vor einem neuen Problem, das um so schwerer wiegt, je mehr man sich ihren eigentlichen Ausgangspunkt vergegenwärtigt. Windelband und Rikkert sprachen als Schüler Kants. Was dieser für die mathematische Naturwissenschaft geleistet hatte, das wollten sie für die Geschichte und für die Kulturwissenschaften leisten. Sie wollten beide der Herrschaft der Metaphysik entziehen und sie, im Sinne der »transzendentalen« Fragestellung Kants, als ein Faktum behandeln, das auf die Bedingungen seiner Möglichkeit untersucht werden sollte. Wenn sich jetzt, als eine dieser Bedingungen, der Besitz eines allgemeinen Wertsystems ergibt, so fragt sich, wie der Historiker zu einem solchen gelangen und wie er seine objektive Geltung begründen soll. Sucht er diese Begründung der Geschichte selbst zu entnehmen, so droht ihm die Gefahr, sich in einen logischen Zirkel zu verwickeln; will er das System, wie Rickert selbst es in seiner Wertphilosophie getan hat, a priori konstruieren, so zeigt sich immer wieder, daß eine solche Konstruktion ohne irgendwelche metaphysische Annahmen nicht durchführbar ist und daß | somit die Frage im Grunde wieder an ebendem Punkte endet, von dem sie ausgegangen war. Einen anderen Weg als Windelband und Rickert ist Hermann Paul gegangen, um zu einer Lösung der Frage nach den Prinzipien der Kulturwissenschaft zu gelangen. Er hat vor beiden den Vorzug, daß er nicht bei allgemeinen begrifflichen Distinktionen stehenblieb, sondern unmittelbar an seine konkrete Forschungsarbeit anknüpfen und aus ihrer Fülle schöpfen konnte. Diese Arbeit galt der Sprachwissenschaft, und die Probleme der Sprachgeschichte bildeten für Paul das Paradigma, an dem er seine Grundanschauung entwickelte. Er geht davon aus, daß keine historische Disziplin bl oß historisch verfahren könne; daß ihr vielmehr immer eine Prinzipienwissenschaft zur Seite stehen müsse. Als solche wird von Paul die P s yc hol og i e in Anspruch genommen.3 Der Bann des bloßen Historismus scheint damit gebrochen. Aber auf der anderen Seite steht die Sprachwissen3 Vgl. Hermann Paul, Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, Halle a. d. S. 31898, S. 1 ff.

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schaft und die Kulturwissenschaft überhaupt damit unmittelbar in Gefahr, dem Psychologismus zu verfallen. Pauls eigene Theorie ist dieser Gefahr nicht entgangen. Sie stützte sich in der Hauptsache auf Herbart und baute auf dessen psychologischen Grundanschauungen auf. Aber damit drangen unvermerkt auch bestimmte Elemente der Herbartschen Metaphysik in sie ein, die ihren rein empirischen Charakter gefährdeten. »Man kann sich nicht«, so urteilt Karl Voßler, »an […] Herbart anlehnen, ohne die Metaphysik dieses Philosophen in Kauf zu bekommen. Was echte Metaphysik ist, läßt sich [nicht] an der Schwelle der Erfahrungswissenschaften […] verabschieden. In der Tat ist von Herbarts agnostischem Mystizismus mit seinen unerkennbaren Dingen an sich ein dunkler Schatten in Pauls gesamte Sprachwissenschaft herübergefallen; und gerade die Grundfrage, die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache, kann nirgends bei ihm ins Licht treten.«4 Aber was bedeutet die Frage nach dem »Wesen« der Sprache oder nach dem irgendeines anderen Objekts der Kulturwissenschaft, wenn sie weder in rein historischem noch in rein psychologischem, noch in metaphysischem Sinne gestellt werden soll? Bleibt außerhalb dieser Gebiete überhaupt noch irgend etwas übrig, wonach mit Recht und Fug gefragt werden kann? Teilen sie nicht alles »Geistige« vollständig unter sich auf? Hegel unterscheidet die drei Sphären des subjek | tiven, des objektiven und des absoluten Geistes. Die Phänomene des subjektiven Geistes studiert die Psychologie; der objektive Geist ist uns nirgends anders als in seiner Geschichte gegeben; das Wesen des absoluten Geistes enthüllt sich uns in der Metaphysik. Diese Trias also scheint den gesamten Inbegriff der Kultur und alle ihre Einzelformen und Einzelgegenstände zu umfassen. Der Begriff, als logischer und metaphysischer Begriff, scheint uns nicht weiter zu führen als bis zu dieser Einteilung und Dreiteilung. Aber der Unterschied, um den es sich hier handelt, hat noch eine andere Seite, die durch die Analyse der Be g r if f e nicht vollständig sichtbar gemacht werden kann. Hier müssen wir vielmehr einen Schritt weiter zurückgehen. Schon in der Wah r n eh m u n g s elb s t läßt sich ein Moment aufweisen, das in seiner konsequenten Weiterentwicklung auf ebendiesen Unterschied hinführt. Man muß in diese Grund- und Urschicht aller Bewußtseinsphänomene vorstoßen, um in ihr den gesuchten Archimedischen Punkt, das »δς μοι […] πο2 στ3«,5 zu finden. Hier werden wir daher in gewissem Sinne über die Grenzen der bloßen Karl Voßler, Geist und Kultur in der Sprache, Heidelberg 1925, S. 5 f. [Archimedes, Fragm. 15, in: Opera omnia cum commentariis Eutocii, hrsg. v. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Bd. II, Leipzig 1913, S. 548.] 4 5

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Logik hinausgewiesen. Die Analyse der Begriffsform als solcher kann die spezifische Differenz, die zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Kulturwissenschaft besteht, nicht vollständig aufhellen. Wir müssen uns vielmehr entschließen, den Hebel noch tiefer anzusetzen. Wir müssen uns der Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung anvertrauen und fragen, was sie uns für unser Problem zu geben hat. Wenn wir die Wahrnehmung in ihrem einfachen phänomenalen Bestand zu beschreiben suchen, so zeigt sie uns gewissermaßen ein doppeltes Antlitz. Sie enthält zwei Momente, die in ihr innig verschmolzen sind, deren keines sich aber auf das andere reduzieren läßt. Sie bleiben in ihrer Bedeutung voneinander geschieden, wenngleich es nicht gelingt, sie faktisch zu sondern. Es gibt keine Wahrnehmung, die nicht einen bestimmten »Gegenstand« meint und auf ihn gerichtet ist. Aber dieser notwendige objektive Bezug stellt sich uns in einer zweifachen Richtung dar, die wir, kurz und schematisch, als die Richtung auf das »Es« und als die Richtung auf das »Du« bezeichnen können. Immer besteht in der Wahrnehmung eine Auseinanderhaltung des Ichpoles vom Gegenstandspol. Aber die Welt, die dem Ich gegenübertritt, ist in dem einen Falle eine Dingwelt, in dem anderen Falle eine Welt von Personen. Wir betrachten sie das eine Mal als ein Ganzes räumlicher Objekte und als den Inbegriff zeitlicher Veränderungen, | die sich an diesen Objekten vollziehen, während wir sie das andere Mal als etwas »Unseresgleichen« betrachten. Die Andersheit bleibt in beiden Fällen bestehen; aber in ihr selbst zeigt sich ein charakteristischer Unterschied. Das »Es« ist ein anderes schlechthin, ein aliud; das »Du« ist ein Alter ego. Es ist unverkennbar, daß, je nachdem wir uns in der einen oder der anderen Richtung bewegen, die Wahrnehmung für uns einen anderen Sinn und gewissermaßen eine besondere Färbung und Tönung gewinnt. Daß der Mensch die Wirklichkeit in dieser doppelten Weise e rl e bt, ist unverkennbar und unbestritten. Hier handelt es sich um ein einfaches Faktum, an dem keine Theorie rütteln und das sie nicht aus der Welt schaffen kann. Warum fällt es der Theorie so schwer, dieses Faktum zuzugeben? Warum hat sie immer wieder den Versuch gemacht, nicht nur von ihm zu abstrahieren – was methodisch durchaus erlaubt ist –, sondern es auch geradezu zu leugnen und zu verleugnen? Den Grund für diese Anomalie finden wir, wenn wir uns die Tendenz vergegenwärtigen, der alle Theorie ihren Ursprung verdankt und die in ihr um so mehr erstarkt, je weiter sie fortschreitet. Diese Tendenz besteht eben darin, den einen Wahrnehmungsfaktor zwar nicht gänzlich zu unterdrücken, aber ihn zu beschränken – ihm mehr und mehr Raum abzugewinnen. Alle theoretische Welterklärung findet sich bei

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ihrem ersten Auftreten einer anderen geistigen Macht: der Macht des Mythos, gegenüber. Um sich gegen dieselbe zu behaupten, müssen Philosophie und Wissenschaft nicht nur im einzelnen die mythischen Erklärungen durch andere ersetzen, sondern sie müssen die mythische Auffassung des Seins und Geschehens als Ganzes bestreiten und verwerfen. Sie müssen den Mythos nicht nur in seinen Gebilden und Gestalten, sondern in seiner Wurzel angreifen. Diese Wurzel aber ist keine andere als die Ausdruckswahrnehmung. Der Primat der Ausdruckswahrnehmung vor der Dingwahrnehmung ist das, was die mythische Weltansicht charakterisiert. Für sie gibt es noch keine streng bestimmte und gesonderte »Sachwelt«. Denn es fehlt noch an jenen konstanten Einheiten, deren Gewinnung das erste Ziel aller theoretischen Erkenntnis ist. Jedes Gebilde kann sich in das andere wandeln; alles kann aus allem werden. Die Gestalt der Dinge droht in jedem Augenblick zu verfließen; denn sie baut sich nicht aus festen Eigenschaften auf. »Eigenschaften« und »Beschaffenheiten« sind Momente, die uns nur die empirische Beobachtung kennen lehrt, sofern | sie, in immer erneuten und über lange Zeiträume erstreckten Ansätzen, die gleichen Bestimmungen oder dieselben Verhältnisse wiederfindet. Eine solche Gleichartigkeit und Gleichförmigkeit kennt der Mythos nicht. Für ihn kann die Welt in jedem Augenblick ein anderes Gesicht gewinnen, weil der Affekt es ist, der dieses Gesicht bestimmt. In Liebe und Haß, in Hoffnung und Furcht, in Freude und Schreck verwandeln sich die Züge der Wirklichkeit. Jede dieser Erregungen kann eine neue mythische Gestalt, einen »Augenblicksgott« aus sich hervorgehen lassen.6 Indem Philosophie und Wissenschaft dieser mythischen Reaktion eine eigene Form der Aktion gegenüberstellen, indem sie eine selbständige Weise der Betrachtung, der »Theorie« ausbilden, sehen sie sich allmählich mehr und mehr zu dem entgegengesetzten Extrem gedrängt. Sie müssen die Quelle zu verstopfen suchen, aus der der Mythos sich ständig nährt, indem sie der Ausdruckswahrnehmung jegliches Eigenrecht bestreiten. Die Wissenschaft baut eine Welt auf, in der zunächst an die Stelle der Ausdrucksqualitäten, der »Charaktere« des Vertrauten oder Furchtbaren, des Freundlichen oder Schrecklichen, die reinen S in n es q u alit ät en der Farbe, des Tones usf. getreten sind. Und auch diese letzteren müssen immer weiter reduziert werden. Sie sind nur »sekundäre« Eigenschaften, denen die primären, die rein quantitativen Bestimmungen zugrunde liegen. Diese letzteren bilden 6 Vgl. hierzu meine Schrift »Sprache und Mythos. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Götternamen«, Leipzig/Berlin 1925 (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, Bd. 6), S. 29 ff. [ECW 16, S. 227–311: S. 257 ff.].

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all das, was für die Erkenntnis als objektive Wirklichkeit zurückbleibt. Die Physik zieht diese Konsequenz. Und die Philosophie muß, sofern sie kein anderes Zeugnis als das der Physik gelten läßt, noch weiter gehen. Der strenge »Physikalismus« erklärt nicht nur alle Beweise, die man für die Existenz des »Fremdpsychischen« zu geben versucht hat, für unzulänglich oder ungültig, sondern er leugnet auch, daß man nach einem solchen Fremdpsychischen, nach einer Welt, nicht des »Es«, sondern des »Du«, mit Sinn f rag en kann. Nicht nur die Antwort, sondern schon die Frage ist mythisch, nicht philosophisch, und sie muß daher radikal ausgemerzt werden.7 Wenn die Philosophie nichts anderes als Erkenntniskritik wäre und wenn sie den Begriff der Erkenntnis so einschränken dürfte, daß er lediglich die »exakte« Wissenschaft umfaßt, so könnte man sich mit dieser Entscheidung begnügen. Die physikalische Sprache wird dann | die ein zig e »intersubjektive Sprache«, und alles, was ihr nicht angehört, fällt als bloße Täuschung aus unserem Weltbild heraus. »Von der Wissenschaft«, so erklärt Carnap, »verlangt man […] daß sie nicht nur subjektive Bedeutung hat, sondern für die verschiedenen Subjekte, die an ihr teilhaben, sinnvoll und gültig ist. Die Wissenschaft ist das System der intersubjektiv gültigen Sätze. Besteht unsere Auffassung zu Recht, daß die physikalische Sprache die einzige intersubjektive Sprache ist, so folgt daraus, daß die physikalische Sprache d i e Sprache der Wissenschaft ist.«8 Diese Sprache ist nicht nur »intersubjektiv«, sie ist auch u n iv er s al, d. h., jeder Satz läßt sich in sie übersetzen; und was als unübersetzbarer Rest stehenzubleiben scheint, ist überhaupt kein Sachverhalt. Nimmt man diesen Standpunkt an, so würde es z. B. eine Sprach wissen sch af t nur geben, sofern sich an dem Phänomen »Sprache« gewisse physische Bestimmungen zeigen, wie sie in der Lautphysiologie oder der Phonetik beschrieben werden. Daß dagegen die Sprache »Ausdruck« ist, daß sich in ihr »Seelisches« offenbart, daß z. B. Wunschsätze, Befehlssätze, Fragesätze verschiedenen seelischen Haltungen entsprechen: dies alles wäre so wenig konstatierbar, wie es schon die Existenz des »Fremdpsychischen« als solche ist. Das gleiche würde a fortiori von der Kunstwissenschaft, der Religionswissenschaft und allen anderen »Kulturwissenschaften« gelten – sofern sie etwas anderes sein wollen als die Darstellung physischer Dinge 7 Vgl. hierzu Rudolf Carnap, Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie. Das Fremdpsychische und der Realismusstreit, Berlin 1928. 8 Vgl. ders., Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft, in: Erkenntnis 2 (1931), S. 432–465: S. 441 ff. [Zitat S. 448].

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und der Veränderungen, die sich an ihnen abspielen. Die Religionsgeschichte hätte es etwa mit jenen Verhaltungsweisen zu tun, die wir mit dem Namen Ritus und Kultus, Gebet und Opfer bezeichnen. Art und Verlauf dieser Verhaltungsweisen könnte sie aufs genaueste beschreiben, aber sie müßte sich jedes Urteils über ihren »Sinn« enthalten: Sie besäße kein Kriterium, durch welches sie diese »heiligen Handlungen« von anderen, die in das Gebiet des »Profanen« fallen, unterscheiden könnte. Auch der Umstand, daß es sich in ihnen um soziales Verhalten, nicht um individuelles Verhalten handelt, hülfe nicht weiter, denn die Erkenntnis des Sozialen wäre an die gleiche Bedingung gebunden. Sie gälte nur im Sinne rein behavioristischer Darstellung; sie würde uns zeigen, was unter bestimmten Bedingungen an gewissen Menschengruppen gesch i eh t ; aber wir müßten uns, wenn wir nicht bloßen | Illusionen verfallen wollen, sorgfältig jedes Urteils darüber enthalten, was dieses Geschehen »bedeutet«, d. h. welche Vorstellungen, Gedanken, Gefühle in ihm ihren Niederschlag finden. Diese negative Konsequenz aber schließt für uns zugleich eine positive Einsicht in sich. Man kann dem »Physikalismus« die Anerkennung nicht versagen, daß er eine wichtige Klärung des Problems herbeigeführt, daß er das Moment, auf welches wir in der Unterscheidung der Kulturwissenschaft von der Naturwissenschaft den Nachdruck legen müssen, als solches g es eh en hat. Aber er hat den gordischen Knoten zerhauen, statt ihn zu lösen. Die Lösung kann nur einer phänomenologischen Analyse gelingen, die die Frage in ihrer wirklichen Allgemeinheit faßt. Wir müssen, ohne Vorbehalt und ohne erkenntnistheoretisches Dogma, jede Art von Sprache, die wissenschaftliche Sprache, die Sprache der Kunst, der Religion usf., in ihrer Eigenart zu verstehen suchen; wir müssen bestimmen, wieviel sie zum Aufbau einer »gemeinsamen Welt« beiträgt. Daß die Erkenntnis vom »Physischen« die Grundlage und das Substrat für jeden derartigen Aufbau ist, steht fest. Es gibt kein rein »Ideelles«, das diese Stütze entbehren könnte. Das Ideelle besteht nur, insoweit es sich in irgendeiner Weise sinnlich-stofflich darstellt und sich in dieser Darstellung verkörpert. Die Religion, die Sprache, die Kunst: das alles ist für uns nicht anders faßbar als in den Monumenten, die sie sich geschaffen haben. Sie sind die Wahrzeichen, die Denk- und Erinnerungsmale, in denen wir allein einen religiösen, einen sprachlichen, einen künstlerischen Sinn erfassen können. Und ebendieses Ineinander macht dasjenige aus, woran wir ein Kulturobjekt erkennen. Ein Kulturobjekt hat, wie jedes andere Objekt, seine Stelle in Raum und Zeit. Es hat sein Hier und Jetzt, es entsteht und vergeht. Und soweit wir dieses Hier und Jetzt, dieses Entstehen und Vergehen beschreiben, brauchen

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wir über den Kreis physischer Feststellungen nicht hinauszugehen. Auf der andern Seite aber erscheint in ihm eben das Physische selbst in einer neuen F un k t io n . Es »ist« und »wird« nicht nur, sondern in diesem Sein und Werden »erscheint« ein anderes. Dieses Erscheinen eines »Sinnes«, der nicht vom Physischen abgelöst ist, sondern an ihm und in ihm verkörpert ist, ist das gemeinsame Moment aller jener Inhalte, die wir mit dem Namen »Kultur« bezeichnen. Sicherlich kann uns nichts daran hindern, von diesem Moment a bz us e he n und uns in dieser Art der Abstraktion, des Absehens | und Wegsehens, gegen ihren »Symbolwert« blind zu machen. Wir können den David Michelangelos auf die Beschaffenheit des Marmors untersuchen; wir können an Raffaels »Schule von Athen« nichts anderes sehen als eine Leinwand, die mit Farbflecken von bestimmter Qualität und in bestimmter räumlicher Anordnung bedeckt ist. In diesem Augenblick ist das Kunstwerk zu einem Ding unter Dingen geworden, und seine Erkenntnis steht unter denselben Bedingungen, die für jedes andere raumzeitliche Dasein gelten. Aber sobald wir uns in die Da r s te l l ung versenken und uns rein ihr selbst hingeben, stellt sich der Unterschied wieder her. Immer unterscheiden wir an ihr zwei Grundmomente, die nur in ihrer Vereinigung und Durchdringung das Ganze des künstlerischen Gegenstandes konstituieren. Die Farben auf dem Gemälde Raffaels haben »Darstellungsfunktion«‚ sofern sie auf ein Objektives hinweisen. Wir verlieren uns nicht in ihrer Betrachtung, wir sehen sie nicht als Farben; sondern wir sehen durch sie ein Gegenständliches, eine bestimmte Szene, ein Gespräch zwischen zwei Philosophen. Aber auch dieses Objektive ist nicht der einzige und wahrhafte Gegenstand des Gemäldes. Das Gemälde ist nicht einfach die Darstellung einer historischen Szene, eines Gesprächs zwischen Platon und Aristoteles. Denn nicht Platon und Aristoteles, sondern Raffael ist es, der hier in Wahrheit zu uns spricht. Diese drei Dimensionen: die Dimension des physischen Daseins, des gegenständlich Dargestellten, des persönlich Ausgedrückten, sind bestimmend und notwendig für alles, was nicht bloß »Wirkung«‚ sondern »Werk« ist und was in diesem Sinne nicht nur der »Natur«, sondern auch der »Kultur« angehört. Die Ausschaltung einer dieser Dimensionen, die Einschließung in eine einzelne Ebene der Betrachtungen, ergibt immer nur ein Flächenbild der Kultur, verrät uns aber nichts von ihrer eigentlichen Tiefe. Der strikte Positivismus freilich pflegt diese Tiefe zu leugnen, weil er fürchtet, sich in ihrer Dunkelheit zu verlieren. Und man muß ihm zugestehen, daß der Ausdruckswahrnehmung, wenn man sie mit der Dingwahrnehmung vergleicht, eine besondere Schwierigkeit und »Unbegreiflichkeit« innezuwohnen scheint. Diese Unbegreiflichkeit

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besteht nicht für die naive Weltansicht. Sie vertraut sich der Ausdrucksuntersuchung unbefangen an und fühlt sich in ihr völlig heimisch. Keinerlei theoretische Argumente können sie in ihrer Sicherheit erschüttern. Aber dies ändert sich, sobald die Reflexion sich des Pro | blems bemächtigt. Alle logischen »Beweise« für die Existenz des Fremdpsychischen, die man in der Geschichte der Philosophie versucht hat, haben ihr Ziel verfehlt, und alle psychologischen Erklärungen, die man gegeben hat, sind unsicher und fragwürdig. Es ist nicht schwer, die Mängel dieser Beweise und dieser Erklärungen zu durchschauen.9 Die Skepsis konnte hier stets den schwachen Punkt finden, an welchem sie mit ihren Angriffen eingesetzt hat. Kant hat der zweiten Auflage der Vernunftkritik eine besondere Widerlegung des »psychologischen Idealismus« eingefügt. Er wollte durch diese Widerlegung, wie er sagt, den »Skandal der Philosophie und [der] allgemeinen Menschenvernunft« beseitigen, daß beide gezwungen sein sollten, das Dasein der Dinge außer uns bloß auf Glauben anzunehmen.10 Dieser Skandal verschärft sich noch, wenn es sich nicht um das Dasein der »Außenwelt«, sondern um das Dasein fremder Subjekte handelt. Und doch haben selbst überzeugte metaphysische Dogmatiker sich außerstande erklärt, den skeptischen Argumenten an dieser Stelle etwas Entscheidendes entgegenzustellen. Sie haben den Zweifel als unwiderleglich, aber freilich auch als unerheblich betrachtet. Schopenhauer sagt, daß der theoretische Egoismus, der alle Erscheinungen, außer seinem eigenen Individuum, für bloße Phantome hält, durch Beweise nimmermehr zu widerlegen sei. Dennoch könne er als ernstliche Überzeugung lediglich im Tollhause gefunden werden, in welchem Fall es dann gegen ihn nicht sowohl eines Beweises als vielmehr einer Kur bedürfte. Man könne daher den Solipsismus als eine kleine Grenzfestung ansehen, die zwar auf immer unbezwinglich sei, deren Besatzung aber durchaus nicht aus ihr herauskönne, daher man an ihr vorbeigehen und ohne Gefahr sie im Rücken liegen lassen darf.11 Es ist freilich für die Philosophie ein unbefriedigender Zustand, wenn sie hier an den »gesunden Menschenverstand« appellieren muß, den zu kritisieren und im Zaume zu halten sie sonst als eine ihrer Hauptaufgaben ansieht. Daß der Prozeß der Begründung nicht ins Endlose weitergehen kann, daß wir schließlich auf etwas stoßen müssen, das 9 Vgl. hierzu »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Dritter Teil«, Berlin 1929, S. 95 ff. [ECW 13, S. 90 ff.]. 10 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 30 (B XXXVIII Anm.). 11 Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (2. Buch, § 19), Bd. II (Sämmtliche Werke in sechs Bänden, hrsg. v. Eduard Grisebach, Bd. II), 2., mehrfach berichtigter Abdruck, Leipzig o. J., S. 232 ff.

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nur noch »aufweisbar«, nicht aber beweisbar ist, ist ersichtlich. Dies gilt sowohl vom Wissen um das eigene Ich, wie es vom Wissen von der Außenwelt gilt. Auch das »Cogito ergo sum« ist, wie Descartes immer wieder | betont hat, kein logischer Schluß, kein argumentum in forma, sondern eine rein intuitive Erkenntnis. Im Gebiet der eigentlichen Grundprobleme können wir die Reflexion nicht allein walten lassen; wir müssen auf Erkenntnisquellen von anderer und ursprünglicherer Art zurückgehen. Was wir dagegen fordern müssen, ist dies, daß die Phänomene, sobald wir sie ins helle Licht der Reflexion rücken, keine inneren Widersprüche aufweisen, sondern miteinander im Einklang stehen. Diese Bedingung wäre nicht erfüllt, wenn die »natürliche« Weltansicht uns unwiderstehlich zu einer These drängen würde, die die Theorie als schlechthin unbegründbar oder als sinnlos bezeichnen müßte. Es gilt oft als eine fast selbstverständliche, keiner näheren Begründung bedürftige Annahme, daß alles, was der Erkenntnis unmittelbar zugänglich ist, bestimmte physische Daten sind. Die sinnlichen Gegebenheiten: Farbe und Ton, Tast- und Temperaturempfindungen, Geruch und Geschmack, sind das einzige, was unmittelbar erfahrbar ist. Anderes, insbesondere seelisches Sein, mag zwar aus diesen primären Gegebenheiten gefolgert werden, bleibt aber eben deshalb unsicher. Aber die phänomenologische Analyse bestätigt diese Voraussetzung keineswegs. Weder die inhaltliche noch die genetische Betrachtung berechtigt uns dazu, der Sinneswahrnehmung vor der Ausdruckswahrnehmung den Vorrang zu geben. In rein genetischer Hinsicht zeigt uns sowohl die Ontogenese wie die Phylogenese, die Entwicklung des individuellen Bewußtseins wie die des Gattungsbewußtseins, daß ebenjene Data, die zumeist als der Anfang aller Wirklichkeitserkenntnis angesehen werden, erst ein relativ spätes Produkt sind und daß es eines mühsamen und langwierigen Abstraktionsprozesses bedarf, um sie aus dem Ganzen der menschlichen Erfahrung zu gewinnen. Daß die ersten Erlebnisse des Kindes Ausdruckserlebnisse sind, dafür spricht alle unbefangene psychologische Beobachtung.12 Die Wahrnehmung von »Dingen« und »Dingqualitäten« tritt erst weit später in ihre Rechte. Es ist insbesondere die S pr a c he , die hier den Ausschlag gibt. In dem Maße, als wir die Welt nicht nur in bloßen Eindrücken erleben, sondern als wir diesem Erleben sprachlichen Ausdruck geben, wächst auch die Kraft des gegenständlichen Vor-

12 Vgl. hierzu »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Dritter Teil«, S. 74 ff. [ECW 13, S. 69 ff.].

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stellens.13 Aber | daß sie im Gebiet der Sprache selbst niemals alleinherrschend werden kann: das bezeugt uns schon die Tatsache, daß aller sprachlicher Ausdruck »metaphorischer« Ausdruck ist und bleibt. Im Organismus der Sprache bildet die Metapher ein unentbehrliches Element; ohne sie würde die Sprache ihr Leben verlieren und zu einem konventionellen Zeichensystem erstarren. Aber auch die eigentlich th eo r et is ch e Weltansicht, die Weltansicht der Philosophie und Wissenschaft, beginnt keineswegs damit, das Universum als einen Inbegriff bloß »physischer« Dinge zu betrachten. Die Auffassung des Kosmos als ein System von Körpern und die Auffassung des Geschehens als eine Wirkung rein physikalischer Kräfte ist erst spät hervorgetreten; wir können sie kaum weiter als bis ins 17. Jahrhundert zurückverfolgen. Platon beginnt einen der Beweise, die er für die Unsterblichkeit der Seele gegeben hat, mit der Betrachtung, daß die Seele der »Anfang aller Bewegung« ist; denken wir sie ausgelöscht, so müßte das Universum zum Stillstand kommen. Bei Aristoteles wird dieser Gedanke zum Grundpfeiler der Kosmologie. Wenn die Himmelskörper sich in ewiger Bewegung erhalten, so kann dies nur darin seinen Grund haben, daß es ein seelisches Prinzip ist, dem diese Bewegung entstammt. Noch Giordano Bruno, der Herold und Verkünder des neuen kopernikanischen Weltbildes, erklärt die Lehre von der Beseelung der Himmelskörper als eine Überzeugung, in der alle Philosophien übereinstimmen. Bei Descartes begegnen wir zum ersten Mal dem Gedanken eines streng mathematischen und mechanischen Universums; und seither greift er unaufhaltsam weiter. Aber man sieht, daß dieser Gedanke ein Letztes, nicht ein Erstes ist. Es ist ein Abstraktionsprodukt, zu dem sich die Wissenschaft in ihrem Bestreben, die Naturphänomene zu berechnen und zu beherrschen, gezwungen sieht. Durch ihn versucht der Mensch, wie Descartes selbst erklärt, sich zum »Herrscher und Besitzer der Natur« (»maistres et possesseurs de la Nature«)14 zu machen. Die physische »Natur« der Dinge ist dasjenige in den Erscheinungen, was immer in der gleichen Weise wiederkehrt und was sich in dieser Wiederkehr auf strenge, unverbrüchliche Gesetze bringen läßt. Sie ist das, was wir, als ein Konstantes und Gleichbleibendes, aus dem Inbegriff der uns gegebenen Phänomene ausscheiden können. Aber das auf diese Weise Abgelöste und Herausgelöste ist erst das Produkt der theoreNäheres in meinem Aufsatz »Le langage et la construction du monde«. [Rene Descartes, Discours de la méthode. Pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences, in: Œuvres, hrsg. v. Charles Adam u. Paul Tannery, Bd. VI, Paris 1902, S. 1–78: S. 62.] 13 14

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tischen Reflexion. Es ist ein »Terminus ad quem«‚ nicht ein »Terminus a quo«; ein Ende, aber kein Anfang. Die Naturwissenschaft als solche soll | und muß freilich ihren Weg entschlossen bis zu diesem Ende verfolgen. Sie sucht alles »Personale« nicht nur mehr und mehr zu verdrängen, sondern sie strebt nach einem Weltbild, aus dem es prinzipiell ausgeschaltet ist.15 Erst mit dem Absehen von der Welt des Ich und des Du erreicht sie ihre wahre Absicht. Der astronomische Kosmos war der erste, an dem diese Betrachtungsweise ihren höchsten Triumph und ihren endgültigen Sieg zu erringen schien. Bei Kepler wird die Vorstellung der »Planetenseelen«‚ die ihn anfangs noch ganz beherrscht, um so mehr zurückgedrängt, je mehr er zu einer eigentlichen mathematischen Theorie der Planetenbewegung vordringt; bei Galilei wird diese Vorstellung bereits als eine reine Fiktion erklärt. Die Philosophie der neueren Zeit ging auf diesem Wege noch weiter. Sie forderte die Ausschaltung der »okkulten« psychischen Qualitäten nicht nur für die Astronomie und Physik, sondern für alles Naturgeschehen. Auch die Biologie durfte hier nicht zurückbleiben; auch für sie schien die Herrschaft des »Vitalismus« zu Ende zu sein. Das Leben wird jetzt nicht nur aus der anorganischen, sondern auch aus der organischen Natur verwiesen. Auch der Organismus untersteht den Gesetzen des Mechanismus, den Gesetzen von Druck und Stoß, und geht vollständig in ihnen auf. Alle Versuche, dieser radikalen »Entseelung« der Natur mit metaphysischen Argumenten entgegenzutreten, sind nicht nur gescheitert, sondern sie haben die Sache, der sie dienen wollten, kompromittiert. Im 19. Jahrhundert hat noch Gustav Theodor Fechner einen solchen Versuch gewagt. Er war selbst Physiker, und er wollte im Gebiet der Seelenlehre der Psychophysik den Weg bahnen. Aber sein philosophisches Bestreben ging vor allem dahin, die mechanische Weltauffassung an ihrer Wurzel anzugreifen. Der »Nachtansicht« der Naturwissenschaft wollte er die »Tagesansicht« gegenüberstellen. Es ist für unser Problem äußerst lehrreich, die Methode zu verfolgen, deren Fechner sich hierbei bediente. Sie bestand in nichts anderem als darin, daß er von der Ausdruckswahrnehmung ausging und diese wieder in ihre vollen Rechte einsetzen wollte. Diese Art der Wahrnehmung | kann nach Fechner nicht nur nicht trügen, sondern sie ist im Grunde das 15 Daß diese Ausschaltung des »Personalen«‚ auch im Weltbild der Physik, niemals a b s o lu t gelingen kann, sondern daß sie nur als ein Grenzbegriff der naturwissenschaftlichen Methode anzusehen ist, hat Schrödinger in einem interessanten Aufsatz dargelegt: Erwin Schrödinger, Quelques remarques au sujet des bases de la connaissance scientifique, in: Scientia 57 (1935), S. 181–191.

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einzige Mittel, durch das wir uns aus dem Bannkreis des abstrakten Denkens befreien und uns der Wirklichkeit nähern können. Den kühnsten und merkwürdigsten Vorstoß in dieser Richtung hat Fechner in seiner Schrift »Nanna oder Über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen« unternommen. Hier werden schlechthin alle Phänomene der Pflanzenwelt als Ausdrucksphänomene gefaßt und in diesem Sinne gedeutet. Die Pflanzen sind für Fechner »Seelen« – »Seelen […] die still blühen, duften, im Schlürfen des Taues ihren Durst, im Knospentriebe ihren Drang, im Wenden gegen das Licht noch eine höhere Sehnsucht befriedigen«.16 Aber die mechanische Theorie hat keine Mühe, all die Erscheinungen, in denen Fechner den Beweis für ein Seelenleben der Pflanzen finden wollte, auf »Tropismen« zurückzuführen, die sich durch bekannte physikalische und chemische Kräfte erklären lassen. Nach ihr reichen Heliotropismus, Geotropismus, Phototropismus vollständig aus, um von den Vorgängen des pflanzlichen Lebens Rechenschaft zu geben. Die modernen Begründer der Tropismentheorie haben nicht gezögert, dieselbe auch auf das tierische Leben zu erstrecken, und sie haben geglaubt, hier den strengen empirischen Nachweis für Descartes’ These vom Automatismus der Tiere gefunden zu haben.17 Und schließlich zeigte sich, daß selbst die P sy ch o lo gie, die Lehre von den Bewußtseinserscheinungen, dieser Tendenz der fortschreitenden Objektivierung und Mechanisierung keinen Einhalt gebieten kann. Auch das »Cogito« Descartes’ bildet keine sichere und unübersteigliche Scheidewand mehr. Für Descartes selbst bedeutete es die scharfe Grenzlinie zwischen »Natur« und »Geist«, weil es der Ausdruck des »reinen Denkens« war. Aber gibt es ein solches reines Denken, oder ist das, was man dafür ausgegeben hat, nicht vielleicht lediglich eine rationalistische Konstruktion? Der Versuch, die These des Empirismus in radikaler Schärfe durchzuführen, muß notwendig auf diese Frage führen. Einer der scharfsinnigsten modernen Analytiker der Psychologie hat sie sich ausdrücklich gestellt. In seinen »Essays in Radical Empiricism« wirft William James die Frage auf, ob es irgendeinen Erfahrungsbeweis für dasjenige gebe, was wir gemeinhin mit dem Namen »Bewußtsein« bezeichnen. Und er gelangt zu einer negativen | Entscheidung. Die Psychologie muß nach ihm auf den Begriff des Bewußtseins verzichten, wie sie gelernt hat, auf den Begriff der Seelensubstanz Verzicht zu leisten. Denn in Wahrheit 16 Gustav Theodor Fechner, Nanna oder Über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen, Hamburg/Leipzig 41908, S. 10. 17 Vgl. Jacques Loeb, Vorlesungen über die Dynamik der Lebenserscheinungen, Leipzig 1906.

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handelt es sich hier nur um zwei verschiedene Bezeichnungen für ein und dieselbe Sache. Die Behauptung, daß es ein »reines Denken«, ein »reines Selbstbewußtsein«‚ eine »transzendentale Einheit der Apperzeption« gebe, schwebt nach James im Leeren. Kein nachweisbares psychologisches Datum kann für sie angeführt werden. Sie ist ein bloßes Echo, ein schwacher Nachhall, den die metaphysische Seelensubstanz bei ihrem Verschwinden hinterlassen hat. Denn es gibt kein Ichbewußtsein und kein Ichgefühl ohne bestimmte Körpergefühle. »[…] ich bin fest überzeugt davon«, so erklärt James, »daß der Strom des Denkens, den ich als Phänomen ausdrücklich und nachdrücklich anerkenne, nur ein ungenauer Ausdruck für etwas ist, das sich bei schärferer Analyse in der Hauptsache als der Strom meines Atmens (the stream of my breathing) herausstellt. Das ›Ich denke‹, von dem Kant sagt, daß es alle meine Vorstellungen muß begleiten können, ist das ›Ich atme‹‚ das sie tatsächlich begleitet.«18 Vom Standpunkt eines strikten Empirismus, der es lediglich mit der Feststellung der Tatsachen des Bewußtseins zu tun hat, scheint also zuletzt selbst der Beg r if f des Selbstbewußtseins, wenn man ihn im Sinne der klassisch-idealistischen Tradition versteht, fragwürdig zu werden. James selbst fügt freilich sofort hinzu, daß diese Fragwürdigkeit nicht das Phänomen als solches betrifft, sondern nur einer bestimmten Deutung desselben anhaftet. Wenn er die Tatsache des »reinen Selbstbewußtseins« bestreitet, so geschieht dies nur, sofern mit diesem Namen ein für sich bestehendes Ding bezeichnet werden soll. Was er leugnet, ist nur die substantielle Natur des Ich, nicht aber seine rein f u n k t io n elle Bedeutung. »Let me then immediately explain«, so sagt er ausdrücklich, »that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it […] stand[s] for a function.«19 Hält man diese Fragestellung fest, so rückt auch das Problem des Verhältnisses von Ich und Du alsbald in ein neues Licht. Beide können jetzt nicht mehr als selbständige Dinge oder Wesenheiten beschrieben werden, als für sich daseiende Objekte, die gewissermaßen durch eine räumliche Kluft getrennt sind und 18 William James, Does »Consciousness« exist?, in: Essays in Radical Empiricism, London 1912, S. 1–38: S. 36 [Zitat S. 36 f.: »[…] I am as confident as I am of anything that, in myself, the stream of thinking (which I recognize emphatically as a phenomenon) is only a careless name for what, when scrutinized, reveals itself to consist chiefly of the stream of my breathing. The ›I think‹ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ›I breathe‹ which actually does accompany them.«]; vgl. auch Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind, London/ New York 1921 (Library of Philosophy). 19 [James, Does »Consciousness« exist?, S. 3.]

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zwischen | denen es nichtsdestoweniger, unbeschadet dieser Distanz, zu einer Art von Fernwirkung, zu einer actio in distans, kommt. Das Ich wie das Du bestehen vielmehr nur insoweit, als sie »für einander« sind, als sie in einem funktionalen Verhältnis der Wechselbedingtheit stehen, und das Faktum der Kultur ist ebender deutlichste Ausdruck und der unwidersprechlichste Beweis dieser wechselseitigen Bedingtheit. Die Kultur fällt freilich aus dem Kreise der naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtungsweise, die es mit Dingen und Dingverhältnissen zu tun hat, keineswegs prinzipiell heraus. Sie selbst und die Wissenschaft von ihr bilden keinen »Staat im Staate«. Die Werke der Kultur sind physisch-materialer Art; die Individuen, die diese Werke schaffen, haben ihr psychisches Dasein und Eigenleben. Dies alles kann und muß unter physikalischen, psychologischen, soziologischen Kategorien untersucht und studiert werden. Aber wenn wir uns von den einzelnen Werken und von den einzelnen Individuen den F or me n der Kultur zuwenden und uns in ihre Betrachtung versenken, so stehen wir an der Schwelle eines neuen Problems. Der strikte Naturalismus leugnet dieses Problem nicht; aber er glaubt es dadurch bewältigen zu können, daß er diese Formen, daß er die Sprache, die Kunst, die Religion, den Staat als eine einfache S u m m e von Einzelwirkungen zu erklären sucht. Die Sprache wird aus einer Konvention, aus einer »Verabredung«, die die Individuen treffen, erklärt; das staatliche und gesellschaftliche Leben wird auf einen »Gesellschaftsvertrag« zurückgeführt. Der Zirkel, der dabei begangen wird, ist freilich leicht zu entdecken. Denn Verabredung ist nur im Medium der Sprache und Rede möglich, ebenso wie ein Vertrag nur im Medium des Rechtes und des Staates Sinn und Geltung hat. Die erste Frage, die es zu lösen gibt, besteht somit darin, worin dieses Medium besteht und welches seine Bedingungen sind. Die metaphysischen Theorien vom Ursprung der Sprache, der Religion, der Gesellschaft beantworten diese Frage damit, daß sie auf überpersonale Kräfte, auf das Wirken des »Volksgeistes« oder der »Kulturseele« zurückgehen. Aber dies ist nichts anderes als ein Verzicht auf wissenschaftliche Erklärung und ein Rückfall in den Mythos. Die Welt der Kultur wird hierbei als eine Art von Überwelt erklärt, die in die physische Welt und in das Dasein des Menschen hineinwirkt. Eine kritische Kulturphilosophie kann sich keiner der beiden Erklärungsarten gefangengeben. Sie muß ebensowohl die Scylla des Naturalismus wie die Charybdis der Metaphysik vermeiden. | Und der Weg hierzu eröffnet sich ihr, wenn sie sich klarmacht, daß »Ich« und »Du« nicht fertige G eg e be nhe i te n sind, die durch die Wirkung, die sie aufeinander ausüben, die Formen der Kultur erschaffen. Es zeigt sich vielmehr, daß in diesen Formen und

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kraft ihrer die beiden Sphären, die Welt des »Ich« wie die des »Du«, sich erst k o n s t it u ier en . Es gibt nicht ein festes, in sich geschlossenes Ich, das sich mit einem ebensolchen Du in Verbindung setzt und gleichsam von außen in seine Sphäre einzudringen sucht. Geht man von einer derartigen Vorstellung aus, so zeigt sich am Ende immer wieder, daß die in ihr gestellte Forderung unerfüllbar ist. Wie in der Welt der Materie, so bleibt auch im Geistigen jedes Sein gewissermaßen an seinen Ort gebannt und für das andere undurchdringlich. Aber sobald wir nicht vom Ich und Du als zwei substantiell getrennten We s e nh eiten ausgehen, sondern uns statt dessen in den Mittelpunkt jenes Wechselv er k eh r s versetzen, der sich zwischen ihnen in der Sprache oder in irgendeiner anderen Kulturform vollzieht, so schwindet dieser Zweifel. Im Anfang ist die Tat: Im Gebrauch der Sprache, im künstlerischen Bilden, im Prozeß des Denkens und Forschens drückt sich je eine eigene Ak t iv it ät aus, und erst in ihr finden sich Ich und Du, um sich gleichzeitig voneinander zu scheiden. Sie sind in- und miteinander, indem sie sich in dieser Weise im Sprechen, im Denken, in allen Arten des künstlerischen Ausdrucks Einheit bleiben. Es wird hieraus verständlich, ja es erscheint fast notwendig, daß die Psychologie des strikten »Behaviorismus« die Zweifel, die sie gegen die Wirklichkeit des »Du«, gegen die Existenz des »Fremdseelischen« erhebt, zuletzt auch gegen die Wirklichkeit des Ich, des »Cogito« im eigentlichen Sinne, kehren muß. Denn mit dem einen Moment muß in der Tat das andere fallen. So paradox James’ Frage »Does Consciousness exist?« lauten mag, so ist sie im Grunde doch nur konsequent. Aber ebendiese Konsequenz kann uns den Ausweg aus dem Dilemma weisen, indem sie uns zeigt, in welche Sackgasse sich hier der »radikale Empirismus« und der Psychologismus verirrt hat. Die Berufung auf die überzeugende Kraft der Ausdruckswahrnehmung reicht für sich allerdings nicht hin, um die Zweifel zu zerstreuen. Wir müssen vielmehr ein anderes Argument hinzunehmen; wir müssen an dem, was wir Ausdruck nennen, zwei verschiedene Momente unterscheiden. Einen »Ausdruck der Gemütsbewegungen« gibt es auch in | der tierischen Welt. Charles Darwin hat ihn in einem eigenen Werk eingehend studiert und beschrieben. Aber alles, was wir hier feststellen können, ist und bleibt p as s iv er Ausdruck. Im Bereich des menschlichen Daseins und der menschlichen Kultur aber begegnet uns plötzlich ein Neues. Denn alle Kulturformen, so verschieden sie voneinander auch sein mögen, sind ak t iv e Au s d r u ck sfor me n. Sie sind nicht, wie die Röte der Scham, das Runzeln der Stirn, das Ballen der Faust, bloße unwillkürliche Reaktionen, sondern Aktionen. Sie sind nicht einfache Geschehnisse, die sich in uns und an uns abspielen, sondern sie

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sind sozusagen spezifische E ner g ien , und durch den Einsatz dieser Energien baut sich für uns die Welt der Kultur, die Welt der Sprache, der Kunst, der Religion auf. Der Behaviorismus glaubt freilich, auch gegen diesen Einwand gewappnet zu sein. Er steht fest auf dem Boden des Gegebenen, und er erklärt, daß uns dies Gegebene in jedem Fall nichts anderes als eine bestimmte Verbindung sinnlicher Qualitäten, eine Mannigfaltigkeit von Farben, eine Folge von Lauten zeigt. Wenn wir behaupten, daß all diese Inhalte nicht nur »sind«, sondern daß in ihnen irgend etwas anderes »erscheint«, daß ihnen außer ihrem rein physischen Dasein ein »Symbolwert« zukommt, so greifen wir damit über das, was die Erfahrung uns allein kennen lehrt, hinaus. Der Lautkomplex, den wir »Sprache« nennen, kann daher nicht als Beweis dafür angeführt werden, daß hinter ihm jenes andere steht, was wir mit dem Ausdruck des »Denkens« zu bezeichnen pflegen. »[…] der Behaviorist«, so sagt Russell, »versichert uns, daß die Reden, die die Menschen führen, erklärt werden können ohne die Voraussetzung, daß Menschen denken. Dort, wo man ein Kapitel über Denkprozesse erwarten könnte, steht bei ihm ein Kapitel über Sprachgewohnheiten. Es ist demütigend zu finden, wie außerordentlich zutreffend sich diese Hypothese bei näherer Prüfung erweist.«20 Daß ein großer Teil dessen, was im täglichen Leben gesprochen wird, unter diese vernichtende Kritik fällt, kann kaum bestritten werden. Aber haben wir ein Recht, dieses Urteil auf das Ganze der menschlichen Rede zu erstrecken? Folgt sie nur dem Gesetz der Nachahmung, und ist sie leerer »Psittazismus«? Besteht kein Unterschied zwischen dem Sprechen des Papageis und der menschlichen Sprache? Russell selbst führt zur Stütze der behavioristischen These ein bestimmtes Beispiel an. Man nehme an, daß ein Lehrer in | einer Prüfung seinen Schülern eine gewisse Rechenaufgabe, etwa eine Aufgabe aus dem Einmaleins vorlege. Er wird von dem einen Schüler eine »richtige«‚ von dem andern eine »falsche« Antwort erhalten. Aber beweist auch diese »richtige« Antwort etwas anderes, als daß eine bloße Wortformel sich dem Gedächtnis des Schülers eingeprägt hat und daß er sie zu wiederholen vermag? Dies ist zweifellos richtig; aber kein Lehrer, kein wirklicher Pädagoge wird bei einer Prüfung so vorgehen, daß er lediglich nach Resultaten fragt. Er wird einen Weg 20 Russell, The Analysis of Mind, S. 26 f. [Zitat S. 27: »[…] behaviourists say that the talk they have to listen to can be explained without supposing that people think. Where you might expect a chapter on ›thought‹ processes you come instead upon a chapter on ›The Language Habit.‹ It is humiliating to find how terribly adequate this hypothesis turns out to be.«]

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finden, die Selbsttätigkeit des Schülers ins Spiel zu setzen. Er wird ihm ein Problem stellen, das dem Schüler vielleicht als solches vorher nie begegnet ist, und er wird an der Art seiner Lösung erkennen, nicht nur welche Art von eingelerntem Wissen der Prüfling besitzt, sondern auch, wie er dieses Wissen zu gebrauchen versteht. Und hier schwindet der Zweifel, den auch der vielfältigste, rein passive Ausdruck nicht prinzipiell zu überwinden vermag. Es gibt sicherlich passive Rede, wie es passiven Ausdruck gibt. Sie geht über den Kreis der bloßen Sprachgewohnheit (Language Habit) nicht hinaus. Aber die echte Rede, der sinnerfüllte »Logos«‚ ist von anderer Art. Sie ist niemals rein imitativ, sondern sie ist produktiv; und erst in dieser Funktion, in dieser ihr innewohnenden Energie bewährt und beweist sie jene andere Energie, die wir mit dem Namen des »Denkens« bezeichnen. In der Teilhabe an einer gemeinsamen Sprachwelt besteht der wahre Zusammenhang zwischen »Ich« und »Du«, und in dem ständigen tätigen Eingreifen in sie stellt sich die Beziehung zwischen beiden her. Freilich kann dieser Umstand ebensowohl in negativem wie in positivem Sinne verstanden und gewertet werden. Die Klage, daß die Sprache nicht nur verbindet, sondern auch trennt, ist uralt. Die Philosophie, die Mystik und die Dichtung haben diese Klage wiederholt. » Warum kann der lebendige Geist dem Geist nicht erscheinen? / Spricht die Seele, so spricht, ach! schon die Seele nicht mehr.«21 Dennoch beruht die Sehnsucht nach einer unmittelbaren Gedankenund Gefühlsübertragung, die aller Symbolik, aller Vermittlung durch Wort und Bild, entraten könnte, auf einer Selbsttäuschung. Sie wäre nur dann berechtigt, wenn die Welt des »Ich« als eine gegebene und fertige b es t ü n d e und Wort und Bild keine andere Aufgabe hätten, als dieses Gegebene auf ein anderes Subjekt zu übe r tr a g e n. Aber ebendiese Auffassung wird dem wirklichen Sinn und der wirk | lichen Tiefe des Prozesses des Sprechens und Bildens nicht gerecht. Hätte dieser Prozeß, hätten Sprache und Kunst lediglich die Funktion, zwischen der Innenwelt der verschiedenen Subjekte eine Brücke zu schlagen, so wäre der Einwurf berechtigt, daß die Hoffnung auf einen solchen Brückenschlag utopisch ist. Der Abgrund läßt sich nicht füllen; jede Welt gehört letzten Endes nur sich selbst an und weiß nur von sich selbst. Aber das wahre Verhältnis ist ein anderes. Im Sprechen und Bilden teilen die einzelnen Subjekte nicht nur das mit, was sie schon 21 [Friedrich Schiller, Sprache, in: Sämtliche Werke. Säkular-Ausgabe in 16 Bdn., in Verb. mit Richard Fester u. a. hrsg. v. Eduard von der Hellen, Bd. I, Stuttgart/Berlin 1904, S. 149.]

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besitzen, sondern sie gelangen damit erst zu diesem Besitz. An jedem lebendigen und sinnerfüllten Gespräch kann man sich diesen Zug deutlich machen. Hier handelt es sich niemals um bloße Mitteilung, sondern um Rede und Gegenrede. Und in diesem Doppelprozeß baut sich erst der Gedanke selbst auf. Platon hat gesagt, daß es zur Welt der »Idee« keinen anderen Zugang gebe, als daß wir »einander Rede stehen in Frage und Antwort«. In Frage und Antwort müssen »Ich« und »Du« sich teilen, um damit nicht nur einander, sondern auch sich selbst zu verstehen. Beides greift hier ständig ineinander ein. Das Denken des einen Partners entzündet sich an dem des andern, und kraft dieser Wechselwirkung bauen sie beide, im Medium der Sprache, eine »gemeinsame Welt« des Sinnes für sich auf. Wo uns dieses Medium fehlt, da wird auch unser eigener Besitz unsicher und fragwürdig. Alles Denken muß die Probe der Sprache bestehen; und selbst die Kraft und Tiefe des Gefühls beweist und bewährt sich erst im Ausdruck des Gefühls. Jeder von uns hat die Erfahrung gemacht, daß er in jenem »unformulierten« Denken, das dem Traum eigentümlich ist, oft der erstaunlichsten Leistungen fähig ist. Spielend gelingt uns die Lösung eines schwierigen Problems. Aber im Augenblick des Erwachens ist dies zerronnen; die Notwendigkeit, das Errungene in Worte zu fassen, läßt seine Schattenhaftigkeit und Nichtigkeit erkennen. Die Sprache ist also keineswegs lediglich Entfernung von uns selbst; sie ist vielmehr, gleich der Kunst und gleich jeder anderen »symbolischen Form«, ein Weg zu uns selbst; sie ist produktiv in dem Sinne, daß sich durch sie unser Ichbewußtsein und Selbstbewußtsein erst konstituiert. Hierzu bedarf es stets des zwiefachen Weges der Synthesis und Analysis, der Trennung und Wiedervereinigung. Dieses »dialektische« Verhältnis läßt sich nicht nur am eigentlichen Dialog, sondern es läßt sich schon am Monolog aufweisen. Denn auch das einsame Denken ist, wie Platon sagt, ein »Gespräch der Seele mit sich selbst«.22 So paradox es | klingen mag, so läßt sich sagen, daß im Monolog die Funktion der En tzweiu n g , im Dialog die Funktion der Wi ede r v e r e i ni gu n g überwiegt. Denn das »Gespräch der Seele mit sich selbst« ist nicht möglich, ohne daß die Seele sich hierbei gewissermaßen spaltet. Sie muß die Aufgabe des Sprechenden und Hörenden, des Fragenden und Antwortenden übernehmen. Insofern hört die Seele im Selbstge22 [Platon, Theaitetos 189 E: »Λγον, 'ν α τê πρíς α(τêν ) ψυχê διεξ#ρχεται περë çν .ν σκοπ 0.« Cassirer zitiert Platon unter Angabe der Stephanus-Paginierung. Die Verifizierung des originalsprachlichen Textes erfolgt nach: Opera omnia uno volumine comprehensa, hrsg. v. Gottfried Stallbaum, Leipzig/London 1899.]

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spräch auf, ein bloß einzelnes, ein »Individuum« zu sein. Sie wird zur »Person« – in der etymologischen Grundbedeutung dieses Wortes, das an die Maske und an die Rolle des Schauspielers erinnert. »Im Begriff des Individuums«, so sagt Karl Voßler, »ist diese Möglichkeit überhaupt nicht vorgesehen, denn zu seinem Wesen gehört, daß es innerlich unteilbar bleibe. Wenn die Menschen durchaus nur Individuen und nicht […] Personen wären, so ließe sich nicht einsehen, wie sie zur Führung eines Gespräches, welches doch Mitteilung, also geistige Teilung und Vereinigung ist, gelangen könnten. […] Der wahre Träger und Schöpfer des Gespräches ist sonach im letzten Grunde, d. h. wenn man die Dinge philosophisch betrachtet, immer nur eine einzige Person, die sich in zwei, in mehrere und schließlich beliebig viele Rollen oder Unter-Personen auseinanderlegt.«23 Noch klarer und überzeugender tritt diese doppelte Funktion alles Symbolischen, die Funktion der Spaltung und Wiedervereinigung, in der Ku n s t hervor. »Man weicht der Welt nicht sicherer aus als durch die Kunst, und man verknüpft sich nicht sicherer mit ihr als durch die Kunst.«24 Dieses Wort Goethes drückt ein Grundgefühl aus, das in jedem großen Künstler wirksam ist. Der Künstler besitzt den stärksten Willen und das stärkste Vermögen zur Mitteilung. Er kann nicht rasten und ruhen, bis er den Weg gefunden hat, all das, was in ihm lebt, in anderen zum Leben zu erwecken. Und dennoch fühlt er sich gerade in diesem ständig sich erneuernden Strom der Mitteilung zuletzt vereinsamt und auf die Grenzen seines eigenen Ich zurückgeworfen. Denn kein einzelnes Werk, das er schafft, kann die Fülle der Gesichte, die er in sich trägt, festhalten. Immer bleibt hier ein schmerzlich empfundener Gegensatz zurück; das »Außen« und das »Innen« lassen sich niemals vollständig zur Deckung bringen. Aber diese Grenze, die er anerkennen muß, wird für den Künstler nicht zur Schranke. Er fährt fort zu schaffen, weil er weiß, daß er nur im Schaffen sich selbst | finden und sich selbst besitzen kann. Er hat seine Welt und sein eigenes Ich erst in der Gestalt, die er ihnen gibt. Auch das religiöse Gefühl zeigt die gleiche Doppelheit. Je tiefer und inniger es ist, um so mehr scheint es sich von der Welt abzuwenden und um so mehr scheint es alle Fesseln abzustreifen, die den Menschen an den Menschen, an seine soziale Wirklichkeit binden. Der Gläubige kennt nur sich selbst und Gott; er will nichts anderes ken23 Voßler, Geist und Kultur in der Sprache (Kap. 2: Sprechen, Gespräch und Sprache), S. 12 f. 24 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften. Ein Roman (Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XX), S. 262.]

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nen. »Deum […] animam[que] scire cupio«‚ sagt Augustin, »[n]ihilne plus? Nihil omnino.«25 Und doch bewährt sich bei Augustin selbst, wie bei allen anderen religiösen Genies, die Kraft des Glaubens erst in der Verkündung des Glaubens. Er muß seinen Glauben anderen mitteilen, er muß sie mit seiner religiösen Leidenschaft und Inbrunst erfüllen, um des Glaubens wahrhaft gewiß zu werden. Diese Verkündung ist nicht anders möglich als in religiösen Bildern – in Bildern, die als Symbole beginnen, um als Dogmen zu enden. Auch hier ist also jede beginnende Äußerung schon der Anfang der Entäußerung. Es ist das Schicksal, und es ist in gewissem Sinn die immanente Tragik jeder geistigen Form, daß sie diese innere Spannung nicht zu überwinden vermag. Mit der Auflösung der Spannung wäre auch das Leben des Geistigen erloschen; denn dieses besteht eben darin, das Geeinte zu trennen, um dafür um so sicherer das Getrennte vereinigen zu können. |

25 [Aurelius Augustinus, Soliloquiorum libri II, in: Opera omnia, post lovaniensium theologorum recensionem castigata denuo ad manuscriptos codices gallicos, vaticanos, belgicos, etc., necnon ad editiones antiquiores et castigatiores, hrsg. v. Jacques-Paul Migne, Bd. I, Paris 1841, Sp. 869–904: Sp. 872.]

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dritte studie. Naturbegriffe und Kulturbegriffe I Wir waren davon ausgegangen, daß alle Versuche, den spezifischen Unterschied zwischen »Naturwissenschaft« und »Kulturwissenschaft« zu bestimmen, solange unbefriedigend und unzureichend bleiben, als man sich nicht entschließt, das Gebiet der bloßen Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie zu überschreiten. Wir mußten, um diesen Unterschied mit Schärfe bezeichnen zu können, von der Begriffsstruktur auf die Wahrnehmungsstruktur zurückgehen. Schon die Wahrnehmung enthält, wie wir zu zeigen versucht haben, im Keime jenen Gegensatz, der in expliziter Form in der gegensätzlichen Methodik hervortritt, deren sich Naturwissenschaft und Kulturwissenschaft bedienen. Daß alle Begriffe, sofern sie den Anspruch erheben, uns irgendeine Art von Wirklichkeitserkenntnis zu geben, sich letzten Endes in der Anschauung »erfüllen« müssen, pflegt heute von keiner erkenntnistheoretischen Richtung mehr bestritten zu werden. Aber dieser Satz gilt nicht nur für jeden Einzelbegriff; er gilt auch für die verschiedenen Begriffs t y p en , denen wir im Aufbau der Wissenschaft begegnen. Wenn diese Typen nicht bloße Fiktionen sein sollen, wenn sie mehr bedeuten sollen als willkürliche Namen, die wir im Interesse der Klassifikation geschaffen haben, so müssen sie ein »fundamentum in re« besitzen. Es muß möglich sein, sie bis zu ihrer letzten Erkenntnisquelle zurückzuverfolgen; es muß sich zeigen lassen, daß die Differenz zwischen ihnen sich in einer ursprünglichen Doppelrichtung des Anschauens und Wahrnehmens gründet. Jetzt, nachdem wir in diesem Kreise einen festen Halt- und Stützpunkt gewonnen haben, müssen wir die Frage erneuern. Wir müssen zur Logik zurückkehren und nach dem lo g is ch en Ch ar ak t er d er Kul tur be g r i ffe fragen. Daß sie einen solchen besitzen, daß sie alle, wie mannigfach sie auch sind und auf wie verschiedene Gegenstände sie sich beziehen, durch irgendein »geistiges Band« miteinander verknüpft sind: das lehrt uns jede noch so flüch | tige Betrachtung. Aber welcher Art ist dieses Band – welcher Familie gehören diese Begriffe an, und welche Verwandtschaft besteht zwischen ihnen und anderen Begriffsklassen? Drei prinzipiell verschiedene Antworten sind bisher auf diese Frage gegeben worden. In ihnen spiegelt sich deutlich der Wettstreit und Widerstreit zwischen den verschiedenen Tendenzen wider, die in der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie noch immer um die Herrschaft ringen. Die Naturwissenschaft, die Geschichte und die Psycholo-

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gie machen sich hier den Rang streitig. Und jede von ihnen tritt mit einem durchaus begründeten Anspruch auf, der immer wieder Gehör fordert. Eben hieraus ergibt sich, daß das Problem durch einen einfachen dogmatischen Machtspruch nicht zu lösen ist. Jede der drei Richtungen kann sich auf eine Position zurückziehen, in der sie sich sicher behaupten kann und aus der sie durch keine Argumente des Gegners zu vertreiben ist. Denn das Physische, das Psychische und das Historische gehören in der Tat notwendig zum Begriff des Kulturobjekts. Sie sind die drei Momente, aus denen sich dasselbe aufbaut. Ein Kulturobjekt bedarf stets eines physisch-stofflichen Substrats. Das Gemälde haftet an der Leinwand, die Statue am Marmor, die historische Urkunde an Schriftzeichen, die wir auf Pergament oder Papier geschrieben finden. Nur in Dokumenten und Monumenten dieser Art stellt sich uns eine vergangene Kultur dar. Aber dies alles verlangt zugleich, um richtig erfaßt und gelesen zu werden, nach einer doppelten Interpretation. Es muß historisch in seiner Zeitstelle bestimmt, es muß nach Alter und Herkunft befragt werden, und es muß als Ausdruck bestimmter seelischer Grundhaltungen, die für uns in irgendeiner Weise nachfühlbar sind, verstanden werden. Physikalische, historische und psychologische Begriffe gehen daher stets in die Beschreibung eines Kulturobjekts ein. Aber das Problem, das uns bei dieser Beschreibung entgegentritt, besteht nicht im Inhalt dieser Begriffe selbst, sondern in der S y n t h e s e , kraft derer wir sie ideell zusammenfassen und zu einem neuen Ganzen, zu einem Ganzen sui generis vereinen. Jede Betrachtungsweise, die diese Synthese nicht zureichend erklärt, bleibt unzulänglich. Denn beim Fortgang zu einer bestimmten Begriffsstufe kommt es nicht darauf an, welche Bestandteile sie in sich enthält, sondern auf die eigentümliche Art, in der sie dieselben vereint und zusammenschließt. So unbestreitbar es daher ist, daß sich an jedem Kulturobjekt eine physische, eine psychologische, eine historische Seite aufweisen läßt, so | bleibt uns doch dies Objekt in seiner spezifischen Bedeutung verschlossen, solange wir diese Elemente isolieren, statt sie in ihrer Wechselbeziehung, in ihrer gegenseitigen »Durchdringung« zu erfassen. Der physikalische, der psychologische, der historische Aspekt ist als solcher notwendig; aber keiner von ihnen vermag uns das Totalbild zu geben, nach dem wir in den Kulturwissenschaften streben. Hier stoßen wir freilich auf eine Schwierigkeit, die mit dem gegenwärtigen Stand der Logik und mit ihrer historischen Entwicklung zusammenhängt. Seit Platon besitzen wir eine Logik der Mathematik; seit Aristoteles eine Logik der Biologie. Die mathematischen Relationsbegriffe, die biologischen Art- und Gattungsbegriffe haben hier

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ihre sichere Stelle gefunden. Von Descartes, von Leibniz und Kant wird die Logik der mathematischen Naturwissenschaft aufgebaut, und schließlich treten im 19. Jahrhundert die ersten Versuche zu einer »Logik der Geschichte« auf. Blickt man dagegen auf die Grundbegriffe der Sprachwissenschaft, der Kunstwissenschaft, der Religionswissenschaft hin, so wird man zu seiner Verwunderung gewahr, daß sie gewissermaßen noch immer heimatlos sind: Sie haben im System der Logik ihren »natürlichen Ort« noch nicht gefunden. Statt dies durch abstrakte Erörterungen zu erweisen, ziehe ich es vor, den Sachverhalt an konkreten Einzelbeispielen zu verdeutlichen, die ich der unmittelbaren Arbeit der Kulturwissenschaften entnehme. Die Forschungsarbeit als solche ist hier stets ihre eigenen Wege gegangen: Sie hat sich dem Prokrustesbett bestimmter begrifflicher Distinktionen, in das man sie oft von seiten der Logik und Erkenntnistheorie einzupressen suchte, nicht gefügt. An ihr können wir daher, besser als irgendwo sonst, den eigentlichen Stand des Problems ablesen. Jede besondere Kulturwissenschaft bildet bestimmte Form- und Stilbegriffe aus und benützt dieselben zu einem systematischen Überblick, zu einer Klassifikation und Unterscheidung der Erscheinungen, von denen sie handelt. Diese Formbegriffe sind weder »nomothetisch«‚ noch sind sie rein »ideographisch«. Sie sind nicht nomothetisch: Denn es handelt sich in ihnen nicht darum, allgemeine Gesetze aufzustellen, aus denen die besonderen Phänomene deduktiv abgeleitet werden können. Aber auch auf die geschichtliche Betrachtung lassen sie sich nicht reduzieren. Verdeutlichen wir uns dies zunächst am Aufbau der Sprachwissenschaft. Daß wir, wo immer möglich, die Sprache in ihrer Entwicklung studieren müssen und daß diese uns die reichsten | und fruchtbarsten Aufschlüsse über sie gibt, steht fest. Aber um den Bestand des zu Untersuchenden und des zu Erklärenden, um die Gesamtheit der sprachlichen Erscheinungen vollständig zu überblicken, müssen wir einen anderen Weg einschlagen. Wir müssen von dem ausgehen, was Wilhelm von Humboldt die »innere Sprachform« genannt hat, und wir müssen versuchen, uns einen Einblick in die Gliederung dieser inneren Sprachform zu verschaffen. Hier handelt es sich um reine Stru k tur p r o b lem e der Sprache, die von historischen Problemen deutlich unterschieden sind und die unabhängig von ihnen behandelt werden können und müssen. Was eine Sprache ihrer Struktur nach ist – das läßt sich bestimmen, auch wenn wir wenig oder nichts von ihrer historischen Entwicklung wissen. So hat z. B. Humboldt als erster den Begriff der »polysynthetischen Sprachen« aufgestellt und mit ihrer Beschreibung ein glänzendes Beispiel seiner Sprach- und Formanalyse gegeben. Über die Entstehung und Entwicklung dieser Sprachen stan-

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den ihm hierbei keinerlei Daten zur Verfügung. Etwas ähnliches wiederholt sich überall, wo wir es mit Sprachen schriftloser Völker zu tun haben. In seiner »Vergleichenden Grammatik der Bantusprachen« hat Carl Meinhof die Eigentümlichkeit derjenigen Sprachen untersucht, die die Einteilung der Nomina nicht nach dem sogenannten »natürlichen Geschlecht« – als Maskulina, Feminina, Neutra – vornehmen, sondern statt dessen ganz andere Einteilungsprinzipien benutzen.1 Auch in diesen Analysen konnten historische Gesichtspunkte keine Rolle spielen; aber ihr Fehlen brauchte der Sicherheit unseres Wissens um die Sprachstruktur keinerlei Eintrag zu tun. Von der Sprachwissenschaft blicken wir zu einem anderen großen Gebiet der Kulturwissenschaft: zur Ku n s t w i s s e ns c ha ft, hinüber. Zwischen beiden eine Brücke schlagen zu wollen, mag auf den ersten Blick sehr gewagt erscheinen; denn in den Gegenständen, die sie behandeln, und in der Methodik, deren sie sich bedienen, scheinen sie weit voneinander getrennt. Dennoch arbeiten sie mit Begriffen, die ihrer allgemeinen Form nach miteinander verwandt sind und die gewissermaßen zur selben logischen »Familie« gehören. Auch die Kunstgeschichte könnte keinen Schritt vorwärts tun, wenn sie sich ausschließlich auf historische Betrachtungen, auf Erzählung des Gewesenen und Gewordenen, einschränken wollte. Auch für sie gilt der Platonische Satz, daß es vom Werden, als b lo ß em Werden, keine wissenschaft | liche Erkenntnis geben kann. Um in das Werden einzudringen, um es übersehen und beherrschen zu können, muß sie sich zuvor bestimmter Halt- und Stützpunkte im »Sein« versichert haben. Jede historische Erkenntnis bezieht sich auf eine bestimmte Erkenntnis der »Form« und des »Wesens« und legt dieselbe zugrunde. Diese Korrelation und dieses Ineinandergreifen der beiden Momente stellt sich immer wieder deutlich heraus, sobald die kunstwissenschaftliche Forschung sich gedrängt sieht, auf ihre eigene Methode zu reflektieren. Mit besonderer Klarheit tritt sie in einem Werk wie Heinrich W öl ffl i ns »Kunstgeschichtlichen Grundbegriffen« heraus. Wölfflin will alles Spekulative sorgsam fernhalten; er urteilt und spricht als reiner Empiriker. Aber er betont nachdrücklich, daß die Tatsachen als solche stumm bleiben müssen, wenn man sich nicht zuvor bestimmter begrifflicher Gesichtspunkte versichert hat, gemäß denen sie zu ordnen und zu interpretieren sind. Hier sieht er die Lücke, die sein Buch ausfüllen will. »Die begriffliche Forschung«, so erklärt er schon im Vorwort,

1 Näheres hierüber s. »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Erster Teil«, S. 264 ff. [ECW 11, S. 269 ff.].

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»hat mit der Tatsachenforschung nicht Schritt gehalten.«2 Wölfflins Werk will nicht eigentlich Kunstgeschichte geben; es stellt vielmehr gewissermaßen die »Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Kunstgeschichte« dar, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können. »Wir geben hier«, so betont er an einer Stelle, »nicht die Geschichte des malerischen Stils, sondern bemühen uns um den allgemeinen Begriff.«3 Dieser wird dadurch gefunden und fixiert, daß der ma l e r i s c he Stil scharf und bestimmt vom lin ear en Stil geschieden und ihm in allen seinen Äußerungsformen gegenübergestellt wird. Das »Lineare« und das »Malerische« stehen sich nach Wölfflin als zwei verschiedenartige Formen des Sehens gegenüber. Sie sind zwei Auffassungsweisen räumlicher Verhältnisse, die auf ganz verschiedene Ziele ausgehen und die demgemäß je ein besonderes Moment des Räumlichen erfassen. Das Lineare geht auf die feste plastische Form der Dinge; das Malerische geht auf ihre Erscheinung. »Dort ist es die feste Gestalt, hier die wechselnde Erscheinung; dort ist es die bleibende Form, meßbar, begrenzt, hier die Bewegung, die Form in Funktion; dort die Dinge für sich, hier die Dinge in ihrem Zusammenhang.«4 Es versteht sich von selbst, daß Wölffin diesen Gegensatz des »Linearen« und des »Malerischen« nicht hätte formu | lieren und daß er ihn nicht zu anschaulicher Deutlichkeit hätte bringen können, wenn er sich nicht fort und fort auf ein gewaltiges historisches Anschauungsmaterial gestützt hätte. Aber auf der anderen Seite betont er mit allem Nachdruck, daß das, was seine Analyse herausstellen will, kein einmaliges historisches Geschehen ist, das an einen bestimmten Zeitpunkt gebunden und auf ihn beschränkt ist. Wölfflins Grundbegriffe sind sowenig »idiographische« Begriffe, wie diejenigen Humboldts es waren. Sie gehen von der Feststellung eines ganz allgemeinen Sachverhalts aus; aber sie stellen, gegenüber den allgemeinen Klassen- und Gesetzesbegriffen der Naturwissenschaft, ein Allgemeines von anderer Art und anderer Stufe dar. An bestimmten historischen Erscheinungen – am Gegensatz zwischen der Formensprache der Klassik und des Barock, am Gegensatz des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, am Gegensatz von Dürer und Rembrandt – soll ein fundamentaler Formunterschied zu Bewußtsein gebracht werden. Die Einzelerscheinungen wollen nicht mehr sein als die paradigmatischen Erläuterungen dieses Unterschieds; sie wollen ihn keineswegs als solchen begründen. Es gibt nach Wölfflin eine »Klassik« und ein »Barock« 2 [Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Das Problem der Stilentwickelung in der neueren Kunst, München 1915, S. VI.] 3 A. a. O., S. 35. 4 A. a. O., S. 31.

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nicht nur in der neueren Kunstgeschichte, sondern auch in der antiken Baukunst, ja selbst auf einem so fremdartigen Boden wie der Gotik.5 Ebensowenig läßt sich der Unterschied, der hier vorliegt, dadurch fassen, daß man ihn auf einen nationalen oder individuellen Unterschied zurückführt. Nationale und individuelle Differenzen spielen in der Entwicklung des linearen und des malerischen Stils ihre Rolle; aber die Wesensart beider läßt sich aus ihnen nicht ableiten. Diese Wesensart ist vielmehr etwas, das man sich an ganz verschiedenen Epochen, an ganz verschiedenen nationalen Kulturen und an ganz verschiedenen Künstlerindividuen zu deutlicher Anschauung bringen kann. Auch die Frage nach der En twick lu n g des einen Stils aus dem andern läßt sich nach Wölfflin unabhängig von diesen Voraussetzungen stellen und beantworten. Die Stilgeschichte vermag bis zu einer bestimmten Grundschicht von Begriffen vorzudringen, die sich auf die »Darstellung als solche« beziehen: »[…] es läßt sich eine Entwicklungsgeschichte des abendländischen Sehens geben, für die die Verschiedenheit des individuellen und nationalen Charakters von keiner großen Bedeutung mehr ist.«6 »Es gibt einen Stil, der, wesentlich objektiv gestimmt, | die Dinge nach ihren festen, tastbaren Verhältnissen auffaßt und wirksam machen will, und es gibt im Gegensatz dazu einen Stil, der, mehr subjektiv gestimmt, der Darstellung das Bild zugrunde legt, in dem die Sichtbarkeit dem Auge wirklich erscheint […]«7 An beiden Stilformen können die heterogensten Künstler teilnehmen. »Um zu exemplifizieren«‚ so sagt Wölfflin an einer Stelle seiner Darstellung, »konnten wir natürlich nicht anders verfahren als das einzelne Kunstwerk heranzuziehen, aber alles was von Raffael und Tizian, von Rembrandt und Velásquez gesagt wurde, sollte doch nur die allgemeine Bahn beleuchten, nicht den besonderen Wert des aufgegriffenen Stückes ins Licht setzen.«8 In diesem Zusammenhang stellt Wölfflin sogar das Ideal einer Kunstgeschichte auf, die eine »Kunstgeschichte ohne Namen« sein würde.9 Sie bedürfte keiner Namen, weil sie sich in ihrer Fragestellung nicht auf etwas Individuelles, sondern auf etwas Prinzipielles und insofern »Anonymes« richtet: auf die Veränderungen des räumlichen S e he ns und auf die dadurch bedingte Modifikation des optischen Form- und Raumgefühls. Für den Logiker ist es hierbei höchst interessant und wertvoll, 5 6 7 8 9

Vgl. a. a. O., S. 243. A. a. O., S. 13. A. a. O., S. 23. A. a. O., S. 237. A. a. O., S. V.

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zu beobachten, wie Wölfflin dadurch, daß er die reinen S t r ukturb egriffe der Kunstwissenschaft in solcher Schärfe herausarbeitet, unwillkürlich auf ganz universelle Probleme der »Formwissenschaft« geführt wird. Es ist kein bloßer Zufall, daß er zu Wendungen greift, die, über das Gebiet der Kunstwissenschaft hinaus, auf die S pr a c hwissen sch af t hinweisen. Humboldt hat immer wieder betont, daß die Verschiedenheit zwischen den einzelnen Sprachen keine bloße Verschiedenheit der »Schälle und Zeichen« sei. In jeder Sprachform drückt sich nach ihm vielmehr eine eigene »Weltansicht«‚ eine bestimmte Grundrichtung des Denkens und Vorstellens aus. Ein durchaus analoger Gedanke liegt bei Wölfflin zugrunde, obwohl bei ihm natürlich keinerlei unmittelbare Anlehnung oder Anknüpfung an Humboldts Gedankenwelt besteht. Er überträgt das Humboldtsche Prinzip aus der Welt des Denkens und Vorstellens auf die Welt des Anschauens und Sehens. Jeder künstlerische Stil läßt sich, wie er betont, nicht nur nach gewissen formalen Momenten, nach der Art der Zeichnung, | der Linienführung usf. bestimmen, sondern in jedem dieser Momente drückt sich eine bestimmte Gesamtorientierung, gewissermaßen eine geistige Einstellung des Auges aus. Solche Verschiedenheiten sind weit mehr als nur eine Angelegenheit des Geschmacks: »[…] bedingend und bedingt enthalten sie die Grundlagen des ganzen Weltbildes eines Volkes.«10 Ebenso wie verschiedene Sprachen in ihrer Grammatik und in ihrer Syntax voneinander abweichen, wandelt sich auch die Sprache der Kunst, beim Übergang vom linearen zum malerischen Stil, nach Grammatik und Syntax. Der Inhalt der Welt kristallisiert sich für die Anschauung nicht in einer gleichbleibenden Form.11 Und es ist eine der Hauptaufgaben der Kunstwissenschaft, diesen Wandel der Anschauungsform zu verfolgen und ihn in seiner inneren Notwendigkeit verständlich zu machen. Hier aber werden wir auf eine andere Frage geführt. Wir haben behauptet, daß die Form- und Stilbegriffe der Kulturwissenschaften sowohl von den naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffen wie von den historischen Begriffen deutlich geschieden sind, daß sie eine Begriffsklasse sui generis darstellen. Aber lassen sie sich nicht vielleicht auf einen anderen Typus: auf den Typus der We r tbe g r i ffe , zurückführen? Man weiß, welche Rolle die Wertbegriffe in Rickerts Geschichtslogik spielen. Daß die Geschichtswissenschaft es nicht lediglich mit der Feststellung individueller Tatsachen zu tun hat, sondern daß sie eine Verknüpfung zwischen ihnen herstellen muß und daß diese histori10 11

A. a. O., S. 251. A. a. O., S. 237.

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sche Synthesis ohne die Beziehung auf ein »Allgemeines« nicht möglich und durchführbar sei: dies hat Rickert nachdrücklich betont. Aber an die Stelle der naturwissenschaftlichen Seinsbegriffe tritt für ihn in der Geschichte und in der Kulturwissenschaft das System der Wertbegriffe. Die Masse des historischen Stoffes kann nur dadurch gegliedert und der historischen Erkenntnis zugänglich gemacht werden, daß wir das Besondere auf allgemeine überindividuelle Werte beziehen. Aber auch d iese These hält der genaueren Nachprüfung der konkreten Gestaltung der Kulturwissenschaften nicht Stand. Zwischen Stilbegriffen und Wertbegriffen besteht ein grundsätzlicher Unterschied. Was die Stilbegriffe darstellen, ist kein Sollen, sondern ein reines »Sein« – wenngleich es sich in diesem Sein nicht um physische Dinge, sondern um den Bestand von »Formen« handelt. Spreche ich von der »Form« | einer Sprache oder von einer bestimmten Kunstform, so hat dies an sich mit einer Wertbeziehung nichts zu tun. Es können sich an die Feststellung solcher Formen bestimmte Werturteile a nknüpfe n; aber für die Erfassung der Form als solcher, für ihren Sinn und ihre Bedeutung, sind sie nicht konstitutiv. So hat z. B. Humboldt in seinen Untersuchungen über den menschlichen Sprachbau eine gewisse geistige »Hierarchie« der einzelnen sprachlichen Formen feststellen zu können geglaubt. Er sieht in den flektierenden Sprachen die Spitze dieser Hierarchie; er bemüht sich nachzuweisen, daß die Flexionsmethode im Grunde die »[einzig] gesetzmässige[…] Form«, sei, die von den isolierenden, agglutinierenden oder polysynthetischen Sprachen nicht völlig erreicht werde. Er unterscheidet zwischen Sprachen, die diese »gesetzmäßige Form« zeigen, und solchen, die in der einen oder anderen Beziehung von ihr abweichen.12 Aber er konnte diese Rangordnung der Sprachen offenbar erst vornehmen, nachdem er ihre Strukturunterschiede nach bestimmten Prinzipien festgestellt hatte – und diese Feststellung mußte völlig unabhängig von irgendwelchen Wertgesichtspunkten erfolgen. Das gleiche gilt für die Stilbegriffe der Kunstwissenschaft. Auch hier können wir, auf Grund ästhetischer Normen, deren wir sicher zu sein glauben, dem einen Stil vor dem andern den Vorzug geben. Aber das »Was« der Einzelstile, ihre Besonderheit und Eigenart, erfassen wir nicht kraft solcher Normbegriffe, sondern für seine Bestimmung stützen wir uns auf andere Kriterien. 12 Vgl. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (Gesammelte Schriften, hrsg. v. der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Abt. 1: Werke, hrsg. v. Albert Leitzmann, Bd. VII/1), Berlin 1907, S. 252 ff. [Zitat S. 253].

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Wenn Wölfflin von »Klassik« und »Barock« spricht, so haben beide Begriffe für ihn lediglich eine deskriptive, keine ästhetisch qualifizierende oder normierende Bedeutung. Mit dem ersteren Begriff soll keineswegs der Nebensinn des Vorbildlichen oder Mustergültigen verbunden werden. Und ebensowenig soll die Tatsache, daß, wie die Kunstgeschichte uns lehrt, der malerische Stil auf den linearen zu folgen pflegt und sich aus ihm entwickelt, die Behauptung in sich schließen, daß wir es in dieser Umbildung mit einem »Fortschritt«, mit einer Höherbildung zu tun haben. Wölfflin sieht in beiden Stilformen vielmehr lediglich verschiedene Lösungen eines bestimmten Problems, die aus sich ästhetisch gleichberechtigt sind. I nne r ha l b jedes der beiden Stile können wir das Vollkommene vom Unvollkommenen, das Geringe oder Mittelmäßige vom Ausgezeichneten scheiden. Aber auf beide Stile als Ganzes lassen sich | solche Unterschiede nicht ohne weiteres übertragen. »Die malerische Art ist die spätere«, so sagt Wölfflin, »und ohne die erste nicht wohl denkbar, aber sie ist nicht die absolut höherstehende. Der lineare Stil hat Werte entwickelt, die der malerische Stil nicht mehr besitzt und nicht mehr besitzen will. Es sind zwei Weltanschauungen anders gerichtet in ihrem Geschmack und ihrem Interesse an der Welt und jede doch imstande, ein vollkommenes Bild des Sichtbaren zu geben. […] Aus dem verschieden orientierten Interesse an der Welt entspringt jedesmal eine andere Schönheit.«13 Wir haben bisher die Gründe darzulegen gesucht, die uns dazu berechtigen und nötigen, den Kulturbegriffen sowohl gegenüber den historischen Begriffen wie gegenüber den Wertbegriffen eine besondere Stellung zuzuweisen und sie in ihrer logischen Struktur von beiden zu unterscheiden. Aber noch bleibt eine andere Frage übrig, die bisher ihre Lösung nicht gefunden hat. Besteht dieselbe Autonomie der Form- und Stilbegriffe auch gegenüber der Fragestellung der Psychologie? Erschöpft sich das Ganze der Kultur – die Entwicklung der Sprache, der Kunst, der Religion – nicht in geistig-seelischen Prozessen; und fallen alle diese Prozesse nicht eo ipso unter die Gerichtsbarkeit der Psychologie? Besteht hier noch irgeneine Differenz – kann es an diesem Punkt ein Bedenken oder ein Ausweichen geben? Es hat in der Tat stets hervorragende Forscher gegeben, die so geurteilt und demgemäß den Schluß gezogen haben, daß man nach einer »Prinzipienwissenschaft« für die Kulturwissenschaften nicht erst zu suchen brauche: Sie liege in der Psychologie fertig und vollständig vor. Im Gebiet der Sprachwissenschaft ist diese These mit besonderer Klarheit und mit besonderem Nachdruck von Hermann Paul verteidigt worden. Paul 13

Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe, S. 20 u. 31.

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ist vor allem Sprachhistoriker – er steht also nicht im Verdacht, daß er das Recht der geschichtlichen Betrachtungsweise in irgendeiner Weise beschränken will. Aber auf der anderen Seite betont er, daß ohne Erledigung der prinzipiellen Fragen, ohne Feststellung der allgemeinen Bedingungen des geschichtlichen Werdens, überhaupt kein historisches Einzelresultat zu gewinnen sei. Der Sprachgeschichte, wie der Geschichte jeder anderen Kulturform, muß daher nach ihm stets eine Wissenschaft zur Seite stehen, die sich »[…] mit den allgemeinen Lebensbedingungen de[r] geschichtlich sich entwickelnden Objekt[e] beschäftigt, welche die in allem Wechsel gleichmässig vorhandenen | Faktoren nach ihrer Natur und Wirksamkeit untersucht.« Diese konstanten Faktoren können nirgend anders als in der Psychologie gefunden werden. Diese letztere wird hierbei von Paul durchaus als Individualpsychologie, nicht wie bei Steinthal und Lazarus und später bei Wundt, als »Völkerpsychologie« gedacht. Der Individualpsychologie wird demnach die Aufgabe zugewiesen, die prinzipiellen Fragen der Sprachtheorie ihrer Lösung entgegenzuführen: »Alles dreht sich […] darum, die Sprachentwickelung aus der Wechselwirkung abzuleiten, welche die Individuen auf einander ausüben.«14 Als Hermann Paul, zu Beginn seiner »Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte«‚ diese These aufstellte, hatte in der Philosophie und in der allgemeinen Wissenschaftstheorie der Kampf zwischen der »transzendentalen« und der »psychologischen« Methode seine äußerste Schärfe erreicht. Auf der einen Seite standen die neukantischen Schulen, die betonten, daß es die erste und wichtigste Aufgabe aller erkenntniskritischen Untersuchung sei, zwischen dem quid juris und dem quid facti zu unterscheiden. Die Psychologie, als empirische Wissenschaft, habe es mit Tats ach en f r ag en zu tun, die nie und nimmer als Norm zur Entscheidung reiner G elt u n g s f r ag en dienen könnten. Heute ist d ieser Strich zwischen »Logizismus« und »Psychologismus«‚ der eine Zeitlang die ganze Signatur der Philosophie bestimmt hat, einigermaßen in den Hintergrund getreten. Die Entscheidung ist hier, nach langwierigen Kämpfen von beiden Seiten, erfolgt, und sie pflegt kaum mehr ernstlich angefochten zu werden. Die Logik – so hatten die extremen Psychologisten gefolgert – ist die Lehre von den Formen und Gesetzen des Denkens. Sie ist daher so gewiß eine psychologische Disziplin, als es den Vorgang des Denkens und Erkennens nur in der Psyche gibt.15 Den Paralogismus, der in dieser Schlußfolgerung lag, hat Husserl in seinen »Logischen Untersuchungen« bloßgelegt und 14 15

[Paul, Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, S. 1 u. 12 Anm.] Vgl. Theodor Lipps, Grundzüge der Logik, Hamburg/Leipzig 1893, S. 1 ff.

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gewissermaßen bis in seine geheimsten Schlupfwinkel hinein verfolgt. Er wies auf den radikalen und unaufheblichen Unterschied hin zwischen der Form als »idealer Bedeutungseinheit« und den psychischen Erlebnissen, den »Akten« des Fürwahrhaltens, Glaubens, Urteilens, die sich auf diese Bedeutungseinheiten beziehen und sie zum Gegenstand haben.16 Die Gefahr, die Formenlehre der Logik und die der reinen Mathematik in psychologische Bestimmungen aufzulösen, war damit | beseitigt. Im Bereich der Kulturwissenschaften scheint es freilich auf den ersten Blick weit schwerer zu sein, eine derartige Grenze zu ziehen. Denn – so läßt sich fragen – gibt es überhaupt einen bestimmten »Bestand« der Sprache, der Kunst, des Mythos, der Religion, oder geht nicht all das, was wir in dieser Weise bezeichnen, in einzelnen Akten des Sprechens, des künstlerischen Gestaltens oder Genießens des mythischen Glaubens, des religiösen Vorstellens auf? Findet sich noch ein Untersuchungsobjekt, das nicht vollständig im Kreis dieser Akte beschlossen ist? Aber gerade ein Blick auf den gegenwärtigen Stand des Problems kann uns darüber belehren, daß dies in der Tat der Fall ist. Auch hier hat sich die Klärung mehr und mehr durchgesetzt. Die Sprachpsychologie, die Kunstpsychologie, die Religionspsychologie sind im Lauf der letzten Jahrzehnte immer weiter ausgebaut worden. Aber sie treten nicht mehr mit dem Anspruch auf, die Sprachthe orie, die Kunst t h eo r ie, die Religions the or i e verdrängen oder entbehrlich machen zu wollen. Auch hier hat sich immer deutlicher das Gebiet einer reinen »Formenlehre« herauskristallisiert, die mit anderen Begriffen als denen der empirischen Psychologie arbeitet und nach anderen Methoden aufgebaut werden muß. Ein Beispiel hierfür bietet insbesondere Karl Bühlers »Sprachtheorie«. Es ist um so bedeutsamer, als Bühler als Psychologe an die Probleme der Sprache herantritt und im Laufe seiner Untersuchung diesen Gesichtspunkt niemals aus den Augen verliert. Aber das »Wesen« der Sprache läßt sich nach Bühler weder in bloß historischen noch in bloß psychologischen Untersuchungen erschöpfend zur Darstellung bringen. Er betont schon im Vorwort seiner Schrift, daß er an die Sprache die Frage: »Was bist du?«‚ nicht die Frage: »Woher kommst du des Weges?«, stellen wolle. Das ist die alte philosophische Frage des τ στι. Der »Sematologie« ist hier in methodischer Hinsicht ihre volle Selbständigkeit zugestanden. Gerade als Psychologe und auf Grund psychologischer Analysen tritt Bühler demgemäß für die These der Idealität des Gegenstandes »Sprache« ein: »Die Sprachgebilde«, so erklärt er, »sind platonisch 16 Vgl. bes. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Teil 1: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik (Kap. 8), Halle a. d. S. 1900, S. 154 ff.

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gesprochen ideenartige Gegenstände, sie sind logistisch gesprochen Klassen von Klassen wie die Zahlen oder Gegenstände einer höheren Formalisierung […] des wissenschaftlichen Denkens.«17 Darin liegt zugleich, daß und warum »[d]ie restfreie Ein | ordnung der Linguistik in die [Reihe] der idiographischen Wissenschaften […] unbefriedigend [ist] und […] einer Revision unterworfen werden [muß]« Es muß nach Bühler immer eine Art von Heimatlosigkeit der Sprachforschung herauskommen, wenn man sie entweder auf die Erforschung historischer Tatsachen beschränken oder sie auf Physik und Psychologie zugleich »reduzieren« will.18 Stellt man sich auf diesen Standpunkt, so können damit alle Grenzstreitigkeiten zwischen Sprachphilosophie und Sprachpsychologie entfallen – und heute sind wir vielleicht bereits so weit, daß man diese Streitigkeiten für überholt und antiquiert erklären kann. Die einzelnen Aufgaben haben sich klar und bestimmt gegeneinander abgegrenzt. Auf der einen Seite ist es klar, daß die Schaffung einer Sprachthe or ie nicht möglich ist, ohne daß wir uns hierfür fort und fort auf die Ergebnisse der Sprachgeschichte und Sprachpsychologie beziehen. Im leeren Raum der Abstraktion und Spekulation kann eine solche Theorie nicht aufgebaut werden. Aber ebenso steht fest, daß die empirische Forschung im Gebiet der Linguistik wie in dem der Sprachpsychologie fort und fort Begriffe voraussetzen muß, die sie der sprachlichen »Formenlehre« entnimmt. Wenn Untersuchungen darüber angestellt werden, in welcher Reihenfolge die verschiedenen Wortklassen in der sprachlichen Entwicklung des Kindes auftreten oder in welcher Phase das Kind vom Gebrauch des »Einwortsatzes« zum »parataktischen« Satz, von diesem zum »hypotaktischen« Satz übergeht,19 so ist es klar, daß hierbei die Bedeutung bestimmter Grundkategorien der Formenlehre, der Grammatik und Syntax, zugrunde gelegt wird. Auch sonst zeigt es sich immer wieder, daß die empirische Forschung sich in Scheinprobleme verliert und in unlösbare Antinomien verstrickt, wenn ihr nicht eine sorgfältige begriffliche Reflexion auf das, was die Sprache »ist«‚ zur Seite steht und sie ständig in ihren Fragestellungen begleitet. Wölfflin hat, wie wir erwähnt haben, in seinen »Kunstgeschichtlichen Grundbegriffen« darüber geklagt, daß die begriffliche 17 Karl Bühler, Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache, Jena 1934, S. 58 ff. [Zitat S. 60]. 18 A. a. O., S. 6. 19 Vgl. hierzu z. B. Clara Stern/William Stern, Die Kindersprache. Eine psychologische und sprachtheoretische Untersuchung (Monographien über die seelische Entwicklung des Kindes, Bd. I) (Kap. 12–15), 2., um ein Nachw. u. eine Beobachtungsanleitung erw. Aufl., Leipzig 1920, S. 157 ff.

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Forschung in der Kunstgeschichte mit der Tatsachenforschung nicht Schritt gehalten habe. Ähnlichen Klagen begegnen wir heute auch mehr und mehr im Gebiet der Sprachpsychologie. Als Beleg hierfür sei ein wichtiger Aufsatz angeführt, den | Géza Révész soeben unter dem Titel »Die menschlichen Kommunikationsformen und die sog. Tiersprache« veröffentlicht hat.20 Révész geht davon aus, daß unzählige »Beobachtungen«, die man über die »Tiersprache« zu machen geglaubt hatte, und viele, wenn nicht die meisten Experimente, die man auf diesem Gebiet angestellt hat, schon deshalb fragwürdig und unfruchtbar geblieben sind, weil man hier von keinem bestimmten Begriff der Sprache ausgegangen ist – weil man also im Grunde nicht wußte, wonach man forschte und fragte. Er fordert in dieser Hinsicht eine radikale Wandlung der Methode. »[Wir] müssen […] uns darüber klar werden, dass die Frage nach der sog. Tiersprache ausschliesslich auf Grund tierpsychologischen Tatsachen nicht gelöst werden kann. Jeder, der unvoreingenommen die seitens der Tier- und Entwicklungspsychologen aufgestellten Thesen und Theorien einer kritischen Betrachtung unterzieht, muss schliesslich zu der Ueberzeugung kommen, dass die aufgeworfene Frage durch Aufzeigen der verschiedenen tierischen Kommunikationsformen und durch Hinweise auf gewisse Dressurleistungen, die ihrerseits die widersprechendsten Deutungen zulassen, mit logischer Gewissheit nicht zu beantworten ist. Man muss demnach trachten einen logisch rechtmässigen Ausgangspunkt zu finden, von dem die Erfahrungstatsachen eine natürliche und sinnvolle Deutung finden können. Dieser Ausgangspunkt ist in der B e g r i f f s b estimm u n g d er S p r a c h e zu finden. […] Nimmt man sich […] die Mühe die sog. Tiersprache vom sprachphilosophischen und sprachpsychologischen Standpunkte aus zu sehen, – meiner Ansicht nach die einzig berechtigte Stellungnahme, – so wird man nicht bloss die Lehre von einer Tiersprache aufgeben, sondern zugleich die Widersinnigkeit der Problemstellung in ihrer heutigen Fassung in ihrem ganzen Umfang einsehen.«21 Auf die meines Erachtens sehr bedeutsamen Argumente, auf welche Révész seine Auffassung gestützt hat, kann in diesem Zusammenhang nicht eingegangen werden. Ich habe seine Worte hier nur angeführt, um zu zeigen, wie stark die Frage nach der Sprach s t r u k t u r in die empirische Forschung eingreift und wie diese den »sichern [Weg der] Wissenschaft« nicht finden kann, 20 Géza Révész, Die menschlichen Kommunikationsformen und die sog. Tiersprache, in: Nederl. Akademie van Wetenschappen: Proceedings of the Section of Sciences 43 (1940), S. 1230–1241, 1322–1331 und 44 (1941), S. 109–118. 21 [A. a. O., S. 1237 f.]

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bevor sie nicht der logischen Reflexion ihr Recht eingeräumt hat. In den Kulturwissenschaften wie in der Naturwissenschaft gilt das Kantische Wort über das Verhältnis von Erfahrung | und Vernunft: »[…] die Vernunft [muß] mit Prinzipien ihrer Urteile […] vorangehen und die Natur nötigen […] auf ihre Fragen zu antworten, nicht aber sich von ihr allein gleichsam am Leitbande gängeln lassen […] denn sonst hängen zufällige, nach keinem vorher entworfenen Plane gemachte Beobachtungen gar nicht in einem notwendigen Gesetze zusammen, welches doch die Vernunft sucht und bedarf.«22 Erst nachdem wir in dieser Weise die Form- und Stilbegriffe der Kulturwissenschaften gegenüber anderen Begriffsarten abgegrenzt haben, können wir an ein Problem herantreten, das für die Anwendung dieser Begriffe auf die einzelnen Erscheinungen von entscheidender Bedeutung ist. Wir verstehen eine Wissenschaft in ihrer logischen Struktur erst dann, wenn wir uns klargemacht haben, in welcher Weise sie die Su b su m t io n d es B es o n d er en u n te r da s A l l g e me i ne vollzieht. Aber in der Beantwortung dieser Frage müssen wir uns vor einem einseitigen Formalismus hüten. Denn es gibt kein generelles Schema, auf das wir uns hier beziehen und berufen könnten. Die Au fgab e besteht für alle Wissenschaften in gleicher Weise; aber ihre Lö su n g schlägt sehr verschiedene Wege ein. Eben in dieser Verschiedenheit drückt sich je ein eigener und spezifischer Erkenntnistypus in sich aus. Es war offenbar eine unzulängliche Lösung des Problems, wenn man den »Allgemeinbegriffen« der Naturwissenschaft die »Individualbegriffe« der historischen Wissenschaften entgegenstellte. Denn eine solche Trennung zerschneidet gewissermaßen den Lebensfaden des Begriffs. Jeder Begriff will, seiner logischen Funktion nach, eine »Einheit des Mannigfaltigen«, eine Beziehung zwischen Individuellem und Allgemeinem, sein. Isoliert man das eine dieser Momente, so zerstört man die »Synthesis«‚ die jeder Begriff, als solcher, vollziehen will. »Das Besondere«, so sagt Goethe, »unterliegt ewig dem Allgemeinen; das Allgemeine hat ewig sich dem Besondern zu fügen.«23 Aber die Art dieser »Fügung«, dieses Zusammenschlusses des Besonderen durch das Allgemeine ist nicht in allen Wissenschaften die gleiche. Sie ist anders, wenn wir das System der mathematischen Begriffe und das der empirischen Naturbegriffe vergleichen; und sie ist anders, wenn wir das letztere den historischen Begriffen gegenüberstellen. Es bedarf [Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 16 (B XIII f.).] [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen über Literatur und Ethik. Aus Kunst und Alterthum, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XLII/2, S. 111–164: S. 131.] 22 23

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stets der sorgfältigen Einzelanalyse, um diese Unterschiede festzustellen. Am einfachsten erscheint das Verhältnis, wenn es gelingt, das Allgemeine in der Form eines G es e tz e s be g r i ffs auszusprechen, aus dem | sich die einzelnen »Fälle« deduktiv ableiten lassen. In dieser Weise »folgen« etwa aus dem Newtonschen Gravitationsgesetz die Keplerschen Regeln für die Planetenbewegungen oder die Regeln über den periodischen Wechsel von Ebbe und Flut. Alle Begriffe der empirischen Naturwissenschaft streben in irgendeiner Weise danach, dieses Ideal zu erreichen, wenngleich nicht jede von ihnen es sofort und nicht jede in derselben Weise zu verwirklichen vermag. Immer besteht die Tendenz, das empirische N e b en ein a nde r der Bestimmungen, das die Beobachtung zunächst allein darbietet, kraft gedanklicher Bearbeitung in ein anderes Verhältnis: in ein Verhältnis des B e di ng ts e i ns des einen durchs das andere, zu verwandeln. Diese Form der »Subsumtion« ist es, die um so besser und vollkommener gelingt, je mehr die beschreibenden Begriffe der Naturwissenschaft auf theoretische Begriffe bezogen und fortschreitend in diese verwandelt werden. Ist dies erreicht, dann gibt es im Grunde keine Einzelbestimmungen eines empirischen Begriffs mehr. Wir besitzen alsdann, wie in den rein mathematischen Begriffen, eine Grundbestimmung, aus der alle andern folgen und in bestimmter Weise ableitbar sind. In dieser Weise ist es z. B. der modernen theoretischen Physik gelungen, alle die einzelnen »Eigenschaften« eines bestimmten Dinges, all die Bestimmungen, die in einer physischen oder chemischen Konstante ausgedrückt sind, auf eine gemeinsame Quelle zurückzuführen. Sie zeigt, daß die Eigenschaften eines Elementes, deren jede zunächst einzeln durch empirische Beobachtung gefunden wurde, Funktionen einer bestimmten Größe, der Größe des »Atomgewichts« sind, daß sie in gesetzlicher Weise mit der »Ordnungsnummer« des Elements zusammenhängen. Es ergibt sich hieraus, daß ein bestimmter empirisch vorliegender Stoff, ein gewisses Metall, dann und nur dann unter den Begriff »Gold« subsumiert werden kann, wenn er die betreffende Grundeigenschaft und somit auch alle die anderen Eigenschaften, die sich aus ihr ableiten lassen, zeigt. Ein Schwanken ist hier nicht möglich: »Gold« heißt uns nur, was ein gewisses, quantitativ streng bestimmtes, spezifisches Gewicht, eine bestimmte elektrische Leitungsfähigkeit, einen bestimmten Ausdehnungskoeffizienten usf. besitzt. Aber wenn man etwas Ähnliches von den Form- und Stilbegriffen der Kulturwissenschaften erwartet, so sieht man sich durch sie alsbald enttäuscht. Sie scheinen mit einer eigentümlichen Unbestimmtheit behaftet, die sie nicht zu überwinden vermögen. Auch hier läßt sich das Besondere | dem Allgemeinen in irgendeiner Weise ein o r d ne n; aber es läßt sich ihm nicht in

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derselben Weise u n t er o r d n en . Ich begnüge mich damit, auch diesen Sachverhalt an einem einzelnen konkreten Beispiel zu verdeutlichen. Jacob Burckhardt hat in seiner »Kultur der Renaissance« eine klassische Schilderung des »Renaissancemenschen« gegeben. Sie enthält Züge, die uns allen wohlbekannt sind. Der Renaissancemensch besitzt bestimmte charakteristische Eigenschaften, die ihn deutlich vom »mittelalterlichen Menschen« scheiden. Er ist durch seine Sinnenfreude, seine Hinwendung zur Natur, seine Verwurzelung im »Diesseits«‚ seine Aufgeschlossenheit für die Welt der Form, seinen Individualismus, seinen Paganismus, seinen Amoralismus gekennzeichnet. Die empirische Forschung ist auf die Suche nach diesem Burckhardtschen »Renaissancemenschen« gegangen – aber sie hat ihn nicht gefunden. Es ließ sich kein einziges historisches Individuum angeben, das in sich wirklich all die Züge vereint, die Burckhardt als die konstitutiven Elemente seines Bildes betrachtet. »Versucht man«, so sagt Ernst Walser in seinen »Studien zur Weltanschauung der Renaissance«, »das Leben und Denken der führenden Persönlichkeiten des Quattrocento, eines Coluccio Salutati, Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Lorenzo Magnifico oder Luigi Pulci rein induktiv zu betrachten, so ergibt sich regelmäßig, daß gerade für die studierte Person die aufgestellten Merkmale […] absolut n ic h t passen. Versucht man die bisher bloß einzeln zusammenge[fügten] ›charakteristischen Merkmale‹ in ihrem engen Zusammenhange mit dem Lebenslaufe des geschilderten Mannes und vor allem aus dem breiten Strome des ganzen Zeitalters zu begreifen, [so] erhalten sie regelmäßig ein ganz anderes Aussehen. Und hält man die Resultate induktiver Forschung zusammen, so steigt allmählich ein neues Bild der Renaissance empor, nicht weniger gemischt aus Fromm und Unfromm, Gut und Böse, Himmelssehnsucht und Erdenlust, aber unendlich viel komplizierter. Das Leben und Streben der ganzen Renaissance läßt sich nicht aus e i n e m Prinzip, dem Individualismus und Sensualismus ableiten, gerade so wenig wie die vielgerühmte Einheitskultur des Mittelalters.«24 Ich stimme diesen Sätzen Walsers vollständig zu. Jeder, der sich einmal um die konkrete Erforschung der Geschichte, der Literatur, der | Kunst, der Philosophie der Renaissance bemüht hat, wird sie aus eigener Erfahrung bestätigen und mannigfach belegen können. Aber ist damit der Burckhardtsche Begriff widerlegt? Sollen wir ihn, im 24 Ernst Walser, Studien zur Weltanschauung der Renaissance, Basel 1920; jetzt in: ders., Gesammelte Studien zur Geistesgeschichte der Renaissance. Mit einer Einführung von Werner Kaegi, hrsg. v. der Stiftung von Schnyder von Wartensee, Basel 1932, S. 96–128: S. 102.

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Sinne der Logik, gewissermaßen als eine Nullklasse betrachten – als eine Klasse, unter die kein einziger Gegenstand fällt? Das wäre nur dann notwendig, wenn es sich hier um einen jener Gattungsbegriffe handelte, die durch empirische Vergleichung der Einzelfälle, durch das, was man gemeinhin »Induktion« nennt, gewonnen werden. An d iesem Maße gemessen könnte in der Tat Burckhardts Begriff die Probe nicht bestehen. Aber ebendiese Vor a us s e tz ung ist es, die der logischen Korrektur bedarf. Sicher hat Burckhardt seine Darstellung des Renaissancemenschen nicht anders geben können als dadurch, daß er sich für sie auf ein gewaltiges Tatsachenmaterial stützte. Die Fülle dieses Materials und seine Zuverlässigkeit setzt uns, wenn wir sein Werk studieren, immer wieder in Erstaunen. Aber die Art der »Zusammenschau«, die er vollzieht, die historische Synthesis, die er gibt, ist prinzipiell von ganz anderer Art als bei den empirisch gewonnenen Naturbegriffen. Wenn wir hier von »Abstraktion« sprechen wollen, so handelt es sich um jenen Prozeß, den Husserl als »ideirende Abstraktion« bezeichnet hat. Daß die Ergebnisse einer solchen »ideirenden Abstraktion« jemals mit irgendeinem konkreten Einzelfall zur Deckung gebracht werden können: dies kann weder erwartet noch verlangt werden. Und auch die »Subsumtion« kann hier nie in der gleichen Weise vorgenommen werden, wie wir einen hier und jetzt gegebenen Körper, ein Stück Metall, unter den Begriff des Goldes subsumieren, wobei wir finden, daß er alle uns bekannten Bedingungen des Goldes erfüllt. Wenn wir Leonardo da Vinci und Aretino, Marsilio Ficino und Macchiavell, Michelangelo und Cesare Borgia als »Renaissancemenschen« bezeichnen, so wollen wir damit nicht sagen, daß sich in ihnen allen ein bestimmtes, inhaltlich fixiertes Einzelmerkmal finden läßt, in dem sie übereinstimmen. Wir werden sie nicht nur als durchaus verschieden, sondern auch als gegensätzlich empfinden. Was wir von ihnen behaupten, ist nur dies, daß sie ungeachtet dieser Gegensätzlichkeit, ja vielleicht gerade durch sie, in einem bestimmten ideellen Zusammenhang miteinander stehen; daß jeder von ihnen in seiner Weise am Aufbau dessen mitwirkt, was wir den »Geist« der Renaissance oder die Kultur der Renaissance nennen. Es ist eine Einheit der R ich t u n g , nicht eine Einheit des S e i ns , die damit zum Ausdruck | gebracht werden soll. Die einzelnen Individuen gehören zusammen – nicht weil sie einander gleichen oder ähnlich sind, sondern weil sie an einer gemeinsamen Au f g a be mitwirken, die wir gegenüber dem Mittelalter als neu und die wir als den eigentümlichen »Sinn« der Renaissance empfinden. Alle echten Stilbegriffe der Kulturwissenschaften führen, schärfer analysiert, auf solche Sinnbegriffe zurück. Der künstlerische Stil einer Epoche läßt sich nicht bestimmen, wenn

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man nicht alle ihre verschiedenartigen und oft scheinbar disparaten künstlerischen Äußerungen dadurch zu einer Einheit zusammensieht, daß man sie, um den Rieglschen Ausdruck zu gebrauchen, als Äußerungen eines bestimmten »Kunstwollens« versteht.25 Derartige Begriffe charak t er is ier en zwar, aber sie de te r mi ni e r e n nicht: Das Besondere, was unter sie fällt, läßt sich aus ihnen nicht ableiten. Aber es ist ebensowenig richtig, was man hieraus folgert, daß hier eben nur noch anschauliche Beschreibung, nicht aber begriffliche Kennzeichnung vorliegt; es handelt sich vielmehr um eine eigentümliche Weise und Richtung dieser Kennzeichnung, um eine logisch-geistige Arbeit sui generis. Wir halten an diesem Punkte inne, um zunächst noch einmal auf frühere Betrachtungen zurückzublicken. Das Ergebnis der logischen Analyse der Stilbegriffe erhält seine volle Bedeutung erst, wenn wir es mit dem Ergebnis der phänomenologischen Analyse vergleichen. Hier zeigt sich für uns nicht nur ein Parallelismus, sondern eine echte Wechselbestimmung. Der Unterschied zwischen den Form- und Stilbegriffen auf der einen Seite, den Dingbegriffen auf der anderen Seite drückt in rein logischer Sprache ebenjene Differenz aus, die uns früher in der Wahrnehmungsstruktur entgegentrat. Er ist gewissermaßen die logische Übersetzung eines bestimmten Richtungsgegensatzes, der als solcher nicht erst im Reich der Begriffe auftritt, sondern dessen Wurzel sich in das Erdreich der Wahrnehmung herabsenkt. Der Begriff spricht hier »diskursiv« aus, was die Wahrnehmung in der Form einer rein »intuitiven« Erkenntnis enthält. Die »Wirklichkeit«‚ die wir in der Wahrnehmung und in der unmittelbaren Anschauung erfassen, gibt sich uns als ein Ganzes, in dem es nirgends schroffe Trennungen gibt. Und doch ist sie »eins und doppelt«;26 denn wir erfassen sie auf der einen Seite als dingliche, auf der anderen Seite als »personale« Wirklichkeit. Eine der ersten Aufgaben jeder Kritik der Erkenntnis | besteht darin, sich die logische Konstitution jeder dieser beiden Grundformen des Erlebens deutlich zu machen. Für die Dingwelt, für das, was wir die »physische« Wirklichkeit nennen, hat Kant diese Frage kurz und prägnant beantwortet. Was mit den materialen Bedingungen der Erfahrung, was mit Empfindung nach allgemeinen Gesetzen zusammenhängt, ist wirklich. Die Wirklichkeit, im physi25 Vgl. Alois Riegl, Stilfragen. Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik, Berlin 1893, und ders., Die spätrömische Kunst-Industrie nach den Funden in Österreich-Ungarn im Zusammenhange mit der Gesamtentwicklung der bildenden Künste bei den Mittelmeervölkern, Bd. I, Wien 1901. 26 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gingo Biloba, in: West-östlicher Divan (Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. VI), S. 152.]

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kalischen Sinne, geht keineswegs in der Empfindung auf. Sie ist nicht an das bloße Hier und Jetzt gebunden. Sie stellt dieses Hier und Jetzt in einen allgemeinen systematischen Zusammenhang; sie fügt es dem System des Raumes und der Zeit ein. Alle begriffliche Bearbeitung, die die Wissenschaft an der »Materie« der Empfindung vornimmt, dient zuletzt diesem e in en Ziele. Diese Arbeit ist im Laufe der Entwicklung der Wissenschaft immer reicher und vielfältiger geworden; und sie stellt sich der logischen Analyse, die ihren Weg im einzelnen zu verfolgen sucht, als immer subtiler heraus. Aber sie läßt sich, sofern eine schematische Vereinfachung erlaubt ist, im wesentlichen auf zwei Grundmomente zurückführen. E i g e ns c ha fts kons ta nz und Ge s et z es k o n s t an z sind die beiden wesentlichen Züge der physischen Welt. Wenn wir von einem »Kosmos« sprechen können, so heißt dies, daß wir den Heraklitischen Fluß des Werdens in irgendeiner Weise zum Stehen bringen, daß wir aus ihm bleibende Bestimmtheiten herauszuheben vermögen. Dieser Übergang tritt nicht erst dort ein, wo die philosophische und wissenschaftliche Theorie mit ihren selbständigen Ansprüchen hervortritt. Die Tendenz zu dieser »Verfestigung« ist vielmehr schon der Wahrnehmung selbst eigen – und ohne sie könnte sie niemals zur Wahrnehmung von »Dingen« werden. Schon die Perzeption, schon das Sehen, Hören, Tasten vollzieht hier den ersten Schritt, den alle Begriffsbildung voraussetzen und an den sie anknüpfen muß. Denn schon hier vollzieht sich jener Auslesungsprozeß, kraft dessen wir die »wirkliche« Farbe eines Gegenstandes von seiner scheinbaren Farbe, seine wahre Größe von seiner scheinbaren Größe unterscheiden. Die moderne Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinneswahrnehmung hat diesen Prozeß in helles Licht gerückt und ihn nach allen Seiten hin verfolgt. Das Problem der Wahrnehmungskonstanz bildet eines ihrer wichtigsten und erkenntnistheoretisch fruchtbarsten Probleme. Denn von hier aus läßt sich eine Brücke schlagen, die die Wahrnehmungserkenntnis mit den höchsten Begriffsbildungen der exakten Wissenschaft, insbesondere mit dem mathematischen Gruppenbegriff, | verknüpft. Die Wissenschaft unterscheidet sich hier – in freilich höchst bedeutsamer Art – nur darin von der Wahrnehmung, daß sie eine strenge B es t im mung verlangt, wo diese sich bei einer bloßen S ch ät z u n g begnügt.27 Hierzu bedarf es der Ausbildung eigener und neuer Methoden. Sie bestimmt das »Wesen« des Dinges in reinen Zahlbegriffen, in den physikalischen und chemischen Kon27 Näheres hierüber in meinem Aufsatz »Le concept de groupe et la théorie de la perception«, in: Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique 35 (1938), S. 368–414.

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stanten, die für jede Dingklasse charakteristisch sind. Und sie stellt den Zusammenhang dadurch her, daß sie diese Konstanten durch feste funktionale Beziehungen verknüpft, durch Gleichungen, die uns zeigen, wie die einen Größen von den anderen abhängen. Damit erst haben wir das feste Gerüst der »objektiven« Wirklichkeit gewonnen; die eine, gemeinsame Dingwelt ist konstituiert. Aber dieses Ergebnis muß freilich mit einem Opfer erkauft werden. Diese Dingwelt ist radikal entseelt; alles, was irgendwie an das »persönliche« Erleben des Ich erinnert, ist nicht nur zurückgedrängt, sondern es ist beseitigt und ausgelöscht. In d iesem Bild der Natur kann daher die menschliche Kultur keine Stätte und keine Heimat finden. Dennoch ist die Kultur gleichfalls eine »intersubjektive Welt«; eine Welt, die nicht in »mir« besteht, sondern die allen Subjekten zugänglich sein und an der sie alle teilhaben sollen. Aber die Form dieser Teilhabe ist eine völlig andere als in der physischen Welt. Statt sich auf denselben raumzeitlichen Kosmos von Dingen zu beziehen, finden und vereinigen sich die Subjekte in einem gemeinsamen Tun. Indem sie dieses Tun miteinander vollziehen, erkennen sie einander und wissen sie voneinander im Medium der verschiedenen Formwelten, aus denen sich die Kultur aufbaut. Den ersten und entscheidenden Schritt, den Schritt, der vom »Ich« zum »Du« hinüberführt, muß auch hier die Wahrnehmung tun. Aber das passive Ausdruckserlebnis genügt hierfür sowenig, wie die bloße Empfindung, die einfache »Impression«‚ zur objektiven Erkenntnis genügt. Die wahre »Synthesis« kommt erst in jenem aktiven Austausch zustande, den wir, in typischer Form, in jeder sprachlichen »Verständigung« vor uns sehen. Die Konstanz, deren wir hierfür bedürfen, ist nicht die von Eigenschaften oder Gesetzen, sondern von Bedeutungen. Je weiter die Kultur sich entwickelt und in je mehr Einzelgebiete sie sich auseinanderlegt, um so reicher und vielfältiger | gestaltet sich diese Welt der Bedeutungen. Wir leben in den Worten der Sprache, in den Gestalten der Poesie und der bildenden Kunst, in den Formen der Musik, in den Gebilden der religiösen Vorstellung und des religiösen Glaubens. Und nur hierin »wissen« wir voneinander. Dieses intuitive Wissen hat noch nicht den Charakter der »Wissenschaft«. Wir verstehen einander im Sprechen, ohne hierfür der Sprachwissenschaft oder Grammatik zu bedürfen; und das »natürliche« künstlerische Gefühl bedarf keiner Kunstgeschichte und keiner Stilistik. Aber dieses »natürliche« Verstehen gelangt bald an seine Grenze. So wenig die einfache Sinneswahrnehmung in die Tiefen des Weltraumes eindringen kann, so wenig gelangen wir mit den Elementen der Intuition in die Tiefe der Kultur. In dem einen wie in dem anderen Fall ist uns

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nur die Nähe erfaßbar; die Ferne verliert sich in Dunkel und Nebel. Hier greift das Bestreben und die Leistung der Wissenschaft ein. Die Naturwissenschaft wird der Ferne Herr, indem sie sich zur Erkenntnis allgemeiner Gesetze erhebt, für die es keinen Unterschied der Nähe und Ferne gibt. Sie beginnt mit Beobachtungen, die wir in unserem nächsten Kreis anstellen können, sie geht von den Regeln aus, die sie am freien Fall der Körper vorfindet; aber sie erweitert diese Entdekkung zu dem allgemeinen Gesetz der Gravitation, das sich auf das Ganze des Weltraums erstreckt. Diese Form der Allgemeinheit ist der Kulturwissenschaft nicht erreichbar. Dem Anthropomorphismus und Anthropozentrismus kann sie nicht entsagen. Ihr Gegenstand ist nicht die Welt als solche, sondern nur ein einzelner Umkreis von ihr, der, vom rein räumlichen Standpunkt aus, als verschwindend klein erscheint. Aber wenn sie bei der Menschenwelt stehenbleibt und damit innerhalb der Grenzen des engen Erdendaseins gefangen bleibt, so strebt sie um so mehr danach, diesen ihr zugewiesenen Bereich vollständig zu durchmessen. Ihr Ziel ist nicht die Universalität der Gesetze; aber ebensowenig ist es die Individualität der Tatsachen und Phänomene. Gegenüber beiden stellt sie ein eigenes Erkenntnisideal auf. Was sie erkennen will, ist die To t alit ät d er F or me n, in denen sich menschliches Leben vollzieht. Diese Formen sind unendlich differenziert, und doch entbehren sie nicht der einheitlichen Struktur. Denn es ist letzten Endes »derselbe« Mensch, der uns in tausend Offenbarungen und in tausend Masken in der Entwicklung der Kultur immer wieder entgegentritt. Dieser Identität werden wir uns nicht beobachtend, wägend und messend bewußt; und ebensowenig erschließen wir sie aus psycho | logischen Induktionen. Sie kann sich nicht anders als durch die Tat beweisen. Eine Kultur wird uns nur zugänglich, indem wir aktiv in sie eingehen; und dieses Eingehen ist nicht an die unmittelbare Gegenwart gebunden. Die Zeitunterschiede, die Unterschiede des Früher und Später, relativieren sich hier ebenso, wie sich in der Auffassung der Physik und Astronomie die räumlichen Unterschiede, die Unterschiede des Hier und Dort, relativieren. Für beide Leistungen bedarf es einer höchst subtilen und komplizierten begrifflichen Vermittlung. Sie wird in dem einen Fall durch Dingbegriffe und Gesetzesbegriffe, in dem anderen Fall durch Formbegriffe und Stilbegriffe geleistet. Die geschichtliche Erkenntnis geht als unentbehrliches Moment in diesen Prozeß ein; aber sie ist nicht Selbstzweck, sondern Mittel. Die Aufgabe der Geschichte besteht nicht lediglich darin, daß sie uns vergangenes Sein und Leben k en n en lehrt, sondern daß sie es uns de ute n lehrt. Alles bloße Wissen vom Vergangenen bliebe für uns ein »totes Bild auf einer Ta-

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fel«,28 wenn keine anderen Kräfte als die des reproduktiven Gedächtnisses an ihm betätigt wären. Was das Gedächtnis an Tatsachen und Vorgängen aufbewahrt, das wird zur historischen Erinnerung erst dadurch, daß wir es in unser Inneres einbeziehen und es in dasselbe zu verwandeln vermögen. Ranke hat gesagt, daß die eigentliche Aufgabe des Historikers darin bestehe, zu beschreiben, »wie es eigentlich gewesen«.29 Aber auch wenn man dieses Wort annimmt, so bleibt es dabei, daß das »Gewesene«, wenn es in den Blickpunkt der Geschichte rückt, eine neue Bedeutung gewinnt. Geschichte ist nicht einfach Chronologie, und die historische Zeit ist nicht die objektiv-physikalische Zeit. Das Vergangene ist für den Historiker nicht im selben Sinne vorüber wie für den Naturforscher; es besitzt und behält eine eigentümliche Gegenwart. Der Geologe mag uns von einer vergangenen Gestalt der Erde berichten; der Paläontologe mag uns von ausgestorbenen organischen Formen erzählen. All dies »war« einmal, und es läßt sich in seinem Dasein und Sosein nicht erneuern. Die Geschichte aber will niemals bloß vergangenes Sein vor uns hinstellen; sie will uns vergangenes Leben verstehen lehren. Den Inhalt dieses Lebens vermag sie nicht zu erneuern; aber sie versucht seine reine Form zu bewahren. Die Fülle der verschiedenen Form- und Stilbegriffe, die die Kulturwissenschaften ausprägen, dient zuletzt dieser einen Aufgabe: Nur durch sie ist die Wiederbelebung, die »Palingenesie« der Kultur möglich. Was | uns tatsächlich von der Vergangenheit aufbewahrt ist, sind bestimmte historische Denkmäler: »Monumente« in Wort und Schrift, in Bild und Erz. Zur Geschichte wird dies für uns erst, indem wir in diesen Monumenten Symbole sehen, an denen wir bestimmte Lebensformen nicht nur zu erkennen, sondern kraft deren wir sie für uns wiederherzustellen vermögen. II Eine Theorie, die für die logische Autonomie der Stilbegriffe eintritt, sieht sich vor allem den Angriffen gegenüber, die der Naturalismus des 19. Jahrhunderts gegen diese Autonomie erhoben hat. Der scharfsinnigste und konsequenteste Versuch, jede Eigenart der Stilbegriffe zu bestreiten, ist von Hippolyte Taine unternommen worden. Er ist um 28 [Baruch de Spinoza, Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (Teil 2, Lehrsatz 49, Anm.), in: Opera quae supersunt omnia, hrsg. v. Karl Hermann Bruder, Bd. I, Leipzig 1843, S. 149–416: S. 264: »veluti picturas in tabula mutas«.] 29 [Leopold von Ranke, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514 (Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. XXXIII/XXXIV), Leipzig 21877, S. VII.]

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so bestechender, als Taine nicht bei der bloßen Theorie stehengeblieben ist, sondern unmittelbar darangegangen ist, sie in die Tat umzusetzen. In seiner »Philosophie de l’art« und in seiner »Geschichte der englischen Literatur« hat er seine These in glänzender Weise durchgeführt. An einem Material, das fast alle großen Epochen der Kunst- und Literaturgeschichte umfaßt, wollte er den Beweis dafür erbringen, daß Literatur- und Kunstwissenschaft nur dann in wahrhaft wissenschaftlicher Weise behandelt werden können, wenn sie auf jede Sonderstellung verzichten. Statt sich in irgendeiner Hinsicht von der Naturwissenschaft unterscheiden zu wollen, müssen sie völlig in dieser aufgehen. Denn alles wissenschaftliche Erkennen ist ursächliches Erkennen: Und so wahr es nicht zwei Reihen von Ursachen gibt, die »geistigen« und die »natürlichen«, so wahr kann es auch keine »Geisteswissenschaft« neben der »Naturwissenschaft« geben. »Die moderne Methode, der ich zu folgen versuche«, so erklärt Taine, »und die jetzt in allen Kulturwissenschaften (sciences morales) herrschend zu werden beginnt, besteht darin, die menschlichen Werke, und insbesondere die Kunstwerke, als Tatsachen und Erzeugnisse anzusehen, deren Kennzeichen man angeben und deren Ursachen man erforschen muß: nichts mehr. Die Wissenschaft verwirft weder, noch verzeiht sie; sie stellt fest, und sie erklärt. […] Sie verfährt wie die Botanik, die mit dem gleichen Interesse den Orangenbaum und den Lorbeer, die Fichte und die Birke studiert. Sie ist selbst eine Art von Botanik, die sich jedoch nicht auf Pflanzen, sondern auf menschliche Werke bezieht. In dieser Hinsicht folgt sie der allgemeinen Bewegung, die | heute die Geisteswissenschaften den Naturwissenschaften annähert und die den ersteren, indem sie ihnen die Prinzipien und die kritischen Richtlinien der letzteren gibt, dieselbe Sicherheit mitteilt und denselben Fortschritt sichert.«30

30 Hippolyte Taine, Philosophie de l’art (1. Teil, Kap. 1, § 1), Paris/London/ New York 1865, S. 21 f. [»La méthode moderne que je tâche de suivre, et qui commence à s’introduire dans toutes les sciences morales, consiste à considérer les œuvres humaines et, en particulier, les œuvres d’art comme des faits et des produits dont il faut marquer les caractères et chercher les causes; rien de plus. Ainsi comprise, la science ne proscrit ni ne pardonne; elle constate et elle explique. […] elle fait comme la botanique qui étudie, avec un intérêt égal, tantôt l’oranger et le laurier, tantôt le sapin et le bouleau; elle est elle-même une sorte de botanique appliquée, non aux plantes, mais aux œuvres humaines. A ce titre, elle suit le mouvement général qui rapproche aujourd’hui les sciences morales des sciences naturelles, et qui, donnant aux premières les principes, les précautions, les directions des secondes, leur communique la même solidité et leur assure le même progrès.«].

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Es ist bekannt, in welcher Weise Ta in e die Aufgabe, die er sich hier gestellt hat, zu lösen versucht hat. Wenn die Reduktion der Kulturwissenschaft auf die Naturwissenschaft gelingen soll, so muß vor allem versucht werden, der verwirrenden Vielheit des Kulturgeschehens Herr zu werden. In der Sprache, in der Kunst, in der Religion, im staatlichen und gesellschaftlichen Leben vermag unser Blick anfangs nichts anderes zu sehen, als eine bunte Mannigfaltigkeit und einen steten Wechsel einzelner Gestaltungen. Keine ist der anderen gleich, und keine kehrt jemals in derselben Weise wieder. Aber wir dürfen uns von dieser bunten Fülle nicht verwirren und nicht blenden lassen. Das Wissen muß auch hier den Weg gehen, den es in den Naturwissenschaften gegangen ist. Es muß die Tatsachen auf Gesetze, die Gesetze auf Prinzipien zurückführen. Dann verschwindet der Schein der Vielfalt; es tritt eine Gleichförmigkeit und eine Einfalt hervor, die mit der der exakten Naturwissenschaft wetteifern kann. Im geistigen wie im physischen Geschehen treffen wir zuletzt auf bestimmte konstante Faktoren, auf Grundkräfte, die stets in derselben Weise wirksam sind. »Es gibt eine Reihe großer, allgemeiner Ursachen […] und die allgemeine Struktur der Dinge und die großen Züge der Ereignisse sind ihr Werk. Die Religionen, die Philosophie, die Dichtung, die Industrie und Technik, die Formen der Gesellschaft und der Familie sind schließlich nichts anderes als das Gepräge, das den Geschehnissen durch diese allgemeine Ursache gegeben worden ist.«31 Es soll hier nicht gefragt werden, wieweit Taine den i nha l tl i c he n Beweis für diese seine Grundthese, für die These des strengen Determinismus erbracht hat.32 Hier handelt es sich für uns nur um die l og i s ch e Seite des Problems: um die Begriffe, die Taine zugrunde legt, und um die Methode, die er in seiner Deutung der Kulturphänomene zur Geltung bringt. Wollte er seinem Prinzip treu bleiben, | so mußte er darauf bedacht sein, die »Kulturbegriffe« aus den »Naturbegriffen« zu entwickeln. Er mußte zeigen, wie die einen sich unmittelbar an die anderen anschließen und aus ihnen hervorgehen. Und ebendies war offenbar das Ziel, das er erreicht zu haben glaubte, als er seine 31 Ders., Histoire de la littérature anglaise (Einleitung), Bd. I, 8., überarb. Aufl., Paris 1892, S. XVII [»Ce sont là les grandes causes […] en sorte que la structure générale des choses et les grands traits des événements sont leur œuvre, et que les religions, les philosophies, les poésies, les industries, les formes de société et de famille, ne sont, en définitive, que des empreintes enfoncées par leur sceau.«] 32 Zu dieser Frage vgl. meine Abhandlung »Naturalistische und humanistische Begründung der Kulturphilosophie«, Göteborg 1939 (Göteborgs Kungl. Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhälles Handlingar, 5. Folge, Serie A, Bd. 7/3) [ECW 22, S. 140–166].

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berühmte Trias der kulturwissenschaftlichen Erklärungsgründe aufstellte. Diese Erklärungsgründe: die Begriffe von R as s e , M i l i e u, Mo ment , schienen in keiner Hinsicht den Kreis dessen zu überschreiten, was wir mit rein naturwissenschaftlichen Mitteln feststellen können. Und doch enthalten sie auf der anderen Seite im Keime all das in sich, was wir zur Ableitung selbst der kompliziertesten kulturwissenschaftlichen Phänomene bedürfen. Sie erfüllen die doppelte Bedingung, daß sich in ihnen ein ganz einfacher und unbestreitbarer Tatbestand darstellt, der zugleich einer außerordentlichen Variation fähig ist, der in den mannigfachsten Anwendungsfällen gleichartig wiederkehrt. Man muß immer wieder die Kunst bewundern, mit der Taine in seinen konkreten Einzelschilderungen das starre Schema, das er zugrunde legt, belebt und mit anschaulichem Gehalt erfüllt hat. Fragt man jedoch, wie ihm diese Leistung gelungen ist, so ergibt sich ein sehr merkwürdiger und methodisch komplizierter Sachverhalt. Denn unvermerkt werden wir hier stets an einen Punkt geführt, an dem die Erklärungsweise Taines gewissermaßen dialektisch in ihr eigenes Gegenteil umschlägt. Wir verdeutlichen dies an einem Einzelbeispiel: an seiner Darstellung der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts. Seiner Maxime getreu beginnt Taine hier mit den »allgemeinen« Ursachen. Holland ist das Land der Anschwemmungen; es ist hervorgegangen aus den Ablagerungen, die die großen Flüsse mit sich führen und an ihren Mündungen absetzen. Mit diesem e i ne n Zuge ist der Grundcharakter des Landes und seiner Bewohner gegeben. Wir sehen das Klima und die Atmosphäre vor uns, in der der niederländische Mensch aufgewachsen ist, und wir begreifen, wie diese Atmosphäre alle seine physischen und seine sittlich-geistigen Eigenschaften bestimmen mußte. Die niederländische Kunst ist nichts als der natürliche und notwendige Ausdruck und Abdruck ebendieser Eigenschaften. Auf diese Weise läßt sich der spekulativ-idealistischen Ästhetik eine materialistische und naturalistische Ästhetik – der »Ästhetik von oben« eine »Ästhetik von unten« entgegensetzen. Die begriffliche Strenge würde hierbei erfordern, daß wir schrittweise vorgehen. Die Kontinuität in der Reihe der Ursachen darf nicht unter | brochen werden. Nirgends darf es einen plötzlichen Sprung vom »Physischen« zum »Geistigen« geben. Von der anorganischen Welt müssen wir zur organischen Welt, von der Physik zur Biologie, von dieser zur speziellen Anthropologie fortschreiten. Damit aber stehen wir am Ziele; denn sobald wir den Menschen als das, was er ist, erkannt haben, haben wir auch seine Leistung verstanden. Dieses Programm lautet in jeder Hinsicht verheißungsvoll – aber hat Taine es wirklich durchgeführt? Ist er allmählich von der Physik

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zur Botanik und Zoologie, zur Anatomie und Physiologie aufgestiegen, um mit der Psychologie und Charakterologie zu enden und hieraus schließlich die besonderen Kulturphänomene zu erklären? Wenn man näher zusieht, so findet man, daß dies keineswegs der Fall ist. Taine beginnt damit, die Sprache des Naturforschers zu sprechen; aber man spürt, daß er in dieser Sprache nicht heimisch ist. Je weiter er fortschreitet und je mehr er sich den eigentlichen konkreten Problemen nähert, um so mehr sieht er sich genötigt, in einer anderen Begriffssprache zu denken und zu reden. Er geht von naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffen und Termini aus, aber im Verlaufe seiner Arbeit unterliegen beide einem eigentümlichen Bed eu t u n g s wa nde l . Wenn Taine von der griechischen, der italienischen, der niederländischen Landschaft spricht, so müßte er, wenn er seiner Methode treu bleiben wollte, diese Landschaft nach ihren »physischen« Merkmalen, also als Geologe oder Geograph, beschreiben. Und an Ansätzen hierzu fehlt es, wie wir gesehen haben, in der Tat nicht. Aber bald begegnen wir einer ganz anderen Charakteristik, die man im Gegensatz zur physischen eine »physiognomische« Charakteristik nennen könnte. Die Landschaft ist düster oder heiter, streng oder lieblich, zart oder erhaben. Dies alles sind offenbar keine Merkmale, die sich auf dem Wege naturwissenschaftlicher Beobachtung feststellen lassen, sondern es sind reine Ausdruckscharaktere. Und nur kraft ihrer gelingt es Taine, die Brücke zu schlagen, die ihn zur Welt der griechischen, der italienischen, der niederländischen Kunst hinüberführt. Mit besonderer Deutlichkeit tritt dieser Sachverhalt hervor, sobald Taine sich dem eigentlichen anthropologischen Problem nähert. Seine These verlangt, daß er jeder großen Kulturepoche einen bestimmten Menschentypus zuordnet und sie aus ihm ableitet. Er mußte demnach zeigen, daß der Grieche kraft seiner Rasse und der physischen Einzelbestimmungen, die aus ihr folgen, zum Schöpfer der Homerischen | Gedichte und des Parthenon-Frieses, der Engländer zum Schöpfer des elisabethanischen Dramas, der Italiener zum Schöpfer der »Divina Commedia« oder der Sixtinischen Kapelle werden mußte. Aber all solchen fragwürdigen Konstruktionen ist Taine aus dem Wege gegangen. Auch hier wendet er sich nach einem kurzen Versuch, die Sprache der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffe zu sprechen, rasch entschlossen der Ausdruckssprache zu. Statt sich auf die Anatomie oder Physiologie zu stützen, vertraut er sich einer ganz anderen Erkenntnisweise an. Vom Standpunkt der Logik mag dies als ein Rückfall und als ein Widerspruch erscheinen; aber vom Standpunkt seiner eigentlichen Aufgabe ist es ein entschiedener Gewinn. Denn erst hierdurch gewinnt das trockene logische Schema – das Schema von Rasse, Milieu, Moment – Farbe und

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Leben. Das Individuum tritt nicht nur in seine Rechte; sondern es wird geradezu als der Mittelpunkt aller kulturgeschichtlichen Betrachtung erklärt. »Rien n’existe que par l’individu; c’est l’individu lui-même qu’il faut connaître.« Nur von ihm aus erschließt sich die Eigenart des künstlerischen, des sozialen, des religiösen Lebens einer Epoche. »Ein Dogma ist nichts an sich selbst; um es zu verstehen, blickt auf die Menschen hin, die es gemacht haben, auf dieses oder jenes Porträt des 16. Jahrhunderts, auf das harte und energische Gesicht eines Erzbischofs oder eines englischen Märtyrers. […] die wirkliche Geschichte erhebt sich vor uns erst, wenn der Historiker dazu gelangt, über den Abstand der Zeiten hinweg, den lebendigen Menschen vor uns hinzustellen […] mit seiner Stimme und seiner Physiognomie, mit seinen Gesten und Kleidern […]«33 Aber woher nehmen wir diese konkrete Menschenkenntnis, die nach Taine das A und O aller kulturgeschichtlichen Arbeit ist? Wir wollen Taine seinen Hauptsatz, daß alle Kultur das Werk des Menschen ist und daß daher mit der Einsicht in die Natur des Menschen alles andere vollständig bestimmt ist, ohne weiteres zugeben. Kant, der einer der radikalsten Vertreter des Freiheitsgedankens ist, den es in der Geschichte der Philosophie gibt, hat nichtsdestoweniger gesagt, daß wir, wenn wir den empirischen Charakter eines Menschen vollständig kennen würden, alle seinen künftigen Handlungen mit derselben Sicherheit voraussagen könnten, wie der Astronom eine Sonnen- oder Mondesfinsternis voraussagt. Wenden wir dies vom Individuellen ins Allgemeine, so läßt sich behaupten, daß, sobald wir einmal den Charakter | des Niederländers des 17. Jahrhunderts kennen, damit alles andere gegeben ist. Wir können aus dieser Erkenntnis alle Kulturgestaltungen deduzieren: Wir begreifen, daß und warum es in den Niederlanden in dieser Epoche zu einer Umformung des staatlichen und religiösen Lebens, zu einem großen wirtschaftlichen Aufschwung, zum Erwachen der Denkfreiheit, zu einer Blüte des wissenschaftlichen und künstlerischen Lebens gekommen ist. Aber selbst die vollständige Einsicht in diesen realen Zusammenhang von Ursache und Wirkung würde uns unsere lo g is ch e Hauptfrage noch nicht beantworten. Denn die Logik fragt nicht nach den R ea l g r ünde n des Geschehens, sondern nach den E r k en n t n is gr ünde n. Für sie lautet also die 33 Taine, Histoire de la littérature anglaise (Einleitung), S. V [»Un dogme n’est rien par lui-même; voyez les gens qui l’ont fait, tel portrait du seizième siècle, la roide et énergique figure d’un archevêque ou d’un martyr anglais. […] la véritable histoire s’élève seulement quand l’historien commence à démêler, à travers la distance des temps, l’homme vivant […] avec sa voix et sa physionomie, avec ses gestes et ses habits […]«].

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eigentliche Hauptfrage, welche Er k en n t n isa r t es ist, der wir unser Wissen vom Menschen, als dem Träger und Schöpfer der Kultur, zu verdanken haben. Und hier zeigt sich uns, bei Taine selbst und mitten in seiner eigenen Darstellung, eine höchst merkwürdige Wendung. Taine hat seine Kenntnis vom Griechen der klassischen Zeit, vom Engländer der Renaissance, vom Niederländer des 17. Jahrhunderts nicht lediglich aus historischen Archiven geschöpft. Und ebensowenig stützt er sich hierfür auf naturwissenschaftliche Beobachtungen und Schlußfolgerungen oder auf das, was ihn das psychologische Laboratorium lehren konnte. Denn mit alledem würden wir, wie er betont, nur zu Einzelzügen kommen, uns aber kein wirkliches Ge s a mtbi l d vom Menschen formen können. Worauf gründet sich also dieses Gesamtbild, das Taine in solcher Anschaulichkeit vor uns hinstellt und auf das er immer wieder als auf den eigentlichen Erklärungsgrund zurückgreift? Um nicht den Anschein zu erwecken, daß wir hier irgend etwas in Taines Theorie hineinlegen, wollen wir diese Frage mit seinen eigenen Worten beantworten. Woher – so fragt er sich – haben wir eine so genaue Kenntnis der Vlamen des 17. Jahrhunderts, daß wir fast den Eindruck haben, wir hätten mitten unter ihnen gelebt? Was ist es, das sie uns so unmittelbar vertraut macht? Und die Antwort auf diese Frage lautet, daß kein anderer als – Rubens diese Vlamen zuerst so gesehen hat, wie wir sie heute sehen, und daß sich durch ihn ihr Bild unverlöschlich in uns eingeprägt hat. Aber Taine geht hier noch einen Schritt weiter. Er sagt uns nicht nur, daß Rubens diesen Typus des Vlamen vo rgefu n d en und in seiner Kunst festgehalten, sondern daß er ihn gesch affen hat. Aus unmittelbarer Naturbeobachtung konnte er ihn nicht entnehmen, und aus einfacher empirischer Ver | gleichung konnte er ihn nicht gewinnen. Denn kein »wirklicher« Niederländer enthält das, was Rubens geben wollte und was er uns gegeben hat. »Geht nach Flandern«, so sagt uns Taine, »seht euch die Typen dort, in den Momenten der Freude und des Wohllebens, bei den Festen in Gent oder Antwerpen an. Ihr werdet gute Leute sehen, die gut essen und noch besser trinken, die mit großer Heiterkeit und Gemütsruhe ihre Pfeife rauchen, phlegmatisch, verständig, von trockenem Aussehen, mit großen, unregelmäßigen Zügen, ähnlich den Gestalten, die Teniers gemalt hat. Was die strotzenden Kraftgestalten betrifft, die wir in Rubens’ Kirmes vor uns sehen – so werdet ihr nichts dergleichen finden. Rubens hat sie aus einer anderen Quelle geschöpft. […] Das Vorbild zu ihnen liegt in ihm selbst. Er fühlte in sich die Poesie des großen, üppigen Lebens, der überschäumenden, hemmungslosen und schamlosen Sinnenlust, der brutalen Freude, die sich in gigantischen Ausmaßen entfaltet. Um dieses Gefühl auszudrücken, hat er uns in

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seiner Kirmes […] den erstaunlichsten Triumph menschlicher Bestialität gemalt, den jemals der Pinsel eines Malers uns dargestellt hat. Wenn der Künstler das Verhältnis der Teile des menschlichen Körpers in seiner Wiedergabe verändert, so verändert er sie stets in ein und demselben Sinne und mit einer bestimmten Absicht. Er will damit einen wesentlichen Charakter (caractère essentiel) des Gegenstandes und die Hauptidee (idée principale), die er sich von ihm gebildet hat, sichtbar machen. Achten wir auf dieses Wort! Dieser Charakter ist das, was die Philosophen das Wesen der Dinge (l’essence des choses) nennen […] Wir wollen indes hier von der Bezeichnung ›Wesen‹‚ die ein Terminus technicus ist, absehen. Wir werden statt dessen einfach sagen, daß die Aufgabe der Kunst darin besteht, den Grundcharakter des Gegenstandes, irgendeine hervorstechende und bemerkenswerte Eigenschaft, einen wichtigen Gesichtspunkt, einen Hauptzug an ihm zu offenbaren.« (»[…] l’art a pour but de manifester le caractère capital, quelque qualité saillante et [notable] un point de vue important, une manière d’être principale de l’objet.«)34 Alle diese Umschreibungen des Objekts der Kunst bleiben im Grunde ebenso viele Rätsel, wenn man an den Ausgangspunkt der Taineschen Theorie denkt. Denn durch welches Mittel soll denn bestimmt werden, worin das »Wesen« eines bestimmten anschaulichen Gegenstandes, sein »hervorstechender Charakter«‚ seine hauptsächliche Eigenschaft be | steht? Die unmittelbar empirische Beobachtung läßt uns hier offenbar im Stich. Denn alles, was sie uns an Merkmalen bietet, steht, von ih r em Standpunkt aus gesehen, auf gleicher Linie: 34 Taine, Philosophie de l’art (1. Teil, Kap. 1, § 5), S. 49–51 [»Allez en Flandre, regardez les types, même dans les moments de joie et de bombance, dans les fêtes de Gayant, à Anvers ou ailleurs; vous verrez de bonnes gens qui mangent bien, qui boivent mieux, qui fument avec beaucoup de sérénité d’âme, flegmatiques et sensés, l’air terne, avec de grands traits irréguliers, assez semblables aux figures de Téniers; quant aux superbes brutes de la Kermesse, vous ne rencontrerez rien de semblable. Et certainement c’est d’ailleurs que Rubens les a tirées. […] Rubens les sentait en lui-même, et la poésie de la grosse vie plantureuse, de la chair satisfaite et dévergondée, de la joie brutale et gigantesquement épanouie, venait s’étaler dans les sensualités abandonnées, dans les rougeurs luxurieuses, dans les blancheurs et dans les fraîcheurs des nudités qu’il prodiguait. C’est pour exprimer de sentiment que dans cette Kermesse il […] le plus étonnant triomphe de la bestialité humaine qu’un pinceau de peintre ait jamais représenté. Ces deux exemples vous montrent que l’artiste, en modifiant les rapports des parties, les modifie dans le même sens, avec intention, de façon à rendre sensible un certain caractère essentiel de l’objet, et, par suite, l’idée principale qu’il s’en fait. Notons ce mot, messieurs. Ce caractère est ce que les philosophes appellent l’essence des choses […] Nous laisserons de côté ce mot d’essence, qui est technique, et nous dirons simplement que […]«].

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Kein Merkmal besitzt vor dem anderen einen Wesens- oder Wertvorzug. Ebenso ist klar, daß statistische Methoden uns hier nicht weiterhelfen können. Das Bild des Niederländers, das Rubens in seinen Gemälden gibt, ist ja nach Taine selbst keineswegs als bloßes Durchschnittsbild anzusehen, das aus Hunderten von Einzelbeobachtungen zusammengelesen ist. Es stammt nicht aus direkter Naturbeobachtung und war durch ihre Methoden nicht zu finden. Es stammt aus der Seele des Künstlers; denn nur sie war fähig, in dieser Weise das »Wesentliche« vom »Unwesentlichen«, das Bestimmende und Beherrschende vom Zufälligen zu sondern. »In der Natur ist der Charakter nur vorwiegend; in der Kunst handelt es sich darum, ihn zum beherrschenden zu machen.« (»Car dans la nature le caractère n’est que dominant; il s’agit dans l’art de le rendre dominateur.«) »Dieser Charakter formt die wirklichen Objekte; aber er formt sie nicht vollständig. Er wird in seiner Wirksamkeit durch die Mitwirkung anderer Ursachen gehemmt. Er hat sich den Objekten nicht in vollkommen deutlicher und sichtbarer Prägung aufdrücken können. Der Mensch fühlt diese Lücke – und um sie auszufüllen, erfindet er die Kunst.«35 Als Taine diese Sätze schrieb, glaubte er mit ihnen den Kreis der streng naturalistischen Theorie in keiner Hinsicht zu überschreiten. Dennoch sieht man auf den ersten Blick, daß sie in jeder »idealistischen« Ästhetik stehen könnten und daß Taine hier einer solchen Ästhetik all das zugesteht, was er anfangs zu bestreiten schien.36 Die Kunst besitzt jetzt eine ihr eigentümliche schöpferische F unkti on, und auf Grund derselben scheidet sie Wesentliches vom Unwesentlichen, Notwendiges vom Zufälligen. Sie überläßt sich nicht einfach der empirischen Beobachtung und der Masse der Einzelfälle, sondern sie »unterscheidet, [w]ählet und richtet«.37 Das Wissen vom »Wesentlichen«‚ das uns hier entgegentritt, verdanken wir also nicht der induktiven | Methodik der Naturwissenschaft. Es bedurfte vielmehr eines Homer oder Pindar, eines Michelangelo oder Raffael, eines Dante oder 35 A. a. O., S. 57 f. [»Ce caractère façonne les objets réels, mais il ne les façonne pas pleinement. Il est gêné dans son action, entravé par l’intervention d’autres causes. Il n’a pu s’enfoncer par une empreinte assez forte et assez visible dans les objets qui portent sa marque. L’homme sent cette lacune, et c’est pour la combler qu’il invente l’art.«]. 36 Dies ist um so auffallender, als Taine im Prinzip durchaus auf dem Boden der »Nachahmungstheorie« stehenbleibt. Er will nicht nur die Poesie und die Malerei oder Plastik, sondern auch die Architektur und Musik als »nachahmende Künste« erklären, wobei er freilich zu einer sehr künstlichen und gewaltsamen Konstruktion greifen muß. 37 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Das Göttliche, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. II, S. 83–85: S. 84.]

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Shakespeare, um uns dieses Wissen zu vermitteln. Die Intuition der großen Künstler ist es, die für uns das Bild des Griechen der klassischen Zeit, des Italieners, des Engländers der Renaissance geschaffen und es in seinen Grundzügen festgestellt hat. Hier erkennt man deutlich, daß Taines Denken, um zu einem bestimmten und konkreten Resultat zu gelangen, eine eigentümliche Kreisbewegung beschreiben muß. Taine wollte die Welt der Kunstformen aus der Welt der physischen Kräfte ableiten und erklären. Aber er mußte diese Formen unter einer anderen Benennung wieder einführen; denn nur hierdurch vermochte er in der »fließend immer gleiche[n] Reihe«38 der Naturphänomene und der Naturursachen bestimmte Unterschiede einzuführen, deren er für seine Darstellung notwendig bedurfte. Und dieser erste Schritt wurde für alles Folgende von entscheidender Bedeutung. Denn nachdem er einmal geschehen war, war der eiserne Panzer der strengen naturalistischen Methodik bereits durchbrochen. Taine kann sich jetzt, unbeschwert durch irgendwelche dogmatischen Voraussetzungen, wieder der »naiven« Anschauung hingeben – und er tut dies in reichstem Maße. Geologie und Geographie, Botanik und Zoologie, Anatomie und Physiologie werden allmählich vergessen. Wenn Taine die holländische Natur schildert, so überläßt er sich unbefangen dem, was die holländische Landschaftsmalerei ihn über diese Natur gelehrt hat. Und wenn er von der griechischen Rasse spricht, so verläßt er sich für ihre Kennzeichnung nicht auf anthropologische Beobachtungen und Messungen, sondern auf das, was ihn die griechische Plastik, was Phidias und Praxiteles ihn gelehrt haben. Kein Wunder, daß sich diese Betrachtung umkehren läßt, daß man die Kunst aus der Natur »ableiten« kann, nachdem man sich ein Bild von der Natur geformt hat, das in bestimmten Grundzügen aus der Kunst selbst stammt und durch sie seine Beglaubigung empfängt. Die Schwierigkeit, die uns hier begegnet, weist auf ein ganz allgemeines Problem hin, das sich in jedem Gebrauch kulturwissenschaftlicher Begriffe früher oder später geltend macht. Das Objekt der Natur scheint uns unmittelbar vor Augen zu liegen. Zwar lehrt uns die schärfere erkenntnistheoretische Analyse alsbald, wie vieler und wie komplizierter Begriffe es bedarf, um auch dieses Objekt, um den »Gegenstand« der Physik, der Chemie, der Biologie in seiner Eigenart zu bestimmen. Aber diese Bestimmung vollzieht sich in einer gewissen | gleichbleibenden Richtung: Wir gehen gewissermaßen auf den Gegenstand zu, um ihn immer genauer kennenzulernen. Das Kulturobjekt aber bedarf einer anderen Betrachtung; denn es liegt uns sozusagen im Rücken. Zwar scheint es 38

[Ders., Faust. Erster Theil, S. 13.]

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uns auf den ersten Blick mehr vertraut und besser zugänglich zu sein als jeder andere Gegenstand. Denn was könnte der Mensch eher und vollkommener begreifen – so hat schon Vico gefragt –, als das, was er selbst geschaffen hat? Und doch tritt eben hier eine Schranke des Erkennens auf, die schwer zu überwinden ist. Denn der r e fl e x i v e Prozeß des Begreifens ist seiner Richtung nach dem pr odukti v e n Prozeß entgegengesetzt; beide können nicht zugleich miteinander vollzogen werden. Die Kultur schafft in einem ununterbrochenen Strom ständig neue sprachliche, künstlerische, religiöse Symbole. Die Wissenschaft und die Philosophie aber muß diese Symbolsprache in ihre Elemente zerlegen, um sie sich verständlich zu machen. Sie muß das synthetisch Erzeugte analytisch behandeln. So herrscht hier ein beständiger Fluß und Rückfluß. Die Naturwissenschaft lehrt uns, nach Kants Ausdruck, »Erscheinungen zu buchstabieren, um sie als Erfahrung[en] lesen zu können«;39 die Kulturwissenschaft lehrt uns, Symbole zu deuten, um den Gehalt, der in ihnen verschlossen liegt, zu enträtseln – um das Leben, aus dem sie ursprünglich hervorgegangen sind, wieder sichtbar zu machen. |

39 [Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können, in: Werke, Bd. IV, hrsg. v. Artur Buchenau u. Ernst Cassirer, S. 1–139: S. 64 (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 312). S. auch ders., Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 257 (B 370 f.).]

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vierte studie. Formproblem und Kausalproblem Der Formbegriff und der Kausalbegriff bilden die beiden Pole, um die sich unser Weltbegreifen bewegt. Sie sind beide unentbehrlich, wenn unser Denken zur Aufstellung einer festen Weltordnung gelangen soll. Der erste Schritt muß darin bestehen, die Mannigfaltigkeit des Seins, die sich der unmittelbaren Wahrnehmung darbietet, zu gliedern und sie nach bestimmten Gestalten, nach Klassen und Arten abzuteilen. Aber neben der Frage nach dem Sein steht – gleich ursprünglich und gleichberechtigt wie sie – die Frage nach dem Werden. Nicht nur das »Was« der Welt, sondern auch ihr »Woher« soll begriffen werden. Schon der Mythos kennt beide Fragen. Er sieht alles, was er erfaßt: die Welt sowohl wie die Götter, unter diesem doppelten Aspekt. Auch die Götter haben ihr Sein und ihr Werden: Der mythischen Theologie steht die mythische Theogonie zur Seite. Das philosophische Denken stellt sich dem Mythos entgegen und bildet eine neue und eigene Weise der Welterkenntnis aus. Aber auch in ihm finden wir von früh an die gleiche Spaltung, die sich bald zum bewußten Gegensatz steigert. Kaum daß der Formbegriff und der Kausalbegriff ihre erste strenge Fassung gefunden haben, so beginnen sie auch schon, einander entgegenzutreten. Der Kampf, der zwischen ihnen einsetzt, erfüllt die gesamte Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie und gibt derselben ihr eigentümliches Gepräge. »Formdenken« und »Ursachendenken« treten hier nicht nur auseinander, sondern sie treten sich als feindliche Gegensätze gegenüber. Die ionischen Naturphilosophen, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, die Atomisten fragen nach der Ursache des Werdens. »Rerum cognoscere causas«:1 Das bildet das eigentliche Ziel ihrer Denk- und Forschungsarbeit. Demokrit hat gesagt, daß er lieber eine einzige »Aitiologie« finden wolle, als die Herrschaft über das ganze Perserreich zu gewinnen. Aber neben den »Physiologen«, die nach dem Grund des Entstehens und Werdens fragen, steht eine andere Gruppe von Denkern, die dieses Entstehen und Werden verneint und die daher die Frage | nach seinem Grunde als eine Selbsttäuschung erklären muß. Als ihr Vater und Ahnherr wird in Platons »Theaitet« Parmenides bezeichnet.2 Und Platon selbst hat in klassischer Prägnanz und Klarheit geschildert, wie sich in seiner eigenen Entwicklung die große Krise vollzog, die ihn vom Werden zum Sein, vom Ursachen1 [Vergil, Georgica (Buch 2, V. 490), in: Bucolica et Georgica (Opera, hrsg. v. Otto Ribbeck, Bd. I), Leipzig 1894, S. 59–208: S. 130.] 2 Platon, Theaitetos 183 E.

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problem zum Formproblem geführt hat. Er berichtet im »Phaidon«, wie begierig er nach dem Buch des Anaxagoras gegriffen habe, weil in ihm der »Nus«, die Vernunft, als Weltprinzip aufgestellt wurde. Aber bald habe er es enttäuscht aus der Hand gelegt; denn an Stelle des gesuchten Vernunftprinzips fand er nur eine mechanische Ursache. Er mußte eine »zweite Fahrt« versuchen – und sie erst war es, die ihn ans Ufer des Ideenlandes führte. Einen anderen Ausgleich des Gegensatzes schien das Aristotelische System zu versprechen. Aristoteles will, gegenüber den reinen Formdenkern, gegenüber den Eleaten und Platon, das Werden wieder in seine Rechte einsetzen, weil er überzeugt ist, daß nur auf diese Weise die Philosophie aus einer bloßen Begriffslehre zu einer Lehre vom Wirklichen werden könne. Aber auf der anderen Seite sieht er mit Platon in der Erkenntnis der Form das eigentliche Ziel aller wissenschaftlichen Welterklärung. Form und Materie, Sein und Werden müssen sich durchdringen, wenn eine solche Erklärung möglich sein soll. Aus dieser Durchdringung entsteht der eigentümliche Aristotelische Begriff der Fo r m u r s ach e. Die materialen Ursachen, zu denen die Atomisten in ihrem Streben nach der »Aitiologie« gegriffen hatten, sind außerstande, die Frage nach dem Warum des Werdens zu beantworten. Denn sie verfehlen das, was das Werden erst sinnvoll macht, was es zu einem Ganzen zusammenschließt. Ein Ganzes kann nicht aus einer mechanischen Verbindung der Teile entstehen. Echte Ganzheit besteht nur dort, wo alle Teile von einem einzigen Zweck beherrscht sind und ihn zu verwirklichen streben. Weil die Wirklichkeit diese Struktur zeigt, weil sie organisches Sein und organisches Werden ist, darum ist sie dem wissenschaftlichen Begriff und der philosophischen Erkenntnis zugänglich. Für diese fällt das Formprinzip mit dem Prinzip des Grundes zusammen, denn beide vereinen sich im Zweckprinzip. Ατα, ε6δος und τ#λος sind nur drei verschiedene Ausdrücke für ein und denselben fundamentalen Sachverhalt. So schien es der Aristotelischen Philosophie gelungen zu sein, den | Formbegriff mit dem Ursachenbegriff nicht nur zu versöhnen, sondern beide ineinander aufgehen zu lassen. Formbetrachtung, Ursachenbetrachtung und Zweckbetrachtung konnten aus einem obersten Prinzip deduziert werden. Hierin lag eine der größten Leistungen des Aristotelischen Systems. Denn nun ergab sich eine bewunderungswürdige Einheit und Geschlossenheit der Welterklärung. Physik und Biologie, Kosmologie und Theologie, Ethik und Metaphysik waren auf eine gemeinsame Ursache bezogen. In Gott als dem unbewegten Beweger hatten sie ihre Einheit gefunden. Solange diese Leistung unbestritten blieb, konnte der Aristotelismus nicht ernstlich erschüttert werden.

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Kraft ihrer hat er seine Herrschaft über Jahrhunderte hin behauptet. Aber seit dem 14. Jahrhundert mehren sich die Anzeichen dafür, daß diese Herrschaft nicht mehr unangefochten gilt. Wilhelm von Occam und seine Schüler bilden eine neue Naturbetrachtung aus; sie begründen eine Bewegungslehre, die den Prinzipien der Aristotelischen Physik in vieler Hinsicht scharf widerspricht. In den ersten Jahrhunderten der Renaissance kommt es sodann zu dauernden Kämpfen zwischen Aristotelikern und Platonikern. Der Sturz des Aristotelismus ist indes weder durch die Dialektik noch durch die empirische Forschung herbeigeführt worden. Aristoteles blieb unbesieglich, solange sein Grundbegriff, der Begriff der Formursache, sich in seiner zentralen Stellung behauptete. Erst als die Angriffe sich gegen diesen Punkt richteten, konnte das System aus seinen Angeln gehoben werden. Dies geschah in dem Augenblick, als die mathematische Naturwissenschaft mit ihren Ansprüchen hervortrat und als sie ihr Erkenntnisideal nicht nur tatsächlich verwirklichen, sondern es auch philosophisch begründen wollte. Jetzt erfuhr der Kausalbegriff eine Umgestaltung, die seine völlige Loslösung vom Formbegriff zu gestatten und zu fordern schien. Denn die Mathematik, die bei Platon noch ganz dem Kreis des Seins angehört, war jetzt auf die Seite des Werdens hinübergetreten. Die Dynamik Galileis schloß, in ihrer mathematischen Form, das Reich des Werdens auf und machte es der strengen begrifflichen Erkenntnis zugänglich. Der Aristotelische Begriff der Formursache wird damit allen Anspruchs für verlustig erklärt. Nur die mathematische Ursache ist eine causa vera. Die Aristotelischen Formen sind nichts als »dunkle Qualitäten«‚ die aus der Forschung verbannt werden müssen. Damit beginnt jener Siegeszug des mathematischen Denkens und der »mechanischen Kausalität«‚ kraft dessen beide sich ein Gebiet | nach dem anderen unterwerfen. Descartes benutzt Harveys Entdeckung des Blutkreislaufes, um an ihr die Notwendigkeit der mechanischen Erklärungsart zu demonstrieren. Hobbes faßt schon die D e fi ni ti on der Philosophie derart, daß aus ihr nicht nur die Suprematie, sondern auch die alleinige Gültigkeit des Kausalbegriffes unmittelbar hervorgeht. Philosophie ist nach ihm »Erkenntnis der Wirkungen oder Phänomene aus ihren Ursachen oder Prinzipien«.3 Ein Ungewordenes, ein Ewiges, wie es die peripatetisch-scholastischen Formen sind, kann daher nie3 [Thomas Hobbes, Elementorum philosophiae sectio prima de corpore (Teil 1, Kap. 1, § 2), in: Opera philosophica, quae latine scripsit, omnia. Ante quidem per partes, nunc autem, post cognitas omnium objectiones, conjunctim et accuratius edita, Bd. II, Amsterdam 1668, S. 1–261: S. 2: »Philosophia est Effectuum sive Phaenomenon ex conceptis eorum Causis seu Generationibus […] cognito.«]

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mals ein Objekt der Erkenntnis sein; es ist ein leeres Wort, das wir aus der Philosophie und aus der Wissenschaft ausstreichen müssen. Mit dieser Ausschaltung des Formbegriffs aber mußte auch die Kluft zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Kulturwissenschaft aufs neue sichtbar werden. Denn diese letztere kann den Formbegriff nicht auslöschen, ohne sich damit selbst aufzugeben. Was wir in der Sprachwissenschaft, in der Kunstwissenschaft, in der Religionswissenschaft erkennen wollen, das sind bestimmte »Formen«‚ die wir, ehe wir versuchen können, sie auf ihre Ursachen zurückzuführen, in ihrem reinen Bestand verstanden haben müssen. Die Rechte des Kausalbegriffs werden damit in keiner Weise bestritten oder verkümmert; aber sie werden begrenzt, indem ihnen ein anderer Anspruch der Erkenntnis gegenübertritt. Der methodische Wettstreit und Widerstreit bricht damit aufs neue aus. In der Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts ist er zu seiner vollen Schärfe gelangt. Zuletzt aber schien, in der Weltanschauung des »historischen Materialismus«, die Entscheidung gefallen und das endgültige Urteil gesprochen. Sie war zu einer neuen Grundschicht des Geschehens vorgestoßen, die die Gebilde der Kultur mit einem Schlage der strengen kausalen Betrachtung unterwarf und sie damit erst wahrhaft verständlich zu machen schien. Diese Gebilde bestehen nicht aus eigenem Recht; sie sind nur der »Überbau«, der auf einem anderen, tieferen Fundament aufruht. Haben wir dieses Fundament erreicht, erkennen wir die wirtschaftlichen Phänomene und Tendenzen als die eigentlichen Triebkräfte alles Geschehens, so ist damit aller scheinbare Dualismus beseitigt und die Einheit wiederhergestellt. Wenn die Kulturwissenschaften diese Entscheidung anfechten wollten, so sahen sie sich damit vor eine schwierige Aufgabe gestellt. Denn was vermochten sie der Mathematik, der Mechanik, der Physik und Chemie gegenüberzustellen? Mußten nicht alle ihre Angriffe an dem | eisernen Panzer der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Methodik abprallen? Stand nicht die Logik der klaren und deutlichen Begriffe unleugbar auf dieser Seite, während sie selbst sich auf unbestimmte gefühlsmäßige Forderungen, auf bloße »Velleitäten« stützen mußten? In der Tat hätten die Kulturwissenschaften den Kampf kaum führen können, wenn ihnen nicht von anderer Seite her eine unerwartete Hilfe zuteil geworden wäre. Solange die Naturwissenschaft als solche fest auf dem Boden der »mechanischen Weltansicht« stand, war die absolute Herrschaft dieser Weltansicht kaum zu brechen. Aber hier vollzog sich nun jene merkwürdige Entwicklung, die zu einer inneren Krise und schließlich zu einer »Revolution der Denkart«4 im Gebiet 4

[Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 15 (B XI).]

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der naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis selbst hingeführt hat. Seit dem Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts tritt sie in allen Gebieten immer deutlicher hervor. Nach und nach ergreift sie die Physik, die Biologie, die Psychologie. Auch diese Wandlung ging vom F or mbe g r i ff aus; aber sie versteht diesen nicht mehr in seiner alten Aristotelischen Bedeutung. Der Unterschied läßt sich kurz so aussprechen, daß vom Aristotelischen Formbegriff zwar das Moment der G anz he i t, nicht aber das der Z weck t ät ig k eit beibehalten wird. Aristoteles war »anthropomorph« verfahren. Er war vom zweckmäßigen Tun des Menschen ausgegangen, und er hatte es in die gesamte Natur hineingesehen. Wenn der Architekt ein Haus baut, so ist hier das Ganze früher als seine einzelnen Teile; denn der Plan und Entwurf, die Vorstellung der Gestalt des Hauses geht der Ausführung des einzelnen voraus. Aristoteles zieht hieraus den Schluß, daß überall, wo sich eine derartige Priorität feststellen läßt, eine zweckmäßige Tätigkeit vorausgesetzt werden müsse. Und die Prämisse für diesen Schluß findet er im Werden der Natur überall bestätigt. Denn alles Werden ist organisches Werden, ist Übergang von der »Möglichkeit« zur »Wirklichkeit«, ist Entfaltung einer ursprünglichen Anlage, die als Einheit und Ganzheit besteht, um sich in ihre Teile auseinanderzulegen. Diesen Anthropomorphismus hat die mathematische Naturwissenschaft scharf bestritten, und zu ihm ließ sich nicht wieder zurückkehren. Aber wenn damit das Ganze als zwecksetzende und zwecktätige K ra ft gefallen war, so war damit doch die Kat eg o r ie der Ganzheit nicht gefallen. Der Mechanismus hatte auf diese Kategorie verzichtet. Er war analytisch verfahren; er hatte erklärt, daß sich die Bewegung eines Ganzen nur dann verstehen lasse, wenn es gelänge, sie in die Bewegung letzter | Elementarteilchen aufzulösen und vollständig auf sie zurückzuführen. Lagranges »Analytische Mechanik« ist der glänzendste Versuch, dieses Programm durchzuführen. Und aus ihr schien sich, in philosophischer Hinsicht, mit innerer Notwendigkeit das Ideal jenes »Laplaceschen Geistes« zu ergeben, der das gesamte Weltgeschehen vorwärts und rückwärts übersehen kann, wenn ihm die Lage aller einzelnen Massenpunkte in einem gegebenen Augenblick und die Gesetze für die Bewegung dieser Punkte bekannt sind. Aber im Lauf ihrer Entwicklung war die klassische Physik und die Punktmechanik auf Probleme geführt worden, die sie mit dieser Methodik nicht zu meistern vermochte. Sie mußte sich zu einem Umbau ihres Begriffsapparats entschließen, der die Voraussetzung, daß jedes Ganze sich als die »Summe seiner Teile« begreifen lassen müsse, mehr und mehr problematisch machte. Der Faraday-Maxwellsche Begriff des elektromagnetischen Feldes bildet hier den ersten entscheidenden Wendepunkt. Hermann

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Weyl hat in seiner Schrift »Was ist Materie?« die Verdrängung der alten »Substanztheorie« durch die moderne »Feldtheorie« eingehend geschildert. Den eigentlichen, erkenntnistheoretisch wichtigen Unterschied zwischen beiden findet er darin, daß das Feld sich nicht mehr als ein bloß summatives Ganze, als ein Aggregat aus Teilen auffassen läßt. Das Feld ist kein Dingbegriff, sondern ein Relationsbegriff; es setzt sich nicht aus Stücken zusammen, sondern ist ein System, ein Inbegriff von Kraftlinien. »[…] ein Materieteilchen wie das Elektron ist für [die Feldtheorie] lediglich ein kleines Gebiet des elektrischen Feldes, in welchem die Feldstärke enorm hohe Werte annimmt und wo demnach auf kleinstem Raum eine gewaltige Feld[stärke] konzentriert ist. [Dieses Weltbild] ruht ganz und gar im Kontinuum; auch die Atom[e] und Elektronen sind keine letzten unveränderlichen, von den angreifenden Naturkräften hin und her geschobenen Elemente, sondern selber stetig ausgebreitet und feinen fließenden Veränderungen unterworfen.«5 Noch weit deutlicher und charakteristischer als in der Entwicklung der Physik tritt diese Rückkehr zum Ganzheitsbegriff in der Entwicklung der Biologie hervor. Hier geht sie bisweilen so weit, daß eine vollständige Restitution dieses Begriffs in seiner ursprünglichen Aristotelischen Bedeutung erreicht zu sein scheint. Die Bewegung des Vitalismus nimmt sich in der Tat auf den ersten Blick als nichts anderes denn als eine merkwürdige Aristotelesrenaissance aus, die zum min | desten die biologische Wissenschaft zu ihren ersten Anfängen zurückzuführen scheint. Drieschs Begriff der Entelechie knüpft, im Namen wie in der Sache, unmittelbar an Aristoteles an. Folgt man jedoch der Gesamtbewegung des biologischen Denkens in den letzten Jahrzehnten, so erkennt man, daß auch in ihm, trotz aller Annäherung an den Aristotelischen Formbegriff, eine ähnliche Differenzierung und Spaltung im Inhalt des Begriffs selbst erfolgt ist, wie wir sie im physikalischen Denken beobachten können. Die Kategorie der Ganzheit fällt jetzt nicht mehr schlechthin mit der des Zweckes zusammen, sondern beginnt sich von ihr bestimmt zu scheiden. In den ersten Anfängen der vitalistischen Bewegung fließen die Formprobleme noch unterschiedslos mit den Kausalproblemen zusammen. Das hat zur Folge, daß man diesen Problemen nur dadurch gerecht werden zu können glaubt, daß man an eine andere Art von Ursächlichkeit appelliert als diejenige, die uns in den Erscheinungen der anorganischen Welt entgegentritt. Wo sich Restitution und Regeneration, wo sich 5 Hermann Weyl, Was ist Materie?, in: ders., Was ist Materie? Zwei Aufsätze zur Naturphilosophie, Berlin 1924, S. 1–59 u. 77–84: S. 35 f.

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Behauptung und Wiederherstellung bestimmter Form-Charaktere in der biologischen Welt zeigt, da schließt man auf K r ä fte , die von den mechanischen verschieden und ihnen überlegen sein sollen. Driesch benutzt die Phänomene der Restitution und Regeneration dazu, um den Begriff der Lebenskraft zu erneuern. Für ihn wird die Seele wieder zum »elementaren Naturfaktor«. Sie gehört der räumlichen Welt nicht an, aber sie wirkt in diese hinein. Die Entelechie kann keine Intensitätsdifferenzen irgendwelcher Art erschaffen; wohl aber besitzt sie die Fähigkeit, solche Intensitätsdifferenzen, wo sie vorhanden sind, zu »suspendieren«, d. h. ihre Wirksamkeit zeitweilig zu verhindern. Auf diese Weise glaubte Driesch seine Grundauffassung mit dem Gesetz der Erhaltung der Energie in Einklang setzen und zeigen zu können, daß durch die Einführung der neuen »seelenartigen« Kraft die rein physikalische Kräftebilanz in der Natur nicht verändert werde.6 Aber seine Lehre ist und bleibt eine rein metaphysische Theorie, die die Erfahrungsbasis, auf die sie sich ursprünglich stützt, sehr bald aus dem Auge verliert. Auf diesem Wege ist die moderne Biologie Driesch nicht gefolgt. Aber ebensowenig ist sie auf die reine »Maschinentheorie des Lebens«7 zurückgegangen. Sie hat beide Extreme vermieden, indem sie sich immer mehr auf den rein methodischen Sinn des Problems besann. | Ihr handelte es sich nicht in erster Linie um die Frage, ob organische Formen aus rein mechanischen Kräften e r kl ä r t werden können; sie legte vielmehr den Nachdruck darauf, daß sie durch reine Kausalbegriffe nicht vollständig be s c hr i e be n werden können. Und für diesen Nachweis griff sie auf die Kategorie der »Ganzheit« zurück. Man kann sich diesen Stand des Problems an dem letzten zusammenfassenden Überblick über die theoretische Biologie vergegenwärtigen, den Ludwig von Bertalanffy gegeben hat.8 Bertalanffy betont, daß in jeder Naturwissenschaft der Fortschritt in der begrifflichen Klärung nicht minder notwendig sei, als der Fortschritt in der Tatsachenerkenntnis. Und einen der wichtigsten Fortschritte in ersterer Hinsicht findet er darin, daß die Biologie gelernt habe, die Ganzheitsbetrachtung streng durchzuführen, ohne sich dadurch auf den Weg der Zweckbetrachtung drängen und zu der Annahme von »Zweckursachen« ver6 Vgl. Hans Driesch, Die »Seele« als elementarer Naturfaktor. Studien über die Bewegungen der Organismen, Leipzig 1903; ders., Philosophie des Organischen. Gifford-Vorlesungen, gehalten an der Universität Aberdeen in den Jahren 1907– 1908, Bd. II, Leipzig 1909, S. 222 ff. u. ö. 7 [A. a. O., S. 11.] 8 Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Theoretische Biologie, Bd. I: Allgemeine Theorie, Physikochemie, Aufbau und Entwicklung des Organismus, Berlin 1932.

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leiten zu lassen. Die Erscheinungen der organischen Natur beweisen derartige Ursachen nicht; sie zeigen uns keine »Entelechie« im Sinne von Driesch, keine »Oberkräfte« im Sinne Eduard von Hartmanns, keine »Dominanten« im Sinne Reinkes. Was sie uns alles zeigen, ist, daß das Geschehen im Organismus stets eine bestimmte Ri c htung innehält. »Gewiß können wir die im Organismus ablaufenden Einzelvorgänge physiko-chemisch beschreiben – aber als Lebensvorgang sind sie damit in keiner Weise gekennzeichnet. Wenn nicht alle, so doch die überwiegend meisten Lebensvorgänge […] zeigen sich dahin geordnet, daß sie auf die Erhaltung [und] Wiederherstellung der Ganzheit des Organismus gerichtet sind. […] Darüber, daß die Erscheinungen in den Organismen zu einem großen Teil ›ganzheits-‹ [und] ›systemerhaltend‹ sind, und daß es die Aufgabe der Biologie ist, festzustellen, ob und inwiefern sie es sind, kann eigentlich gar kein [Zweifel sein]. Nun nannte man aber, alten Denkgewohnheiten folgend, diese Geordnetheit de[s] Lebens[…] ›Zweckmäßigkeit‹, und fragte, welchen ›Zweck‹ ein Organ oder eine Funktion habe. Im Begriff ›Zweck‹ schien aber ein Wollen und [Intendieren] des Zieles involviert zu sein – eine Vorstellungs[art], die dem Naturforscher mit Recht unsympathisch ist, und so machte man den Versuch, die ›Zweckmäßigkeit‹ als eine bloß subjektive und unwissenschaftliche Betrachtungsweise hinzustellen. In der Tat ist die ganzheitliche Betrachtungsweise, in der schlechten Formulierung als ›Zweckmäßigkeitsbetrachtung‹, häufig gemißbraucht worden: erstens | durch den Darwinismus, der in seinem Bestreben, für jedes Organ und jeden Charakter Nützlichkeit[s-] und Selektionswert herauszufinden, häufig gänzlich haltlose Hypothesen über die ›Zweckmäßigkeit‹ aufstellte; zweitens vom Vitalismus, der sie als Beweis des Waltens seiner Vitalfaktoren ansah.« Aber dieser Mißbrauch kann und darf uns nach Bertalanffy nicht daran hindern, anzuerkennen, daß die Ganzheitsbetrachtung im Aufbau der Biologie ihre berechtigte und notwendige Stelle hat, und daß sie durch keine andere Methode ersetzt werden kann. Auch die Kenntnis der kausalen Zusammenhänge kann sie in keiner Weise verdrängen oder überflüssig machen wollen. »Es hat keinen Sinn, die Ganzheitserhaltung des Organischen wegdisputieren zu wollen, sondern das richtige Vorgehen ist, sie erstens zu erforschen uns zweitens zu erklären.«9 9 In dieser Darstellung des Ideals der biologischen Erkenntnis stützt sich Bertalanffy vor allem auf John Scott Haldane, der für diese Auffassung den Namen »Holismus« eingeführt hat. Vgl. John Scott Haldane, The New Physiology. And other Essays, London 1919, und Adolf Meyer-Abich, Ideen und Ideale der biologischen Erkenntnis. Beiträge zur Theorie und Geschichte der biologischen Ideologien, Leipzig 1934 (Bios. Abhandlungen zur theoretischen Biologie und ihrer

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Daß auch die moderne Ps y ch o lo g i e der gleichen Entwicklungslinie folgt und daß die Tendenz, die sich in der Physik und Biologie aufzeigen läßt, in ihr besonders deutlich und prägnant zutage tritt, bedarf kaum des Hinweises. Früher als andere Wissenschaften scheint die Psychologie zum mindesten das methodische P robl e m gesehen zu haben, das hier vorliegt. Aber auch sie konnte dasselbe nicht unmittelbar in Angriff nehmen; denn ihre eigene Vergangenheit, ihre gesamte wissenschaftliche Geschichte stand ihr dabei im Wege. Die Psychologie war, als empirische Wissenschaft, ein Sprößling und ein Seitenzweig der Naturforschung. Ihre erste Aufgabe mußte darin bestehen, sich, gleich dieser, von der Herrschaft der scholastischen Begriffe freizumachen und sich auf die Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens zu besinnen. Zu diesen Grundtatsachen aber schien kein anderer Weg hinführen zu können als derjenige, der in der exakten Wissenschaft seine Probe bestanden hatte. So wird die Methode der Psychologie bei ihren ersten wissenschaftlichen Begründern überall der der Physik nachgebildet. Hobbes strebt bewußt danach, Galileis »resolutive und kompositive« Methode vom Gebiet der Physik auf das der Psychologie zu übertragen. Im 18. Jahrhundert ist es der Ehrgeiz Condillacs, zum »Newton der Psychologie« zu werden, indem er sich des gleichen Mittels wie dieser, des Mittels der Auflösung aller komplex | en Phänomene in ein einfaches Grundphänomen, bedient.10 Ist dieses Elementarphänomen gefunden, so lassen sich nicht nur alle die verschiedenartigen Inhalte des Bewußtseins, sondern auch alle scheinbaren Tätigkeiten desselben, alle Bewußtseinsoperationen und Prozesse aus ihm vollständig ableiten.11 Damit war die Psychologie zur Ele me nta r ps yc hol og i e geworden, deren bewundertes Vorbild die Punktmechanik war und blieb. Wie die Astronomie die Grundgesetze des Kosmos dadurch gefunden hatte, daß sie die Gesetze studierte, die für die Bewegung einfacher Massenpunkte gelten, so mußte die Psychologie alles Seelenleben aus den Atomen der Empfindung und aus den Regeln der Verknüpfung für sie, aus »Perzeptionen« und »Assoziationen«‚ ableiten. Das Sein des Bewußtseins läßt sich nur aus seiner Genesis erklären, und diese Genesis ist letzten Endes nichts anderes und nichts Schwierigeres als die Verbindung gleichartiger Teile zu immer komplexeren Gebilden. In welcher Weise und durch welche Mittel die moderne psychologiGeschichte, sowie zur Philosophie der organischen Naturwissenschaften, Bd. 1) [Zitate Bertalanffy, Theoretische Biologie, S. 11, 14 u. 19]. 10 Vgl. hierzu Georges Le Roy, La psychologie de Condillac, Paris 1937. 11 Näheres in meiner Schrift »Die Philosophie der Aufklärung«, Tübingen 21932 (Grundriß der philosophischen Wissenschaften), S. 21 ff. [ECW 15, S. 17 ff.].

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sche Forschung diese Anschauung überwunden hat, ist bekannt. Sie hat hierbei den rein genetischen Problemen nicht nur nicht entsagt, sondern sie hat ihnen eine neue Bedeutung gegeben. Aber sie glaubt nicht länger, daß diese Probleme den ein z ig e n Gegenstand der Psychologie ausmachen und daß sich durch sie ihr Gehalt erschöpfen läßt. Dem Kausalbegriff tritt der S tr u k t u r b eg r i ff als leitendes Prinzip gegenüber. Die Struktur wird nicht erkannt, sondern sie wird zerstört, wenn man sie in ein bloßes Aggregat, in eine »Und-Verbindung« aufzulösen sucht. Der Begriff der »Ganzheit« ist damit auch hier in seine Rechte eingesetzt und in seiner fundamentalen Bedeutung erkannt: Die Elementarpsychologie ist zur Gestaltpsychologie geworden. Wir haben jedoch diese methodische Umbildung der Physik, der Biologie und Psychologie hier nur darum angedeutet, um an sie die Frage anzuknüpfen, inwieweit sich hieraus auch für die Gestaltung der Kulturwissenschaften ein neuer Aspekt ergibt. Diese Frage läßt sich jetzt schärfer fassen und sicherer beantworten. Die Anerkennung des Ganzheitsbegriffes und des Strukturbegriffes hat den Unterschied zwischen Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft keineswegs verwischt oder eliminiert. Aber sie hat eine trennende Schranke beseitigt, die bisher zwischen beiden bestand. Die Kultur | wissenschaft kann sich freier und unbefangener als zuvor in das Studium i hr e r Formen, ih rer Strukturen und Gestalten versenken, seit auch die anderen Wissensgebiete auf ihre eigentümlichen Formprobleme aufmerksam geworden sind. Die Logik der Forschung kann jetzt all diesen Problemen ihren Platz zuweisen. Formanalysen und kausale Analysen erscheinen nunmehr als Richtungen, die einander nicht widerstreiten, sondern die einander ergänzen und die sich in allem Wissen miteinander verbinden müssen. Noch weit stärker als die Naturphänomene zeigen sich die Phänomene der Kultur dem Reich des Werdens verhaftet. Aus dem Strom des Werdens können sie nicht heraustreten. Wir können keine Sprachwissenschaft, keine Kunstwissenschaft, keine Religionswissenschaft treiben, ohne daß wir uns auf das stützen, was die Sprachgeschichte, die Kunstgeschichte, die Religionsgeschichte uns lehrt. Und wir können uns auf dieses hohe Meer des Werdens nicht wagen, ohne jenem Kompaß zu vertrauen, den uns die Kategorie von »Ursache« und »Wirkung« in die Hand gibt. Die Erscheinungen blieben ein unübersehbares Gewirr für uns, wenn wir sie nicht durch feste Kausalketten miteinander verbinden könnten. Dieser Drang, in die Ursachen des Werdens der Kultur vorzudringen, ist so stark, daß er für uns leicht alles andere verdeckt. Und doch ist die Analyse des Werdens und eine kausale Erklärung nicht alles. Sie ist nur eine einzelne D ime ns i on

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der Betrachtung des Kulturgeschehens, der andere Dimensionen gleichberechtigt und gleich selbständig gegenüberstehen. Das eigentliche Tiefenbild der Kultur ergibt sich für uns erst, wenn wir alle diese Dimensionen unterscheiden, um sie sodann, kraft dieser Unterscheidung und auf Grund derselben, wieder in der rechten Weise miteinander zu verbinden. Drei Momente sind es, die wir hier herausheben können und die wir sorgfältig auseinanderhalten müssen. In aller Betrachtung von Kulturgebilden steht die We r de ns a na l ys e , die sich im wesentlichen auf die Kategorie von Ursache und Wirkung stützt, der Wer k an aly s e und der Fo r m a na l ys e gegenüber. Die Werkanalyse bildet die eigentliche tragende Grundschicht. Denn ehe wir die Geschichte der Kultur schreiben und ehe wir uns eine Vorstellung über die ursächlichen Zusammenhänge ihrer einzelnen Erscheinungen bilden können, müssen wir uns einen Überblick über die Werke der Sprache, der Kunst, der Religion verschafft haben. Und es genügt nicht, daß wir sie als bloßen Rohstoff vor uns liegen haben. | Wir müssen in ihren Sinn eingedrungen sein; wir müssen verstehen, was sie uns zu sagen haben. Zu diesem Verständnis gehört ein eigenes Verfahren der Deutung; eine selbständige und höchst schwierige und komplizierte »Hermeneutik«. Wenn sich, auf Grund dieser Hermeneutik, das Dunkel zu lichten beginnt, wenn sich in den Monumenten der Kultur allmählich immer deutlicher bestimmte Grundgestalten herausheben, wenn sie sich zu gewissen Klassen zusammenschließen und wenn wir in diesen Klassen selbst bestimmte Beziehungen und Ordnungen zu entdecken vermögen – dann beginnt eine neue, doppelte Aufgabe. Es gilt, generell betrachtet das »Was« jeder einzelnen Kulturform, das »Wesen« der Sprache, der Religion, der Kunst zu bestimmen. Was »ist«, was bedeutet jede von ihnen, und welche Funktion erfüllen sie? Und wie verhalten sich Sprache und Mythos, Kunst und Religion zueinander, worin unterscheiden sie sich, und was verbindet sie miteinander? Hier gelangen wir zu einer »Theorie« der Kultur, die letzten Endes ihren Abschluß in einer »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen« suchen muß – mag dieser Abschluß auch als ein »unendlichferner Punkt« erscheinen, dem wir uns nur asymptotisch annähern können. Von der Formanalyse führt ein weiterer Schritt zu dem Verfahren, das wir als A kt an aly s e bezeichnen können. Hier fragen wir nicht nach den Gebilden, den Werken der Kultur – und ebensowenig fragen wir nach den allgemeinen Formen, in denen sie sich uns darstellen. Wir fragen nach den seelischen P r oz e s s e n, aus denen sie hervorgegangen sind und deren objektiven Niederschlag sie bilden. Wir erforschen die Eigenart des »Symbolbewußtseins«, das sich im Gebrauch der menschlichen Sprache bekundet; wir fragen nach der

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Art und der Richtung des Vorstellens, des Fühlens, der Phantasie und des Glaubens, auf denen die Kunst, der Mythos, die Religion beruhen. Jede dieser Betrachtungsweisen hat ihr eigenes Recht und ihre eigene Notwendigkeit, und jede bedient sich, logisch gesehen, besonderer Instrumente und macht von Kategorien Gebrauch, die ihr spezifisch zugehören. All dies muß man sich deutlich machen, und all dies muß man sich ständig gegenwärtig halten, um den Grenzverschiebungen und Grenzstreitigkeiten zu entgehen, die sich, im Gebiet der Kulturwissenschaften und der Kulturphilosophie, immer wieder ergeben haben. Eines der bekanntesten Beispiele für sie liefert die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Sprache oder die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Mythos, der Kunst, der Religion. Sie entsteht dadurch, daß man den Hebel der Kausal | frage gewissermaßen an einer falschen Stelle einsetzt. Statt sie an die Erscheinungen in n er h alb einer bestimmten Form zur richten, richtet man sie an diese Form als solche, als in sich geschlossenes Ganze. Hier aber läßt uns die Kategorie von Ursache und Wirkung, die in ihrem Bereich so unentbehrlich und so fruchtbar ist, im Stich. Die Lösungen, die sie zu geben verspricht, erweisen sich bei näherer Betrachtung als Tautologien oder Zirkelschlüsse. Sprachwissenschaft und Sprachphilosophie haben immer wieder versucht, das Dunkel des Sprachursprungs zu lichten. Aber wenn man die verschiedenen Theorien überblickt, die beide aufgestellt haben, so gewinnt man den Eindruck, daß sie keinen Schritt vorwärts gekommen sind. Wollte man die Sprache durch irgendwelche kausalen Mittelglieder aus der Natur hervorgehen lassen, so blieb nichts anderes übrig, als sie unmittelbar an bestimmte Naturphänomene anzuknüpfen. Sie mußte als organischer Vorgang aufgewiesen werden, ehe sie als geistiger Vorgang gedeutet werden konnte. Diese Erwägung führte dazu, daß man auf den reinen Empfindungslaut als den eigentlichen Sprachursprung zurückging. Denn der Schrei der Empfindung, der Schmerz- und Angstlaut, der Lock- oder Warnungsruf scheint schon über große Teile der Tierwelt verbreitet zu sein. Gelang es hier, die Brücke zu schlagen – gelang es zu zeigen, daß die Interjektion der eigentliche Anfang und das »Prinzip« der Sprache sei, so schien damit das Problem gelöst. Aber daß diese Hoffnung verfehlt war, mußte sich bald ergeben. Denn gerade die wichtigste Seite der Frage war hierbei übersehen. Wie der Schrei zum »Wort« werden, wie er G eg en s t än d lic he s bezeichnen könne, blieb ungeklärt. Hier trat die zweite Theorie ein, die sich auf die Lautnachahmung stützte und in ihr den ersten Ursprung der Sprachworte sah. Aber auch sie scheiterte an dem Grundphänomen alles Sprechens: am Phänomen des S at z es . Solange es nicht gelang, den Satz als ein

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bloßes Aggregat von Worten zu erklären, sobald man ihn in seiner eigentümlichen »Fügung« sah, zeigte es sich, daß es in der Natur kein Gebilde gibt, das dieser Fügung entspricht. Auch der Rückgang in »primitive« Stadien der Sprache kann uns hier den Weg nicht weisen; denn jede noch so primitive sprachliche Erscheinung enthält schon die gan ze Sprache in sich, weil sie die F unkti on des »Bedeutens« und »Meinens« in sich schließt. Hieraus ergibt sich unmittelbar, daß und warum hier dem kausalen Begreifen eine feste Grenze gezogen ist. Die Funktion der Sprache – | und ebenso die der Kunst, der Religion usf. – ist und bleibt ein »Urphänomen« im Goethischen Sinne. Sie »erscheint und ist«, ohne daß es an ihr noch etwas zu erklären gäbe. »Das Höchste, wozu der Mensch gelangen kann«, so hat Goethe einmal zu Eckermann gesagt, »ist das Erstaunen, und wenn ihn das Urphänomen in Erstaunen setzt, so sei er zufrieden; ein Höheres kann es ihm nicht gewähren, und ein Weiteres soll er nicht dahinter suchen: hier ist die Grenze. Aber den Menschen ist der Anblick eines Urphänomens gewöhnlich noch nicht genug, sie denken, es müsse noch weiter gehen, und sie sind den Kindern ähnlich, die wenn sie in einen Spiegel geguckt, ihn sogleich umwenden, um zu sehen, was auf der anderen Seite ist.«12 Aber – so läßt sich hiergegen einwenden – ist diese Umwendung nicht vielleicht die eigentliche Aufgabe der Ph ilo s o p h ie, die nicht, wie die Kunst, bei der einfachen Anschauung und bei der Erscheinung stehenbleiben kann, sondern statt dessen zur Idee, als dem Grunde der Erscheinungswelt, vordringen will? War es nicht diese Wendung der Blickrichtung, die Platon gefordert und die er, im Höhlengleichnis des »Staates«, so prägnant und charakteristisch beschrieben hat? Und wird nicht die Philosophie und die Wissenschaft der Skepsis preisgegeben, wenn man ihr an einem so wichtigen und entscheidenden Problem die Warumfrage verbietet? Kann sie auf das »Prinzip des zureichenden Grundes« jemals Verzicht leisten? Dieses Verzichts bedarf es in der Tat nicht. Aber wir müssen uns allerdings deutlich machen, daß auch die Skepsis ihre Rechte hat. Die Skepsis ist nicht nur Verleugnung oder Vernichtung des Wissens. Gerade die Philosophie kann als Beweis hierfür dienen. Man braucht nur an ihre wichtigsten und fruchtbarsten Epochen zu denken, um sich zu vergegenwärtigen, welche wichtige und unentbehrliche Rolle 12 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe zu Johann Peter Eckermann, 18. Februar 1829, in: Goethes Gespräche. Gesamtausgabe, unter Mitw. von Max Morris u. a. neu hrsg. v. Flodoard von Biedermann [= Goethes Gespräche, begr. v. Woldemar von Biedermann, 2., durchges. u. stark verm. Aufl.], Bd. IV, Leipzig 1910, S. 72 f.: S. 72.

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das Nich twissen in ihnen gespielt hat und wie sich an ihm das Wissen erst eigentlich gefunden und ständig erneuert hat. Das Sokratische Nichtwissen, Nicolaus Cusanus’ »docta ignorantia«‚ der Cartesische Zweifel gehören zu den wichtigsten Instrumenten der philosophischen Erkenntnis. Es ist besser, auf ein Wissen zu verzichten, als sich ein Problem dadurch aus den Augen rücken zu lassen, daß man sich bei einer Scheinlösung beruhigt. Alle echte Skepsis ist relative Skepsis. Sie erklärt gewisse Fragen für unlösbar, um uns dadurch um so mehr auf den Kreis der lösbaren Fragen hinzuweisen und um | uns um so sicherer in ihm festzuhalten. Dies bestätigt sich auch an unserem Problem. Denn was hier von uns verlangt wird, ist nicht dies, daß wir der Frage nach dem »Warum« entsagen, sondern daß wir sie an ihrer rechten Stelle anwenden sollen. Was wir hier lernen – und was im Grunde schon die Physik, die Biologie, die Psychologie uns lehren konnte –, ist dies, daß wir die Strukturfrage nicht mit der Kausalfrage verwechseln dürfen und daß wir die eine nicht auf die andere zurückführen können. Beide haben ihr relatives Recht; beide sind unentbehrlich und notwendig. Aber keine kann sich an die Stelle der anderen setzen. Haben wir einmal, auf dem Wege der Formanalyse und mit ihren Mitteln, das »Wesen« der Sprache bestimmt, dann müssen wir auf dem Wege der kausalen Erkenntnis, auf dem Wege der Sprachpsychologie und der Sprachgeschichte, zu erforschen suchen, wie dieses Wesen sich umbildet und entwickelt. Wir versenken uns damit in ein reines Werden; aber auch dieses Werden verbleibt innerhalb eines bestimmten Seins, innerhalb der »Form« der Sprache überhaupt. Es ist demnach »Werden zum Sein«‚ »γ#νεσι[ς] ες ο σαν«,13 wie Platon sagt. Formbegriff und Kausalbegriff trennen sich also voneinander, um sich um so sicherer wiederzufinden und um sich um so enger aneinanderzuschließen. Das Bündnis zwischen beiden kann für die empirische Forschung nur fruchtbar werden, wenn jeder von ihnen sein Eigenrecht und seine Selbständigkeit behauptet. Hat man sich dies einmal klargemacht, so erscheint es keineswegs als ein bloßer Agnostizismus, als ein intellektuelles Opfer, das man sich mühsam abringen muß, wenn man zugesteht, daß die Frage nach der En tsteh u n g d er S y m b o lf u n k t io n mit wissenschaftlichen Mitteln nicht lösbar ist. Es besagt nicht, daß wir hier an einer absoluten Schranke unseres Wissens stehen, sondern vielmehr, daß nicht alles Wissen in der Erkenntnis vom Entstehen aufgeht, sondern daß es daneben eine andere Erkenntnisform gibt, die es, statt mit dem Entstehen, mit dem reinen Bestand zu tun hat. Die Aporie entsteht erst, 13

[Platon, Philebos 26 D.]

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wenn man annimmt, daß die Begriffe von Ursache und Wirkung die einzigen Wegweiser der Erkenntnis seien und daß es dort, wo sie uns im Stich lassen, nur Dunkel und Unwissenheit geben könne. Hobbes hat, wie wir gesehen haben, dieses »Axiom« schon in die Begriffsbestimmung der Philosophie hineingelegt.14 Und doch ist das, was hier als Prinzip der Erkenntnis hingestellt wird, in Wahrheit nichts anderes als eine | Petitio principii. Es wird damit als erwiesen angenommen, was den eigentlichen Fragepunkt bildet und was am meisten des Beweises bedürfte; es wird davon ausgegangen, daß es außerhalb der Dimension, die durch den Kausalbegriff bestimmt und beherrscht wird, keine andere Ebene gibt, in der es irgend etwas zu »wissen« gibt. Was die Anerkennung dieser Mehrdimensionalität der Erkenntnis immer wieder erschwert und hinangehalten hat, ist der Umstand, daß damit das Entwicklungsprinzip in die Brüche zu gehen schien. Denn in der Tat gibt es keine »Entwicklung«, die in stetiger Folge von der einen Dimension zur anderen hinüberführt. An irgendeiner Stelle muß man hier einen generischen Unterschied zugeben, der sich nur noch feststellen läßt, ohne sich weiter erklären zu lassen. Heute hat für uns freilich auch dieses Problem viel von seiner Schärfe verloren. Denn wir pflegen auch in der Bio lo g i e die Evolutionstheorie nicht mehr in dem Sinne zu verstehen, daß wir jede neue Form aus der alten durch bloße Akkumulation zufälliger Veränderungen hervorgehen lassen. Die Darwinsche Lehre, die dem Stetigkeitsprinzip zuliebe diese Auffassung durchzuführen suchte, wird gegenwärtig in der Ausprägung, die der dogmatische Darwinismus ihr gegeben hat, wohl von keinem Biologen mehr vertreten. Der Satz »Natura non facit saltus« hat dadurch eine sehr wesentliche Einschränkung erfahren. Seine Problematik ist im Gebiet der Physik durch die Quantentheorie, im Gebiete der organischen Natur durch die Mutationstheorie aufgedeckt worden. Auch im Kreise des organischen Lebens bliebe die »Entwicklung« im Grunde ein leeres Wort, wenn wir annehmen müßten, daß es sich in ihr um bloße »Auswicklung« eines schon Gegebenen und Vorhandenen handelt, so daß, im Sinne der älteren Präformations- und Einschachtelungstheorien, schließlich alles doch immer »beim Alten bliebe«. An irgendeiner Stelle müssen wir auch hier ein Neues zugeben, das nur durch einen »Sprung« erreicht werden kann. »Als Mutationstheorie«, so beschreibt Hugo de Vries seine Lehre, »bezeichne ich den Satz, dass die Eigenschaften der Organismen aus scharf von einander unterschiedenen Einheiten aufgebaut sind. […] Auf dem Gebiete der Abstammungslehre führt dieses Princip zu der Ueberzeugung, dass 14

Vgl. oben, S. 448.

111–112

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die Arten nicht fliessend, sondern stufenweise aus einander hervorgegangen sind. Jede neue zu der älteren hinzukommende Einheit bildet eine Stufe und trennt die neue Form, als selbständige Art, scharf und völlig von der Species, aus der sie hervorgegangen ist. Die neue Art ist | somit mit einem Male da; sie entsteht aus der früheren ohne sichtbare Vorbereitung, ohne Uebergänge.«15 Der Übergang von der Natur zur »Kultur« gibt uns also in d ies er Hinsicht kein neues Rätsel auf. Er bestätigt nur, was uns schon die Naturbetrachtung lehrt, daß jede echte Entwicklung im Grunde immer eine μετ!βασις ες λλο γ#νος ist, die wir zwar aufweisen, aber nicht mehr kausal erklären können. Erfahrung und Denken, Empirie und Philosophie befinden sich hier in gleicher Lage. Denn beide können das »Ansich« des Menschen nicht anders bestimmen, als daß sie es in den Erscheinungen aufweisen. Sie können die Erkenntnis vom »Wesen« des Menschen nur dadurch gewinnen, daß sie den Menschen in der Kultur und im Spiegel seiner Kultur erblicken; aber sie können diesen Spiegel nicht umwenden, um zu sehen, was hinter ihm liegt. |

15 Hugo de Vries, Die Mutationstheorie. Versuche und Beobachtungen über die Entstehung von Arten im Pflanzenreich, Bd. I: Die Entstehung der Arten durch Mutation, Leipzig 1901, S. 3.

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fünfte studie. Die »Tragödie der Kultur« Hegel hat von der Weltgeschichte gesagt, daß sie nicht die Stätte des Glückes sei; die friedlichen und glücklichen Perioden seien leere Blätter im Buche der Geschichte. Seine Grundüberzeugung, daß »alles in der Geschichte vernünftig zugehe«‚ fand er dadurch keineswegs widerlegt; er sah in diesem Satze vielmehr ihre Bestätigung und Bekräftigung. Aber was bedeutet der Sieg der Idee in der Weltgeschichte, wenn er mit dem Verzicht auf alles menschliche Glück erkauft werden muß? Klingt eine solche Theodizee nicht fast wie Hohn, und war nicht Schopenhauer im Recht, wenn er erklärte, daß der Hegelsche »Optimismus« nicht nur eine absurde, sondern auch eine ruchlose Denkweise sei? Fragen dieser Art haben sich, gerade in den reichsten und glänzendsten Kulturepochen, dem Menschengeist immer wieder aufgedrängt. Man empfand die Kultur statt einer Bereicherung vielmehr als eine immer weitere Entfremdung vom eigentlichen Ziele des Daseins. Mitten in der Aufklärungszeit erhebt Rousseau seine flammende Anklagerede gegen die »Künste und Wissenschaften«. Sie haben den Menschen in sittlicher Hinsicht entnervt und verweichlicht, und sie haben in physischer Hinsicht seine Bedürfnisse nicht befriedigt, sondern statt dessen tausend unstillbare Triebe in ihm erregt. Alle Kulturwerte sind Phantome, denen wir entsagen müssen, wenn wir nicht ständig dazu verurteilt sein sollen, aus dem Faß der Danaiden zu schöpfen. Mit dieser Anklage hat Rousseau den Rationalismus des 18. Jahrhunderts in seinen Grundfesten erschüttert. Hier liegt die tiefe Wirkung, die er auf Kant geübt hat. Durch Rousseau sieht sich Kant vom bloßen Intellektualismus befreit und auf einen neuen Weg gewiesen. Er glaubt nicht länger, daß eine Steigerung und Verfeinerung der intellektuellen Kultur alle Rätsel des Daseins lösen und alle Schäden der menschlichen Gesellschaft heilen könne. Die bloße Verstandeskultur vermag den höchsten Wert des Menschentums nicht zu begründen; sie muß durch andere Mächte geregelt und im Zaum gehalten | werden. Aber selbst wenn das geistig-sittliche Gleichgewicht erreicht, wenn der praktischen Vernunft der Primat vor der theoretischen gesichert wird, bleibt die Hoffnung, daß damit auch das Glücksverlangen des Menschen gestillt werden könne, eitel. Vom »Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodizee« ist Kant tief überzeugt. So bleibt für ihn keine andere Lösung als jene radikale Ausmerzung des Eudämonismus, die er in der Grundlegung seiner Ethik versucht hat. Wäre die Glückseligkeit das eigentliche Ziel des menschlichen Strebens, so wäre damit die Kultur ein für allemal gerichtet. Ihre Rechtfertigung kann

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nur darin liegen, daß man einen anderen Wertmaßstab einführt. Der wahre Wert liegt nicht in den Gütern, die der Mensch als ein Geschenk der Natur und der Vorsehung empfängt. Er liegt allein in seinem eigenen Tun und in dem, wozu er sich durch dieses Tun macht. Damit nimmt Kant die Voraussetzung Rousseaus an, ohne aus ihr die gleiche Folgerung zu ziehen. Rousseaus Ruf »Zurück zur Natur!« könnte dem Menschen sein Glück wiedergeben und sichern; aber damit würde der Mensch zugleich seiner eigentlichen Bestimmung entfremdet. Denn diese Bestimmung liegt nicht im Sinnlichen, sondern im Intelligiblen. Nicht die Glückseligkeit, sondern die »Glückwürdigkeit« ist das, was die Kultur dem Menschen verspricht und was sie ihm allein geben kann. Ihr Ziel ist nicht die Verwirklichung des Glückes auf Erden, sondern die Verwirklichung der Freiheit, der echten Autonomie, die nicht die technische Herrschaft des Menschen über die Natur, sondern die moralische Herrschaft über sich selbst bedeutet. Damit glaubt Kant das Problem der Theodizee aus einem metaphysischen Problem in ein rein ethisches Problem verwandelt und es kraft dieser Umwandlung kritisch gelöst zu haben. Aber nicht alle Zweifel, die man gegen den Wert der Kultur richten kann, sind damit beschwichtigt. Denn ein anderer und ein viel tieferer Widerstreit scheint sich zu ergeben, wenn man das neue Ziel ins Auge faßt, das hier der Kultur gestellt wird. Kann sie dieses Ziel wirklich erreichen? Ist es sicher, daß der Mensch in der Kultur und durch sie die Erfüllung seines eigentlichen »intelligiblen« Wesens finden kann, daß er hier zwar nicht zur Befriedigung all seiner Wünsche, wohl aber zur Entwicklung all seiner geistigen Kräfte und Anlagen gelangen wird? Dies wäre nur dann der Fall, wenn er die Schranke der Individualität überspringen, wenn er sein eigenes Ich zum Ganzen der Menschheit erweitern könnte. | Aber eben in diesem Versuch fühlt er seine Grenze um so deutlicher und um so schmerzlicher. Denn es gibt auch hier ein Moment, das die Spontaneität, die reine Selbsttätigkeit des Ich bedroht und unterdrückt, statt sie zu erhöhen und zu steigern. Vertieft man sich in d iese Seite des Problems, so gewinnt es damit erst seine volle Schärfe. Georg Simmel hat in einem Aufsatz, dem er den Titel gegeben hat »Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur«, die Frage in voller Bestimmtheit gestellt. Aber er verzweifelt an ihrer Lösung. Die Philosophie kann nach ihm den Konflikt nur aufweisen; sie kann keinen endgültigen Ausweg aus ihm versprechen. Denn die Reflexion zeigt uns, je tiefer sie dringt, um so mehr die d i a l e kti s c he S tr uktur des Ku ltu rb ewu ß t s ein s . Der Fortschritt der Kultur beschenkt die Menschheit mit immer neuen Gaben; aber das einzelne Subjekt sieht sich vom Genuß derselben mehr und mehr ausgeschlossen. Und

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wozu dient ein Reichtum, den das Ich niemals in seinen lebendigen Besitz verwandeln kann? Wird es durch ihn nicht lediglich beschwert, statt durch ihn befreit zu werden? In solchen Erwägungen tritt uns der Kulturpessimismus erst in seiner schärfsten und radikalsten Fassung entgegen. Denn nun trifft er auf die verwundbarste Stelle. Er weist auf einen Mangel hin, von dem uns keine geistige Entwicklung befreien kann, weil er im Wesen dieser Entwicklung selbst liegt. Die Güter, die sie schafft, wachsen ständig an Zahl; aber gerade in diesem Wachstum hören sie auf, für uns nutzbar zu werden. Sie werden zu einem bloß Objektiven, zu einem dinglich Vorhandenen und Gegebenen, das sich aber vom Ich nicht mehr fassen und umfassen läßt. Unter ihrer Mannigfaltigkeit und unter ihrem ständig zunehmenden Gewicht sieht sich das Ich erdrückt. Es schöpft aus der Kultur nicht mehr das Bewußtsein seiner Macht, sondern nur die Gewißheit seiner geistigen Ohnmacht. Den eigentlichen Grund für diese »Tragödie der Kultur« sieht Simmel darin, daß die scheinbare Verinnerlichung, die die Kultur uns verspricht, stets mit einer Art von Selbstentäußerung einhergeht. Zwischen »Seele« und »Welt« besteht ein stetes Spannungsverhältnis, das zuletzt zu einem schlechthin antithetischen Verhältnis zu werden droht. Der Mensch kann auch die geistige Welt nicht gewinnen, ohne dadurch Schaden an seiner Seele zu nehmen. Das geistige Leben besteht in einem ständigen Fortgang; das seelische in einem immer tieferen Rückgang auf sich selbst. Die Ziele und Wege des »objektiven | Geistes« können daher nie die gleichen sein, wie die des subjektiven Lebens. Für die Einzelseele muß alles, was sie nicht mehr mit sich selbst erfüllen kann, zur harten Schale werden. Diese Schale legt sich immer dichter um sie herum und läßt sich immer weniger sprengen. »Dem vibrierenden, rastlosen, ins Grenzenlose hin sich entwickelnden Leben der in irgend einem Sinne schaffenden Seele steht ihr festes, ideell unverrückbares Produkt gegenüber, mit der unheimlichen Rückwirkung, jene Lebendigkeit festzulegen, ja erstarren zu machen; es ist oft, als ob die zeugende Bewegtheit der Seele an ihrem eigenen Erzeugnis stürbe. […] Indem die Logik der unpersönlichen Gebilde und Zusammenhänge mit Dynamik geladen ist, entstehen zwischen diesen und den inneren Trieben und Normen der Persönlichkeit harte Reibungen, die in der Form der Kultur als solcher eine einzigartige Zusammendrängung erfahren. Seit der Mensch zu sich Ich sagt, sich zum Objekt, über und gegenüber sich selbst, geworden ist, seit durch solche Form unserer Seele ihre Inhalte in einem Zentrum zusammengehören – seitdem mußte ihr aus dieser Form das Ideal wachsen, daß dies so mit dem Mittelpunkt Verbundene auch eine Einheit sei, die in

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sich geschlossen und deshalb ein selbstgenugsames Ganzes sei. Allein die Inhalte, an denen das Ich diese Organisierung zu einer eigenen, einheitlichen Welt vollziehen soll, gehören nicht ihm allein an; sie sind ihm gegeben , von irgend einem räumlichen, zeitlichen, ideellen Außerhalb her, sie sind zugleich die Inhalte irgendwelcher anderer Welten, gesellschaftlicher und metaphysischer, begrifflicher und ethischer, und in diesen besitzen sie Formen und Zusammenhänge unter sich, die mit denen des Ich nicht zusammenfallen wollen. […] Dies ist die eigentliche Tragödie der Kultur. Denn als ein tragisches Verhängnis – im Unterschied gegen ein trauriges oder von außen her zerstörendes – bezeichnen wir doch wohl dies: daß die gegen ein Wesen gerichteten vernichtenden Kräfte aus den tiefsten Schichten eben dieses Wesens selbst entspringen; daß sich mit seiner Zerstörung ein Schicksal vollzieht, das in ihm selbst angelegt und sozusagen die logische Entwicklung eben der Struktur ist, mit der das Wesen seine eigene Positivität aufgebaut hat.«1 Das Leiden, an dem alle menschliche Kultur krankt, erscheint in dieser Darstellung noch weit tiefer und hoffnungsloser, als es in der Schilderung Rousseaus erschien. Denn auch jener Rückweg, den Rous | seau suchte und forderte, ist hier verschlossen. Simmel ist weit davon entfernt, dem Gang der Kultur an irgendeiner Stelle Einhalt gebieten zu wollen. Er weiß, daß sich das Rad der Geschichte nicht umwälzen läßt. Aber er glaubt zugleich zu sehen, daß sich die Spannung zwischen den beiden gleich notwendigen und gleichberechtigten Polen damit immer mehr verschärfen wird und daß durch sie der Mensch zuletzt einem unheilvollen Dualismus preisgegeben werden muß. Die tiefe Fremdheit oder Feindschaft, die zwischen dem Lebensund Schaffensprozeß der Seele auf der einen Seite, seinen Inhalten und Erzeugnissen auf der anderen Seite besteht, duldet keinen Ausgleich und keine Versöhnung. Sie muß sich um so deutlicher fühlbar machen, je reicher und intensiver dieser Prozeß in sich selbst wird und auf einen je weiteren Kreis von Inhalten er sich erstreckt. Simmel scheint hier die Sprache des Skeptikers zu sprechen; aber er spricht in Wahrheit die Sprache des Mystikers. Denn es ist die geheime Sehnsucht aller Mystik, sich rein und ausschließlich in das Wesen des Ich zu versenken, um in ihm das Wesen Gottes zu finden. Was zwischen dem Ich und Gott liegt, das empfindet sie nur als eine trennende Schranke. Und dies gilt nicht minder von der geistigen Welt, als es von der phy1 Georg Simmel, Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, in: ders., Philosophische Kultur. Gesammelte Essais, Leipzig 1911 (Philosophisch-soziologische Bücherei, Bd. 27), S. 245–277: S. 251 ff. u. 265 ff. [Zitat S. 251, 265 f. u. 272].

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sischen Welt gilt. Denn auch der Geist besteht nur dadurch, daß er sich ständig entäußert. Er schafft unaufhörlich neue Namen und neue Bilder; aber er begreift nicht, daß er sich in dieser Schöpfung dem Göttlichen nicht nähert, sondern mehr und mehr von ihm entfernt. Die Mystik muß all die Bildwelten der Kultur verneinen, sie muß sich von »Name und Bild« befreien. Sie fordert von uns, daß wir auf alle Symbole verzichten und daß wir sie zerbrechen. Sie tut dies nicht in der Hoffnung, daß wir damit das Wesen des Göttlichen e r ke nne n können. Der Mystiker weiß, und er ist tief davon durchdrungen, daß alles Erken n en sich immer nur im Kreise von Symbolen bewegen kann. Aber er stellt sich ein anderes und höheres Ziel. Er will, daß das Ich, statt den vergeblichen Versuch zu machen, das Göttliche zu begreifen und zu ergreifen, sich mit ihm verschmilzt und mit ihm zu eins wird. Alle Vielheit ist Täuschung – gleichviel, ob es sich um die Vielheit der Dinge oder um die der Bilder und Zeichen handelt. Indem jedoch die Mystik so spricht, indem sie auf jede Substantialität des Einzelich zu verzichten scheint, hat sie damit ebendiese Substantialität doch in einem gewissen Sinne beibehalten und bekräftigt. Denn sie nimmt das Ich als ein an sich Bestimmtes, das sich in dieser | Bestimmtheit behaupten, das sich nicht an die Welt verlieren soll. Hier aber setzt die erste Frage ein, die wir an sie richten müssen. Wir haben in einer früheren Betrachtung aufzuweisen gesucht, daß das »Ich« nicht als seine ursprünglich gegebene Realität besteht, die sich auf andere Realitäten der gleichen Art bezieht und sich mit ihnen in Verbindung setzt. Wir sahen uns genötigt, das Verhältnis anders zu fassen. Wir fanden, daß die Scheidung zwischen »Ich« und »Du«‚ und ebenso die Scheidung zwischen »Ich« und »Welt«‚ den Zielpunkt, nicht den Ausgangspunkt des geistigen Lebens bildet. Halten wir hieran fest, so nimmt unser Problem eine andere Bedeutung an. Denn jene Verfestigung, die das Leben in den verschiedenen Formen der Kultur, in Sprache, Religion und Kunst erfährt, bildet alsdann nicht schlechthin den G eg en s at z zu dem, was das Ich kraft seiner eigenen Natur verlangen muß, sondern sie bildet eine Vor a us s e tz ung dafür, daß es sich selbst in seiner eigenen Wesenheit findet und versteht. Hier zeigt sich ein höchst komplexer Zusammenhang, der sich durch kein noch so subtiles räumliches Bild zutreffend ausdrücken läßt. Wir dürfen nicht fragen, wie das Ich über seine eigene Sphäre »hinausgelangen« und in eine andere, ihm fremde Sphäre übergreifen kann. Alle diese metaphorischen Ausdrücke müssen wir vermeiden. In der Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems hat man freilich immer wieder zu derartigen mangelhaften Beschreibungen gegriffen, um durch sie das Verhältnis des Objekts zum Subjekt zu kennzeichnen. Man nahm

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an, daß das Objekt mit einem Teil seiner selbst in das Ich eingehen müsse, um von ihm erkannt zu werden. Die »Idolentheorie« der antiken Atomistik wurzelt in dieser Auffassung; die »Speziestheorie« des Aristoteles und der Scholastik hat sie beibehalten, um sie nur vom Stofflichen ins Spirituelle zu übersetzen. Aber nehmen wir einmal an, daß das Wunder sich begeben könnte – daß der »Gegenstand« in dieser Weise in das »Bewußtsein« hinüberwandern könnte. Dann bliebe offenbar noch immer die Hauptfrage ungelöst; denn wir wüßten nicht, wie diese Spur des Objekts, indem sie sich dem Ich einprägt, auch als solche gewu ß t werden könnte. Ihr einfaches Dasein und Sosein würde offenbar keineswegs hinreichen, um diese ihre repräsentative B ed eu tu n g zu erklären. Diese Schwierigkeit verschärft sich noch, wenn die Übertragung nicht vom Gegenstand zum Subjekt, sondern wenn sie sich zwischen verschiedenen Subjekten vollziehen soll. Auch hier würde im günstigsten Fall ein und derselbe I nha l t als ein bloßes | Duplikat in »mir« und in einem »anderen« bestehen. Aber wie kraft dieses gleichartigen Bestandes das Ich vom Du, das Du vom Ich w i s s en könnte – wie das eine sich diesen Bestand als vom andern »herrührend« de u te n könnte: das bliebe nach wie vor unverständlich. In noch höherem Grade gilt es hier, daß der bloße passive »Eindruck« nicht genügt, um das Phänomen des »Ausdrucks« zu erklären. Hierin liegt eine der Hauptschwächen jeder rein sensualistischen Theorie, die ein Ideelles begriffen zu haben glaubt, indem sie es zu einer Kopie eines objektiv Vorhandenen macht. Ein Subjekt wird dem anderen nicht dadurch kenntlich oder verständlich, daß es in dasselbe übergeht, sondern daß es sich zu ihm in eine aktive Beziehung setzt. Daß dies der Sinn aller geistigen Mitteilung ist, hat sich uns früher gezeigt: Das sich Mitteilen verlangt eine Gemeinschaft in bestimmten P r ozessen , nicht in der bloßen Gleichheit von Produkten. Geht man von dieser Betrachtung aus, so rückt damit das von Simmel aufgeworfene Problem in ein neues Licht. Es hört keineswegs auf, als solches zu bestehen; aber seine Lösung muß nunmehr in einer anderen Richtung gesucht werden. Die Zweifel und Einwände, die man gegen die Kultur erheben kann, behalten ihr volles Gewicht. Man muß einsehen und zugestehen, daß sie kein harmonisch sich entfaltendes Ganze, sondern von den stärksten inneren Gegensätzen erfüllt ist. Die Kultur ist »dialektisch«, so wahr sie dramatisch ist. Sie ist kein einfaches Geschehen, kein ruhiger Ablauf, sondern sie ist ein Tun, das stets von neuem einsetzen muß und das seines Zieles niemals sicher ist. So kann sie sich niemals schlechthin einem naiven Optimismus oder einem dogmatischen Glauben an die »Perfektibilität« des Menschen überlassen. Alles, was sie aufgebaut hat, droht ihr immer

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wieder unter den Händen zu zerbrechen. Demgemäß behält sie stets etwas Unbefriedigendes und etwas tief Fragwürdiges, wenn man sie allein im Lichte ihres Werkes betrachtet. Die wahrhaft produktiven Geister legen alle ihre Leidenschaft in ihr Werk; aber ebendiese Leidenschaft wird ihnen zum Quell immer neuer Leiden. Dieses Drama hat Simmel schildern wollen. Aber er kennt in ihm gewissermaßen nur zwei Rollen. Auf der einen Seite steht das Leben, auf der anderen Seite steht das Reich ideeller, an sich geltender, objektiver Werte. Beide Momente können niemals ineinander aufgehen und sich völlig miteinander durchdringen. Je weiter der Kulturprozeß fortschreitet, um so mehr erweist sich das Geschaffene als der Feind des Schöpfers. | Das Subjekt kann sich in seinem Werk nicht nur nicht erfüllen, sondern es droht zuletzt an ihm zu zerbrechen. Denn was das Leben eigentlich und innerlich will, ist nichts anderes als seine eigene Bewegtheit und seine strömende Fülle. Es kann diese innere Fülle nicht herausstellen, nicht in bestimmten Gebilden sichtbar werden lassen, ohne daß diese Gebilde für es selbst zu Schranken werden – zu festen Dämmen, an die seine Bewegung anprallt und an welchen sie sich bricht. »Der Geist erzeugt unzählige Gebilde, die in einer eigentümlichen Selbständigkeit fortexistieren, unabhängig von der Seele, die sie geschaffen hat, wie von jeder anderen, die sie aufnimmt oder ablehnt. So sieht sich das Subjekt der Kunst wie dem Recht gegenüber, der Religion wie der Wissenschaft, der Technik wie der Sitte […] es ist die Form der Festigkeit, des Geronnenseins, der beharrenden Existenz, mit der der Geist, so zum Objekt geworden, sich der strömenden Lebendigkeit, der inneren Selbstverantwortung, den wechselnden Spannungen der subjektiven Seele entgegenstellt; als Geist dem Geiste innerlich […] verbunden, aber eben darum unzählige Tragödien an diesem tiefen Formgegensatz erlebend: zwischen dem subjektiven Leben, das rastlos, aber zeitlich endlich ist, und seinen Inhalten, die, einmal geschaffen, unbeweglich, aber zeitlos gültig sind.«2 Es wäre vergeblich, diese Tragödien leugnen oder sich mit irgendeinem oberflächlichen Trostmittel über sie hinwegsetzen zu wollen. Aber sie erhalten ein anderes Gesicht, wenn man den Weg, der hier gezeichnet ist, fortsetzt und bis zu Ende verfolgt. Denn am Ende dieses Weges steht nicht das Wer k , in dessen beharrender Existenz der schöpferische Prozeß erstarrt, sondern das »Du«, das andere Subjekt, das dieses Werk empfängt, um es in sein eigenes Leben einzubeziehen und es damit wieder in das Medium zurückzuverwandeln, dem es ursprünglich entstammt. Jetzt erst zeigt sich, welcher Lösung die 2

[A. a. O., S. 245.]

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»Tragödie der Kultur« fähig ist. Solange nicht der »Gegenspieler« zum Ich hervorgetreten ist, kann sich der Kreis nicht schließen. Denn so bedeutsam, so gehaltvoll, so fest in sich selbst und in seinem eigenen Mittelpunkt ruhend ein Werk der Kultur auch sein mag: es ist und bleibt doch nur ein Durchgangspunkt. Es ist kein »Absolutes«, an welches das Ich anstößt, sondern es ist die Brücke, die von einem Ichpol zum andern hinüberführt. Hierin liegt seine eigentliche und wichtigste Funktion. Der Lebensprozeß der Kultur besteht eben darin, daß sie in der Schaffung derartiger Vermittlungen und Übergänge unerschöpf | lich ist. Wenn wir diesen Prozeß ausschließlich oder vornehmlich vom Standpunkt des Individuums aus sehen, so behält er stets einen eigentümlich zwiespältigen Charakter. Der Künstler, der Forscher, der Religionsstifter – sie alle können eine wahrhaft große Leistung nur dann vollbringen, wenn sie sich ganz ihrer Aufgabe hingeben und wenn sie ihr eigenes Sein über ihr vergessen. Aber das fertige Werk ist, sobald es einmal vor ihnen steht, niemals allein Erfüllung, sondern es ist zugleich Enttäuschung. Es bleibt hinter der ursprünglichen Intuition, aus der es stammt, zurück. Die begrenzte Wirklichkeit, in der es dasteht, widerspricht der Fülle der Möglichkeiten, die diese Intuition ideell in sich barg. Nicht nur der Künstler, sondern auch der Denker empfindet immer wieder diesen Mangel. Und gerade die größten Denker scheinen fast immer zu einem Punkt zu gelangen, an dem sie endgültig Verzicht darauf leisten, ihre letzten und tiefsten Gedanken auszusprechen. Das Höchste, was der Gedanke zu erfassen vermag – so erklärt Platon im siebenten Brief –, ist dem Wort nicht mehr erreichbar; es entzieht sich der Mitteilung durch Schrift und Lehre. Solche Urteile sind aus der Psychologie des Genies verständlich und notwendig. Für uns selbst aber wird diese Skepsis um so mehr beschwichtigt, je größer, je umfassender und reicher das künstlerische oder philosophische Werk ist, in das wir uns versenken. Denn wir, die Aufnehmenden, messen nicht mit den gleichen Maßen, mit denen der Schaffende sein Werk mißt. Wo er ein Zuwenig sieht, da bedrängt uns ein Zuviel; wo er ein inneres Ungenügen empfand, da stehen wir vor dem Eindruck einer unerschöpflichen Fülle, die wir uns nie völlig aneignen zu können glauben. Beides ist gleich berechtigt und gleich notwendig; denn in ebendiesem eigentümlichen Wechselverhältnis erfüllt das Werk erst seine eigentliche Aufgabe. Es wird zum Vermittler zwischen Ich und Du, nicht indem es einen fertigen Gehalt von dem einen auf das andere überträgt, sondern indem sich an der Tätigkeit des einen die des anderen entzündet. Und hieraus erkennt man auch, warum die wahrhaft großen Werke der Kultur uns niemals als etwas schlechthin Starres, Verfestigtes gegenüberstehen, das in die-

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ser Starrheit die freie Bewegung des Geistes einengt und hemmt. Ihr Gehalt besteht für uns nur dadurch, daß es ständig von neuem angeeignet und dadurch stets aufs neue geschaffen wird. Das Wesen dieses Prozesses tritt vielleicht am deutlichsten dort hervor, wo die beiden Subjekte, die an ihm teilhaben, nicht Individuen, | sondern ganze Epochen sind. Jede »Renaissance« einer vergangenen Kultur kann uns ein Beispiel hierfür liefern. Eine Renaissance, die diesen Namen verdient, ist niemals eine bloße Rezeption. Sie ist nicht die einfache Fortführung oder Weiterbildung von Motiven, die einer vergangenen Kultur angehören. Oft glaubt sie es zu sein; oft kennt sie keinen höheren Ehrgeiz, als dem Vorbild, dem sie folgt, so nahe als möglich zu kommen. In dieser Weise haben allen klassizistischen Zeitaltern die großen Kunstwerke der Alten als Muster gegolten, die man wohl nachahmen, aber nie erreichen könne. Aber die eigentlichen und großen Renaissancen der Weltgeschichte sind immer Triumphe der Spontaneität, nicht der bloßen Rezeptivität gewesen. Es gehört zu den anziehendsten Problemen der Geistesgeschichte, zu verfolgen, wie diese beiden Momente ineinander eingreifen und sich wechselseitig bedingen. Man könnte hier von einer historischen Dialektik sprechen; aber diese Dialektik birgt durchaus keinen Widerspruch in sich, da sie vielmehr durch das Wesen der geistigen Entwicklung gegeben und in ihm tief begründet ist. Immer dann, wenn ein Subjekt – es mag sich nun um einen einzelnen oder um eine ganze Epoche handeln – bereit ist, sich zu vergessen, um in einem anderen aufzugehen und sich diesem ganz hinzugeben: immer dann fi nde t es sich selbst in einem neuen und tieferen Sinn. Solange die eine Kultur der andern nur bestimmte I n h alt e entnimmt, ohne den Willen und die Fähigkeit zu besitzen, in ihr eigentliches Zentrum, in ihre eigentümliche Form einzudringen, zeigt sich diese fruchtbare Wechselwirkung noch nicht. Es bleibt im besten Fall bei einer äußeren Übernahme einzelner Bildungs elem en t e; aber diese werden nicht zu wirklichen bildenden Kräften oder Motiven. Diese begrenzte Art der Einwirkung der Antike können wir schon im Mittelalter überall feststellen. Schon im 9. Jahrhundert hat es in der bildenden Kunst und in der Literatur eine »Karolingische Renaissance« gegeben. Und die Schule von Chartres kann man als eine »mittelalterliche Renaissance« bezeichnen. Aber von jener »Wiedererweckung des klassischen Altertums«, die in den ersten Jahrhunderten der italienischen Renaissance einsetzt, ist dies alles nicht nur dem Grade, sondern auch der Art nach verschieden. Man hat Petrarca oft den »ersten modernen Menschen« genannt. Aber er konnte es, seltsam genug, nur dadurch werden, daß er zu einem neuen und tieferen Verständnis der Antike durchdrang. Er sah,

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durch das Medium der antiken Sprache und der antiken Kunst und Literatur, | wieder die antiken Lebensformen; und in ihrer Anschauung gestaltete sich sein eigenes originales Lebensgefühl. Diese eigentümliche Durchdringung des Eigenen und des Fremden gilt für die gesamte italienische Renaissance; Burckhardt hat von ihr gesagt, daß sie »das Altertum nie anders denn als Ausdrucksmittel für ihre eigenen Bauideen behandelt« habe.3 Dieser Prozeß ist unerschöpflich; er setzt immer von neuem ein. Die Antike ist auch nach Petrarca immer wieder »entdeckt« worden; und jedes Mal sind es andere und neue Züge an ihr, die ans Licht gehoben wurden. Die Antike des Erasmus ist nicht mehr die gleiche wie die des Petrarca. Und an beide reihen sich die Antike von Rabelais und Montaigne, von Corneille und Racine, von Winckelmann, Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt an. Von irgendeiner dinglich-inhaltlichen Identität zwischen ihnen kann nicht die Rede sein. Was identisch ist, ist dies, daß die italienische, die niederländische, die französische, die deutsche Renaissance die Antike als eine unvergleichliche K r a ftqu elle empfinden, die sie nutzen, um ihren eigenen Ideen und Idealen zum Durchbruch zu verhelfen. So gleichen die wirklich großen Kulturepochen der Vergangenheit nicht einem erratischen Block, der als Zeuge einer vergangenen Zeit in die Gegenwart hineinragt. Sie sind nicht träge Massen; sondern sie sind die Zusammenballung gewaltiger potentieller Energien, die nur auf den Augenblick harren, in welchem sie wieder hervortreten und sich in neuen Wirkungen bekunden sollen. Das Geschaffene steht also auch hier dem schöpferischen Prozeß nicht einfach gegenüber oder entgegen: In die »[g]eprägte Form«4 strömt vielmehr immer neues Leben ein, das sie davor schützt, sich »zum Starren [zu] waffne[n]«.5 Daß diese nie abbrechende Auseinandersetzung zwischen verschiedenen Kulturen sich niemals ohne innere Reibungen vollziehen kann, ist freilich ersichtlich. Zu einer wirklichen Verschmelzung kann es nicht kommen; denn die Gegenkräfte können nur wirken, indem sie sich wider einander behaupten. Selbst dort, wo eine vollkommene Harmonie erreicht oder erreichbar scheint, fehlt es nicht 3 Jacob Burckhardt, Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien (Geschichte der neueren Baukunst, Bd. I), bearb. v. Heinrich Holtzinger, Stuttgart 41904, S. 42. 4 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Urworte. Orphisch, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 95 f.: S. 95, sowie in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XLI/1, S. 215–221: S. 215; ders., Brief an Sulpiz Boisserée vom 21. Mai 1818, in: Werke, 4. Abt., Bd. XXIX, S. 180– 182: S. 181.] 5 [Ders., Eins und Alles, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 81, sowie in: Werke, 2. Abt., Bd. XI, S. 265 f.: S. 265.]

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an starken inneren Spannungen. Betrachten wir die Fortwirkung der antiken Kultur, so stellt sie fast den idealen Grenzfall dar. Alles bloß Negative scheint ausgelöscht; die großen produktiven Kräfte scheinen rein und ungehindert ihre stete und stille Wirksamkeit ausüben zu können. Und doch | fehlt es auch in diesem Idealfall nicht an Konflikten, ja an unversöhnlichen Gegensätzen. Die Rechtsgeschichte zeigt, welche großartige organisierende Kraft dem römischen Recht innewohnte und wie es diese Kraft im Lauf der Jahrhunderte immer aufs neue bewiesen hat. Aber das römische Recht konnte nicht schaffen, ohne zugleich eine Fülle vielversprechender Keime zu vernichten. Der Konflikt zwischen dem »natürlichen« Rechtsempfinden und den nationalen Rechtsgebräuchen auf der einen Seite, dem »gelehrten« Recht auf der anderen Seite brach immer wieder auf. Sieht man in derartigen Gegensätzen tragische Konflikte, so behält das Wort von der »Tragödie der Kultur« sein volles Recht. Aber wir dürfen nicht lediglich die Tatsache des Widerstreits, sondern wir müssen auch seine Heilung, wir müssen die eigentümliche »Katharsis« ins Auge fassen, die sich hier wieder und wieder vollzieht. So viele Kräfte auf der einen Seite gebunden werden, so werden doch auf der anderen Seite immer wieder neue und stärkere gelöst. Diese Bindung und Lösung zeigt sich im Kampf der verschiedenen Kulturen, und sie zeigt sich nicht minder in jenem Kampf, den das Individuum mit dem Ganzen, den die große schöpferische Einzelkraft mit den Kräften zu führen hat, die auf die Beharrung und in gewissem Sinne auf die Verewigung des gegebenen Bestandes abzielen. Das Produktive liegt mit dem Traditionellen in stetem Widerstreit. Es wäre auch hier irrig, den Konflikt lediglich in den Farben von Schwarz und Weiß zu malen – allen Wert auf der einen Seite, allen Unwert auf der anderen zu sehen. Die Tendenzen, die auf Erhaltung gerichtet sind, sind nicht minder bedeutungsvoll und unentbehrlich als diejenigen, die auf Erneuerung gerichtet sind, weil Erneuerung sich nur an Beharrendem vollziehen und weil Beharrendes nur kraft steter Selbsterneuerung bestehen kann. Am deutlichsten wird dieses Verhältnis dort, wo der Kampf zwischen den beiden Tendenzen sich ganz in der Tiefe abspielt – in einer Tiefe, über die das bewußte Planen und Wollen der Individuen keine Macht mehr hat, weil in ihr Kräfte walten, die dem einzelnen nicht zum Bewußtsein kommen. Ein solcher Fall ist in der Entwicklung und Umbildung der S p r ach e gegeben. Die traditionelle Bindung ist hier am stärksten, und sie scheint dem Schöpfertum des einzelnen nur einen geringen Spielraum zu verstatten. Die Sprachphilosophie hat immer wieder darüber gestritten, ob die Sprache ein Erzeugnis der »Natur« oder der »Satzung«, ob sie φσει oder #σει sei. Aber

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gleich | viel, ob man die eine oder die andere These annimmt, ob man in der Sprache ein Objektives oder ein Subjektives, ein Bestehendes oder ein Gesetztes sieht, so muß man auch dieses Letztere, wenn es seinen Zweck erfüllen soll, mit einer Art von Zwang ausstatten, kraft dessen es sich gegen jede Willkür behauptet. Der »Nominalist« Hobbes erklärt, daß die Wahrheit nicht in den Dingen, sondern in den Zeichen liege: »veritas non in re, sed in dicto consistit«.6 Aber er fügt hinzu, daß das Zeichen, einmal gesetzt, keiner Veränderung mehr zugänglich sei, daß die Konvention als etwas Absolutes anerkannt werden müsse, wenn überhaupt menschliches Sprechen und Verstehen möglich sein solle. Die Sprachgeschichte straft freilich diesen Glauben an eine unabänderliche, ein für allemal festlegbare Bedeutung der Sprachbegriffe Lügen. Sie zeigt, daß jeder lebendige Sprachgebrauch einem steten Bedeutungswandel unterliegt. Der Grund hierfür besteht darin, daß »Sprache« niemals als physisches »Ding« existiert, das mit sich selbst einerlei bleibt und das stets dieselben konstanten »Eigenschaften« aufweist. Sie ist nur im Akt des Sprechens, und dieser vollzieht sich niemals unter genau gleichen Bedingungen und in genau derselben Weise. Hermann Paul hat in seinen »Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte« darauf hingewiesen, welche bedeutsame Rolle dem Umstand zufällt, daß die Sprache nur dadurch besteht, daß sie von einer Generation an die andere weitergegeben wird. Dieses Weitergeben kann niemals in der Art erfolgen, daß dabei die Aktivität und Selbsttätigkeit des einen Teils ausgeschaltet wird. Der Empfangende nimmt die Gabe nicht gleich einer geprägten Münze. Er kann sie nur aufnehmen, indem er sie geb rau cht , und in diesem Gebrauch drückt er ihr eine neue Prägung auf. So spricht der Lehrer und der Lernende, so sprechen Eltern und Kinder niemals streng »dieselbe« Sprache. In dieser notwendigen Bildung und Umbildung sieht Paul einen der wichtigsten Faktoren für alle Sprachgeschichte.7 Diese Sprachschöpfung, die sich nur in der unbewußten Abweichung von dem gegebenen Vorbild erweist, ist freilich vom eigentlichen Schöpfertum noch weit entfernt. Sie ist Wandel, der sich am Substrat der Sprache vollzieht; aber sie ist keine Tat, die auf dem bewußten Einsatz neuer Kräfte beruht. Aber auch dieser letzte entscheidende Schritt ist unentbehrlich, wenn die Sprache nicht absterben soll. Die Erneuerung von innen her erlangt ihre volle Stärke und Intensität erst dann, wenn die Sprache | nicht lediglich der Vermittlung und Weitergabe eines festen Kulturbesitzes 6 [Vgl. Hobbes, Elementorum philosophiae sectio prima de corpore (Teil 1, Kap. 3, § 7), S. 20: »Veritas enim in dicto, non in re consistit […]«.] 7 Vgl. Paul, Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (Kap. 1), S. 21 ff.

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dient, sondern statt dessen zum Ausdruck eines neuen, individuellen Lebensgefühls wird. Indem dieses Gefühl in die Sprache einströmt, weckt es all die unbekannten Energien, die in ihr schlummern. Was im Kreise des täglichen Ausdrucks bloße Abweichung war, das wird hier zur Neugestaltung, die so weit gehen kann, daß sie schließlich fast den gesamten Sprachkörper, daß sie Wortschatz, Grammatik, Stilistik umzuschaffen scheint. Die großen Epochen der Dichtung haben in dieser Weise auf die Bildung der Sprache gewirkt. Dantes »Divina Commedia« hat nicht nur dem Epos einen neuen Sinn und Gehalt gegeben; sie bildet auch die Geburtsstunde der »lingua volgare«, des modernen Italienisch. Es scheint im Leben der großen Dichter immer wieder Augenblicke gegeben zu haben, in denen sie diesen Drang zur Erneuerung der Sprache so stark empfanden, daß ihnen das Gegebene, das Material, in dem sie arbeiten mußten, fast als eine lästige Fessel erschien. In solchen Augenblicken erwacht in ihnen die Skepsis gegen die Sprache zur vollen Stärke. Auch Goethe ist von dieser Skepsis nicht frei – und er hat ihr bisweilen einen nicht minder charakteristischen Ausdruck gegeben als Platon. In einem bekannten Venezianischen Epigramm erklärt er, daß er, so vieles er auch versucht habe, nur ein Talent der Meisterschaft nahe gebracht habe: das Talent, deutsch zu schreiben. » Und so verderb’ ich unglücklicher Dichter In dem schlechtesten Stoff leider nun Leben und Kunst.«8 Aber wir wissen, was Goethes Kunst aus diesem »schlechtesten Stoff« gemacht hat. Die deutsche Sprache ist bei Goethes Tode nicht mehr das, was sie bei seiner Geburt gewesen war. Sie ist nicht nur inhaltlich bereichert und über ihre bisherigen Grenzen erweitert, sondern sie ist auch zu einer neuen Form herangereift; sie schließt Möglichkeiten des Ausdrucks in sich, die ein Jahrhundert zuvor noch völlig unbekannt waren. Auch in anderen Gebieten läßt sich immer wieder der gleiche Gegensatz aufweisen. Der Schaffensprozeß hat stets zwei verschiedenen Bedingungen zu genügen: Er muß auf der einen Seite an ein Bleibendes und Bestehendes anknüpfen, und er muß auf der anderen Seite stets zu einem neuen Einsatz und Ansatz bereit sein, der dies Bestehende wandelt. Denn nur auf diese Weise gelingt es, den Anforderungen | gerecht zu werden, die von seiten des Objekts und des Subjekts gestellt werden. Auch der bildende Künstler findet seinen Weg ebenso gebahnt und vorbereitet, wie der Dichter ihn vorbereitet 8 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Epigramme. Venedig 1790, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. I, S. 305–331: S. 314.]

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findet, wenn er sich der Sprache anvertraut. Denn wie jede Sprache einen bestimmten Wortschatz aufweist, den sie nicht im Augenblick erschafft, sondern über den sie als einen festen Besitz verfügt, so gilt das gleiche auch für alle Arten bildender Tätigkeit. Es gibt einen Formenschatz des Malers, des Plastikers, des Architekten, und es gibt eine eigentümliche »Syntax« dieser Gebiete, wie es eine Syntax der Sprache gibt. Dies alles kann nicht frei »erfunden« werden. Hier behauptet die Tradition immer wieder ihre Rechte, denn nur durch sie kann die Kontinuität des Schaffens hergestellt und sichergestellt werden, auf der alle Verständlichkeit, auch innerhalb der bildnerischen Sprache, beruht. »So wie die Sprachwurzeln ihre Geltung immer behaupten und bei allen späteren Umgestaltungen und Erweiterungen der Begriffe, die sich an sie knüpfen, der Grundform nach wieder hervortreten«, so sagt Gottfried Semper, »wie es unmöglich ist, für einen neuen Begriff zugleich ein ganz neues Wort zu erfinden, ohne den ersten Zweck zu verfehlen, nämlich verstanden zu werden, eben so wenig darf man diese ältesten Typen und Wurzeln der Kunstsymboliken […] verwerfen und unberücksichtigt lassen. […] denselben Vortheil, den die vergleichende Sprachforschung und das Studium der Urverwandtschaften der Sprachen dem heutigen Redekünstler gewähren, hat derjenige Baukünstler in seiner Kunst voraus, der die ältesten Symbole se i ner Sprache in ihrer ursprünglichsten Bedeutung erkennt und sich von der Weise Rechenschaft ablegt, wie sie, mit der Kunst selbst, sich geschichtlich in Form und Bedeutung umwandelten.«9 Die Traditionsgebundenheit zeigt sich zunächst in all dem, was man die Technik der einzelnen Künste nennt. Sie unterliegt ebenso festen Regeln wie jeder andere Werkzeugsgebrauch, denn sie ist von der Beschaffenheit des Materials, in dem der Künstler arbeitet, abhängig. Kunst und Handwerk, bildnerische Tätigkeit und handwerkliche Fertigkeit haben sich nur langsam getrennt; und gerade in den Höhepunkten künstlerischer Entwicklung pflegt ihr Zusammenhang besonders innig zu sein. Kein Künstler kann seine Sprache wirklich sprechen, wenn er sie nicht zuvor in dem steten Verkehr mit seinem | Material erlernt hat. Und dies bezieht sich keineswegs allein auf die stofflichtechnische Seite des Problems. Auch im Bereich der Form selbst hat es seine genaue Parallele. Denn auch die künstlerischen Formen werden, einmal geschaffen, zum festen Besitz, der sich von einer Generation zur 9 Gottfried Semper, Die textile Kunst für sich betrachtet und in Beziehung zur Baukunst (Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder Praktische Aesthetik. Ein Handbuch für Techniker, Künstler und Kunstfreunde, Bd. I), 2., durchges. Aufl., München 1878, S. 6.

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anderen vererbt. Oft kann sich diese Übertragung und Vererbung über Jahrhunderte erstrecken. Jede Epoche übernimmt von der vorhergehenden bestimmte Formen und gibt sie an die folgende weiter. Die Formsprache gewinnt eine solche Festigkeit, daß bestimmte Themata mit bestimmten Weisen des Ausdrucks fest zu verwachsen scheinen, daß sie uns immer wieder in denselben oder leicht modifizierten Formen begegnen. Dieses »Beharrungsgesetz«, das für die Fortbewegung der Formen gilt, bildet einen der wichtigsten Faktoren der künstlerischen Entwicklung – und für die Kunstgeschichte liegt hier eine der reizvollsten Aufgaben. In neuerer Zeit ist es insbesondere Aby Warburg gewesen, der auf diesen Prozeß das stärkste Gewicht gelegt und der ihn, psychologisch wie historisch, nach allen Seiten hin zu erleuchten gesucht hat. Warburg ist ursprünglich von der Kunstgeschichte der italienischen Renaissance ausgegangen. Aber sie bildet für ihn nur ein einzelnes Paradigma, an dem er sich die Eigenart und die Grundrichtung des schöpferischen Prozesses in der bildenden Kunst klarmachen wollte. Beides fand er am deutlichsten ausgedrückt in dem Nachleben der antiken Bildformen. Er zeigte, wie die Antike für gewisse typische, immer wiederkehrende Situationen bestimmte prägnante Ausdrucksformen geschaffen hat. Gewisse innere Erregungen, gewisse Spannungen und Lösungen sind in ihnen nicht nur festgehalten, sondern sie sind gleichsam in sie gebannt. Überall, wo ein gleichartiger Affekt anklingt, wird auch das Bild, das die Kunst für ihn geschaffen, wieder lebendig. Es entstehen, nach Warburgs Ausdruck, bestimmte »Pathosformeln«‚ die sich dem Gedächtnis der Menschheit unauslöschlich einprägen. Den Bestand und den Wandel, die Statik und die Dynamik dieser »Pathosformeln« hat Warburg durch die gesamte Geschichte der bildenden Kunst hindurch verfolgt.10 Er hat damit die Kunstgeschichte nicht nur inhaltlich bereichert, sondern ihr auch methodisch ein neues Gepräge gegeben. Denn hier rührte er an ein systematisches Grundpro | blem aller kulturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung. Wie die Malerei und Plastik bestimmte feste Haltungen, Stellungen, Gesten des menschlichen Körpers dazu benützt, um seelisches Dasein und seelische Bewegtheit sichtbar werden zu lassen, so besteht auch in allen anderen Gebieten der Kultur die Aufgabe immer wieder darin, in dieser Weise Bewegung und Ruhe, Geschehen und Dauer miteinander zu verknüpfen und das eine als Darstellungsmittel für das andere zu brauchen. Sprachliche und künstlerische Formen müssen, wenn sie 10 Vgl. bes. Aby Warburg, Die Erneuerung der heidnischen Antike. Kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der europäischen Renaissance, 2 Bde. (Gesammelte Schriften, hrsg. v. Gertrud Bing), Leipzig/Berlin 1932.

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»allgemein mitteilbar« sein, wenn sie die Brücke zwischen verschiedenen Subjekten schlagen sollen, eine innere Festigkeit und Konsistenz besitzen. Aber sie müssen zugleich wandlungsfähig sein; denn jeder Geb rau ch der Formen schließt, da er in verschiedenen Individuen vor sich geht, schon eine gewisse Modifikation ein und wäre ohne sie nicht möglich. Man könnte versuchen, die verschiedenen künstlerischen Gattungen nach dem Verhältnis zu unterscheiden, das in ihnen zwischen diesen beiden überall notwendigen Gegenpolen besteht. Hier müßte freilich erst eine prinzipielle Vorfrage beantwortet werden. In welchem Sinne läßt sich überhaupt von solchen »Gattungen« sprechen? Sind sie etwas anderes als bloße Wortmarken? Die antike Poetik und Rhetorik ging darauf aus, die verschiedenen dichterischen Ausdrucksformen streng zu scheiden und jeder von ihnen eine bestimmte unveränderliche »Natur« zuzusprechen. Sie glaubte, daß die einzelnen Dichtarten spezifisch voneinander geschieden seien, daß die Ode und die Elegie, die Idylle und die Fabel ihre eigenen Gegenstände und ihre eigenen Gesetze habe. Der Klassizismus hat diese Auffassung zum Grundprinzip seiner Ästhetik gemacht. Bei Boileau gilt es als unbestrittene Voraussetzung, daß Komödie und Tragödie je ihr eigenes »Wesen« habe und daß dieses für die Wahl ihrer Motive, ihrer Charaktere, ihrer sprachlichen Mittel bestimmend sein müsse. Auch bei Lessing herrscht diese Grundansicht vor, wenngleich er sie wesentlich freier gestaltet. Er gesteht dem Genie das Recht zu, die Grenzen der einzelnen Gattungen zu erweitern; aber auch er glaubt nicht, daß diese Grenzen prinzipiell aufgehoben werden können. Die moderne Ästhetik hat versucht, alle die hier fixierten Unterschiede als einen bloßen Ballast zu behandeln, den man einfach über Bord werfen müsse. Am weitesten in dieser Hinsicht ist Benedetto Croce gegangen. Er erklärt alle Einteilungen der Künste und alle Unterscheidungen von Kunstgattungen als bloße Nomenklaturen, die einem praktischen Zwecke dienen mögen, | die aber jeder theoretischen Bedeutung entbehren. Derartige Klassifikationen haben nach Croce so viel oder so wenig Wert wie die Rubriken, unter denen wir die Bücherschätze einer Bibliothek ordnen. Die Kunst läßt sich, wie er betont, weder in dieser Weise nach Sachen noch läßt sie sich nach ihren Darstellungsmitteln in einzelne Fächer zerlegen. Die ästhetische Synthesis ist und bleibt eine unteilbare Einheit. »Da jedes Kunstwerk einen Gemütszustand ausdrückt und der Gemütszustand individuell und immer neu ist, so bedeutet die Intuition unendlich viele Intuitionen, die unmöglich in ein Fächerwerk von Ga ttung e n reduziert werden können […] Das will besagen, jede beliebige Theorie der Teilung der K ü n s t e ist unbegründet. Die Gattung oder die

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Klasse ist in diesem Falle eine einzige, die Kunst selbst oder die Intuition, während die einzelnen Kunstwerke im übrigen zahllos sind: alle original, keines ins andere übersetzbar […] jedes unbezwungen vom Verstand. Zwischen das Universale und das Besondere schiebt sich in philosophischer Betrachtung kein Zwischenelement ein, keine Reihe von Gattungen oder Arten, von ›generalia‹. Weder der Künstler, der die Kunst schafft, noch der Beschauer, der sie betrachtet, haben etwas andres nötig als das Universale und das Individuelle oder besser das individuell gewordene Universale: die allgemeine künstlerische Aktivität, die sich ganz in die Darstellung eines einzelnen Gemütszustandes zusammengezogen und konzentriert hat.«11 Wäre dies ohne Einschränkung richtig, so würde man damit zu der seltsamen Folgerung geführt, daß, wenn wir Beethoven einen großen Musiker, Rembrandt einen großen Maler, Homer einen großen Epiker, Shakespeare einen großen Dramatiker nennen, damit nur gleichgültige empirische Nebenumstände ausgesprochen wären, die in ä sthe ti sch er Beziehung belanglos und für ihre Charakteristik als K ü ns tler entbehrlich sind. Gibt es nur »die« Kunst auf der einen Seite, das Individuum auf der anderen Seite, so ist es relativ zufällig, in welchem Medium der einzelne Künstler sich selbst ausdrücken will. Dies könnte in Farben oder Tönen, im Wort oder in Marmor geschehen, ohne daß hierdurch die künstlerische Intuition betroffen würde; sie bliebe dieselbe und hätte nur eine andere Art der Mitteilung gewählt. Aber eine solche Auffassung würde, wie mir scheint, dem künstlerischen Prozeß nicht gerecht werden. Denn das Kunstwerk | würde damit in zwei Hälften zerbrechen, die in keiner notwendigen Beziehung zueinander stünden. In Wahrheit gehört jedoch die besondere Art des Ausdruckes nicht erst zur Tech n ik der Werkgestaltung, sondern schon zur K onzep tio n des Kunstwerks selbst. Beethovens Intuition ist musikalisch, Phidias’ Intuition ist plastisch, Miltons Intuition ist episch, Goethes Intuition ist lyrisch. Dies alles betrifft nicht nur die äußere Schale, sondern den Kern ihres Schaffens. Und damit stoßen wir erst auf den eigentlichen Sinn und das tiefere Recht der Einteilung der Künste in verschiedene »Gattungen«. Das Mo t i v, das Croce zu seinem heftigen Kampf gegen die Lehre von den Gattungen veranlaßt hat, ist leicht zu erkennen. Er wollte damit einem Irrtum entgegentreten, der sich durch die ganze Geschichte der Ästhetik hindurchzieht und der in ihr oft 11 Benedetto Croce, Grundriß der Ästhetik. Vier Vorlesungen, übers. v. Theodor Poppe, Leipzig 1913 (Wissen und Forschen, Bd. 5), S. 45 f. Vgl. ders., Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale. Teoria e storia, Bari 31908 (Filosofia come scienza dello spirito, Bd. 1), S. 129 ff.

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zu unfruchtbaren Problemstellungen geführt hat. Immer wieder hat man versucht, die Bestimmungen der einzelnen künstlerischen Gattungen und den Unterschied zwischen ihnen dazu zu benützen, einen »Kanon« des Schönen aufzustellen. Man suchte aus ihnen bestimmte allgemeine Normen für die Bewertung der Kunstwerke zu gewinnen, und man stritt über den Vorrang der einzelnen Künste selbst. Mit welchem Eifer der Wettstreit zwischen Malerei und Poesie noch in der Renaissance geführt wurde, kann man z. B. aus Leonardo da Vincis »Trattato della pittura« ersehen. Dies ist freilich eine falsche Tendenz. Es ist vergebens, eine Bestimmung von dem, was die Ode, was die Idylle, was das Trauerspiel an sich ist, zu geben und zu fragen, ob ein einzelnes Werk den Gattungszweck mehr oder weniger vollkommen erfüllt hat. Und noch fragwürdiger ist es, wenn man die einzelnen Künste in einer aufsteigenden Reihe zu ordnen sucht und fragt, welche Stelle jede von ihnen in dieser Hierarchie der Werte einnimmt. »Ein kleines Gedicht«, so erklärt Croce, »steht ästhetisch einem Epos gleich […] oder eine Skizze einem Altargemälde oder einem Fresco; ein Brief ist ein Kunstgegenstand nicht weniger als ein Roman […]« Das mag völlig zutreffen – aber folgt daraus, daß, seinem ästhetischen Sinn und Gehalt nach, ein lyrisches Gedicht ein Epos, daß der Brief ein Roman »ist«; daß er es sein kann und sein will? Croce konnte diese Folgerung nur darum ziehen, weil er im Aufbau seiner Ästhetik das Moment des »Ausdrucks« als das eigentliche und einzige Fundament gelten läßt. Er legt den Akzent fast ausschließlich darauf, daß die Kunst Ausdruck des individuellen Gefühls und des individuellen Gemütszustandes sein müsse, | und es gilt ihm gleich viel, welche Wege sie hierbei einschlägt und welcher besonderen Richtung der Darstellung sie folgt. Dadurch wird die »subjektive« Seite vor der »objektiven« nicht nur bevorzugt, sondern die letztere sinkt der ersteren gegenüber fast zu einem gleichgültigen Moment herab. Alle Art künstlerischer Intuition wird »lyrische Intuition« – gleichviel, ob sie sich in einem Drama, einem Heldengedicht, in der Skulptur, in der Architektur, in der Schauspielkunst verwirklicht. »Da […] die Individualität der Intuition die Individualität des Ausdrucks bedeutet, da eine Malerei von einer anderen nicht weniger verschieden ist als von einer Dichtung, und Malerei und Dichtung wertvoll sind nicht durch die Töne, die die Luft erschüttern und die Farben, die sich im Licht brechen, sondern durch das, was sie dem Geist […] zu sagen wissen, so hat es keinen Zweck die abstrakten Mittel des Ausdrucks heranzuziehen, um […] eine Reihe von Gattungen oder Klassen zu konstruieren.«12 Wie man sieht, verwirft Croce 12

Ders., Grundriß der Ästhetik, S. 36 [Zitate S. 48 u. 46].

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die Lehre von den Gattungen nicht nur – was völlig berechtigt wäre –, sofern sie Normbegriffe aufstellen, sondern auch, sofern sie bestimmte Stilbegriffe fixieren will. Und deshalb müssen für ihn alle Differenzen der Darstellungs f o r m verschwinden oder in bloße Differenzen der »physischen« Darstellungsmittel umgedeutet werden. Aber gerade diese Entgegensetzung des »physischen« und des »psychischen« Faktors wird durch die unbefangene Versenkung in ein großes Kunstwerk widerlegt. Beide Momente sind hier so vollständig ineinander aufgegangen, daß sie sich zwar in der Reflexion scheiden lassen, daß sie aber für die ästhetische Anschauung und das ästhetische Gefühl ein untrennbares Ganze bilden. Kann man wirklich, wie es Croce tut, die konkrete »Intuition« den »abstrakten« Mitteln des Ausdrucks gegenüberstellen und demgemäß alle Differenzen, die sich im Kreise der letzteren finden, als rein begriffliche Differenzen behandeln? Oder ist nicht eben beides im Kunstwerk innerlich zusammengewachsen? Läßt sich, rein phänomenologisch, eine Art gleichförmiger Urschicht der ästhetischen Intuition aufweisen, die immer dieselbe bleibt und die sich erst bei der Ausführung des Werkes dafür entscheidet, welchen Weg sie gehen und ob sie sich in Worten, in Tönen oder Farben verwirklichen will? Auch Croce hat dies nicht angenommen. »Wenn man einer Dichtung ihr Metrum, ihren Rhythmus und ihre Worte nimmt«, so erklärt er nachdrücklich, »dann bleibt nicht, wie | manche glauben, jenseits von all dem der poetische Gedanke: es bleibt nichts. Die Dichtung ist als diese Worte, dieser Rhythmus und dieses Metrum geboren.«13 Aber daraus folgt, daß auch die ästhetische Intuition als musikalische oder plastische, als lyrische oder dramatische geboren wird, daß die hier ausgedrückten Unterschiede also nicht bloße Wortmarken oder Etiketten sind, die wir den einzelnen Kunstwerken anheften, sondern daß ihnen echte Stildifferenzen, verschiedene Richtungen der künstlerischen Intention entsprechen. Geht man hiervon aus, so zeigt sich, daß unser allgemeines Problem in allen Arten künstlerischer Gestaltung auftritt, während es doch andrerseits in jeder von ihnen eine spezifische Gestalt annehmen kann. Das Moment der Formkonstanz und das Moment der »Modifizierbarkeit« der Form tritt uns überall entgegen. Der Ausgleich zwischen beiden scheint freilich in den verschiedenen Künsten nicht in der gleichen Weise zu erfolgen. In dem einen Fall scheint das Beständige und Gleichförmige, in dem andern der Wandel und die Bewegung den Vorrang zu behaupten. Man könnte in gewissem Sinne der Bestimmtheit, der Festigkeit und Geschlossenheit der architektonischen Form die 13

A. a. O., S. 36.

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Bewegung, die Variabilität und Variation der lyrischen oder musikalischen Form gegenüberstellen. Aber dies sind bloße Akzentverschiebungen; denn auch in der Architektur zeigt sich Dynamik und Rhythmus, wie sich in der Musik eine strenge Statik der Formen zeigt. Was die Lyrik betrifft, so scheint sie von allen Künsten die beweglichste und flüchtigste zu sein. Sie weiß von keinem anderen Sein als dem, das sich im Werden enthüllt – und dieses Werden ist nicht die objektive Veränderung der Dinge, sondern die innere Bewegtheit des Ich. Wenn hier etwas festgehalten werden soll, so ist es der Übergang selbst; das Kommen und Gehen, das Auftauchen und Verschwinden, das Anklingen und Verschweben der feinsten seelischen Regungen und der flüchtigsten seelischen Stimmungen. Wenn irgendwo, so scheint es hier sicher zu sein, daß der Künstler keine f er t ig e Welt von »Formen« nutzen kann; daß jeder neue Augenblick eine neue Form erschaffen muß. Und doch zeigt die Geschichte der Lyrik, daß selbst in ihr der »Bestand« gegenüber der Bewegung nicht gänzlich verschwindet, daß die »Heterogenität« nicht einzig und nicht einseitig herrscht. Gerade in der Lyrik erscheint alles Neue, was sie erzeugt, immer noch als ein Anklang und Wiederklang. Denn es sind im Grunde | nur wenige große Grundthemen, denen sie sich zuwendet. Sie bleiben unerschöpflich und unveränderlich; sie gehören allen Völkern, und sie haben im Lauf der Zeiten kaum eine wesentliche Änderung erfahren. In keinem Gebiet scheint die Stoffwahl auf einen so engen Kreis beschränkt wie hier. Der Epiker mag immer neue Begebenheiten, der Dramatiker mag immer neue Charaktere und immer neue Konflikte gestalten. Aber die Lyrik schreitet den Kreis menschlichen Empfindens ab, um sich in ihm stets wieder auf denselben Mittelpunkt zurückverwiesen zu sehen. Für sie gibt es im Grunde nichts Äußeres, sondern Ort für Ort ist sie im Innern. Dieses Innere erscheint in ihr als unendlich, sofern es niemals völlig aussagbar und völlig erschöpfbar ist; aber diese Unendlichkeit betrifft seinen Gehalt, nicht seinen Umfang. Die Zahl der eigentlich lyrischen M ot iv e scheint im Wandel der Zeiten kaum der Erweiterung fähig, und sie scheint ihrer nicht bedürftig zu sein. Denn die Lyrik versenkt sich immer wieder in die »Naturformen der Menschheit«. Noch im Persönlichsten, Individuellen, Einmaligen fühlt sie die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen. Ein bestimmter Kreis von Gegenständen ist ihr genug, um aus ihm allen Reichtum der Stimmung und der dichterischen Form hervorzuzaubern. Immer wieder begegnen wir den gleichen Gegenständen und den gleichen vorbildlichen menschlichen Situationen. Die Liebe und der Wein, die Rose und die Nachtigall, der Schmerz der Trennung und das Glück des Wiederfindens, das Erwachen und Sterben der Natur: dies alles kehrt in der lyri-

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schen Dichtung aller Zeiten unablässig wieder. Die Last der Tradition und Konvention ist daher auch in der Geschichte der Lyrik zu spüren – und sie wiegt hier besonders schwer. Aber all dies ist beseitigt und überwunden, sooft, im Laufe der Jahrhunderte, ein neuer großer Lyriker geboren wird. Auch er pflegt den Kreis der lyrischen »Objekte« und der lyrischen Motive kaum zu erweitern. Goethe hat sich nicht gescheut, sowohl in der Wahl der Motive wie in der Formwahl, an die Lyrik aller Völker und aller Jahrhunderte anzuknüpfen. Die »Römischen Elegien« und der »West-östliche Divan« beweisen, was solche Anklänge und Wiederklänge für ihn bedeutet haben. Dennoch hören wir in jenen so wenig die Sprache von Catull oder Properz, wie wir in diesem die Sprache von Hafis hören. Wir hören nur Goethes Sprache – die Sprache des einmaligen, unvergleichlichen Lebensmoments, den er in diesen Dichtungen festgehalten hat. So begegnen wir in den verschiedenen Kulturgebieten immer wieder | demselben, in seiner Grundbeschaffenheit einheitlichen Prozeß. Der Wettstreit und Widerstreit zwischen den beiden Kräften, von denen die eine auf Erhaltung, die andere auf Erneuerung zielt, hört niemals auf. Das Gleichgewicht, das zwischen ihnen bisweilen erreicht scheint, ist immer nur ein labiles Gleichgewicht, das in jedem Augenblick in neue Bewegung umschlagen kann. Dabei wird mit dem Wachstum und der Entwicklung der Kultur der Ausschlag des Pendels immer weiter: Die Amplitude der Schwingung wächst mehr und mehr. Die inneren Spannungen und Gegensätze gewinnen damit eine immer stärkere Intensität. Dennoch wird dieses Drama der Kultur nicht schlechthin zu einer »Tragödie der Kultur«. Denn es gibt in ihm ebensowenig eine endgültige Niederlage, wie es einen endgültigen Sieg gibt. Die beiden Gegenkräfte wachsen miteinander, statt sich wechselseitig zu zerstören. Der schöpferischen Bewegung des Geistes scheint in den eignen Werken, die sie aus sich hervorbringt, ein Gegner zu erwachsen. Denn alles Geschaffene muß seiner Natur nach dem, was neu entstehen und werden will, den Raum streitig machen. Aber wenn sich die Bewegung immer wieder an ihren Gebilden bricht, so zerbricht sie doch nicht an ihnen. Sie sieht sich nur zu einer neuen Anstrengung genötigt und getrieben, in der sie neue, unbekannte Kräfte entdeckt. Nirgends tritt dies in so bedeutsamer und charakteristischer Form hervor, als im Verlauf der r elig iö s en Ideenbewegung. Hier zeigt der Kampf seine vielleicht tiefste und erschütterndste Seite. Nicht nur der Gedanke oder die Phantasie, sondern Gefühl und Wille, der ganze Mensch ist an ihm beteiligt. Denn jetzt handelt es sich nicht mehr um endliche einzelne Ziele; es handelt sich um Tod oder Leben, um Sein oder Nichtsein. Es gibt keine relativen Entscheidungen; es geht um die e i ne absolute

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Entscheidung. Die Religion ist überzeugt, im Besitz dieser absoluten Entscheidung zu sein. In ihr glaubt der Mensch ein Ewiges gefunden zu haben, einen Bestand, der dem Zeitstrom nicht mehr angehört. Aber die Verheißung dieses höchsten Gutes und dieses höchsten Wertes schließt für das Subjekt zugleich eine bestimmte Forderung in sich. Es muß sie, so wie sie ihm dargeboten wird, hinnehmen; es muß seiner eigenen inneren Unruhe, seinem rastlosen Suchen entsagen. Wenn die Religion, wie alle geistigen Güter, aus dem Lebensstrom entspringt, so will sie ihn doch zugleich überwinden. Sie eröffnet den Ausblick in ein »transzendentes« Gebiet, das unberührt von ihm an sich selbst gilt und in sich selbst verharrt. | Um dieses ihres Zieles willen muß sie die stärksten inneren und äußeren Bindungen enthalten. Je weiter wir in der Religionsgeschichte zurückgehen, um so fester werden diese Bindungen. Der Gott, dessen Hilfe erfleht wird, erscheint nur, wenn kein Wort in der Gebetsformel verändert wird; der Ritus verliert jede religiöse Kraft, wenn er sich nicht in ein und derselben unwandelbaren Kette von Einzelhandlungen vollzieht. In den Religionen der »Primitiven« verfällt das Ganze des Lebens dieser Starrheit des religiösen Formalismus. Jede Einzelhandlung ist von religiösen Verboten betroffen und bedroht. Eine Fülle von Tabuvorschriften legte sich wie ein eiserner Ring um das Dasein und das Leben des Menschen. Aber die Entwicklung der Religion weist ihr andere und höhere Ziele. Die Bindung hört nicht auf; aber sie wendet sich nicht nach außen, sondern nach innen. Das Gebet wird aus magischem Wortzwang zur Anrufung der Gottheit; das Opfer und die Kulthandlung werden zur Versöhnung mit Gott. Und damit wächst und erstarkt die Macht des Subjektiven und Individuellen. Die Religion ist und bleibt ein Ganzes von festen Glaubenssätzen und festen praktischen Geboten. Diese Sätze sind wahr, diese Gebote sind gültig, weil sie von Gott offenbart und verkündigt worden sind. Aber diese Verkündigung selbst vollzieht sich nirgend anders als in der Seele der einzelnen, der großen Religionsstifter und Propheten. Damit bricht der Gegensatz wieder in seiner vollen Stärke auf, und jetzt wird er in seiner ganzen Tiefe erlebt. Das Ich wächst über alle seine empirischen Grenzen hinaus; es erkennt keine Schranke zwischen sich und der Gottheit an; es fühlt sich unmittelbar gottbeseelt und gottdurchdrungen. Und kraft dieser Unmittelbarkeit verwirft es alles, was den Charakter der objektiven Satzung hat, was nur dem religiösen Herkommen angehört. Der Prophet will einen »neuen Himmel und eine neue Erde«14 aufbauen. Aber hier verfällt er freilich, in seinem eigenen Sein und in seinem eigenen 14

[Jesaja 65, 17.]

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Werk, wieder der Gewalt, von der er die Menschen befreien will. Er kann bestimmte bestehende Dogmen nur verwerfen, indem er ihnen seine eigene tiefere Gewißheit vom Göttlichen entgegenstellt. Und um diese Gewißheit auszusprechen, muß er selbst wieder zum Schöpfer neuer religiöser Symbole werden. Sie sind für ihn, solange er noch von der inneren Kraft des Schauens beseelt und erfüllt ist, nichts anderes als Sinnbilder. Aber für diejenigen, an die die Verkündigung ergeht, werden diese Sinnbilder wieder zu Dogmen. Das Wirken jedes großen Religionsstifters lehrt uns, wie er immer | wieder unerbittlich in diesen Kreis hineingezogen wird. Was für ihn Leben war, wandelt sich zur Satzung und erstarrt in ihr. So finden wir auch hier die gleiche Oszillation, die in den anderen Gestaltungen der Kultur hervortritt. Auch die Religion kann sich, wenngleich sie ein Festes, Ewiges, Absolutes verkündet, diesem Prozeß nicht entziehen: Denn indem sie in das Leben einzugreifen und es zu gestalten sucht, unterliegt sie damit dem Auf und Ab, dem steten und unaufhaltsamen Rhythmus des Lebens. Auf Grund dieser Betrachtungen können wir nunmehr auch den spezifischen Unterschied schärfer bezeichnen, der zwischen dem Werden der »Natur« und dem der »Kultur« besteht. Auch die Natur kennt keinen Stillstand; auch die Organismen besitzen, in aller Bestimmtheit ihrer Form, eine eigentümliche Freiheit. Die Modifikabilität ist ein Grundcharakter alles Organischen. »Bildung und Umbildung organischer Gestalten« ist das große Thema aller Morphologie der Natur. Aber die Beziehung zwischen Bewegung und Ruhe, zwischen Gestalt und Metamorphose, die in der organischen Natur herrscht, unterscheidet sich in doppelter Hinsicht von dem Verhältnis, das uns in den Gebilden der Kultur begegnet. Beweglichkeit und Dauer müssen wir für beide in Anspruch nehmen; aber jedes dieser Momente erscheint uns in einer anderen Beleuchtung, wenn wir von der Welt der Natur auf die des Menschen hinüberblicken. Wenn wir in der Natur einen Aufstieg von »niederen« zu »höheren« Formen nachweisen zu können glauben, so betrifft er den Fortgang von einer zur anderen Gattung. Der genetische Gesichtspunkt ist hier immer und notwendig ein generischer Gesichtspunkt. Was die Individuen betrifft, so fallen sie aus dieser Betrachtungsweise notwendig heraus; wir wissen von ihnen nichts und brauchen von ihnen nichts zu wissen. Denn die Veränderungen, die sich in ihnen vollziehen, wirken auf die Gattung nicht unmittelbar zurück und gehen in ihr Leben nicht ein. Hier besteht jene Schranke, die die Biologie als die Tatsache der Nichtvererbbarkeit erworbener Eigenschaften bezeichnet. Die Variationen, die sich im Kreise der Pflanzen- und Tierwelt in einzelnen Exemplaren vollziehen, bleiben biologisch belanglos; sie tauchen auf, um

137–138

Die »Tragödie der Kultur«

485

wieder zu versinken. Wollen wir diesen Sachverhalt in der Sprache der Weismannschen Vererbungstheorie ausdrücken – wobei wir die Frage nach der empirischen Richtigkeit und Beweisbarkeit dieser Theorie hier natürlich dahingestellt sein lassen –, so können wir sagen, daß diese Veränderungen nur das | Soma, nicht aber das »Keimplasma« betreffen, daß sie demgemäß an der Oberfläche bleiben und nicht in jene Tiefenschicht hinabwirken, von der die Entwicklung der Gattung abhängt. In den Kulturphänomenen aber ist diese biologische Schranke beseitigt. Der Mensch hat in den »symbolischen Formen«, die das Eigentümliche seines Wesens und seines Könnens sind, gewissermaßen die Lösung einer Aufgabe vollzogen, die die organische Natur als solche nicht zu lösen vermochte. Der »Geist« hat geleistet, was dem »Leben« versagt blieb. Hier ist das Werden und Wirken des einzelnen in ganz anderer, tief eingreifender Weise mit dem des Ganzen verknüpft. Was die Individuen fühlen, wollen, denken, bleibt nicht in ihnen selbst verschlossen; es objektiviert sich im Werk. Und diese Werke der Sprache, der Dichtung, der bildenden Kunst, der Religion werden zu den »Monumenten«‚ zu den Erinnerungs- und Gedächtniszeichen der Menschheit. Sie sind »dauernder als Erz«;15 denn in ihnen besteht nicht nur ein Stoffliches weiter, sondern sie sind der Ausdruck eines Geistigen, das, wenn es auf verwandte und empfängliche Subjekte trifft, jederzeit wieder aus seiner stofflichen Hülle befreit und zu neuer Wirkung erweckt werden kann. Freilich gibt es auch im Bereich der Kulturgüter Unzähliges, was zugrunde geht und was der Menschheit für immer verloren geht. Denn auch diese Güter haben eine materielle Seite, an der sie verwundbar sind. Der Brand der Bibliothek zu Alexandria hat vieles vernichtet, was für unsere Kenntnis der Antike von unschätzbarem Werte gewesen wäre, und die meisten von Leonardos Gemälden sind für uns verloren, weil die Farben, in denen sie gemalt waren, sich nicht als dauerhaft erwiesen haben. Aber selbst in diesen Fällen bleibt das einzelne Werk mit dem Ganzen wie durch unsichtbare Fäden verknüpft. Wenn es in seiner besonderen Gestalt nicht mehr besteht, so hat es doch Wirkungen geübt, die in irgendeiner Weise in die Entwicklung der Kultur eingegriffen und ihren Gang vielleicht an irgendeinem Punkte entscheidend bestimmt haben. Wir brauchen hierbei nicht nur an das Große und Außergewöhnliche zu denken. Das gleiche bewährt sich auch im engsten und kleinsten Kreise. Man hat mit Recht hervorgehoben, daß es vielleicht keinen einzelnen Akt des Sprechens gibt, der nicht irgend15 [Horaz, Carminum libri VI, in: Carmina, hrsg. v. Friedrich Vollmer, Leipzig 1907, S. 9–138: S. 114: »aere perennius«.]

486

Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften

138–139

wie »die« Sprache beeinflußte. Aus unzähligen solchen Akten, die in gleicher Richtung wirken, können sich bedeutsame Änderungen des Sprachgebrauchs, können sich lautliche Verschiebungen oder formale Wandlungen ergeben. Das liegt daran, daß die Menschheit sich in | ihrer Sprache, ihrer Kunst, in allen ihren Kulturformen gewissermaßen einen neuen Körper geschaffen hat, der allen gemeinsam zugehört. Der Einzelmensch als solcher kann individuelle Fertigkeiten, die er sich im Laufe des Lebens erworben, freilich nicht fortpflanzen. Sie haften am physischen »Soma«‚ das nicht vererbbar ist. Aber was er in seinem Werk aus sich herausstellt, was sprachlich ausgedrückt, was bildlich oder plastisch dargestellt ist, das ist der Sprache oder der Kunst »einverleibt« und dauert durch sie fort. Dieser Prozeß ist es, der die bloße U mb ild u n g , die sich im Kreise des organischen Werdens vollzieht, von der B ild u n g der Menschheit unterscheidet. Die erstere vollzieht sich passiv, die zweite aktiv. Daher führt die erste nur zu Veränderungen, während die zweite zu bleibenden Gestaltungen führt. Das Werk ist im Grunde nichts anderes als eine menschliche Tat, die sich zum Sein verdichtet hat, die aber auch in dieser Verfestigung ihren Ursprung nicht verleugnet. Der schöpferische Wille und die schöpferische Kraft, aus denen es hervorgegangen ist, lebt und wirkt in ihm fort und führt zu immer neuen Schöpfungen weiter.

ROUSSEAU, KANT, GOETHE TWO ESSAYS1 (1945)

1

[Zuerst veröffentlicht: Princeton 1945 (The History of Ideas Series, Bd. 1).]

488

V

To the memory of my young friend Ingeborg Müller-Riemer February 14, 1908 – September 20, 1938 |

VII

489

Preface

The two essays in this little book deal with different subjects, but they have a common theme. They try to illustrate, from various perspectives, the culture of the eighteenth century and the »climate of opinion,«2 to use the term of Whitehead, from which this culture arose. I have treated this subject in more detail in my book »Die Philosophie der Aufklärung«. As I am preparing a new and revised English edition of this work which will appear in the near future, I hope that these essays may be read as a sort of introduction to the larger volume. I avail myself of this opportunity to express my gratitude to the editors and Trustees of Princeton University Press who decided to publish this English edition under the present difficult circumstances. I have to thank Professor John Herman Randall, Jr., for his suggestion to present these two essays in the series of monographs edited by the »Journal of the History of Ideas«. I feel especially indebted to James Gutmann, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr., for their excellent translation. Ernst Cassirer Columbia University October 1944 |

2 [Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World. Lowell Lectures, 1925, New York 1925, S. 5.]

1–2

491

Kant and Rousseau

I. Personal Influence Kant’s biographers tell us that his study, which was furnished with Spartan simplicity and lacked all decoration, had but a single ornament – on a wall hung the portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In other ways also the earliest accounts of Kant’s life give varied evidence of his reverence for Rousseau as a person and his admiration for his work. Most familiar is the story that he who was a model of punctuality, and accustomed to regulate his daily routine by the clock, departed only once from this regular routine. When Rousseau’s »Émile« appeared, fascinated by the study of the work in which he had become absorbed, Kant gave up his daily walk. But we do not require the evidence of such stories to convince us of Rousseau’s profound influence on Kant. His own authentic testimony is much clearer and much more impressive. It leaves no doubt that what Kant thought he owed Rousseau was not any particular doctrine. Rather, at a crucial turning point in his development Rousseau showed him the course he never thereafter abandoned. Kant regarded Rousseau not as the founder of a new »system« but as the thinker who possessed a new conception of the nature and function of philosophy, of its vocation and dignity. »I am myself by inclination a seeker after truth,« he wrote at forty. »I feel a consuming thirst for knowledge and a restless passion to advance in it, as well as satisfaction in every forward step. There was a time when I thought that this alone could constitute the honor of mankind, and I despised the common man who knows nothing. Rousseau set me right. This blind prejudice vanished; I learned to respect human nature, and I | should consider myself far more useless than the ordinary workingman if I did not believe that this view could give worth to all others to establish the rights of man.«3 3 Immanuel Kant, Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse, in: Sämmtliche Werke. In chronologischer Reihenfolge, ed. by Gustav Hartenstein, Vol. VIII, Leipzig 1868, pp. 607–645: p. 624 [»Ich bin selbst aus Neigung ein Forscher. Ich fühle den ganzen Durst nach Erkenntniss und die begierige Unruhe, darin weiter zu kommen, oder auch die Zufriedenheit bei jedem Fortschritte. Es war eine Zeit, da ich glaubte, dieses alles könnte die Ehre der Menschheit machen, und ich verachtete den Pöbel, der von nichts weiss. Rousseau hat mich zurecht gebracht. Dieser verblendete Vorzug verschwindet; ich lerne die Menschen ehren, und würde mich viel unnützer

492

Rousseau, Kant, Goethe

2–3

At first glance it seems strange and paradoxical enough that Rousseau was able to bring about such a change of heart in Kant. For what could bridge the gap between these two personalities? Was there any immediate kinship between them, or did they not rather form an extreme contrast in character and disposition, in destiny and mode of life? If we examine carefully the personal and philosophic development of Rousseau and Kant, we shall search in vain for any point of contact between the two. They belong to quite different worlds. »The kind of philosophy a man chooses,« runs a well known utterance of Fichte’s, »depends upon the kind of man he is. For a philosophic system is no piece of dead furniture one can acquire and discard at will. It is animated with the spirit of the man who possesses it.«4 Were this dictum to be applied strictly and universally, it would be hard to discover any kinship between Rousseau and Kant; for in the entire range of the history of philosophy we can hardly find two spirits so little in tune with each other. A glance at the outward course of their lives and development will suffice to bring into clearest focus this contrast between their two natures. In Kant rule and method constituted the animating and inspiring principles, and they gradually acquired such power that they not only mastered his life in its fullness and variety, but seemed almost to obliterate that concrete fullness. Rousseau tried in vain to subject his life to any rule or to organize it in accordance with any plan. He moved constantly from one extreme to | the other, and in the end life eluded him in contradictory impulses. Rousseau never felt completely at home in any profession, in any science or doctrine, in any religion. He practiced in succession the callings of engraver, domestic servant, tax collector and official, tutor, music copyist, diplomatic secretary, musical performer and composer, before he found his true vocation as thinker and writer. Brought up in the strict principles of Calvinism, at the first opportunity he renounced Calvinism for Catholic doctrine; but he abandoned this in turn when in 1754 he returned to his birthplace, Geneva. His life was filled with unsettled wandering, finden, als die gemeinen Arbeiter, wenn ich nicht glaubte, dass diese Betrachtung allen übrigen einen Werth geben könne, die Rechte der Menschheit herzustellen.«]. 4 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre, in: Sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Immanuel Hermann Fichte, Vol. I, Berlin 1845, pp. 417–449: p. 434 [»Was für eine Philosophie man wähle, hängt sonach davon ab, was man für ein Mensch ist: denn ein philosophisches System ist nicht ein todter Hausrath, den man ablegen oder annehmen könnte, wie es uns beliebte, sondern es ist beseelt durch die Seele des Menschen, der es hat.«].

3–4

Kant and Rousseau

493

interrupted only in his youth by the quiet and peaceful years spent at Les Charmettes. Rousseau himself saw this as his destiny; and this destiny was not only forced upon him from without, as when he was driven from place to place during the last period of his life; it expressed and derived from a fundamental trait of his nature, as he felt and admitted. In the »Confessions« he speaks of that inner turmoil of his whole being that forced him to flee from Parisian society. »If the revolution had only restored me to myself, and had stopped there,« he adds, »all would have been well; but unfortunately it went further, and carried me quickly to the other extreme. Henceforth my troubled soul crossed and recrossed the line of repose; and its ever-renewed oscillations have never allowed it to remain at rest there.«5 Rousseau’s life could find no point of rest or security, because even apart from external threats there was no point of equilibrium at which his personality could abide. What he achieved he could accomplish only at highest tension and in utter convulsion of his whole being. Only a few of his works, like the »Émile« and the »Social Contract«, ripened slowly in his mind. All the rest are the expression of | a spiritual or intellectual crisis which took place suddenly, and unexpectedly overwhelmed him. He has himself described in incomparable and unforgettable fashion the crises that precipitated his first »Discourse« and the »New Héloise«. And ever and again after such experiences he had to start his life and work anew and rebuild them, as it were, out of nothing. There was no prevision to guide him and to protect and shield him from himself and from all the irrational powers to which he felt himself exposed. Over and over, as we survey the course of his life, we are reminded of Faust’s words: » Bin ich der Flüchtling nicht? der Unbehaus’te? Der Unmensch ohne Zweck und Ruh, Der wie ein Wassersturz von Fels zu Felsen braus’te Begierig wüthend nach dem Abgrund zu?«6 5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les confessions (Bk. 9), in: Les confessions, ed. by Adolphe van Bever, 3 vols., Paris 1913–1914, Vols. I, II, and III, pp. 1–186: Vol. II, p. 317 [»Si la révolution n’eût fait que me rendre à moi-même, et s’arrêter là, tout étoit bien; mais malheureusement elle alla plus loin, et m’emporta rapidement à l’autre extrême. Dès lors mon âme en branle n’a plus fait que passer par la ligne de repos, et ses oscillations toujours renouvelées ne lui ont jamais permis d’y rester.«]. 6 »I am the fugitive, all houseless roaming, / The monster without aim or rest, / That like a cataract, down rocks and gorges foaming, / Leaps, maddened,

494

Rousseau, Kant, Goethe

4–5

Rousseau is constantly aspiring toward lofty goals, the very loftiest; but he feels that he cannot attain them, and he sees the chasm at his feet, close by and threatening. If we put Kant’s manner of life alongside this of Rousseau’s we at once find a marked contrast. Order and law, coherence and consistency, are the guiding stars of Kant’s being. We know how he carried this consistency even into small matters, indeed into apparent trivialities. For each and every matter he formulated an appropriate »maxim« and held to it with unswerving tenacity. Some of the circumstances Kant’s earliest biographers carefully and conscientiously relate are so strange and extraordinary that we can hardly avoid smiling at them. And yet they ex | pressed the whole deep seriousness of his nature. This seriousness kept him from leaving anything in the conduct of life, however unimportant it might appear, to the dominion of chance. The will must prove itself in its independence, in its original autonomy, and take the reins from chance. This same trait characterizes Kant’s career as thinker and writer. From the outset he kept in view a specific goal and determined on an appropriate route. In his first published work he wrote: »I have already traced the course I want to follow. I shall set forth on my way and nothing shall keep me from holding to it.«7 And he acted in accordance with these words spoken at the age of twenty. To be sure, his thought matured very slowly and did not escape crucial upheavals. He himself reports various aspects of the »upsets« his thought underwent in the course of the years. But none of this gainsays the methodical progress of Kant’s thought or takes away any of its strictly methodical character. For all the difficulties Kant the »critical« thinker finds within the faculty of reason, indeed all the antinomies he there discovers, enable him only to penetrate more deeply into the structure of reason and to work out its plan and architectonic order more and into the abyss’s breast!« Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. A Tragedy, transl. by Bayard Taylor, New York 1930 (The Modern Readers’ Series), p. 145 [Faust. Eine Tragödie. Erster Theil (Werke, hrsg. im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 4 Abt., insges. 133 Bde. in 143 Bdn., Weimar 1887–1919, 1. Abt., Bd. XIV), S. 168.]. 7 Immanuel Kant, Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte und Beurteilung der Beweise, deren sich Herr von Leibniz und andere Mechaniker in dieser Streitsache bedienet haben, nebst einigen vorhergehenden Betrachtungen, welche die Kraft der Körper überhaupt betreffen, in: Werke, in connection with Hermann Cohen et al. ed. by Ernst Cassirer, 11 vols., Berlin 1912–1921, Vol. I, pp. 1–187: p. 8 (Akad.-Ausg. I, 10) [»Ich habe mir die Bahn schon vorgezeichnet, die ich halten will. Ich werde meinen Lauf antreten, und nichts soll mich hindern, ihn fortzusetzen.«].

5–7

Kant and Rousseau

495

more precisely. For him, reason is of and through its own powers certain of its own inherent logic. In this logic reason possesses once and for all its surest guiding star, which it can trust at every step in the realm of experience, in the general philosophy of nature, and in the special doctrine of man, »philosophical anthropology«. If we can thus find no immediate kinship between Kant and Rousseau, either with regard to personality and way of life, or with regard to the manner and form of their thought, the question arises as to the nature of the tie that | nevertheless bound them to one another. We know that Kant not only prized Rousseau’s style, but that this was exactly what led him to turn again and again to Rousseau’s writings. It could hardly be otherwise. For in just that period of his life in which he felt Rousseau’s influence, Kant had not yet become the pure analyst concerned merely with the »dry dissection of concepts.«8 He was equally a stylist and a psychological essayist, and in this respect he established a new standard for the German philosophical literature of the eighteenth century. His »Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime« display a precision of observation and a lucidity and facility of presentation Kant never again attained in any later work. At this time he must have possessed a sensitive ear for Rousseau’s distinctive literary style. But he was not disposed to surrender to the magic that Rousseau as a man of letters exercised upon him; he rather struggled against it and tried to substitute for it a calm and tranquil judgment. »I must read Rousseau,« he says, »until his beauty of expression no longer distracts me at all, and only then can I survey him with reason.«9 Thus Kant seeks neither stimulus nor emotion in Rousseau’s writings; it is rather an intellectual and moral decision to which he feels them challenging and summoning him. Under the impression of these writings his attitude toward the world and toward man begins to change. His naive confidence that the cultivation of the mind and its steady progress would suffice to make man better, freer and happier is shaken. He feels he must apply leverage at a different point if the question of the »vocation of man« is to be made susceptible of philosophic solution. All the judgments Kant ventures on Rousseau’s character and disposition point in the same direction. He feels the paradox | of 8 [Ders., Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Werke, Bd. III), hrsg. v. Albert Görland, S. 39 (B 9): »Zergliederungen der Begriffe«.] 9 Idem, Fragmente, p. 618 [»Ich muss den Rousseau so lange lesen, bis mich die Schönheit des Ausdrucks gar nicht mehr stört, und dann kann ich allererst ihn mit Vernunft übersehen.«].

496

Rousseau, Kant, Goethe

7–8

this disposition. It does not, however, repel him, but rather attracts him, because he thinks he discerns in Rousseau the will not to be peculiar and eccentric but to be altogether sincere. He does not yield to the suspicion that all Rousseau’s paradoxical theses are merely artificial, that he is using his »[…] extraordinary talents and magic power of eloquence« only in order to »affect an eccentricity that would surpass all intellectual rivals by its captivating and astonishing novelty.«10 He tries to penetrate to the ultimate foundation of Rousseau’s position, and he finds it not only in a special mode of thought but in a certain »mood« of the spirit to which he feels attracted and which strikes in him a responsive chord. In what respect could two such different and opposite natures meet, and on what ideals could they agree? If we raise this question, we discover to our surprise that Kant understood and prized just those things in Rousseau that were inaccessible to the group among whom Rousseau lived. If we follow the account in Rousseau’s »Confessions« and supplement it with what we know from his correspondence, we recognize the reason for the tragic misunderstanding which ruined his life. Certainly Rousseau’s disposition, his sensitiveness, his violence, his morbid distrust, contributed to this misunderstanding. But these traits were by no means the only reason for it. What even Rousseau’s closest friends could not understand or forgive him was the solitude in which he took refuge. At first they saw in this desire for solitude only a fleeting impulse that would soon pass, and they interpreted his persistent resolution as an incomprehensible stubbornness. This trait was responsible for the break with Diderot. All Diderot’s letters express a genuinely friendly interest and a real sympathy for Rousseau’s fate. But all Diderot’s | keenness of insight deserts him, otherwise so penetrating a psychologist, when confronted by Rousseau’s personality. As is well known, Rousseau felt wounded to the extreme when in Diderot’s »Fils Naturel« he read that »[…] only the evil man seeks solitude.«11 He never forgave Diderot these words. We may well believe Diderot’s repeated assurance that the statement was not aimed at Rousseau. But on the other hand there existed here 10 Ibid., p. 624 [»[…] ausserordentlichen Talente und Zauberkraft der Beredtsamkeit nur beweisen und den Sonderling machen wollen, welcher durch eine einnehmende und überraschende Neuheit über alle Nebenbuhler des Witzes hervorstehe.«]. 11 [Denis Diderot, Le fils naturel ou les épreuves de la vertu. Comédie en cinq actes et en prose avec l’histoire véritable de la pièce, in: Œuvres complètes, hrsg. v. Jean Assézat, Bd. VII, Paris 1875, S. 3–168: S. 66: »[…] qu’il n’y a que le méchant qui soit seul.«]

8–9

Kant and Rousseau

497

a genuine opposition of spirit which was bound to make itself more and more clearly felt as time went by and which in the end proved irreconcilable. Diderot’s whole thought moves within and is bound up with a specific social order. The »Encyclopedia« he edited took as its essential task to raise thought to a social level, to make it a function not of the individual but of society. Whatever Diderot accomplished was possible for him only because he was full of this enterprise and devoted all his powers of understanding and will to its service. And as he himself thought with and for Parisian society, he stood constantly in need of that society to stimulate his thinking and keep it active. His work could prosper only in the atmosphere of the Paris salons. Despite all his enthusiasm for nature, to which he too was devoted, he could not free himself from this standard, and he set up the same standard for Rousseau as well, with a naïveté that strikes us today as strange. To Diderot, Rousseau’s life in the »Hermitage« seemed an expression of morbid overstimulation, and he can hardly speak of it save with bitterness and irony. Even in the letters he wrote Rousseau to effect a reconciliation and to allay his distrust, this bitterness appears. To one he even adds a contemptuous postscript: »Farewell, citizen,« he writes, »what an extraordinary citizen a hermit is.«12 | (»C’est pourtant un Citoyen bien singulier qu’un Hermite.«) But in fact and in all seriousness Rousseau was just such a citoyen bien singulier. From the outset he stood in a paradoxical relation to society: he had to flee from it in order to serve it and to give it what he was capable of giving. In his hermitage he reflected upon the duties of citizenship, and only there did he become the author of the »Social Contract«. In the »Émile« also he retained the same trait: he requires that »Émile« be educated outsid e society, because in this way alone can he be educated f o r society in the only true sense. All this Kant discerned. He gave himself up to the direct impression received from studying the »Émile«, and he thus gained a deeper insight into Rousseau’s nature than the people among whom Rousseau lived and even his closest friends were capable of. For he was not blinded by prejudices. He neither exaggerated the value of life in society nor underestimated it. Kant was by no means unsociable; he sought and cherished social intercourse and saw in it an intellectual and moral discipline. Especially in his youth he yielded himself freely 12 Idem, Letter to Jean-Jacques Rousseau from March 10, 1757 (No. 342), in: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Correspondance générale, ed. by Théophile Dufour, 20 vols., Paris 1924–1934, Vol. III, pp. 19 f.: p. 20 [»Adieu, le Citoyen!«].

498

Rousseau, Kant, Goethe

9–10

to the charm of such relations; »Magister« Kant was much sought after in all circles of Königsberg society, among merchants and army officers, by the middle class as well as the nobility; he was accounted an excellent conversationalist and man of the world. But if Kant possessed such advantages and if he sought to cultivate and perfect them, they were never capable of deluding him. He saw in them a grace and ornament of life, but nothing capable of constituting and determining its real worth. For him the demands of »mores« and of »morality« were quite distinct. And he was grateful to Rousseau because in an age when the best minds seemed to have forgotten this distinction, he drew the line with utter and thoroughgoing precision. | Kant regarded this as Rousseau’s distinctive achievement. He did not think that Rousseau intended to alienate men from civilization or to lead them back to the wilderness by his enthusiastic praise of the state of nature. He explicitly defends him from such a suspicion, to which Voltaire had given so sharp and biting an expression. In his lectures on anthropology he declared that »[i]t is surely not permissible to regard Rousseau’s splenetic account of the human race, that has dared to desert the state of nature, as a commendation of returning to this condition in the forests […] His […] writings […] did not indeed propose that man should g o back to the state of nature, but that he should loo k back upon it from the level he has now attained.«13 From this remark of Kant’s it is quite clear in what sense he took Rousseau’s doctrine of the »state of nature«, and in what direction he developed it further. In it he saw – to express it in terms of his own subsequent ideas – not a constitutive but a regulative principle. He regarded Rousseau’s theory not as a theory of what exists but of what should be, not as an account of what has been but as an expression of what ought to be, not as a retrospective elegy but as a prospective prophecy. For Kant the seemingly retrospective view should serve to equip men for the future and to make them fit to establish that future. It should not alienate men from the task of improving their civilization, but should show them how much in the values they prize 13 Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (§ 107), ed. by Otto Schöndörffer, in: Werke, Vol. VIII, pp. 1–228: p. 220 f. (Akad.-Ausg. VII, 326 f.) [»Man darf eben nicht die hypochondrische (übellaunige) Schilderung, die Rousseau vom Menschengeschlecht macht, das aus dem Naturzustande herauszugehen wagt, für Anpreisung wieder dahin ein- und in die Wälder zurückzukehren, als dessen wirkliche Meinung annehmen […] Seine […] Schriften […] wollte[n] im Grunde nicht, daß der Mensch wiederum in den Naturzustand zurückgehen, sondern von der Stufe, auf der er jetzt steht, dahin zurücksehen sollte.«].

10–11

Kant and Rousseau

499

in civilization is sham and show. This distinction is fundamental for Kant also; for him every genuine ordering of the values in human life and experience depends upon it. For him none of the merely social »virtues«, no matter now glamorous they may seem, could ever constitute the true meaning of »virtue« itself. »Every social virtue of man | is but a token,« his anthropology declares; »he who takes it for real gold is but a child.«14 For Kant all the goods of civilization have their »value«, but this value does not suffice to assure them of genuine »worth«. For Kant’s ethics draws a sharp dividing line between the two. »In the realm of ends,« declares the »Fundamentals of the Metaphysics of Morals«, »everything has either a value or a worth. What has a value has a substitute which can replace it as its equivalent; but whatever is, on the other hand, exalted above all values, and thus lacks an equivalent […] has no merely relative value, that is, a price, but rather an inner worth, that is, dignity. Now morality is the condition in accordance with which alone a reasonable being can be an end in himself, because only through morality is it possible to be an autonomous member of the realm of ends. Hence morality, and humanity, in so far as it is capable of morality, can alone possess dignity.«15 For the moment let us not pursue the significance these words possess for Kant’s theory of freedom and for the construction of his system. We shall ask merely how Rousseau’s figure must have appeared to him in the light of this conviction. And here we can at once establish a characteristic difference as over against the judgment of most of his contemporaries. Kant was perhaps the first to do justice to that trait in Rousseau’s nature which even his closest friends misunderstood. Rousseau gave repeated assurances in his writings, in his »Confessions« and in his letters, that he never loved men more warmly than when he seemed to be drawing away and fleeing from them. In contact with people and under the compulsion of social conventions, Rous14 Ibid. (§ 14), p. 38 (Akad.-Ausg. VII, 152) [»Alle menschliche Tugend im Verkehr ist Scheidemünze; ein Kind ist der, welcher sie für echtes Gold nimmt.«]. 15 Idem, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, in: Werke, Vol. IV, ed. by Artur Buchenau and Ernst Cassirer, pp. 241–324: p. 293 (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 434) [»Im Reiche der Zwecke hat alles entweder einen Preis oder eine Würde. Was einen Preis hat, an dessen Stelle kann auch etwas anderes als Aequivalent gesetzt werden; was dagegen über allen Preis erhaben ist, mithin kein Aequivalent verstattet […] hat nicht bloß einen relativen Wert, d. i. einen Preis, sondern einen innern Wert, d. i. Würde. Nun ist Moralität die Bedingung, unter der allein ein vernünftiges Wesen Zweck an sich selbst sein kann; weil nur durch sie es möglich ist, ein gesetzgebend Glied im Reiche der Zwecke zu sein. Also ist Sittlichkeit und die Menschheit, sofern sie derselben fähig ist, dasjenige, was allein Würde hat.«]

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seau could not discover the human nature he was | capable of loving. »[…] I was never made for society,« he writes at the end of his life in the »Rêveries du promeneur solitaire«, »where everything is compulsion and burdensome obligation. My independent disposition always made it impossible for me to bow to all that those who wish to live among men must accept. As soon as I can act freely I am good and do only what is good; but as soon as I feel the yoke of men I become rebellious and headstrong – and then I am nothing.«16 This form of »misanthropy«, derived from the desire to protect his independence under all circumstances, Kant understood – and approved. He gave a very attractive and characteristic account of the type of personality that corresponds to it in the sketch of the »melancholy temperament« incorporated in his »Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime«. There is little doubt that Rousseau contributed essential features to this portrait of »the melancholy man«. »The man of melancholy disposition is little concerned with the judgment of others, with their opinion of what is good or true; he relies purely on his own insight. Because his motivating forces assume the nature of fundamental principles, he cannot readily be turned to other thoughts; his perseverance can at times degenerate into obstinacy. He regards changes of fashion with indifference and their glitter with contempt. […] He has a lofty sense of the dignity of human nature. He esteems himself and regards man as a creature deserving of respect. He suffers no abject subservience and breathes the noble air of freedom. To him all chains are abhorrent, from the gilded fetters worn at court to the heavy irons of the galley slave. He is a stern judge of himself as well as of others and is not infrequently disgusted with himself as well as with the world.«17 | 16 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire (6th Promenade), in: Les confessions, Vol. III, pp. 187–338: p. 280 [»[…] je n’ai jamais été vraiment propre à la société civile, où tout est gêne, obligation, devoir, et que mon naturel indépendant me rendit toujours incapable des assujettissemens nécessaires à qui veut vivre avec les hommes. Tant que j’agis librement, je suis bon et je ne fais que du bien; mais sitôt que je sens le joug, soit de la nécessité, soit des hommes, je deviens rebelle, ou plutôt rétif: alors je suis nul.«]. 17 Immanuel Kant, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, in: Werke, Vol. II, pp. 243–300: p. 261 (Akad.-Ausg. II, 221) [»Der Mensch von melancholischer Gemütsverfassung bekümmert sich wenig darum, was andere urteilen, was sie vor gut oder vor wahr halten, er stützet sich desfalls bloß auf seine eigene Einsicht. Weil die Bewegungsgründe in ihm die Natur der Grundsätze annehmen, so ist er nicht leicht auf andere Gedanken zu bringen; seine Standhaftigkeit artet auch bisweilen in Eigensinn aus. Er sieht den Wechsel der Moden mit Gleichgültigkeit und ihren Schimmer mit Verachtung an. […] Er hat ein hohes

13–14

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501

All this is not merely characteristic of Kant’s individual ideas; it provides more than a purely biographical interest. It offers an important clue in the history of ideas, for it reveals an aspect of Rousseau’s influence unjustifiably neglected in the traditional view we are accustomed to hold of his effect on modern intellectual history. This traditional view was molded historically by the »Age of Genius« and by Romanticism. In Germany it was the generation of »Storm and Stress« that saw in Rousseau their ancestor and patron. This generation regarded him as the prophet of a new gospel of nature and as the thinker who had rediscovered the primitive power of the emotions and passions and had emancipated them from all restrictions, from the restriction of convention as well as that of »reason«. Modern criticism also has not infrequently accepted this conception, and based on it all the charges it has brought against Rousseau, the visionary, dreamer, and enthusiast. But during the sixties of the eighteenth century, in the crucial period for Rousseau’s influence on Kant, men saw his teaching in another light. For this period Rousseau was not in the first instance the restorer of the rights of the emotions, the apostle of »sentimentality«; he was, as Kant calls him, »the restorer of the rights of humanity.«18 Not only Kant but Lessing also passed such a judgment. Lessing, the most circumspect and manly mind of the age, was surely not disposed to let himself be overcome by frenzy of emotion or to argue the case for sentimentality in any form. Yet Rousseau’s work did not fail to have its influence on him also. In his notice of Rousseau’s first »Discourse« he praised the »elevated attitudes« of the essay and the »manly eloquence« with which they were presented. And he declared that we must feel a secret respect for a man who dared »to speak for virtue against all accepted | prejudices,« even if he went too far in his conclusions.19 Kant thought and felt exactly the same way. He too did not pass Gefühl vor der Würde der menschlichen Natur. Er schätzet sich selbst und hält einen Menschen vor ein Geschöpf, das da Achtung verdienet. Er erduldet keine verworfene Untertänigkeit und atmet Freiheit in einem edlen Busen. Alle Ketten von denen vergoldeten an, die man am Hofe trägt, bis zu dem schweren Eisen des Galeerensklaven sind ihm abscheulich. Er ist ein strenger Richter seiner selbst und anderer und nicht selten seiner sowohl als der Welt überdrüssig.«]. 18 [Vgl. oben, S. 491 f. Anm. 3.] 19 Lessing’s notice of Rousseau’s first Discourse, April, 1751: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Das Neueste aus dem Reiche des Witzes, als eine Beylage zu den Berlinischen Staats- und Gelehrten Zeitungen. 1751, in: Sämtliche Schriften, ed. by Karl Lachmann, 3rd ed., rev. and augm. by Franz Muncker, Vol. IV, Stuttgart 1889, pp. 385–475: pp. 387 ff. [Zitate S. 388 u. 394: »[…] erhabene Gesinnungen […] männliche Beredsamkeit […] welcher der Tugend gegen alle gebilligte Vorurtheile das Wort redet […]«].

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over the »New Héloise« without sympathy. »In the very same spirit in which he examined Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Crusius, and Hume,« Herder reports of Kant during the ’sixties, »he took up the writings of Rousseau, then just appearing, his ›Émile‹ and his ›Héloise‹ […] appraised them and returned again and again to an unaffected insight into nature and the moral worth of man.«20 But Kant certainly read the »New Héloise« in different fashion from most of his contemporaries and from most readers of later times. For him the center of gravity of the whole lay not in the romantic love story but in the second, »moral« portion of the work. He did not regard this as a mere unrelated supplement with which Rousseau had disfigured his work and weakened his artistic effect; and so he could not look upon the »New Héloise« as a mere sentimental romance or a glorification of passion. »[Rousseau’s] state of nature,« according to Irving Babbitt, »is only the projection of his own temperament and its dominant desires upon the void. His programme amounts in practice to the indulgence of infinite indeterminate desire, to an endless and aimless vagabondage of the emotions with the imagination as their free accomplice.«21 Had this really been Rousseau’s »program«, Kant could not have felt attracted to it at any time of his life and thought; he would have turned from it with indignation. But even in the »New Héloise« he found something quite different by keeping in mind the total character of the work. »I trusted my nature, and followed my impulses,« | he read in Julie’s letters. »A happy instinct leads me to the good; a violent passion arises; it has its source in that same instinct: what shall I do to destroy it? From the consideration of order I derive beauty and virtue […] but what can they do against my private interest? […] Finally, since the character and the love of the beautiful are imprinted by nature in the depths of my soul, I shall have my rule as long as they are not disfigured. But how can I be sure that I shall always preserve in its purity that inner image which finds among sensible things no model with which it may be compared? Do we not know that the disordered affections corrupt the judgment as they corrupt the will? […] for the heart deceives us in a thousand ways and acts only by a principle 20 Johann Gottfried Herder, Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (79th letter) (Sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Bernhard Suphan, Vol. XVII), Berlin 1881, p. 404 [»Mit eben dem Geist, mit dem er Leibnitz, Wolf, Baumgarten, Crusius, Hume prüfte […] nahm er auch die damals erscheinenden Schriften Roußeau’s, seinen Emil und seine Heloise […] auf, würdigte sie, und kam immer zurück auf unbefangene Känntniß der Natur und auf moralischen Werth des Menschen.«]. 21 Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, Boston, Mass./New York 1919, p. 79.

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always suspect, but reason has no other end than what is good, its rules are certain, clear and easy in conduct […] and it never goes astray save in the useless speculations that are not made for it.«22 In such words limiting and opposing the doctrine of the »omnipotence of the heart«23 Kant, unlike many modern critics, did not see mere sophistical disguises of Rousseau’s ideas; he thought rather that he here found their true and essential meaning. Thus he felt strengthened by Rousseau himself to distrust the ideal of the »beautiful soul« (schöne Seele) emphasized by eighteenth century ethics. He did not reject this ideal, but declared that from it there could be derived no principle for the scientific and philosophic foundation of ethics. Such a principle he sought not in the beauty of feeling but in the sublimity of the will. »Among moral qualities only true virtue is sublime. There are to be sure good moral qualities that are amiable and fine and that, in so far as they are in harmony with virtue, can also be regarded as noble, although they cannot | be reckoned as belonging to a virtuous disposition. In such matters judgment is nice and complicated. […] A certain tender-heartedness that springs from a warm feeling of sympathy is fine and amiable, for it indicates a kindly interest in the fate of other men […] But this good-natured passion is weak and always blind. […] When on the other hand universal good will […] has become a principle for you, to which you always subordinate your actions, then love for the suffering still remains, but it has now been transformed from a higher standpoint into the true relation to your whole duty. […] As soon as this feeling has attained its proper universality, it is sublime, but at the same time colder. For it is not possible to fill our 22 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La nouvelle Héloïse (Pt. 3, letters 18 and 20), ed. by Daniel Mornet, 4 vols., Paris 1925 (Les grands écrivains de la France, Series 2), Vol. III, pp. 66 f. and 85 [»Je me sentois bien née et me livrois à mes penchans […] Un heureux instinct me porte au bien, une violente passion s’élève; elle a sa racine dans le même instinct, que ferai-je pour la détruire? De la considération de l’ordre je tire la beauté de la vertu […] mais que fait tout cela contre mon intérêt particulier […] Enfin que le caractère et l’amour du beau soit empreint par la nature au fond de mon âme, j’aurai ma règle aussi longtems qu’il ne sera point défiguré; mais comment m’assurer de conserver toujours dans sa pureté cette effigie intérieure qui n’a point parmi les êtres sensibles de modèle auquel on puisse la comparer? Ne sait-on pas que les affections désordonnées corrompent le jugement ainsi que la volonté […] car le cœur nous trompe en mille manières et n’agit que par un principe toujours suspect; mais la raison n’a d’autre fin que ce qui est bien; ses règles sont sûres, claires, faciles dans la conduite […] et jamais elle ne s’égare que dans d’inutiles spéculations qui ne sont faites pour elle.«]. 23 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Versuch über die Dichtungen, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XL, S. 204–241: S. 239: »Allmacht des Herzens«.]

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hearts with tender sympathy for every man and to be bathed in sorrow at the distress of every stranger, or else the virtuous man, forever dissolved in tears of sympathy […] would get no farther with all this good nature than a tender-hearted idler.«24 This was written in 1764, in the »Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime« – but it already contains the characteristic attitude of Kant’s later ethics. It is obvious that with this attitude and conviction Kant could not stop with Rousseau, that he must feel much in him to be strange and fantastic. For high as his moral ideals could aspire, Rousseau himself was never safe from relapses into another way of feeling. He has described in his »Confessions« how in his love for Mme. d’Houdetot he was transformed from the philosopher, the critic of society, the apostle of freedom, into the »extravagant shepherd« again. »[…] see the grave citizen of Geneva,« he cried out in pain, »see the austere Jean-Jacques, almost forty-five, become all at once again the extravagant shepherd.«25 But Kant, usually so strict, was not misled by | such »extravagances« in his admiration for Rousseau’s writings and in his reverence for his person. He expressly defends Rousseau against the charge of being a mere visionary. »I place Aristides among usurers, Epictetus among courtiers, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau among the doctors of the Sorbonne. I think I hear a loud mocking laughter, and a hundred voices crying, › Wh at v is i ona r i e s !‹ This ambiguous ap24 Kant, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen, pp. 255 f. (Akad.-Ausg. II, 215 f.) [»In moralischen Eigenschaften ist wahre Tugend allein erhaben. Es gibt gleichwohl gute sittliche Qualitäten, die liebenswürdig und schön sind und, insoferne sie mit der Tugend harmonieren, auch als edel angesehen werden, ob sie gleich eigentlich nicht zur tugendhaften Gesinnung gezählt werden können. Das Urteil hierüber ist fein und verwickelt. […] Eine gewisse Weichmütigkeit, die leichtlich in ein warmes Gefühl des Mitleidens gesetzt wird, ist schön und liebenswürdig; denn es zeigt eine gütige Teilnehmung an dem Schicksale anderer Menschen an […] Allein diese gutartige Leidenschaft ist gleichwohl schwach und jederzeit blind. […] Wenn dagegen die allgemeine Wohlgewogenheit […] in euch zum Grundsatze geworden ist, welchem ihr jederzeit eure Handlungen unterordnet, alsdenn bleibt die Liebe gegen den Notleidenden noch, allein sie ist jetzt aus einem höhern Standpunkte in das wahre Verhältnis gegen eure gesamte Pflicht versetzt worden. […] Sobald nun dieses Gefühl zu seiner gehörigen Allgemeinheit gestiegen ist, so ist es erhaben, aber auch kälter. Denn es ist nicht möglich, daß unser Busen vor jedes Menschen Anteil von Zärtlichkeit aufschwelle und bei jeder fremden Not in Wehmut schwimme, sonsten würde der Tugendhafte, unaufhörlich in mitleidigen Tränen […] schmelzend, bei aller dieser Gutherzigkeit gleichwohl nichts weiter als ein weichmütiger Müßiggänger werden.«]. 25 Rousseau, Les confessions (Bk. 9), in: Les confessions, Vol. II, p. 332 [»[…] voilà le grave citoyen de Genève, voilà l’austère Jean-Jacques, à près de quarantecinq ans, redevenu tout à coup le berger extravagant.«].

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pearance of being a blind idealist in moral feelings that are in themselves good is en th u sias m , and never has anything great been accomplished in the world without it.«26 Thus Kant made clear in the example of Rousseau the truth of Plato’s words about the Θεα μανα. What always reconciled Kant again to Rousseau, with all his paradoxical and enthusiastic qualities, was the fearlessness, the independence of thought and feeling, the will to the »unconditioned« he there encountered. For Kant himself, though far from any rebellion against the constituted authorities, was inspired with the strongest sense of independence. Much that surprises us in his way of life and may at times seem strange or eccentric, is explained by this trait of his character: by the desire to preserve his inner and outer independence in every moment of life and under all circumstances. And his ethical theory also reckons independence among the highest moral goods. »In submissiveness there is not only something exceedingly dangerous,« he says in his notes to the »Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime«, »but also a certain ugliness and a contradiction, which at the same time indicates its illegitimacy. An animal is not yet a complete being, because it is not conscious of itself […] it knows nothing of its own existence. But that man himself should stand in need of no soul and have no will of his | own, and that another soul should move his limbs, this is absurd and perverse. […] Such a man is like the mere tool of another. […] The man who stands in dependence on another is no longer a man, he has lost his standing, he is nothing but the possession of another man.«27 In this conviction Kant approached Rousseau, and in it he could greet him as a philosophical liberator. 26 Immanuel Kant, Versuch über die Krankheiten des Kopfes, in: Werke, Vol. II, pp. 301–316: p. 311 (Akad.-Ausg. II, 267) [»Ich stelle den Aristides unter Wucherer, den Epiktet unter Hofleute und den Johann Jacob Rousseau unter die Doktoren der Sorbonne. Mich deucht, ich höre ein lautes Hohngelächter, und hundert Stimmen rufen: Welche Phantasten! Dieser zweideutige Anschein von Phantasterei in an sich guten, moralischen Empfindungen ist der Enthusiasmus, und es ist niemals ohne denselben in der Welt etwas Großes ausgerichtet worden.«]. 27 Idem, Fragmente, pp. 635 f. [»Es ist in der Unterwürfigkeit nicht allein etwas äusserst Gefährliches, sondern auch eine gewisse Hässlichkeit und ein Widerspruch, der zugleich seine Unrechtmässigkeit anzeigt. Ein Thier ist noch nicht ein complettes Wesen, weil es sich seiner selbst nicht bewusst ist […] es weiss nicht von seinem eignen Dasein. Dass der Mensch aber gleichsam keiner Seele bedürfen und keinen eigenen Willen haben soll, und dass eine andere Seele meine Gliedmaassen beugen soll, das ist ungereimt und verkehrt. […] Ein solcher Mensch ist gleichsam für sich nichts als ein Hausgeräth eines Andern. […] Der Mensch, der abhängt, ist nicht mehr ein Mensch, er hat diesen Rang verloren, er ist nichts als ein Zubehör eines andern Menschen.«].

506

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II. Rousseau and the Doctrine of Human Nature Kant could accord Rousseau’s thought no higher praise than to place it side by side with Newton’s work: »Newton was the first to discern order and regularity in combination with great simplicity, where before him men had encountered disorder and unrelated diversity. Since Newton the comets follow geometric orbits. Rousseau was the first to discover beneath the varying forms human nature assumes, the deeply concealed essence of man and the hidden law in accordance with which Providence is justified by his observations. Before them, the objections of King Alfonso and the Manichaeans were still valid. After Newton and Rousseau, the ways of God are justified – and Pope’s thesis is henceforth true.«28 At first glance there can hardly be a stranger parallel than Kant is here attempting. For where is the actual basis of comparison? Rousseau never posed as an empirical investigator claiming to have reduced man’s life and being to general laws that could be known and formulated with | precision. The eighteenth century held to its faith in reason and science and saw in them »Des Menschen allerhöchste Kraft,«29 man’s supreme power. It was convinced that it would take only the complete development of man’s understanding, only the cultivation of all his intellectual powers, to transform man spiritually and to produce a new and happier humanity. But Rousseau had broken with this faith; to it he had opposed that passionate indictment against the arts and sciences contained in his first »Discourse«. How could Kant, whose real genius lay in his ability to make clear and precise distinctions, think of comparing two such different achievements as those of Newton and Rousseau? How could he elevate Rousseau’s notion of the »state of nature« to the level of a scientific discovery? Rousseau’s own account of the genesis of the »Discourse on In28 Ibid., p. 630 [»Newton sah zu allererst Ordnung und Regelmässigkeit mit grosser Einfachheit verbunden, wo vor ihm Unordnung und schlimm gepaarte Mannigfaltigkeit anzutreffen waren, und seitdem laufen Kometen in geometrischen Bahnen. Rousseau entdeckte zu allererst unter der Mannigfaltigkeit der menschlichen angenommenen Gestalten die tief verborgene Natur des Menschen und das versteckte Gesetz, nach welchem die Vorsehung durch seine Beobachtungen gerechtfertigt wird. Vordem galt noch der Einwurf des Alphonsus und Manes. Nach Newton und Rousseau ist Gott gerechtfertigt, und nunmehr ist Pope’s Lehrsatz wahr.«]. King Alfonso of Castile, according to the anecdote, after having studied the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, is supposed to have found the system of the universe very irregular and confusing. »If I had been the Creator of the world,« he said, »I should have made the thing better.« 29 [Goethe, Faust. Eine Tragödie. Erster Theil, S. 88.]

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equality« is convincing evidence that he himself had a rather different intention and purpose in mind. He did not arrive at the picture he here draws of man’s original state through any abstract conceptual analysis; it came to him almost like a vision. He tells how the initial plan of his work occurred to him on long walks in the woods about Saint-Germain. »Deep in the heart of the forest I sought and found the vision of those primeval ages whose history I bravely sketched. I denied myself all the easy deceits to which men are prone. I dared to unveil human nature and to look upon it in its nakedness, to trace the course of times and of events which have disfigured human nature. And while comparing conventional man (l’homme de l’homme) with natural man, I pointed out the true source of our misery in our pretended perfection.«30 Why, then, did Kant see in all this anything but an idle dream, he who was so hostile to all visionary tendencies and who mocked the metaphysicians of his day as »airy | architects of intellectual worlds,«31 when they attempted to go beyond experience and to transcend it on principle? What value could the Rousseauian distinction between an homme de la nature and an homme de l’homme possess for him? In this distinction he saw neither an historical description of mankind’s course of development nor an evolutionary hypothesis. He saw in it rather a contribution to ethical and social criticism, a discrimination of true and false values. And he welcomed this discrimination. What Kant prized in Rousseau was the fact that he had distinguished more clearly than others between the mask that man wears and his actual visage. For Kant, too, there are innumerable apparent »goods« in civilization which add nothing to man’s moral worth and in fact even obscure it and render it problematic. There is a great deal that man has absorbed in the course of time and learned from his cultural heritage, which is really in conflict with his »true« character and his proper and original vocation. Thus Kant never takes the idea of 30 Rousseau, Les confessions (Bk. 8), in: Les confessions, Vol. II, p. 269 [»Tout le reste du jour, enfoncé dans la forêt, j’y cherchois, j’y trouvois l’image des premiers tems, dont je traçois fièrement l’histoire; je faisois main-basse sur les petits mensonges des hommes; j’osois dévoiler à nu leur nature, suivre le progrès du tems et des choses qui l’ont défigurée, et comparant l’homme de l’homme avec l’homme naturel, leur montrer dans son perfectionnement prétendu la véritable source de ses misères.«]. 31 [Immanuel Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik, in: Werke, Bd. II, S. 329–390: S. 357 (Akad.-Ausg. II, 342): »Luftbaumeister der mancherlei Gedankenwelten«.]

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the homme naturel in a purely scientific or historical sense, but rather ethically and teleologically. What is truly permanent in human nature is not any condition i n wh ich it once existed and fr om w hi c h it has fallen; rather it is the goal f o r wh i c h and toward which it moves. Kant looks for constancy not in what man i s but in what he s houl d b e. And Kant credits Rousseau the ethical philosopher with having discerned the »real man« beneath all the distortions and concealments, beneath all the masks that man has created for himself and worn in the course of his history. That is, Kant esteems Rousseau for having recognized and honored man’s distinctive and unchanging end. His aim was to advance further along this path Rousseau had taken, and he sought to go on to the goal. We know that this was the enterprise he made central | in his academic teaching during the ’sixties. »[…] since in Ethics I always undertake an historical and philosophic consideration of what occurs before I point out what should occur,« Kant states in announcing his lectures for the year 1765–66, »I shall set forth the method by which we must study man – man not only in the varying forms in which his accidental circumstances have molded him, in the distorted form in which even philosophers have almost always misconstrued him, but what is enduring in human nature, and the proper place of man in creation […]«32 According to Kant it is precisely the empirical philosophers, those who derive their doctrine from experience and aim to base a knowledge of human nature on the history of man’s previous development, who have failed to face this task. They have seen only the changing and accidental, not the essential and permanent. Rousseau sharpened Kant’s awareness of this »essential« element which, he held, consists of man’s ethical and not his physical nature. On this account he salutes Rousseau’s point of view as a new epoch in the thinking of mankind, »a great discovery of our age« totally unknown to the ancients.33 To be sure, a thinker like Kant had available an intellectual equipment 32 Idem, Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesungen in dem Winterhalbenjahre von 1765–1766, in: Werke, Vol. II, pp. 317–328: p. 326 (Akad.-Ausg. II, 311) [»[…] indem ich in der Tugendlehre jederzeit dasjenige historisch und philosophisch erwäge, was geschieht, ehe ich anzeige, was geschehen soll, so werde ich die Methode deutlich machen, nach welcher man den Menschen studieren muß, nicht allein denjenigen, der durch die veränderliche Gestalt, welche ihm sein zufälliger Zustand eindrückt, entstellt und als ein solcher selbst von Philosophen fast jederzeit verkannt worden; sondern die Natur des Menschen, die immer bleibt, und deren eigentümliche Stelle in der Schöpfung […]«]. 33 Ibid. (Akad.-Ausg. II, 312) [»eine schöne Entdeckung unserer Zeiten«].

21–22

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for the achievement of his purpose entirely different from Rousseau’s. As a follower of Newton he did not, indeed, aim to found metaphysics on experience, but to limit it to the realm of possible experience. He insisted that at all points it establish itself upon observed phenomena, and that it carry out a strict analysis of these phenomena. »We are still far from the time,« declares Kant in 1763 in his »Enquiry into the Evidences of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals«, »when we can proceed synthetically in metaphysics; only when analysis has helped us to attain clear and explicitly understood concepts will | synthesis be able to derive complicated cognitions from the simplest, as in mathematics.«34 Because of this basic methodological conviction Kant must refuse to follow Rousseau wherever the latter proceeds in purely deductive fashion, where he treats the assumed »state of nature« as an established fact from which to draw conclusions. Metaphysics must not be based upon invented or hypothetically improvised facts; it must begin with what is given, with empirically ascertained data. And in this sense our only datum is civilized man, not the Rousseauian savage who wanders alone in the forests. Thus even if he does not disallow the value of the problem which Rousseau set up, Kant must here reverse his method of procedure. »Rousseau,« he declares, »proceeds synthetically and begins with natural man; I proceed analytically and begin with civilized man.«35 This beginning is indicated because in the concept of man civilization constitutes no secondary or accidental characteristic but marks man’s essential nature, his specific character. He who would study animals must start with them in their wild state; but he who would know man must observe him in his creative power and his creative achievement, that is, in his civilization.36 But if the student of ethics must accept and build on the »fact of civilization« in this sense – just as, in his theory of knowledge, Kant 34 Idem, Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral. Zur Beantwortung der Frage, welche die Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin auf das Jahr 1763 aufgegeben hat, in: Werke, Vol. II, pp. 173–202: p. 191 (Akad.-Ausg. II, 290) [»Es ist noch lange die Zeit nicht, in der Metaphysik synthetisch zu verfahren; nur wenn die Analysis uns wird zu deutlich und ausführlich verstandenen Begriffen verholfen haben, wird die Synthesis den einfachsten Erkenntnissen die zusammengesetzte, wie in der Mathematik, unterordnen können.«]. 35 Idem, Fragmente, p. 613 [»Rousseau verfährt synthetisch und fängt vom natürlichen Menschen an, ich verfahre analytisch und fange vom gesitteten an.«]. 36 Idem, Reflexionen Kants zur kritischen Philosophie. Aus Kants handschriftlichen Aufzeichnungen (No. 648), ed. by Benno Erdmann, Vol. I: Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, Leipzig 1882, p. 205.

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had begun with the »fact« of mathematics and mathematical natural science – this does not imply that he must exempt this fundamental fact from critical consideration. Here too he must distinguish between the accidental and the necessary, and in this distinction Kant discerns the most important task of philosophy. | »If there is any science man really needs,« he declares, with a high sense of the mission of the critical philosophy, »it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man. Granted that he may have become acquainted with deceptive allurements above him or below him, which have unconsciously enticed him away from his distinctive station, then this teaching will lead him back again to the human level, and however small or deficient he may regard himself, he will suit his assigned station, because he will be just what he should be.«37 For Kant man’s »assigned station« is not located in nature alone; for he must raise himself above it, above all merely vegetative or animal life. But it is just as far from lying somewhere outside nature, in something absolutely otherworldly or transcendent. Man should seek the real law of his being and his conduct neither below nor above himself; he should derive it from himself, and should fashion himself in accordance with the determination of his own free will. For this he requires life in society as well as an inner freedom from social standards and an independent judgment of conventional social values. Even after completing his critical system, Kant declared in his »Idea of a Universal History in the Interest of World Citizenship« (1784), »Rousseau was not so mistaken in giving preference to the condition of the savage, if we omit the last step our species still has to mount. We are cultivated to a high degree by art and science. We are civilized to excess by all sorts of social niceties and refinements. But to consider ourselves truly ethical much is still lacking. […] So long as states use all their power for vain and violent expansion and thus constantly obstruct the slow | efforts of their citizens towards inner development […] we can expect nothing of this sort, because such a development demands a lengthy 37 Idem, Fragmente, pp. 624 f. [»Wenn es irgend eine Wissenschaft gibt, die der Mensch wirklich bedarf, so ist es die, welche ich lehre, die Stelle geziemend zu erfüllen, welche dem Menschen in der Schöpfung angewiesen ist und aus der er lernen kann, was man sein muss, um ein Mensch zu sein. Gesetzt, er hätte über sich oder unter sich täuschende Anlockungen kennen gelernt, die ihn unvermerkt aus seiner eigenthümlichen Stellung gebracht haben, so wird ihn diese Unterweisung wiederum zum Stande des Menschen zurückführen, und er mag sich alsdann auch noch so klein oder mangelhaft finden, so wird er doch für seinen angewiesenen Punkt recht gut sein, weil er gerade das ist, was er sein soll.«].

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inner reworking of every commonwealth to foster the education of its citizens. But all good not based on morally good intention is nothing but vain illusion and splendid misery.«38 In thus extending Rousseau’s central idea, Kant freed it from an ambiguity which has always made it hard to understand, and still does today. In Rousseau himself it is never entirely clear to what extent his notion of a state of nature is »ideal« and to what extent it is »empirical«. He is always shifting from a factual to a purely ideal interpretation. In the preface to his »Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality« he expressly emphasizes the latter: he declares that he is starting from a state of human affairs that no longer exists, that perhaps never existed and will probably never exist, but which we must nevertheless posit in order to judge rightly our present state. But Rousseau did not always speak this way. Often enough he confused his role as educator, as social critic and moral philosopher with the role of the historian. »O man, whatever country thou belongest to,« he exclaims, »whatever be thy opinions, hearken: behold thy history, as I have tried to read it, not in the books of thy fellows who are liars, but in nature, which never lies.«39 And in the final review Rousseau gave of his whole work in his »Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques«, he maintained this interpretation: he here describes himself as the first truthful »historian of human nature.«40 38 Idem, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, in: Werke, Vol. IV, pp. 149–166: p. 161 (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 26) [»[…] Rousseau hatte so unrecht nicht, wenn er den Zustand der Wilden vorzog, sobald man nämlich diese letzte Stufe, die unsere Gattung noch zu ersteigen hat, wegläßt. Wir sind im hohen Grade durch Kunst und Wissenschaft kultiviert. Wir sind zivilisiert bis zum Überlästigen zu allerlei gesellschaftlicher Artigkeit und Anständigkeit. Aber uns für schon moralisiert zu halten, daran fehlt noch sehr viel. […] Solange aber Staaten alle ihre Kräfte auf ihre eiteln und gewaltsamen Erweiterungsabsichten verwenden, und so die langsame Bemühung der inneren Bildung […] ihrer Bürger unaufhörlich hemmen […] ist nichts von dieser Art zu erwarten; weil dazu eine lange innere Bearbeitung jedes gemeinen Wesens zur Bildung seiner Bürger erfodert wird. Alles Gute aber, das nicht auf moralisch-gute Gesinnung gepropft ist, ist nichts als lauter Schein und schimmerndes Elend.«]. 39 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l’inégalité, in: The Political Writings. Edited from the Original Manuscripts and Authentic Editions, ed. by Charles Edwyn Vaughan, 2 vols., Cambridge 1915, Vol. I, pp. 118–220: p. 142 [»O homme, de quelque contrée que tu sois, quelles que soient tes opinions, écoute: voici ton histoire, telle que j’ai cru la lire, non dans les livres de tes semblables, qui sont menteurs, mais dans la nature, qui ne ment jamais.«]. 40 [Ders., Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques (1. Gespräch) (Collection complette des œuvres, Bd. XXI), Zweibrücken 1782, S. 102: »l’historien du cœur humain«.]

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Such a value Kant never attributed to Rousseau’s ideas; from the start he was too acute a critic not to see the contrast existing between ethical truths based on reason and | historical truths based on facts. Hence he applied to Rousseau’s work what he called the »art of reflective analysis,«41 which in the »Critique of Practical Reason« he himself compares with the analysis of the chemist. The man who introduced anthropology as a branch of study in German universities and who lectured on it regularly for decades was too well-grounded an empiricist in this realm to follow Rousseau’s lead. Kant framed no hypotheses concerning the original state of mankind. If he once ventured a step in this direction, in the essay on the »Conjectural Beginning of Human History« (1786), he declared emphatically that he was proposing no strict scientific theory but a »mere excursion« of the imagination accompanied by reason.42 In Rousseau’s own theses, however, Kant made a sharp distinction between the »historical« and the »rational« – and even in accepting the latter he regarded it not in terms of theoretical but of »practical reason«, and judged it by the latter’s standards. Rousseau was always for him the thinker who, in the realm of ethics, »awakened him from dogmatic slumber«43 – who had confronted him with new questions and stimulated him to new solutions.

III. Law and the State Kant judged that Rousseau’s purpose did not involve inviting man to go back to the state of nature, but rather to look back to it in order to become aware of the errors and weaknesses of conventional society. This interpretation finds its best confirmation in Rousseau’s ideas on law and the state. Those critics of Rousseau who see in him nothing but the Romantic enthusiast have never done justice to this part of his thought. They have felt it an incomprehensible inconsistency and an abandonment of his own central posi | tion that the very Rousseau who in the »Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality« 41 [Vgl. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, hrsg. v. Benzion Kellermann, in: Werke, Bd. V, S. 1–176: S. 101 f. (Akad.-Ausg. V, 118): »Scheidekünstler der Solution«.] 42 Idem, Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte, in: Werke, Vol. IV, pp. 325–342: p. 327 (Akad.-Ausg V, 109) [»bloßen Erdichtung«]. 43 [Ders., Brief an Christian Garve vom 21. September 1798, in: Gesammelte Schriften, hrsg. v. d. Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bd. XII, Berlin 1902, S. 254 f.: S. 255: »welche mich aus dem dogmatischen Schlummer zuerst aufweckte«.]

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had declared war on society and made it responsible for all the ills of mankind, should now, in the »Social Contract«, aim to write the laws for that society – laws which should indeed bind the individual to the group with duties far stricter and stronger than ever before. But Rousseau expressly protested against such objections, which he did not escape even during his lifetime, in that self-examination of his life and work which he undertook at the end of his career in his »Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques«. He explains that it had never been his intention, even in his earliest writings, to try to turn back the wheel of history and to restore man once more to that starting point from which he had set forth. »Human nature does not go back […]«:44 man cannot at will reverse the direction he has once taken – he cannot go back, only ahead. The wounds the existing structure of society has inflicted on mankind cannot be healed by destroying the instrument that caused them. We must look further; we must attack not the instrument but the hand that guided it. It is not the form of the social contract as such that is at fault; it is rather the will that inspires the contract. So long as that will is bound to the service of individuals or groups that have gained special privilege through power or wealth, it is the source of all the evil, the champion and protector of all the suffering and injustice that men can inflict on one another. But this is by no means the natural function of the social will; it is rather its corruption. The state too has a »nature« of its own to which Rousseau wants to restore it, even though this nature consists not in an initial condition but in a primary function. This function is the administration of law and the establishment of justice. In his theory of | the state Rousseau was from the outset a Platonist: Plato’s »Republic« early became one of his favorite texts. If as a eudemonist he sought passionately to bring about human happiness, he was obliged to recognize more and more clearly that the effort was vain so long as the »rights of man« were insecure. As secretary of the embassy in Venice, Rousseau acquired an insight into the way in which political and diplomatic affairs were transacted under the reigning regime, which served to strengthen and deepen this conviction. And now, in this most essential and difficult task, he did not allow himself to be swept away, as in his first writings, by an excess of enthusiasm and emotion. He carried the draft of his »Political Institutions« about with him for thirteen or fourteen years; he did not mention it even to his closest friends like Diderot. He felt the difficulty of the task weighing on him, 44 [Rousseau, Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques (3. Gespräch), S. 130: »Mais la nature humaine ne rétrograde pas […]«]

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and was conscious of his responsibility. »I had attained the insight,« he declares in his »Confessions«, »that everything is at bottom dependent on political arrangements, and that no matter what position one takes, a people will never be otherwise than what its form of government makes it […]«45 The lever must be placed at this point. The dream of human happiness evaporates if we do not succeed in helping the Rights of Man to attain victory. When Rousseau examines the available forms of a »political philosophy«, he finds them all insufficient and without foundation. According to him Plato alone discerned the real problem, while all his successors misconstrued or at least warped it. The Aristotelian doctrine that man is »by nature« a social being, a ζ3ον πολιτικν, Rousseau rejects. He does not believe in that »social instinct« on which the theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries hoped to found society. In this respect he | disputes the theory of Grotius as well as that of Diderot and the Encyclopedists. It is not man’s physical nature or any sort of originally implanted need which drives him to his fellows. By nature man has but a single instinct – the instinct of self-preservation. This basic demand suum esse conservare man must renounce as soon as he enters society. He has now lost his indépendance naturelle, and the lost paradise of this independence can never be restored once he has taken the first step outside. Never again can he find »himself«; he is entangled in a thousand claims and demands addressed to him from without. Hence the man who has a true sense of independence, the homme indépendant Rousseau describes in his earliest political sketches, will never willingly bow beneath the yoke of society. He will soon discover the basic defect, the sophism in principle, in all the »legal grounds« that philosophic theory has invented as the foundation of society.46 But if we must abandon the idea of an original social instinct uniting men, then the only theory of the state that seems to be left is that of which among the moderns Hobbes is the keenest and most important representative. Instead of seeing society as the result of an instinct of »sympathy«, we must regard it as a product of the sheer instinct for power. It is based on power, and only by power can it be preserved. 45 Idem, Les confessions (Bk. 9), in: Les confessions, Vol. II, p. 296 [»J’avois vu que tout tenoit radicalement à la politique, et que, de quelque façon qu’on s’y prît, aucun peuple ne seroit jamais que ce que la nature de son gouvernement le feroit être […]«]. 46 This point of view is expressed with particular clarity in the first draft of the »Social Contract« which Vaughan has published. Cf. Contrat social, First Draft, in: The Political Writings, Vol. I, pp. 434–511: pp. 449 ff.

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Rousseau went indeed so far in his attack on Grotius and the Encyclopedists as to hail Hobbes as his ally against them. For a time he saw in Hobbes the great political realist, and as such he preferred Hobbes to all those who have painted human society in charming colors. In one of his essays he called Hobbes one of the | greatest philosophers and one of the most eminent men of genius.47 »If a universal society existed anywhere save in the systems of philosophers,« he argues, »it would be a moral entity with distinctive characteristics that could be differentiated from those of the individual constituents out of which it was constructed […] There would be a universal language that nature would teach to all men and that would constitute the most important instrument for their mutual intercourse. There would be a kind of common organ of sensation (sensorium commune) that would perceive events wherever they occurred. The public weal or woe would not only be composed, as in a simple aggregate, of the happiness or unhappiness of individuals; it would consist of that tie that binds them all to one another […]«48 But such a »universal tie«, such a »general will«, cannot be demonstrated as an empirical fact, and therefore according to Rousseau the empiricist Hobbes was right in denying it. But he vigorously disputes all the consequences that Hobbes as a moralist deduced from this denial. In Hobbes’s theory of the power state, Rousseau, the reader and admirer of Plato, recognized the position that Thrasymachus develops in the first book of the »Republic«. And by virtue of this agreement he finds in Hobbes’s ideas a mere rebirth of the views of the Sophists, which provide no foundation for law but annihilate it.49 What, then, remains after the idyll of an original social impulse in human nature has been destroyed, and after Hobbes’s account of the »war of all against all« is recognized as a paradoxical exaggeration and caricature? On what foundation can we still erect society if we regard both types of hypothesis as mere creatures of speculation? | What is Idem, L’état de guerre, in: The Political Writings, Vol. I, pp. 281–307: p. 305. Idem, Contrat social, First Draft, pp. 449 f. [»Si la société générale existait ailleurs que dans les systèmes des philosophes, elle serait, comme je l’ai dit, un être moral qui aurait des qualités propres, et distinctes de celles des êtres particuliers qui la constituent […] Il y aurait une langue universelle que la nature apprendrait à tous les hommes, et qui serait le premier instrument de leur mutuelle communication. Il y aurait une sorte de sensorium commun qui servirait à la correspondance de toutes les parties. Le bien ou le mal public ne serait pas seulement la somme des biens ou des maux particuliers, comme dans une simple agrégation, mais il résiderait dans la liaison qui les unit […]«]. 49 Cf. idem, L’état de guerre, p. 306. 47 48

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the true nature of the »social bond«, which no political theory has as yet really revealed? From Rousseau’s first draft of the »Social Contract« we can see that for him this was the question out of which grew the conception of his work.50 And the answer he gives opens up new and original lines of thought. It is one of the most remarkable features of Rousseau’s ideas, and one most frequently misunderstood, that he who was the true champion of feeling and of the »rights of the heart« most emphatically denied the primacy of feeling in his theory of law and of the state. He must seek a different foundation for legal and political institutions, for in his view they are constructs of the will and are therefore subject to a law of their own, a mode of law sui generis. It is in the nature of the state that it should not aim at fusing feelings into a unity, but rather at unifying acts of the will and directing them to a common goal. It fulfills this function only if it really succeeds in such a unification, that is, if every demand it makes on the individual is regarded and accepted by him as an expression of the common will. Hence for Rousseau the real »social bond« consists in the fact that particular individuals and groups are not called upon to rule over others; for such a rule, in no matter what refined or »civilized« forms it were exercised, could only reduce us to the most abject slavery. This slavery disappears only if law as such assumes guidance and leadership and if in their mutual relations one man does not obey another, but a common subordination to law takes the place of such service and obedience. This enthusiasm for law as the »universal voice« fills all Rousseau’s political writings and sketches. In his article on »Political Economy« he asks: »How can it happen that | men obey without having anyone above them to issue commands, that they serve without having a master, that they are all the freer when each of them, acting under an apparent compulsion, loses only that part of his freedom with which he can injure others? These wonders are the work of Law. It is to Law alone that men owe justice and liberty; it is this salutary organ of the will of all that makes obligatory the natural equality between men; it is this heavenly voice that dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason, and teaches him to act in accordance with the maxims of his own judgment, and not to be in contradiction to himself.«51 50 Idem, Contrat social, First Draft (Chap. 5: Fausses notions du lien social), pp. 462 ff. 51 Idem, Économie politique, in: The Political Writings, Vol. I, pp. 228–280: p. 245 [»Comment se peut-il faire qu’ils obéissent et que personne ne commande, qu’ils servent et n’aient point de maître; d’autant plus libres en effet, que, sous une apparente sujétion, nul ne perd de sa liberté que ce qui peut nuire à celle d’un

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At this point, according to Rousseau, we first find the true conception of the »social bond« (lien social). For such a bond must bind together freely acting persons, not dead things. Hence it cannot be something imposed upon the wills of these persons from without; they must constitute and create it themselves. Accordingly all theories fail which seek to derive the »social contract« in any form from a contract involving subjection, from a pactum subjectionis. With Hobbes we may take as the origin of such a contract of subjection an agreement between rulers and ruled; with Grotius we may base it on an actual enslavement in the course of conquest – but in any case the chief objection remains the same. For in this way only a union de facto could have come about, never one de jure. »There will always be a great difference,« Rousseau declares, »between subduing a multitude and ruling a society. Even if scattered individuals were successively enslaved by one man, no matter how numerous they might be, I still see nothing more than a master and his slaves, certainly not a people and its ruler; I see what may be | termed an aggregation but not an association; there is as yet neither public good nor body politic.«52 We need no detailed demonstration to show how the attitude expressed in these phrases must have affected Kant. We hear their echo and reverberations in the most essential and crucial theses of the Kantian ethics. The »fundamental law of pure practical reason«: »Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation,«53 coincides with what Rousseau regards as the really fundamental principle of every »legitimate« social order. And we may surmise that Rousseau not only influenced the autre? Ces prodiges sont l’ouvrage de la Loi. C’est à la Loi seule que les hommes doivent la justice et la liberté; c’est cet organe salutaire de la volonté de tous qui rétablit dans le droit l’égalité naturelle entre les hommes; c’est cette voix céleste qui dicte à chaque citoyen les préceptes de la raison publique, et lui apprend à agir selon les maximes de son propre jugement, et à n’être pas en contradiction avec lui-même.«]. 52 Idem, Contrat social (Final Version. 1762), in: The Political Writings, Vol. II, pp. 1–136: p. 31 [»Il y aura toujours une grande différence entre soumettre une multitude et régir une société. Que des hommes épars soient successivement asservis à un seul, en quelque nombre qu’ils puissent être, je ne vois là qu’un maître et des esclaves, je n’y vois point un peuple et son chef. C’est, si l’on veut, une agrégation, mais non pas une association; il n’y a là ni bien public, ni Corps politique.«]. 53 [Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, hrsg. v. Benzion Kellermann, in: Werke, Bd. V, S. 1–176: S. 35 (Akad.-Ausg. V, 40): »Handle so, daß die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung dienen könne.«]

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content and systematic development of Kant’s foundation of ethics, but that he also formed its language and style. This is particularly evident in the second striking formulation of the »categorical imperative«, which Kant proposed in his »Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals«: »So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means merely.«54 If in the first expression of the categorical imperative, which places the emphasis on »universal legislation«, we recognize Rousseau the political theorist, the philosopher of the volonté générale, the second formulation takes us back to the main ideas of Rousseau’s theory of education. Central to his educational theory is the requirement that the pupil is to be educated for his own sake, not for others. He should be developed to manhood, but to »natural«, not to »artificial« manhood, to be homme naturel, not homme artificiel. And for this reason we must not approach him at an early age with demands that have their source only in the utterly artificial and conventional structure of contemporary society. Instead of forcing him | into the straitjacket of these conventions, we should awaken in him a sense of independence; instead of making him serve the purposes of others, we should teach him to think of himself as an end and to act in accordance with this idea. Only when he has become in this sense inwardly free is he to enter society, and only then will he be able to contribute to it in the right way; for only the free man is the true citizen. This is the underlying theme of the »Émile«, and this is the maxim that Rousseau has Mme. de Wolmar express in the later sections of the »New Héloise«: »Man […] is too noble a being to serve simply as the instrument for others, and he must not be used for what suits them without consulting also what suits himself […] It is never right to harm a human soul for the advantage of others […]«55 But here too, however closely Kant approached the content of Rousseau’s thought, he made a significant change in its methodological foundation, and thus he first freed it from various ambiguities that were present in Rousseau’s own presentation. The complaint has at 54 Idem, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, p. 287 (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 428) [»Handle so, daß du die Menschheit, sowohl in deiner Person, als in der Person eines jeden andern, jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloß als Mittel brauchest.«]. 55 Rousseau, La nouvelle Héloïse (Pt. 5, letter 2), Vol. IV, p. 22 [»L’homme […] est un être trop noble pour devoir servir simplement d’instrument à d’autres, et l’on ne doit point l’employer à ce qui leur convient sans consulter aussi ce qui lui convient à lui-même […] Il n’est jamais permis de détériorer une âme humaine pour l’avantage des autres […]«].

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times been made with justice that Rousseau called his chief political work the »Social Contract« instead of retaining the »neutral« title »De la société civile« he had previously intended.56 For the designation »social contract« is bound up by an age-old tradition of natural law with all sorts of secondary associations that have no connection with the actual task Rousseau set himself. It suggests the idea of a temporal beginning of society, of a single act by which it was once brought into being. Rousseau, to be sure, insisted that for him it was not a question of any such beginning, but of the »princi | ple« of society, that he was concerned with a problem of legal philosophy, not of history. In this respect he drew a sharp line between his own problem and the problems of the empirical sociologist. He reproaches even Montesquieu for not having gone back to the basic principles of law and for having been content to give a descriptive comparison of existing forms of law. But this is not the sense in which Rousseau understands the »spirit of the laws«. In the first draft of the »Social Contract« he says: »There are a thousand ways of bringing men together; there is only one way of truly uniting them. Therefore in this work I give only one method for the formation of political societies, though there are perhaps no two among the variety of associations that at present exist which have arisen in the same way and not a single one which was formed in the way I have indicated. But I am seeking the rights and basis of society, and am not quarreling about facts.« (»Mais je cherche le droit et la raison, et ne dispute pas des faits.«)57 But this disclaimer of Rousseau’s did not prevent the historical school of jurisprudence from treating the social contract as an historical event, and as such from criticizing and repudiating it. Even today there is no agreement among Rousseau’s critics on this point.58 Rousseau’s mode of expression does indeed lack full precision of statement here as elsewhere and admits of several interpretations. But Kant could grasp his central thought in only one sense, and he elaborated this sense clearly and unequivocally. As in his critique of 56 Cf. Charles Edwyn Vaughan, Introduction. Rousseau as Political Philosopher, in: The Political Writings, Vol. I, pp. 1–117: p. 22. 57 Rousseau, Contrat social, First Draft, p. 462 [»Il y a mille manières de rassembler les hommes, il n’y en a qu’une de les unir. C’est pour cela que je ne donne dans cet ouvrage qu’une méthode pour la formation des sociétés politiques; quoique, dans la multitude d’agrégations qui existent actuellement sous ce nom, il n’y en ait peut-être pas deux qui aient été formées de la même manière, et pas une qui l’ait été selon celle que j’établis.«]. 58 Further details in Franz Haymann, Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Sozialphilosophie, Leipzig 1898, pp. 57 ff.

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knowledge, in his philosophy of law he strictly divides the question of quid juris from that of quid facti. He regards the historical occurrence of the | social contract not only as insignificant, but even as impossible; he argues, however, that its meaning is not thereby destroyed or even rendered questionable. In the »Metaphysical Basis of the Theory of Law« he declares that »the act through which a people constitutes itself a state, or to speak more properly the idea of such an act, in terms of which alone its legitimacy can be conceived, is the original contract by which all (omnes et singuli) the people surrender their outward freedom in order to resume it at once as members of a common entity, that is, the people regarded as the state (universi) […]«59 Such a contract is thus »[…] by no means to be necessarily assumed to be a fact – indeed it is not even possible as such […]«; it is »[…] a mere idea of reason which has, however, its undoubted (practical) reality: that is, it obligates every lawgiver to promulgate his laws in such a way that they could have arisen from the united will of an entire people, and to regard every subject, in so far as he desires to be a citizen, as though he had joined in assenting to such a will. For that is the touchstone of the legitimacy of every public enactment.«60 Thus Kant achieved the same methodological transformation in the concept of the social contract as he had carried out in the interpretation of Rousseau’s »state of nature«. He transformed both from an »experience« into an »idea«. He believed that he had thereby taken nothing from their value, but had in a strict sense grounded and secured this value.

59 Immanuel Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten in zwei Teilen (Rechtslehre, § 47), in: Werke, Vol. VII, pp. 1–309: p. 122 (Akad.-Ausg. VI, 315) [»Der Akt, wodurch sich das Volk selbst zu einem Staat konstituiert, eigentlich aber nur die Idee desselben, nach der die Rechtsmäßigkeit desselben allein gedacht werden kann, ist der ursprüngliche Kontrakt, nach welchem alle (omnes et singuli) im Volk ihre äußere Freiheit aufgeben, um sie als Glieder eines gemeinen Wesens, d. i. des Volks als Staat betrachtet (universi), sofort wieder aufzunehmen […]«]. 60 Idem, Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis, in: Werke, Vol. VI, pp. 355–398: pp. 380 f. (Akad.-Ausg. VIII, 297) [»[…] keineswegs als ein Faktum vorauszusetzen nötig (ja als ein solches gar nicht möglich) […] eine bloße Idee der Vernunft, die aber ihre unbezweifelte (praktische) Realität hat: nämlich jeden Gesetzgeber zu verbinden, daß er seine Gesetze so gebe, als sie aus dem vereinigten Willen eines ganzen Volkes haben entspringen können, und jeden Untertan, sofern er Bürger sein will, so anzusehen, als ob er zu einem solchen Willen mit zusammen gestimmet habe. Denn das ist der Probierstein der Rechtmäßigkeit eines jeden öffentlichen Gesetzes.«].

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IV. The Problem of Optimism In 1755 Voltaire delivered the first mighty blow at the system of philosophic optimism, in his poem on the Lisbon | earthquake. Leibniz’s arguments for the »best of all possible worlds«61 still retained their full force in the first half of the eighteenth century and had become widely known through Pope’s »Essay on Man«. But against Pope’s dictum, »Whatever is, is right,«62 Voltaire now used the whole arsenal of his dialectic and rhetoric. He declared that only an abstract and remote philosophy which has put on blinkers to hide the suffering of existence could endorse such a thesis, and that it could be defended only with sophistical arguments: » D’inutiles douleurs éternel entretien! Philosophes trompés qui criez: › Tout e s t bi e n‹ Accourez, contemplez ces ruines affreuses, Ces débris, ces lambeaux, ces cendres malheureuses, Ces femmes, ces enfants l’un sur l’autre entassés, Sous ces marbres rompus ces membres disperses; […] Direz-vous, C’est l’effet des éternelles lois Qui d’un Dieu libre et bon nécessitent le choix? […] Non, ne présentez plus à mon coeur agité Ces immuables lois de la nécessité, Cette chaîne des corps, des esprits, et des mondes O rêves de savants! O chimères profondes! Dieu tient en main la chaîne, et n’est point enchainé; Par son choix bienfaisant tout est déterminé, Il est libre, il est juste, il n’est point implacable. Pourquoi donc souffrons-nous sous un maître équitable?«63 | 61 [Vgl. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Essais de Théodicée, in: Philosophische Schriften, hrsg. v. Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, Bd. VI, Berlin 1885, S. 1–436: S. 107: »le meilleur (optimum) parmy tous les mondes possibles«.] 62 [Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, in Four Epistles, in: Select Poetical Works, Leipzig 1848 (Collection of British Authors, Bd. 152), S. 177–218: S. 187.] 63 »And lamentations which inspire my strain, / Prove that philosophy is false and vain. / Approach in crowds, and meditate awhile / Yon shattered walls, and view each ruined pile, / Women and children heaped up mountain high, / Limbs crushed which under ponderous marble lie; […] | / Say, will you then eternal laws maintain, / Which God to cruelties like these constrain? […] / Will you thus limit the eternal mind? […] / Allege not the unchanging laws of fate: / Urge not the links of the eternal chain, / ’Tis false philosophy and wisdom vain. / The God who holds

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It is worthy of note that it should have been Rousseau, who never considered himself a philosophe, who accepted this challenge. He undertook the defence of Providence against Voltaire, as Leibniz had against Bayle. On August 18, 1756, he replied to Voltaire’s poem in a letter in which he declared that it is not the function of a thinker to increase the ills from which mankind suffers by describing them in terrifying detail and thus condemning us to utter desperation. »The optimism you consider so horrible consoles me in the very misery you set forth as unbearable. Pope’s poem assuages my pains and fills me with patience; yours increases my agony and forces me to protest against Providence; it takes all comfort from me and drives me to despair. In this strange contrast between what you prove and what I feel, I beg you to relieve my anxiety and to tell me where the deception lies, whether on the side of feeling or of reason.« In these words Rousseau admits that his optimism is not the result of philosophic reflection and that to defend it he does not rely on logical argument. But he declares that it is so closely bound up with all he believes and so deeply rooted in his very nature that he could never renounce it without denying his own being. »All the | subtleties of metaphysics would not lead me to doubt for a moment the immortality of my soul or a spiritual Providence; I feel it, I believe in it, I desire it, I hope for it and will defend it to my last breath […]«64 Like all the thinkers of the eighteenth century, Kant also experienced this inner conflict with regard to the problem of »theodicy«; he too had to travel a long road before he could take his stand with assurance on this question between the positions of Voltaire and Rousseau. In his description of the Lisbon earthquake, which appeared in 1756, he declared that »man is challenged to take thought by the the chain can’t be enchained; / By his blest will are all events ordained: / He’s just, nor easily to wrath gives way; / Why suffer we beneath so mild a sway?«Voltaire, The Lisbon Earthquake, transl. by William F. Fleming, in: The Works. A Contemporary Version, Vol. XXXVI, New York 1901, pp. 8–18: pp. 8–10. 64 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to Voltaire, August 18, 1756, in: Correspondance générale, Vol. II, pp. 303–324: pp. 304 f. and 324 [»Cet optimisme, que vous trouvez si cruel, me console pourtant dans les mêmes douleurs que vous me peignez comme insupportables. Le poème de Pope adoucit mes maux et me porte à la patience; le vôtre aigrit mes peines, m’excite au murmure, et m’ôtant tout, hors une espérance ébranlée, il me réduit au désespoir. Dans cette étrange opposition qui règne entre ce que vous prouvez et ce que j’éprouve, calmez la perplexité qui m’agite, et dites-moi qui s’abuse, du sentiment ou de la raison.« »Toutes les subtilités de la métaphysique ne me feront pas douter un moment de l’immortalité de l’âme, et d’une Providence bienfaisante. Je la sens, je la crois, je la veux, je l’espère, je la défendrai jusqu’à mon dernier soupir […]«].

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awful visitations which affect his species, the convulsions of the very earth, the fury of the sea when shaken to its depths, mountains in fiery eruption,« since they are »established by God as the rightful consequences of invariable laws […]«65 Moreover, the »Essay on Some Considerations Concerning Optimism« which Kant published three years later still held to the position of the philosophic school of Leibniz and Wolff. Kant declares that one can maintain this to be »the best of all possible worlds« with a certainty that opponents can at least not contradict with any greater assurance. »If someone rises to assert that the highest Wisdom could have preferred the worse to the best, or that the All-Good could choose a lesser instead of a greater good equally in its power, I pay no further heed. It is a poor use of philosophy to employ it to undermine the principles of sound common sense, and we do it scant honor if, in order to frustrate such attempts, we find it necessary to take up the arms of philosophy.«66 But in his philosophic critiques Kant could no longer speak in this way. For he had himself declared the appeal to »common sense« to be invalid in metaphysical questions, and had | refused to submit the judgments of »speculative reason« to the court of so-called »sound common sense.«67 Thus Kant felt challenged to take up this problem anew, after he had rounded out his system, after completing the »Critique of Pure Reason«, the »Critique of Practical Reason«, and the »Critique of Judgment«. In 1791 he wrote a treatise to establish the »Failure of All 65 Immanuel Kant, Geschichte und Naturbeschreibung der merkwürdigsten Vorfälle des Erdbebens, welches an dem Ende des 1755sten Jahres einen großen Teil der Erde erschüttert hat, in: Werke, Vol. I, pp. 439–473: p. 441 (Akad.-Ausg. I, 431) [»Selbst die fürchterliche Werkzeuge der Heimsuchung des menschlichen Geschlechts, die Erschütterungen der Länder, die Wut des in seinem Grunde bewegten Meers, die feuerspeienden Berge fordern den Menschen zur Betrachtung auf und sind nicht weniger von Gott als eine richtige Folge aus beständigen Gesetzen in die Natur gepflanzt […]«]. 66 Idem, Versuch einiger Betrachtungen über den Optimismus, in: Werke, Vol. II, pp. 29–37: pp. 35 f. (Akad.-Ausg. II, 33) [»Wenn sich jemand aufwirft zu behaupten, die höchste Weisheit habe das Schlechtere besser finden können als das Beste oder die höchste Güte habe sich ein kleiner Gut mehr belieben lassen als ein größeres, welches ebensowohl in ihrer Gewalt war, so halte ich mich nicht länger auf. Man bedienet sich der Weltweisheit sehr schlecht, wenn man sie dazu gebraucht, die Grundsätze der gesunden Vernunft umzukehren, und man tut ihr wenig Ehre an, wenn man, um solche Bemühungen zu widerlegen, es noch nötig findet, ihre Waffen aufzubieten.«]. 67 Idem, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können, in: Werke, Vol. IV, pp. 1–139: pp. 7 f. (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 259) [Zitat S. 7: »gemeinen Menschenverstand«].

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Philosophic Attempts at Theodicy«. If speculative reason sets itself up as God’s defender, he declares in this essay, it transcends the limits placed upon it. Its arguments cannot but turn into sophistry, and this results in making suspect the very cause it seeks to serve. Not only have all previous attempts at theodicy failed, but it can indeed be shown that they had to fail and will always have to. For it can be shown that our reason is altogether incapable of gaining insight into the relation between the world, however well we may know it through experience, and the highest Wisdom. The philosopher should not play the part of special pleader in this matter; he should not defend any cause whose justice he is incapable of grasping and which he cannot prove by means of the modes of thought peculiar to philosophy.68 Did Kant thus finally go over to the opposition? Did he decide against Rousseau and in favor of Voltaire? This question can be answered only if we keep in mind the transformation he effected in the way of putting the problem. If we mean by optimism that the totality of pleasure exceeds the totality of pain in the life of an individual or for mankind in general, Kant denies such a doctrine as emphatically and unambiguously as Voltaire or Schopenhauer. In the dispute between Rousseau and Voltaire a remark is quoted from Erasmus to the effect that few men could be found who would consent to be born again.69 Kant | took up this question and put it in an even more extreme form. »It is easy to decide,« he says in the »Critique of Judgment«, »what value life holds for us, if its worth is measured merely by our enjoyments. […] It is less than nothing; for who would wish to begin life anew under the same conditions or even according to a new self-made plan (but one consistent with the course of nature) that aimed merely at enjoyment?«70 But Kant does not regard this as a denial of the value of life. For a new and different standard of value holds for him, the victor over the principle of eudemonism. The diminution of happiness cannot lessen the value of existence, for this does not consist in what h ap p en s to a person, but in what a person d oe s . Our deeds, not 68 Idem, Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee, in: Werke, Vol. VI, pp. 119–138: pp. 129 ff. (Akad.-Ausg. VIII, 262 ff.). 69 Rousseau, Letter to Voltaire, August 18, 1756, p. 308. 70 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (§ 83), ed. by Otto Buek, in: Werke, Vol. V, pp. 233–568: p. 514 note (Akad.-Ausg. V, 434 note) [»Was das Leben für uns für einen Wert habe, wenn dieser bloß nach dem geschätzt wird, was man genießt […] ist leicht zu entscheiden. Er sinkt unter Null; denn wer wollte wohl das Leben unter denselben Bedingungen oder auch nach einem neuen, selbst entworfenen (doch dem Naturlaufe gemäßen) Plane, der aber auch bloß auf Genuß gestellt wäre, aufs neue antreten?«].

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our outward fate, give life its meaning. For Kant this meaning cannot be impaired by any suffering, and no pessimistic argument can touch it. No matter how low we may estimate the value of human existence in terms of what man receives and enjoys, there remains the value that a free personality creates for itself. Only a good will can give man absolute value, and by reason of it the existence of the world can have a final purpose.71 Such a solution of the conflict between »optimism« and »pessimism«, and such a transcending of the »dialectic of pure practical reason«, of the opposition between happiness (Glückseligkeit) and being worthy of happiness (Glückwürdigkeit), was impossible for Rousseau. It would have required him to abandon the eudemonism at the basis of his ethical and religious views, for which he fought passionately. But for Kant the rejection of eudemonism definitely eliminates one aspect of Rousseau’s thought. The chimera of a Golden Age and the idyll of a pastoral Arcady has disappeared. Man cannot and should not escape pain. For this | is the spur to activity, »[…] and in it we first feel our life; without it there would be lifelessness.«72 In all social life as well, it is only the opposition of forces, with all the suffering it entails for mankind, that at the same time makes possible the further operation of these forces. »Without it all excellent natural tendencies in mankind would forever lie dormant and undeveloped. Man desires concord, but nature knows better what is good for his species: nature desires discord. Man wants to live in ease and comfort; but nature aims to shake him out of his lethargy and passive satisfaction into toil and labor […]«73 Here is achieved a new and distinctive attitude toward life, unknown in this form either to Rousseau or to his opponents, Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. With regard to happiness, Kant recognizes only the attitude of complete renunciation. As his »Anthropology« declares, satisfaction in life is for man unobtainable; and even if there were such a thing we should not desire it, for it would mean stagnation and the Ibid. (§ 86), pp. 522 ff. (Akad.-Ausg. V, 312 ff.). Idem, Anthropologie (§ 60), pp. 120 ff. (Akad.-Ausg. VII, 230 ff.) [Zitat S. 121 (Akad.-Ausg. VII, 231): »[…] und in dieser fühlen wir allererst unser Leben; ohne diesen würde Leblosigkeit eintreten.«]. 73 Idem, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte, p. 156 (Akad.-Ausg. VIII, 21) [»Ohne sie würden alle vortreffliche Naturanlagen in der Menschheit ewig unentwickelt schlummern. Der Mensch will Eintracht; aber die Natur weiß besser, was für seine Gattung gut ist; sie will Zwietracht. Er will gemächlich und vergnügt leben; die Natur will aber, er soll aus der Lässigkeit und untätigen Genügsamkeit hinaus, sich in Arbeit und Mühe stürzen […]«]. 71 72

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blunting of all activity.74 But Kant is just as far from seeing the meaning of human civilization in the overrefined satisfactions it provides. There was a period in which he had considerable respect for such satisfactions, and in his earlier writings, especially in his »Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime« we sense a delicate appreciation of all the charms of aesthetic cultivation and social intercourse. But as he grew older, Kant increasingly renounced them too. If he speaks of the value of life, we hear in him only the strict demands of his ethical rigorism. »Is not a righteous man still supported by the consciousness of having upheld and done honor to mankind in his own person, even in the greatest misfortunes of life, which he might have avoided if he could only | have disregarded his duty? […] This comfort is not happiness nor even the smallest part of it. For no one desires such an opportunity, nor perhaps even life itself under such circumstances. But he is alive and cannot bear to be in his own eyes unworthy of life. […] He continues to live only because of a sense of duty, not because he has the slightest taste for life. […] Duty’s title to respect has nothing to do with happiness. It has its own peculiar law and its own peculiar tribunal. And no matter how one might wish to shake up duty and pleasure together in order to offer them as a medical compound, as it were, to an ailing spirit, they will presently separate out of their own accord, and if not, duty will not function. Even if in this way physical life gained a certain strength, the moral life would inevitably decline.«75 Rousseau was destined by fate to the very syncretism Kant here condemns. He set up a strict and lofty ideal of virtue, but he demanded, Idem, Anthropologie (§ 61), p. 124 (Akad.-Ausg. VII, 234 f.). Idem, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, pp. 97 ff. (Akad.-Ausg. V, 88 ff.) [Zitat S. 96–98 (Akad.-Ausg. V, 88 f.): »Hält nicht einen rechtschaffenen Mann im größten Unglücke des Lebens, das er vermeiden konnte, wenn er sich nur hätte über die Pflicht wegsetzen können, noch das Bewußtsein aufrecht, daß er die Menschheit in seiner Person doch in ihrer Würde erhalten und geehrt habe […] Dieser Trost ist nicht Glückseligkeit, auch nicht der mindeste Teil derselben. Denn niemand wird sich die Gelegenheit dazu, auch vielleicht nicht einmal ein Leben in solchen Umständen wünschen. Aber er lebt und kann es nicht erdulden, in seinen eigenen Augen des Lebens unwürdig zu sein. […] Er lebt nur noch aus Pflicht, nicht weil er am Leben den mindesten Geschmack findet. […] Die Ehrwürdigkeit der Pflicht hat nichts mit Lebensgenuß zu schaffen; sie hat ihr eigentümliches Gesetz, auch ihr eigentümliches Gericht, und wenn man auch beide noch so sehr zusammenschütteln wollte, um sie vermischt gleichsam als Arzeneimittel der kranken Seele zuzureichen, so scheiden sie sich doch alsbald von selbst, und tun sie es nicht, so wirkt das erste gar nicht, wenn aber auch das physische Leben hiebei einige Kraft gewönne, so würde doch das moralische ohne Rettung dahin schwinden.«]. 74 75

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as the price of serving it, the fulfillment of his yearning for happiness. Only then would he believe in a benevolent Providence guiding human destinies, and he postulates it for this purpose: »I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope for it, I shall defend it to the last breath.« Kant no longer believes that civilization, even in its highest perfection, can bring about the happiness of mankind, and he no longer asks it to. For him civilization has another law peculiar to itself. It is not the source of happiness, and its meaning does not even consist in providing men with intellectual satisfactions. It is rather the setting in which man is to test and prove his freedom. And he must undergo this test ever and again. Here the mature wisdom of Kant coincides with Goethe’s: »He only earns his freedom and existence, / who daily conquers them | anew.«76 In this conquest life achieves that meaning with which man alone can endow it, and this constitutes not his happiness but rather his distinctive dignity.

V. »Religion within the Limits of mere Reason« No aspect of Rousseau’s philosophy has met with such different and conflicting interpretations as his theory of religion. It has been viewed from the most varied perspectives, and quite opposite judgments have been passed upon its content and value. All the efforts of modern research, all the critical analyses of Rousseau’s work, have not dulled the edge of this contrast. During his life Rousseau passed as the uncompromising opponent of the Christian dogma, as the Deist, the enemy of the faith. As such he was exposed to the persecution of the ecclesiastical and political powers. After his death the judgment was reversed: men saw in him primarily the reviver of feeling, who in contrast to the reigning eighteenth-century devotion to reason rediscovered the distinctive meaning of religion and saved it from dissolution and destruction. But on this point also opinions as to the true content of Rousseau’s faith have been in sharp disagreement. On the one hand men have seen in him the thinker who not only faithfully preserved the heritage of Protestantism, but founded it anew in a more profound and purely spiritual sense. On the other, men have claimed him for Catholicism, they have even tried to see in him the forerunner of the Catholic »Restoration« that began in the nineteenth century. The latter view is best represented in Masson’s work on Rousseau’s religion – the most comprehensive account that Rousseau’s theory of religion 76

[Goethe, Faust. A Tragedy, S. 387.]

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has received. Masson’s account is very penetrating, and thoroughly examines every single source | for Rousseau’s religious development. But that it fails to establish its central thesis, modern criticism, it seems to me, has proved with irrefutable arguments.77 Rousseau has been described equally as a strict rationalist and as a mystical enthusiast, while on the other hand critics have not been wanting who have tried to deny him any genuine religious sense at all. Thus Seillière sees in what Rousseau calls his religion only the morbid inflation of his own egotism, and a pathological deification of himself. »Jean-Jacques, direct reflection of God – that is Rousseau’s religion.«78 We see that the estimate of Rousseau’s religion has run through almost the whole scale from heaven to hell, from beatification to damnation. In what sense is Rousseau himself to blame for this complete divergence of opinion? If we concentrate on the crucial document of his religious philosophy, if we plunge into the study of the »Profession de foi du Vicaire savoyard«, we shall hardly be inclined to make him responsible for all the ideas ascribed to him in the course of time by his interpreters. For the »Profession of Faith«, taken as a whole, possesses a great simplicity and clarity of intellectual structure. We never find in it those sudden transitions, those sharp paradoxes, those unreconciled contradictions that confront us in Rousseau’s first writings. The whole work is inspired with genuine passion, but this passion is under control and expresses itself in clear and tranquil language. Rousseau is trying to convince, not merely to persuade; and his passion is never, as in the great peroration | of the first »Discourse«, purely rhetorical. It expresses an integrity of feeling and a consistency of thought. Only one thing we can of course neither expect nor demand of Rousseau here. He does not analyze ideas precisely, and he never moves within the limits of a fixed philosophical terminology. Such a terminology he always felt as a fetter, which he indignantly cast off. He does not weigh his words; even as a writer he follows the impulse of the moment and seizes upon the expression that impulse suggests. 77 Pierre Maurice Masson, La religion de Jean Jacques Rousseau, 3 vols., Paris 1916 ff. For criticism of Masson’s work cf. Albert Schinz, La pensée religieuse de Rousseau et ses récents interprètes, Paris 1927 (Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, Vol. 10, No. 1), and Georges Beaulavon, La philosophie de J.-J. Rousseau et l’esprit cartésien, in: Revue de métaphysique et de morale 44 (1937), pp. 325–352. 78 Ernest Seillière, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paris 1921 (Bibliothèque d’histoire littéraire et de critique), p. 329 [»Jean-Jacques, reflet direct de Dieu, voilà la religion de Rousseau!«].

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Hence we must not take any of his expressions too strictly, and we must not press them if we are to do justice to his thought. In the »Profession of Faith« Rousseau tries to found religion now on »reason«, now on »instinct«; he speaks of it as a »divine voice«, and he derives it immediately from the »inner light«; he indicates as its foundation now »feeling«, now »conscience«. All these expressions may be hard to reconcile, and they open the door to a variety of interpretations. But a closer examination that is not bound by the letter leaves no doubt, it seems to me, that Rousseau’s religious ideas are consistently thought out, and that they maintain a very definite direction from which they never stray. Rousseau’s religion aims above all at being a religion of freedom, and from this fact it draws its characteristic and crucial traits. In religion also Rousseau rejects any dependence on external authority and any subjection to it. This at once excludes tradition as a religious source. There is no traditional doctrine that can lead us by a royal road to God; we must seek the way ourselves, and traverse it alone. The principle of mere Scriptural authority is hence abandoned once and for all. The written word can never constitute the mediator between man and God, whatever sanctity we may ascribe to it. Instead of uniting it divides, and in the end it threatens to erect between us and the | Divine an insurmountable wall. The number of texts increases, commentaries are heaped upon commentaries: »How many men between God and myself!« Hence Rousseau dares not only to reject revelation as the foundation of religion, but to accuse it of being arbitrary and fortuitous; he speaks of the »fantaisie des révélations,«79 each of which makes God speak in accordance with its own ideas. Had mankind but listened always to God as he speaks in the heart of men, there would be on earth but a single religion. But here a new objection arises. Can the heart really show us the way to that single and original natural religion that Rousseau is seeking and trying to teach? Is the heart not rather itself the most multifarious, changeable, and variegated thing in the world? If we follow the heart alone, are we not at the mercy of every breath of air? does not every new impression we submit to create a new self and with it a new God? This objection would be irrefutable, if as a religious philosopher Rousseau were not far from being the prophet of sentimentality, who considers every stimulus of feeling to be alike and who grants to each 79 [Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La »Profession de foi du Vicaire savoyard«, hrsg. v. Pierre Maurice Masson, Fribourg/Paris 1914, S. 323: »Que d’hommes entre Dieu et moi!« u. 309.]

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one free play. But he drew a clear and distinct line here himself. His religion of » s en t im en t « by no means intends to be a religion of »sentimentality«. For here too the same criterion applies, the criterion of freedom. In mere feeling, in pleasure and pain, in the passions that sweep over man, man is determined from without; he feels himself subjected and delivered over to them. But there is a sphere in which this passivity stops short; and only there do we find that true self that is the bearer of religious feeling. At this point Rousseau transcends the limitations of the sensationalistic psychology. The self is not a datum of sense and can never be understood as the mere product of | sense data. It is an original activity, and the only evidence of such activity available to man. And this spontaneity of the self, not its receptivity, is the mark of the Divine. He who cannot think of himself as a free being is cut off from every approach to God. »No material being is active in itself, but I am. […] my will is independent of my senses; I consent or I resist, I am defeated or I conquer […] I have always the power to will, not the force to execute. When I yield to temptation, I am acting under the compulsion of external objects. When I reproach myself for this weakness, I am listening only to my will; I am slave through my vices, and free through my remorse; my feeling of freedom is effaced only when I am depraved, and when I finally prevent the voice of my soul from raising itself against the law of the body.«80 Can we label this confession of faith, as a critic of Rousseau has done, an »emotional deism«?81 This, it seems to me, would be possible and credible only if in describing religious experience Rousseau had confined himself to the expressions »feeling«, »heart«, »inner voice«, »instinct«. The history of religion and of religious mysticism makes clear how ambiguous all these expressions are and how very diverse forms of faith can lay claim to them. But in the end Rousseau himself summed up all these different aspects in one, and this is for him the real center of religious certainty. He closes his confession of faith with the appeal to conscience, and in it he finds the true source of religion. »Con80 A. a. O, p. 185 [Zitat S. 183 u. 185: »Nul être materiel n’est actif par luimême, et moi, je le suis. […] ma volonté est indépendante de mes sens, je consens ou je résiste, je succombe ou je suis vainqueur […] J’ai toujours la puissance de vouloir, non la force d’exécuter. Quand je me livre aux tentations, j’agis selon l’impulsion des objets externes. Quand je me reproche cette foiblesse, je n’écoute que ma volonté; je suis esclave par mes vices, et libre par mes remords; le sentiment de ma liberté ne s’efface en moi que quand je me déprave, et que j’empêche enfin la voix de l’ame de s’élever contre la loi du corps.«]. 81 Cf. Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, p. 122.

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science! Conscience! divine instinct; immortal and heavenly voice; sure guide of a being ignorant and limited, but intelligent and free; infallible judge of good and evil, which makes man like unto God, it is thou who formest the excellence of his nature and the morality of | his actions; without thee I feel nothing in myself to raise me above the beasts, save the sad privilege of wandering from error to error with the aid of an understanding without rule and a reason without principle.«82 Here is the core of Rousseau’s religion, and what links it immediately to Kant. Not without reason have all the accounts of the Kantian moral philosophy placed the famous apostrophe to duty in the »Critique of Practical Reason« side by side with this passage from Rousseau’s »Profession of Faith«. Rousseau like Kant is certain that the only road to a knowledge of God leads through the conscience, and that here lies the key to all religious truth. The only theology either can admit and recognize is ethical theology. Rousseau has likewise no need of any »theoretical« religion, if by the term we understand one that rests on strictly metaphysical proofs for the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. He distrusts all such proofs, and he declares that they are superfluous and even harmful for what is essential in the certainty of faith. To metaphysical dogmatism he opposes his »involuntary scepticism«; but at the same time he declares that this scepticism does not touch the heart of religious faith, for genuine religion contains not ideas for the understanding but precepts for action. »I seek to know only what concerns my conduct; as for dogmas which influence neither actions nor morality, with which so many people torment themselves, I never trouble myself about them.«83 In the same fashion Kant too had to »destroy knowledge in order to make room for faith«;84 he had to overthrow the dogmatic metaphysics of rational theology in order to be able to erect upon its ruins the edifice of his critical ethics. »My son,« the Savoyard Vicar says in closing his 82 Rousseau, La »Profession«, p. 273 [»Conscience! conscience! instinct divin; immortelle et céleste voix; guide assuré d’un être ignorant et borné, mais intelligent et libre; juge infaillible du bien et du mal, qui rends l’homme semblable à Dieu; c’est toi qui fais l’excellence de sa nature et la moralité de ses actions; sans toi je ne sens rien en moi qui m’éleve au-dessus des bêtes, que le triste privilége de m’égarer d’erreurs en erreurs à l’aide d’un entendement sans régle, et d’une raison sans principe.«]. 83 Ibid., pp. 416 f. [Zitat S. 417: »Je ne cherche à savoir que ce qui importe à ma conduite; quant aux dogmes qui n’influent ni sur les actions, ni sur la morale, et dont tant de gens se tourmentent, je ne m’en mets nullement en peine.«]. 84 [Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 25 (B XXX): »das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen«.]

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profession of faith, »keep thy soul always in such a condition that it will want | God to exist, and thou wilt never doubt him. And whatever religion thou mayest profess, consider that the true duties of religion are independent of the institutions of men; that a just heart is the true temple of God […] that there is no religion that absolves one from the duties of morality, and that these are the really essential things, that inner worship is the first of these duties, and that without faith there can be no true virtue.«85 This is precisely Kant’s »faith founded on practical reason.«86 It makes ethical certainty the support and foundation of religious certainty, instead of basing the former on the latter. So far as I can see there is to be found in Rousseau’s writings no evidence that on this central point he ever wavered. In this respect his religious ideas are far more consistent than those of Rousseau the anthropologist, the critic of culture, the philosopher of law and politics. »I do not like that mystical and figurative way of speaking,« says Julie in the »New Héloise«, »which tries to nourish the heart with the chimeras of the imagination, and which puts mere feelings modeled on earthly love in the place of the true love of God […] I leave aside the subtle interpretations of dogmas I do not understand; I cling to the shining truths that strike my eyes and convince my reason; to the practical truths that instruct me in my duties. […] Is man master of what he believes or does not believe? is it a crime not to understand the art of demonstration? No, conscience tells us nothing of the truth of things, it gives us rather the rules for our duties; it does not prescribe what we have to think, but what we have to do; it does not teach us to reason correctly, but to do good. […] goodness, righteousness, morality, virtue: these are what Heaven demands and what it rewards; this is the true worship God demands of us […]«87 | 85 Rousseau, La »Profession«, pp. 441 f. [Zitat S. 441 u. 443: »Mon fils, tenez votre ame en état de desirer toujours qu’il y ait un Dieu, et vous n’en douterez jamais. Au surplus, quelque parti que vous puissiez prendre, songez que les vrais devoirs de la religion sont indépendans des institutions des hommes; qu’un cœur juste est le vrai temple de la Divinité […] qu’il n’y a point de religion qui dispense des devoirs de la morale, qu’il n’y a de vraiment essenciels que ceux-là; que le culte interieur est le premier de ces devoirs, et que sans la foi nulle veritable vertu n’existe.«]. 86 [Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, S. 155 (Akad.-Ausg. V, 144): »reinen praktischen Vernunftglaubens«.] 87 Rousseau, La nouvelle Héloïse (Pt. 6, letter 8), Vol. IV, pp. 270 ff. [Zitat S. 270 u. 274: »Je n’aime pas, non plus, ce langage mistique et figuré qui nourrit le cœur des chimères de l’imagination, et substitue au véritable amour de Dieu des sentimens imités de l’amour terrestre […] Je laisse la subtile interprétation des dogmes

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This answers also the question of the »rationalism« of Rousseau’s theory of religion. It is strange that in this connection any doubt ever arose, that in things of religion men could ever take him for an »irrationalist«. The obstinate battle he fought against the »intellectuals«, against the Encyclopedists, must not mislead us: it was intended not as a battle against reason but in its behalf. The profession of faith of the Savoyard Vicar remained firm in this conviction even in the midst of the conflict with the philosophes. The truest and most sublime ideas we can conceive of the Divine spring from reason itself, and from reason alone: »Les plus grandes idées de la Divinité nous viennent par la raison seule.«88 No revelation can make reason unnecessary or take its place. For when revelation asks us to subordinate reason to faith, it must give us reasons for this subordination, and thus reinstate reason in its rights. The conflict with the philosophes was thus for Rousseau directed not against reason as such, but against the false use of reason. What he objected to in the philosophes, the thinkers of the »Encyclopedia«, was that they misunderstood and obscured the nature of the problem. They made thinking the measure of religious truth, instead of judging that truth by ethical certainty, which is alone possible. No wonder that in so doing they went astray, that in trying to fight dogmatism they themselves fell into dogmatism once more, though their dogmatism bore an opposite stamp. But reason must not be equated with mere ratiocination: »The art of reasoning is not reason, often it is the abuse of reason.«89 To be sure, Rousseau still lacked the sure methodological weapon to carry through his fight. We can therefore understand why men charged him with an untenable mediating position, why the defenders of traditional faith – like its | opponents – regarded him as their irreconcilable enemy. He would have been spared the misunderstandings that here obtained if he had had a »critique of reason« at his command; if he could have rested his claim on that clear and certain que je n’entends pas. Je m’en tiens aux vérités lumineuses qui frappent mes yeux et convainquent ma raison, aux vérités de pratique qui m’instruisent de mes devoirs. […] Est-on maître de croire ou de ne pas croire? Est-ce un crime de n’avoir pas su bien argumenter? Non; la conscience ne nous dit point la vérité des choses, mais la règle de nos devoirs; elle ne nous dicte point ce qu’il faut penser, mais ce qu’il faut faire; elle ne nous apprend point à bien raisonner, mais à bien agir. […] la bonté, la droiture, les mœurs, l’honnêteté, la vertu; voilà ce que le Ciel exige et qu’il récompense; voilà le véritable culte que Dieu veut de nous […]«]. 88 [Ders., La »Profession«, S. 307.] 89 Idem, Lettres morales (No. 2), in: Correspondance générale, Vol. III, pp. 325–374: p. 352 [»L’art de raisonner n’est point la raison, souvent il en est l’abus.«].

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line of demarcation that Kant, not without Rousseau’s influence, laid down between theoretical and practical reason, between dogmatic and moral certainty. And here we come to still another trait which, so far as I see, has never been adequately appreciated in the accounts and estimates of Rousseau’s philosophy of religion, although it is of the greatest importance for the history of ideas. Rousseau as well as Kant put the ethical aspect so much in the center of religion that both almost lost sight of nature. Kant thought his critique had destroyed all previous attempts to mount from nature to God. He denied all validity to the »cosmological« proof of the existence of God as well as to the »physicotheological« proof. We cannot arrive at God by ascending in the series of causes and effects from the conditioned to the unconditioned, by regarding God as the First Cause and the Prime Mover. And the teleology of nature gives us just as little right to infer a highest Intelligence as its Author. Rousseau likewise gave up this form of proof of God, together with all other purely metaphysical arguments. But in his case this abandonment must at first glance seem highly paradoxical; for it excludes for him the possibility of finding any immediate bridge from nature to God. There is now no longer any direct transition; not nature but morality, not any knowledge of the objective order of the world, but only conscience can show us the way to God. But how much more remarkable this consequence appears coming from Rousseau than from Kant! For had not Rousseau founded a new cult of nature, and did not the momentous influence he exercised rest on just this cult? | Had not the »Émile« become, in Goethe’s words, the »Haupt- und Grundbuch« of this new gospel of nature?90 When Rousseau added to this book his »profession of faith«, and made it the core of the whole, we might have expected that this profession would be erected on a naturalistic foundation. But the opposite is the case. To be sure, Rousseau declares in the »Profession of Faith« that he had closed all books in order to read only in the book of nature.91 And he repeatedly declares that he always felt disposed to worship God truly only when he stood in immediate contact with nature and hearkened to her language. Within the walls of cities and in the narrow precincts of a church, he says, his reverence could never attain its full strength. »I arose each morning before sunrise,« he tells in describing his life at Les Charmettes, »I climbed through a neighboring orchard on a 90 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit. Dritter Theil (Bk. 14) (Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. XXVIII), p. 254. 91 Rousseau, La »Profession«, p. 395.

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beautiful path that led through the vineyard […] During the middle of my walk I offered up my prayer, which was not the idle stammering of the lips but a genuine elevation of the heart toward the Author of that friendly nature whose beauties lay before my eyes. I have never found any inclination to pray in my chamber; it seemed to me that the walls and all the petty work of men around me intruded between myself and God. I love to contemplate him in his works, while my heart is lifted to him.«92 Thus it is Rousseau’s feeling for nature that again and again became for him the source of religious feeling. But if the feeling for nature awakens and strengthens in him the feeling for religion, it does not enter immediately into its content. We might say of Rousseau’s religion, with a Kantian turn, that the feeling for nature is its occasion but | is nevertheless not its source. Any kind of mere deification of nature is alien to Rousseau. To appreciate this fact we must compare Rousseau with Shaftesbury. In his »Hymn to Nature« Shaftesbury turns immediately to the mighty »Genius of Nature«. »O glorious nature! supremely fair and sovereignly good! all-loving and all-lovely, alldivine! whose looks are so becoming and of such infinite grace; whose study brings such wisdom, and whose contemplation such delight […] O mighty Nature! wise substitute of Providence! impowered creatress! […] Thy being is boundless, unsearchable, impenetrable. In thy immensity all thought is lost, fancy gives over its flight, and wearied imagination spends itself in vain, finding no coast nor limit of this ocean, nor, in the widest tract through which it soars, one point yet nearer the circumference than the first centre whence it parted.«93 This is genuine pantheism, which loses itself in the infinity of nature. But we find no such tones and no such dithyrambic exuberance in Rousseau’s profession of faith. This profession, too, is filled with the strongest inner passion; but this passion points in another direction. The religion that Rousseau is teaching and proclaiming in the »Profes92 Idem, Les confessions (Bk. 6), in: Les confessions, Vol. II, p. 19 [»Je me levois tous les matins avant le soleil. Je montois par un verger voisin dans un très joli chemin qui étoit au-dessus de la vigne […] Là, tout en me promenant, je faisois ma prière qui ne consistoit pas en un vain balbutiement de lèvres, mais dans une sincère élévation de cœur à l’auteur de cette aimable nature dont les beautés étoient sous mes yeux. Je n’ai jamais aimé à prier dans la chambre: il me semble que les murs et tous ces petits ouvrages des hommes s’interposent entre Dieu et moi. J’aime à le contempler dans ses œuvres tandis que mon cœur s’élève à lui.«]. 93 Anthony Ashley Cooper, III. Earl of Shaftesbury, The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody, being a Recital of certain Conversations on Natural and Moral Subjects, in: Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc., ed. by John Mackinnon Robertson, Vol. II, London 1900, pp. 1–153: p. 98.

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sion of Faith« does not arise from absorption in the wonders of nature, although the teleological argument retains for him its full force and he declares that it is just as absurd to assume that the world came into being without an intelligent cause as to assume that a work like the »Aeneid« could originate from throwing letters together by chance. But the real miracle that is central for him is the miracle of human freedom and of conscience as the evidence for this freedom. Here he finds the true mediator | between man and God. Shaftesbury gave to the work in which he included his »Hymn to Nature« the title of »The Moralists«. But his own religion is not founded in the first instance upon morality. It is not an ethical but an aesthetic religion; it arises from the intuition of the beauty of the universe. In erecting his philosophy Shaftesbury subordinated the good to the beautiful, and he tried to derive good from beauty. But this is as little Rousseau’s course as it is Kant’s. Rousseau is in earnest in his religious ideas with the »primacy of the practical«. For him God is not only the Creator and Sustainer of nature, he is, to employ the Kantian phrase, »sovereign in the realm of ends.«94 For Rousseau’s religious philosophy is internally consistent with his philosophy of law and the state and is determined by their main ideas. For him religion is written in the hearts of men by the idea of justice, which he holds to be eternal and immutable, and not to be touched by the multiplicity and arbitrariness of positive laws. »[…] no one,« he writes to Vernes, »can reverence the gospel more sincerely than I; I consider it the most sublime of all books […] But in the end it is only a book, a book of which three quarters of mankind know nothing. Shall I believe that a Scythian or an African is less dear to our common Father than you and I, that he has deprived them rather than us of the means of knowing him? No, my friend, not in the few scattered pages of a book but in the hearts of men must we seek God’s law. Here he has inscribed the precept: O man, whoever thou mayest be, turn within thyself, learn to consult thy conscience and thy natural faculties, then wilt thou be good, just, virtuous, bow before thy Lord and in his heaven share in eternal blessedness without end.«95 Rousseau speaks in the same way 94 [Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, S. 293 (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 434): »Oberhaupte im Reiche der Zwecke«.] 95 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to Jacob Vernes, March 25, 1758, in: Correspondance générale, Vol. III, p. 314 f. [»[…] nul homme au monde ne respecte plus que moi l’évangile. C’est à mon gré le plus sublime de tous les livres […] Mais enfin, c’est un Livre; un livre ignoré des trois-quarts du genre humain, croirai-je qu’un Scithe et un affriquain soient moins chers au Pére commun que vous et moi, et pourquoi penserai-je qu’il leur ait ôté, plus tot qu’à nous les ressources neces-

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in the »Moral | Letters«, which, since they were written for Mme. d’Houdetot and not intended for publication, give a particularly intimate picture of his religious thought:96 here too the feeling of justice stands for him as the true title of nobility which nature has inscribed in the hearts of men.97

VI. Conclusion At the close of our examination we take up again the question from which we set out. What does the relation between Rousseau and Kant have to teach us about the connection that holds for both great thinkers between life and philosophy? We have cited the words of Fichte: »What kind of philosophy a man chooses depends upon what kind of man he is.« If these words are to mean that it is the empirical individuality of the philosopher that impresses its stamp on his ideas, and that it is therefore futile to seek to understand these ideas before penetrating into this individuality and in a certain sense becoming one with it, then they are immediately contradicted by the results of our investigation. For between Rousseau and Kant there could never exist such a form of mutual understanding, and no such »sympathy« could ever bind them together. As individuals they not only belonged to different hemispheres of the globus intellectualis; to some extent they formed its opposite poles. This holds for the forms of their thinking as of their lives. What fellowship could exist between Kant, the stern and reflective thinker, and a man who in his autobiography himself confessed that he was denied all power of cool thinking, that everything he | thought and wrote he could create only in the intoxication of passion?98 Where could we find any conformity between the life of Rousseau, who was early filled with an unquenchable desire to wander and who declared that the happiest hours he had enjoyed had been those of his aimless tramping saires pour le connoitre? Non, mon digne ami, ce n’est point sur quelques feuilles éparses qu’il faut aller chercher la loi de Dieu, mais dans le coeur de l’homme, où sa main daigna l’écrire. Ô homme, qui que tu sois, rentre en toi-même, apprens à consulter ta conscience et tes facultés naturelles, tu seras juste, bon, vertueux, tu t’inclineras devant ton maitre, et tu participeras (dans son ciel) à un bonheur éternel.«]. 96 On the content and character of these letters, cf. esp. Charles William Hendel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Moralist, Vol. I, London/New York 1934, pp. 298 ff. 97 Rousseau, Lettres morales (No. 5), pp. 364 ff. 98 Idem, Les confessions (Bk. 10), in: Les confessions, Vol. II, p. 473.

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about – and the life of Kant, which kept within the narrowest bounds and seemed never to feel the desire to pass beyond them? Rousseau was in a sense always fleeing from himself; and even in old age he remained the »lonely wanderer«,99 as he described himself in one of his last works. Kant in contrast longed for nothing more than not to have to alter in any way or on any point the course he had entered upon. »I dread any change,« with these words he gave his reason for declining the call to Halle, in a letter to Markus Herz, »even though it appears very likely to better my condition, and I think I must respect this instinct of my nature […] So I thank most heartily my patrons and friends who are so kindly disposed towards me as to concern themselves with my welfare; but at the same time I urgently request them to direct this disposition toward fending off […] any disturbance of my present situation and preserving me in it.«100 This sensitive shrinking from anything new, unaccustomed and unforeseen determined also the external course of Kant’s life and gradually fastened upon it more and more the shackles of a carefully considered plan. He became gradually more and more »the man of the clock.«101 What a contrast there is here too with Rousseau, to whom every external restriction was unbearable, and who in one of his dialogues has described the happy moment in which he resolved to throw away his watch, that it might not continually remind him of the time! »Thank | Heaven, I cried out in a passionate outburst of joy, now I shall no longer find it necessary to know what time of day it is.«102 And yet all this, as we have seen, did not stand in the way of the fellowship of spirit between the intellectual world of Rousseau and that of Kant, which endured to the end. Such a fellowship would not indeed have been possible if the two had not been in contact at some more profound stratum of their beings. But this contact did not take [Vgl. ders, Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire.] Immanuel Kant, Brief an Markus Herz vom April 1778, in: Werke, Vol. IX, ed. by Ernst Cassirer, pp. 174–176: p. 174 (Akad.-Ausg. X, 214) [»Alle Veränderung macht mich bange, ob sie gleich den größten Anschein zur Verbesserung meines Zustandes giebt und ich glaube auf diesen Instinkt meiner Natur Acht haben zu müssen […] Den größesten Dank also meinen Gönnern und Freunden, die so gütig gegen mich gesinnet sind, sich meiner Wohlfarth anzunehmen, aber zugleich eine ergebenste Bitte, diese Gesinnung dahin zu verwenden, mir in meiner gegenwärtigen Lage alle Beunruhigung […] abzuwehren und dagegen in Schutz zu nehmen.«]. 101 [Vgl. Theodor Gottfried von Hippel, Mann nach der Uhr oder der ordentliche Mann. Ein Lustspiel in einem Aufzuge, o. O. 1765.] 102 Rousseau, Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques (2nd Dialogue), p. 8 [»Graces au Ciel, s’écria-t-il, dans un transport de joie, je n’aurai plus besoin de savoir l’heure qu’il est!«]. 99

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place in anything arising from the mere »existence« of the two, from the circumstance of their lives or their way of judging the particular goods of life. Differently as they thought of these goods, they met in the definite demands they made on the world and on men. Divided in everything determined by the external circumstances of life, by profession and rank, by social milieu – divided also in personal peculiarities, in the manner and direction of their temperaments, Kant and Rousseau have a grasp on a definite idea which they both desire to establish and validate in an objective sense. They are both enthusiasts for the pure idea of right. Kant said that if right should be curtailed or destroyed man’s existence on earth would lose all its meaning. Rousseau experienced the first violent shock to his being when he had to recognize that society, which should be the protector of right, had in all its previous forms become the tool of oppression and of the crassest injustice. In his first writings he sees no escape except a complete reversal and return; he demands that the »homme des hommes« transform himself once more into the »homme de la nature«. But to this pure negation there succeeds the new positive construction he aims to complete in his political theory and his theory of education. All this must have appealed to Kant immediately, and it | must have all but extinguished for him the contrast he felt with the personality of Rousseau and his manner of »existence«. Perhaps, too, he saw this contrast far less clearly than we see it today. In a sense it must be taken as a happy dispensation that Kant regarded Rousseau, although he was Rousseau’s immediate contemporary, from a much greater distance than is for us today the case. He devoted himself without prejudice to the study of Rousseau’s work, and he sought to recognize the man in the work. He saw in him the author of the »Discourse on Inequality«, the »Social Contract«, the »New Héloise«, not of the »Confessions«, which appeared only later when Kant’s notion of Rousseau had long been fixed. But for us, who are familiar with all the details of Rousseau’s life, who know his autobiographical writings, and his correspondence, and who are able to supplement them with contemporary sources, this wealth of information has often obscured the true knowledge of Rousseau’s nature and work more than it has added to it. There are familiar writings in the Rousseau literature which give us in place of the work almost the man alone, and which describe him only in his dissensions and divisions, in his inner contradictions. The history of ideas threatens here to disappear into biography, and this in turn appears as a pure case history.103 Kant possessed a much simpler 103

I am thinking here of such works as Seillière’s »Jean-Jacques Rousseau« and

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and a consistent picture of Rousseau, which in just this simplicity was not less but more true than that which modern interpretation has often drawn for us. But if Kant and Rousseau are united in a great common task, in the fulfillment of this task there fell to their lot quite different missions. Rousseau was first to see the goal, | and he proclaimed it with enthusiastic exuberance. He had to conquer strongly rooted prejudices and to clear away great obstacles. All this could hardly be accomplished by means of tranquil thinking. He had to call to his aid all the powers of passion, and to speak with the force of a new rhetoric. In him we encounter the first outburst which can control itself only with effort. Rousseau never learned to speak the language of »clear and distinct ideas«. But Kant’s thought was bound up with this language. He demanded definiteness and accuracy in ideas and clarity and perspicuity in their architectonic construction. He had to think Rousseau’s ideas further, and he had to complete them and give them a systematic foundation. And in so doing it developed that this foundation led to a problem of absolutely universal significance, to a problem that included a genuine »revolution in men’s way of thinking.«104 Only through a critique of the entire »faculty of reason« could Kant solve the conflict that had inspired Rousseau in his fight against the philosophes; only in this way could he create that wider and deeper idea of »reason« which could do justice to Rousseau’s ideas and incorporate them in itself. Sources and Literature The quotations from Kant’s writings are taken from my collected edition of »Kants Werke« (11 volumes, Bruno Cassirer Verlag, Berlin, 1912 ff.). The »Fragmente aus Kant’s Nachlass« are not contained in this edition; together with other notes of Kant they were to be collected in a separate volume, whose appearance was unfortunately prevented by the outbreak of the first world war. For these fragments reference is therefore made to Hartenstein’s edition (Immanuel Kants Sämmtliche Werke. In chronologischer Reihenfolge hrsg. v. Gustav Hartenstein, Bd. VIII, S. 607–645, Leipzig 1868). Babbitt’s »Rousseau and Romanticism«. The best and most informed refutation of this view is in my judgment to be found in the work of Hendel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 104 [Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 15 (B XI): »Revolution der Denkart«.]

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For the quotations from Rousseau’s writings, since the texts in the familiar collected editions, especially in the older ones, are not always | free from errors, I have tried to employ the best critical editions of the individual works. The following abbreviations are used: P.W.

The Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Edited from the original manuscripts and authentic editions. With introduction and notes. By Charles Edwyn Vaughan, 2 vols., Cambridge 1915. Cor. Gén. Correspondance générale de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. by Théophile Dufour, 20 vols., Paris 1924–1934. Nouv. Hél. La nouvelle Héloïse, ed. by Daniel Mornet, 4 vols., Paris 1925 (Les grands écrivains de la France, Series 2). Confes. Les confessions, ed. integrale publiée sur les manuscrits originaux par Adolphe van Bever, 3 vols., Paris 1913– 1914. Rêveries Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire, ed. van Bever, ibid., Vol. III, pp. 187–338. Prof. La »Profession de foi du Vicaire savoyard«. Edition critique par Pierre Maurice Masson, Fribourg/Paris 1914.

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In Goethe’s »Conversations with Eckermann« there occurs a curious remark, of great importance for his biography and for the history of ideas, which has scarcely been mentioned by students of Goethe, or at least has never been given the right interpretation. It deals with Goethe’s relation to the Kantian philosophy. »Kant,« says Goethe, »never took any notice of me, although independently I was following a course similar to his. I wrote my ›Metamorphosis of Plants‹ before I knew anything of Kant, and yet it is entirely in the spirit of his ideas.«1 »Was ist mit diesem Räthselwort gemeint?«2 – »What means this riddle?« we are tempted to ask with Faust, in reading this passage. The words are indeed paradoxical. What has Goethe’s »Metamorphosis of Plants« to do with Kant? And how could Goethe say that his conception of nature agreed with Kant’s ideas? At first glance we can discover no similarity between them, we see only a sharp contrast. This contrast can be expressed in two words, »mathematics« and »Newton«. Before becoming the critic of pure reason, Kant began with the study of Newtonian physics. His first major work, the »Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels«, aimed to extend, complete, and generalize Newton’s ideas. And in his metaphysics Kant never abandoned this course. »The true method of metaphysics,« he declares, »is at bottom identical with that which Newton introduced into natural science, and which there led to such useful results.« This | pronouncement still belongs to Kant’s pre-critical period; it occurs in his paper for the prize competition of the Berlin Academy on clearness and distinctness, on evidence in the metaphysical sciences.3 But Kant always maintained 1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Johann Peter Eckermann, April 11, 1827, in: Goethes Gespräche. Gesamtausgabe, with Max Morris and others newly ed. by Flodoard von Biedermann [= Goethes Gespräche, started by Woldemar von Biedermann, 2nd ed., rev. and augm.], 5 vols., Leipzig 1909–1911, Vol. II, pp. 366– 373: p. 372 [»Kant hat nie von mir Notiz genommen, wiewohl ich aus eigener Natur einen ähnlichen Weg ging als er. Meine Metamorphose der Pflanzen habe ich geschrieben, ehe ich etwas von Kant wußte, und doch ist sie ganz im Sinne seiner Lehre.«]. 2 [Ders., Faust. Eine Tragödie. Erster Theil (Werke, hrsg. im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 4 Abt., insges. 133 Bde. in 143 Bdn., Weimar 1887–1919, 1. Abt., Bd. XIV), S. 67.] 3 Immanuel Kant, Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der

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this position. The theory of nature was always for him the mathematical theory of nature. »I assert,« he wrote as late as 1786, in the Preface to his »Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft«, »that in any particular theory of nature we can find only so much of real science as we can find mathematics. […] a pure physical theory of determinate natural objects […] is possible only through mathematics; and […] hence any theory of nature will contain only so much of real science as it permits the application of mathematics.«4 This is in sharpest conceivable contrast to Goethe’s notion of nature. Goethe’s theory of nature was one continued attack on Newton and Newtonian physics. During the course of his life this attack grew sharper and sharper, and it finally led to a tragic climax. Everywhere – among philosophers, physicists, biologists – he looked for allies in this contest, but he was able to convince scarcely anyone. Here he stood alone, and this isolation filled him with a growing bitterness. But what could Kan t mean to him in this struggle, Kant the pupil and the philosophical interpreter of Newton, Kant, who had taken it as his aim to investigate critically the logical conditions of Newtonian science? Kant demanded that mathematics should enter into every part of the theory of nature, Goethe energetically rejected any such notion. »Physics must be divorced from mathematics,« he said. »It must be completely independent, and try to penetrate with all its loving, reverent, | pious force into nature and its holy life, quite regardless of what mathematics accomplishes and does. Mathematics, for its part, must declare itself independent of everything external, go its own distinctive and important way, and cultivate a greater purity than is possible when as heretofore it concerns itself with existence and endeavors to win something from it or to conform to it.«5 natürlichen Theologie und der Moral. Zur Beantwortung der Frage, welche die Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin auf das Jahr 1763 aufgegeben hat, in: Werke, in connection with Hermann Cohen et al. ed. by Ernst Cassirer, 11 vols., Berlin 1912–1921, Vol. II, pp. 173–202: p. 186 (Akad.-Ausg. II, 286) [»Die echte Methode der Metaphysik ist mit derjenigen im Grunde einerlei, die Newton in die Naturwissenschaft einführte, und die daselbst von so nutzbaren Folgen war.«]. 4 Idem, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, in: Werke, Vol. IV, pp. 367–485: p. 372 (Akad.-Ausg. 470) [»Ich behaupte aber, daß in jeder besonderen Naturlehre nur so viel eigentliche Wissenschaft angetroffen werden könne, als darin Mathematik anzutreffen ist. […] eine reine Naturlehre über bestimmte Naturdinge […] ist nur vermittelst der Mathematik möglich, und […] so wird Naturlehre nur soviel eigentliche Wissenschaft enthalten, als Mathematik in ihr angewandt werden kann.«]. 5 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen. Nach den Hand-

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From this it is clear that there was for Goethe no approach to Kant through physics. Nor could Kant the logician, the critic of pure reason, offer him any fundamental ideas. We know that in contrast to Herder he felt great admiration for Kant’s masterpiece. He did not fail to make a real effort to understand it. His copy of the »Kritik der reinen Vernunft«, preserved in Weimar, shows the intensive study he devoted to it. But as a whole the work could never come to have for him the significance it held for Schiller. It grew out of another way of thinking – and it lay outside the course of his life and training. He felt this clearly himself. »It was the entrance,« he said, »which I liked. I never dared to advance into the labyrinth itself; my poetic gifts or my common sense soon stopped me, and I never felt I was getting much out of it.«6 Was it then only a compromise that led Goethe finally to acknowledge the Kantian philosophy – and was it his friendship with Schiller that forced him to this compromise? Historians of German literature have long maintained this position, and even today it seems the reigning opinion. But this view is untenable. It was not Schiller who opened Goethe’s eyes to Kant. Long before his intimate association with Schiller he had found his way to | Kant. On this point we possess conclusive evidence. As early as 1790 Körner wrote to Schiller of a visit of Goethe’s to Dresden: »Goethe was here a week, and I spent a good deal of time with him. I soon succeeded in getting closer to him and he was more communicative than I had expected. Where we found most points of contact you will hardly guess. Where else but – in Kant? In the Kritik der Urteilskraft he has found food for his philosophy.«7 schriften des Goethe- und Schiller-Archivs (No. 573), ed. by Max Hecker, Weimar 1907 (Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, Vol. 21), p. 124 [»Als getrennt muß sich darstellen: Physik von Mathematik. Jene muß in einer entschiedenen Unabhängigkeit bestehen und mit allen liebenden, verehrenden, frommen Kräften in die Natur und das heilige Leben derselben einzudringen suchen, ganz unbekümmert, was die Mathematik von ihrer Seite leistet und thut. Diese muß sich dagegen unabhängig von allem Äußern erklären, ihren eigenen großen Geistesgang gehen und sich selber reiner ausbilden, als es geschehen kann, wenn sie wie bisher sich mit dem Vorhandenen abgibt und diesem etwas abzugewinnen oder anzupassen trachtet.«]. 6 Idem, Einwirkung der neuern Philosophie, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. XI, pp. 47–53: p. 49 [»Der Eingang war es der mir gefiel, in’s Labyrinth selbst konnt’ ich mich nicht wagen: bald hinderte mich die Dichtungsgabe, bald der Menschenverstand, und ich fühlte mich nirgend gebessert.«]. 7 Christian Gottfried Körner, Letter to Friedrich Schiller, October 6, 1790, in: Schillers Briefwechsel mit Körner. Von 1784 bis zum Tode Schillers, 2nd ed., augm., ed. by Karl Goedeke, 2 vols., Leipzig 1878, Vol. I, pp. 380–382: p. 381 [»Goethe ist acht Tage hier gewesen, und ich habe viel mit ihm gelebt; es gelang mir ihm bald

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It was the »Critique of Judgment« which was for Goethe the key to the understanding of the Kantian philosophy. And it was more than a philosophy – more than purely theoretical ideas – that he found in it. He has himself described for us clearly and precisely this first impression in his essay »Einwirkung der neueren Philosophie«: »But the Critique of Judgment fell into my hands, and to this book I owe one of the happiest periods of my life. Here I saw my most diverse interests brought together, artistic and natural production handled the same way; the power of aesthetic and teleological judgment mutually illuminated each other.« »If my way of thinking was not always able to agree with the authors, if I seemed to miss something here and there, still the main ideas of the work were quite analogous to my previous production, action and thought. The inner life of art as of nature, their mutual working from within outward, were clearly expressed in the book. It maintained that the productions of these two infinite worlds exist for their own sake, and that things that stand beside each other do indeed exist for each other but not purposely on each other’s account.«8 In these last words we arrive at the real link between Kant and Goethe. The second part of the »Critique of Judgment« bears the title »Critique of Teleological Judg | ment«. Even here Kant demands a clear line of demarcation. He by no means wishes to exclude the conception of »end« in considering biological phenomena. He declares that a purely mechanistic description of living processes is impossible. »It is […] quite certain that we can never get a sufficient knowledge of organized beings and their inner possibility, much less get an explanation of näher zu kommen, und er war mittheilender, als ich erwartet hatte. Wo wir die meisten Berührungspunkte fanden, wirst Du schwerlich errathen. – Wo sonst, als – im Kant! In der Kritik der teleologischen Urtheilskraft hat er Nahrung für seine Philosophie gefunden.«]. 8 Goethe, Einwirkung der neuern Philosophie, pp. 50 f. [»Nun aber kam die Kritik der Urtheilskraft mir zu Handen und dieser bin ich eine höchst frohe Lebensepoche schuldig. Hier sah ich meine disparatesten Beschäftigungen neben einander gestellt, Kunst- und Natur-Erzeugnisse eins behandelt wie das andere, ästhetische und teleologische Urtheilskraft erleuchteten sich wechselsweise. Wenn auch meine Vorstellungsart nicht eben immer dem Verfasser sich zu fügen möglich werden konnte, wenn ich hie und da etwas zu vermissen schien, so waren doch die großen Hauptgedanken des Werks meinem bisherigen Schaffen, Thun und Denken ganz analog; das innere Leben der Kunst so wie der Natur, ihr beiderseitiges Wirken von innen heraus war im Buche deutlich ausgesprochen. Die Erzeugnisse dieser zwei unendlichen Welten sollten um ihrer selbst willen da sein, und was neben einander stand wohl für einander, aber nicht absichtlich wegen einander.«].

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them, by looking merely to mechanical principles of nature. Indeed, so certain is it, that we may confidently assert that it is absurd for men even to entertain any thought of so doing or to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass from natural laws that no design has ordered. Such insight we must absolutely deny to mankind.«9 But although Kant not only recognized the concept of end as a heuristic principle for the investigation of nature, but even regarded it as quite unavoidable, though he called it a maxim of pure reason, he sharply rejected the previous naive and uncritical form of teleological explanation. In the eighteenth century the force of this type of explanation was still unbroken. This kind of thinking is familiar to the literary historian in a work like Brockes’ »Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott«. Everything in nature serves the honor of God – but everything serves at the same time the ends of man; everything is arranged for him, for his use and advantage. But what we smile at today in reading Brockes’ book is by no means unique. Genuinely philosophic thinkers spoke just like Brockes – for instance, Christian Wolff, whom Kant called in the Preface to the second edition of the »Critique of Pure Reason« the »author of the not yet extinguished spirit of thoroughness in Germany.«10 Even Wolff | never draws a sharp line between teleology and mere utility. His German metaphysics, his »Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt, und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt«, Wolff followed up in 1726 with a separate work, »Vernünftige Gedanken von den Absichten der natürlichen Dinge«. As the title states, it is intended for »lovers of truth«. But it is at bottom something rather different. It is no book for philosophers; it is really a manual for the German Philistine of the eighteenth century. Whenever he was in doubt about the purpose of any natural thing, he needed only reach for his Wolff to find at once the correct explanation. He is there enlightened about everything in the world, about sun, moon and stars, about air and winds, about vapors, mist, clouds, dew, frost, rain, snow, and hail. I am content to cite here some especially drastic examples. Why does the pole star exist? Wolff asks. »The pole star,« runs the answer, 9 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (§ 75), ed. by Otto Buek, in: Werke, Vol. V, pp. 233–568: pp. 478 f. (Akad.-Ausg. V, 278 f.); English translation: Critique of Teleological Judgement, transl. by James Creed Meredith, Oxford 1928, p. 54 [Danach zitiert]. 10 [Ders., Kritik der reinen Vernunft, hrsg. v. Albert Görland (Werke, Bd. III), S. 28 (B XXXVI): »der Urheber des bisher noch nicht erloschenen Geistes der Gründlichkeit in Deutschland«.]

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»and the stars in general serve to tell us our directions, which in particular proves exceedingly useful to travelers when they lose their way in the evening or at night; likewise to those whom night overtakes in the field or the woods, and who must follow their direction if they wish to find the way home.« How simple and how plausible, how informative and edifying! Or take a second example. What is the use of daylight? »Daylight is of great use to us: for by daylight we can easily go about our duties, which we can either not perform at all at night, or at least not so easily, and at some expense, since it is necessary to make it light by art.« The man speaking here is not the man who was with some justice called the praeceptor Germaniae, the teacher of Germany in the eighteenth century. Here we are listening only to a scholar of the cast of the apprentice Wagner – the honest and thrifty professor who sitting at his desk | is glad of the sunlight because it saves him the expense of his desk lamp. But the professor is farsighted and impartial. He knows very well that night brings its goods also. »[In the first place, it has its obvious] use, that men and animals who have become tired during the day can refresh themselves again through sleep. […] But it serves also for some pursuits that can not be carried on by day, like catching birds and fish.«11 Now we know why sun, moon and stars, why day and night exist! The stars, that we may find our way home, the day for work, the night for sleep, and for catching birds and fish! Attacks on this Philistine wisdom were not lacking in the eighteenth century. Voltaire wrote his »Candide«, one of his most biting and delightful satires. How good it is, the philosopher in this book explains, that God created us with noses; how else should we be able 11 Christian Wolff, Vernünfftige Gedancken Von den Absichten Der natürlichen Dinge, Den Liebhabern der Wahrheit Mitgetheilet, Frankfurt/Leipzig 31737, pp. 92, 74, and 125 f. [»Der Polar-Stern und die Gestirne überhaupt dienen uns auch die Gegenden zu erkennen: welches insonderheit den Reisenden stattlich zu statten kommet, wenn sie sich des Abends, oder des Nachts etwan verirret, ingleichen denjenigen, welche die Nacht auf dem Felde, oder in einem Walde überfället, und die sich nach der Gegend zu richten haben, wenn sie den Weg, der nach Hause gehet, finden wollen.« »Das Tag-Licht aber schaffet uns grossen Nutzen: denn bey demselben können wir unsere Verrichtungen bequem vornehmen, die sich des Abends theils gar nicht, oder doch wenigstens nicht so bequem, und mit einigen Kosten vornehmen lassen, die durch die Kunst es lichte zu machen erfordert werden.« »[…] den Nutzen, daß Menschen und Thiere, die den Tag über sind müde worden, sich durch den Schlaff wieder erquicken können. […] Unterdessen dienet im Gegentheeil die Nacht zu einigen Verrichtungen, die sich bey Tage nicht wohl vornehmen lassen, dergleichen bey dem Vogelfangen und Fischen vorkommen.«].

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to put on our glasses! Kant cited these words of Voltaire with approval in an essay in which he examined the so-called physico-theological proof.12 But he did not stop with the satire. He gave a critical analysis of the concept of end, to determine its character and its limits. Goethe accepted this analysis without reservation. For in his judgment of the naive teleology of the popular philosophy of the eighteenth century he was from the start in complete agreement with Kant. In a conversation with Chancellor von Müller13 he remarked that popular philosophy had always disgusted him; hence he had the more easily inclined toward Kant, who demolished it. In the »Xenien« of Goethe and Schiller there is a distich entitled »Der Teleolog«: | » Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenschöpfer, der gnädig, Als er den Korkbaum schuf, gleich auch die Stöpsel erfand!«14 For this kind of consideration of utility Goethe felt all his life an unconquerable aversion. »[…] it is an unbounded service of our old Kant,« he wrote in a letter to Zelter, »to the world, and I may add to myself, that in his Critique of Judgment he effectively placed art and nature side by side, and granted both the right of acting in accordance with great principles without purpose. Spinoza had earlier inspired me with a hatred for absurd final causes. Nature and art are too great to aim at ends, and they don’t need to either. There are relations everywhere, and relations are life.«15 But we still stand at the very entrance and vestibule of our exami12 Immanuel Kant, Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes, in: Werke, Vol. II, pp. 67–172: p. 138 (Akad.-Ausg. II, 131). 13 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Friedrich von Müller, December 18, 1823, in: Goethes Gespräche, Vol. III, p. 50. 14 »What reverence is due the world’s Creator, who when / Creating the cork tree graciously also invented the cork.« Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Der Teleolog, in: Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. V/1, p. 207. 15 Idem, Letter to Friedrich Karl Zelter, January 29, 1830, in: Werke, Sect. 4, Vol. XLVI, pp. 221–226: p. 223 [»[…] es ist ein gränzenloses Verdienst unsres alten Kant um die Welt, und ich darf auch sagen um mich, daß er, in seiner Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Kunst und Natur kräftig nebeneinander stellt und beiden das Recht zugesteht: aus großen Principien zwecklos zu handeln. So hatte mich Spinoza früher schon in dem Haß gegen die absurden Endursachen gegläubiget. Natur und Kunst sind zu groß um auf Zwecke auszugehen, und haben’s auch nicht nöthig, denn Bezüge gibt’s überall und Bezüge sind das Leben.«].

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nation. For what we are now considering is only the negative side. We see what both Goethe and Kant rejected – but not what they both affirmed, what united them positively. This union was rooted in another and more profound kinship between their views. I can here only attempt to sketch this relationship very briefly and in barest outline. It was Goethe who first coined the word »morphology«. This term has today become quite current; it has entered into general scientific usage. But we forget too easily what an important and crucial methodological change it meant for the biology of the eighteenth century. With Goethe’s idea of »morphology«, with his conception of the »formation and transformation of organic natures«,16 a new ideal of knowledge was created. A modern botanist, Hansen, has said of Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis | that the period of botany beginning with Goethe is related to the preceding one as chemistry to alchemy.17 To put it briefly and clearly, Goethe completed the transition from the previous gen er ic view to the modern g e ne ti c view of organic nature. The generic view of the plant world found its classic expression in Linnaeus’ system of nature. It holds that we have understood nature when we have succeeded in arranging it in the pigeonholes of our concepts, dividing it into species and genera, into families, classes, and orders. But for Goethe such an enterprise was not enough. According to him, what we grasp in this way are only the products, not the process of life. And into this life process he wanted, not only as poet but also as scientist, to win an insight; in it he saw what was greatest and highest. Here he was thinking and judging like Mephisto in the apprentice scene: » Wer will was Lebendigs erkennen und beschreiben, Sucht erst den Geist heraus zu treiben, Dann hat er die Theile in seiner Hand, Fehlt leider! nur das geistige Band. Encheiresin naturae nennt’s die Chemie, Spottet ihrer selbst und weiß nicht wie.«18 16 [Vgl. ders., Werke, 2. Abt., Bd. VI, S. V u. ö.: »Bildung und Umbildung organischer Naturen«.] 17 Adolph Hansen, Goethes Morphologie (Metamorphose der Pflanzen und Osteologie). Ein Beitrag zum sachlichen und philosophischen Verständnis und zur Kritik der morphologischen Begriffsbildung, Gießen 1919. 18 »He who would study organic existence, / First drives out the soul with rigid persistence; / Then the parts in his hand he may hold and class, / But the spiritual link is lost, alas! / Encheiresin naturae, this Chemistry names, / Nor knows how

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Goethe was a great admirer of Linnaeus. There is a passage in his works in which he places Linnaeus beside Shakespeare and Spinoza in the history of his own inner development – surely the highest praise he could pay him.19 | »[…] I must confess,« he says, »that after Shakespeare and Spinoza Linnaeus had the greatest influence upon me – and just through the reaction he provoked in me.« In the fine essay in which Goethe describes the history of his botanical studies he indicates the character of this reaction. »That I may be clear about those circumstances, think of me as a born poet, seeking to mold his words and his expressions immediately on the objects before him at any time, in order to do them some measure of justice. Such a poet was now to learn by heart a ready-made terminology, to have a certain number of words and epithets ready, so that when he encountered any form, making an apt selection he should know how to apply and order them into an appropriate description. Such a treatment always seemed to me like a kind of mosaic, in which you put one finished piece next to another, in order finally to produce out of a thousand individual pieces the semblance of a picture; and so in this sense I always found the demand to some extent repugnant.«20 Here we can see clearly the kinship between Goethe and Kant. Goethe protested against the »rigid way of thinking« he found in the philosophy and biology of his time. »[…] when I advanced my morphological ideas,« he says in his »Campagne in Frankreich«, »I was sorry to observe that the rigid way of thinking: nothing can come to herself she banters and blames!« Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. A Tragedy, transl. by Bayard Taylor, New York 1930 (The Modern Readers’ Series), p. 75 [Faust. Eine Tragödie. Erster Theil, S. 91]. 19 Idem, Geschichte meines botanischen Studiums. Lesarten, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. VI, pp. 389–393: p. 390. 20 Ibid., pp. 390 f. [»[…] will ich bekennen, daß nach Shakespear und Spinoza auf mich die größte Wirkung von Linné ausgegangen und zwar gerade durch den Widerstreit zu welchem er mich aufforderte.« Idem, Der Verfasser theilt die Geschichte seiner botanischen Studien mit, ibid., pp. 95–127: p. 116: »Soll ich nun über jene Zustände mit Bewußtsein deutlich werden, so denke man mich als einen gebornen Dichter, der seine Worte, seine Ausdrücke unmittelbar an den jedesmaligen Gegenständen zu bilden trachtet, um ihnen einigermaßen genug zu thun. Ein solcher sollte nun eine fertige Terminologie in’s Gedächtniß aufnehmen, eine gewisse Anzahl Wörter und Beiwörter bereit haben, damit er, wenn ihm irgend eine Gestalt vorkäme, eine geschickte Auswahl treffend, sie zu charakteristischer Bezeichnung anzuwenden und zu ordnen wisse. Dergleichen Behandlung erschien mir immer als eine Art von Mosaik, wo man einen fertigen Stift neben den andern setzt, um aus tausend Einzelnheiten endlich den Schein eines Bildes hervorzubringen; und so war mir die Forderung in diesem Sinne gewissermaßen widerlich.«].

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be except what already is, held possession of every mind.«21 He did not completely reject this way of thinking; in his morphological writings he even says that it is the easiest and most natural way, and that as such it had been transmitted from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth, and from the eighteenth to the nineteenth, and would continue to serve | usefully in its own fashion to represent reality clearly and distinctly. But he demanded that it be enlarged and deepened, as only the »ideal way of thinking« could do, which »reveals the eternal in the transitory.« Of this ideal way of thinking he says that it alone is capable of elevating us to the point where common sense and philosophy come to agree.22 The armor of the »rigid way of thinking,« which in Goethe’s words »had quite befogged the century,«23 Kant penetrated at two points. He accepted the Newtonian theory of nature and its explanation of phenomena in terms of forces acting at a distance. But he wanted not only to describe the being of matter, he wanted to understand its genesis. And so he was one of the first to offer a theory of the evolution of the material world from the original nebulae to its present form. He was the author of the theory we today call the Kant-Laplacian hypothesis. In biology Kant went a step further. He clearly envisaged the task and the goal of a general theory of evolution. »This analogy of forms, which in all their differences seem to be produced in accordance with a common type, strengthens the suspicion that they have an actual kinship due to descent from a common parent. This we might trace in the gradual approximation of one animal species to another, from that in which the principle of ends seems best authenticated, namely from man, back to the polyp, and from this back even to mosses and lichens, and finally to the lowest perceivable stage of nature. Here we come to crude matter; and from this, and the forces which it exerts in accordance with mechanical laws (laws resembling those by which it acts in the formation of crystals) seems to be developed the whole technic of nature which, in the case of organized beings, is so incom21 Idem, Campagne in Frankreich 1792, in: Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 1–271: pp. 196 ff. [Zitat S. 197: »[…] wenn ich meine morphologischen Gedanken […] vortrug, so mußte ich doch leider bemerken, daß die starre Vorstellungsart: nichts könne werden als was schon sei, sich aller Geister bemächtigt habe.«]. 22 Idem, Leben und Verdienste des Doctor Joachim Jungius, Rectors zu Hamburg, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. VII, pp. 105–129: p. 120 [»die ideelle Denkweise das Ewige im Vorübergehenden schauen läßt«]. 23 [Ebd.: »hatte das Jahrhundert ganz umnebelt«.]

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prehensible to | us that we feel obliged to imagine a different principle for its explanation.« »Here the archaeologist of nature is at liberty to go back to the traces that remain of nature’s earliest revolutions, and, appealing to all he knows of or can conjecture about its mechanism, to trace the genesis of that great family of living things (for it must be pictured as a family if there is to be any foundation for the consistently coherent affinity mentioned). He can suppose that the womb of mother earth as it first emerged, like a huge animal, from its chaotic state, gave birth to creatures whose form displayed less finality, and that these again bore others which adapted themselves more perfectly to their native surroundings and their relations to each other, until this womb, becoming rigid and ossified, restricted its birth to definite species incapable of further modification, and the multiplicity of forms was fixed as it stood when the operation of that fruitful formative power had ceased. […] An hypothesis of this kind may be called a daring venture on the part of reason; and there are probably few even among the most acute scientists to whose minds it has not sometimes occurred.«24 Here Goethe could see himself and his own fundamental convictions. In his essay »Anschauende Urteilskraft« he described how deep a joy he felt when he first read this passage in the »Critique of Judgment«. »I had at first,« he says, »found my way unconsciously and by an inner impulse to that primordial and archetypical origin, I had even succeeded in constructing a plausible sketch. Now there was nothing to prevent me any longer from resolutely embarking on the venture of reason, as the old man of Königsberg himself called it.«25 | Goethe’s morphology culminates in his theory of metamorphosis. The poetic expression of this theory Goethe set forth in two great didactic poems, »Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen« and »Die Metamorphose der Tiere«. The scientific foundation we must seek in his scientific works. I cannot here go into the particulars of this foundation. I am content to sketch briefly in a few significant examples the chief stages in the development of the theory in Goethe’s own mind. At their head I place here that famous conversation with Schil24 Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (§ 80), pp. 498 f. (Akad.-Ausg. V, 300 f.); Critique of Teleological Judgement, pp. 78 f. [Danach zitiert]. 25 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Anschauende Urtheilskraft, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. XI, pp. 54 f.: p. 55 [»Hatte ich doch erst unbewußt und aus innerem Trieb auf jenes Urbildliche, Typische rastlos gedrungen, war es mir sogar geglückt, eine naturgemäße Darstellung aufzubauen, so konnte mich nunmehr nichts weiter verhindern das Abenteuer der Vernunft, wie es der Alte vom Königsberge selbst nennt, muthig zu bestehen.«].

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ler, which formed the beginning of a deeper intellectual association between them and laid a firm foundation for their future friendship. The report of this conversation is to be found in Goethe’s sketch »Glückliches Ereigniß«. Goethe and Schiller had attended a lecture at the Jena Scientific Society. By chance they left the meeting at the same time, and a conversation began about the lecture. »We arrived at his house, the conversation drew me in; there I vigorously expounded the metamorphosis of plants, and with many suggestive strokes of the pen let a symbolic plant arise before his eyes. He listened to and looked at everything with great interest, with decided power of comprehension; but when I ended he shook his head and said: ›That is not empirical, that is ideal‹ (Das ist keine Erfahrung, das ist eine Idee). I was taken aback and somewhat vexed; for he had emphatically stated the point that divided us. […] But I collected myself and replied: ›I am very glad that I have ideals without knowing it, and even see them with my eyes.‹« »Schiller, who had much more of shrewdness and self-possession than I, and who also hoped to attract rather than to repel me for the sake of his ›Horen‹, which he was considering publishing, replied as a trained Kantian, and since my stiff-necked realism gave many an occasion for vigorous contradiction, we fought for a while and then con | cluded a truce; neither could consider himself the victor, each thought himself invincible. Words like these made me most unhappy: ›How can there ever be an experience that conforms to an ideal? For the distinctive thing about an ideal is that no experience can ever agree with it.‹ If he considered what I called empirical to be ideal, there must exist something mediating between the two to relate them! But the first step had been taken. Schiller’s powers of attraction were great, he fascinated all who approached him; I took part in his plans and promised to give him for the ›Horen‹ many things I had kept unpublished; his wife, whom I had loved and treasured from her childhood on, contributed her share to the lasting understanding, all our mutual friends were glad, and so, through the great and perhaps never-to-besettled controversy between object and subject, we sealed a pact which has endured without interruption and produced much good for us and for others.«26 26 Idem, Glückliches Ereigniß, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. XI, pp. 13–20: pp. 17–19 [»Wir gelangten zu seinem Hause, das Gespräch lockte mich hinein; da trug ich die Metamorphose der Pflanzen lebhaft vor, und ließ, mit manchen charakteristischen Federstrichen, eine symbolische Pflanze vor seinen Augen entstehen. Er vernahm und schaute das alles mit großer Theilnahme, mit entschiedener Fassungskraft; als ich aber geendet, schüttelte er den Kopf und sagte: ›Das ist

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When we read today Goethe’s report of his conversation with Schiller, it is not hard for us to clear up the misunderstanding between them. Goethe was convinced that with his theory of metamorphosis he had placed biology on a new, empirically verifiable and trustworthy foundation. When Schiller declared that the »original plant« (Urpflanze) was not empirical but ideal – this necessarily astonished Goethe – and wounded him. For it called into question the empirical and objective significance of his fundamental idea. But that was surely not Schiller’s intention. He was speaking as a »trained Kantian«. And in Kant’s system an ideal is not, as with Plato, something opposed to experience – something lying outside it and elevated above it. It is rather a moment, a factor in the process of experience itself. It has no independent, isolated ontological existence; it is a regulative principle that is necessary for | the use of experience itself, completing it and giving it a systematic unity. The relation in the Kantian system between ideal and experience, between constitutive conditions and regulative principles, between concepts of the understanding and concepts of reason, is very difficult and complicated. I cannot here go into the details of this complicated relation; that would lead us too far into the depths of the Kantian theory and involve us in the thorny Kantian terminology. We can here keine Erfahrung, das ist eine Idee.‹ Ich stutzte, verdrießlich einigermaßen; denn der Punct, der uns trennte, war dadurch auf’s strengste bezeichnet. Die Behauptung aus Anmuth und Würde fiel mir wieder ein, der alte Groll wollte sich regen; ich nahm mich aber zusammen und versetzte: ›Das kann mir sehr lieb sein, daß ich Ideen habe, ohne es zu wissen, und sie sogar mit Augen sehe.‹ Schiller, der viel mehr Lebensklugheit und Lebensart hatte als ich und mich auch wegen der Horen, die er herauszugeben in Begriff stand, mehr anzuziehen als abzustoßen gedachte, erwiderte darauf als ein gebildeter Kantianer, und als aus meinem hartnäckigen Realismus mancher Anlaß zu lebhaftem Widerspruch entstand, so ward viel gekämpft und dann Stillstand gemacht; keiner von beiden konnte sich für den Sieger halten, beide hielten sich für unüberwindlich. Sätze wie folgender machten mich ganz unglücklich: ›Wie kann jemals Erfahrung gegeben werden, die einer Idee angemessen sein sollte? Denn darin besteht eben das Eigenthümliche der letzteren, daß ihr niemals eine Erfahrung congruiren könne.‹ Wenn er das für eine Idee hielt, was ich als eine Erfahrung aussprach, so mußte doch zwischen beiden irgend etwas Vermittelndes, Bezügliches obwalten! Der erste Schritt war jedoch gethan. Schillers Anziehungskraft war groß, er hielt alle fest, die sich ihm näherten; ich nahm Theil an seinen Absichten und versprach zu den Horen manches, was bei mir verborgen lag, herzugeben; seine Gattin, die ich, von ihrer Kindheit auf, zu lieben und zu schätzen gewohnt war, trug das Ihrige bei zu dauerndem Verständniß, alle beiderseitigen Freunde waren froh, und so besiegelten wir, durch den größten, vielleicht nie ganz zu schlichtenden Wettkampf zwischen Object und Subject, einen Bund, der ununterbrochen gedauert und für uns und andere manches Gute gewirkt hat.«].

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indicate only one point. Goethe himself later arrived at a position from which he could agree with Kant on this question also. In Italy, when he first conceived the idea of the original plant, he thought of it as something actual, as a concrete existence. He looked for it – and he was convinced that he would one day discover it – just as he had found confirmation for his theory of the intermaxillary bone in man on a walk at the Lido near Venice. Goethe has himself told us in his »Italienische Reise« how he went one morning to the public garden in Palermo to think over the plan of his poem on Nausicaa. »[…] but at once another ghost that had been haunting me at this time seized me. Many plants that I had been used to see in tubs and pots, and for the greater part of the year only under glass, were growing here freely in the open air, and when they realize their form completely they are more intelligible to us. In the sight of so many forms both new and familiar, the old fancy occurred to me again: among this multitude could I not discover the original plant? […] My good poetic resolution was disturbed; the garden of Alcinous had vanished, a world garden opened before me.«27 Goethe later learned to think of the original plant in a different fashion. He no longer hoped to see it with his eyes and to grasp it with his hands. But the value of his | theory did not seem to him to have diminished or to have been called into question on that account. Now he no longer took offense when the original plant was called ideal. He himself called it that, and he used another expression that is genuinely Goethean and profoundly significant. He called it a symbol. »The fundamental maxim of metamorphosis,« says Goethe in a conversation with Chancellor von Müller in July 1830, »must not be interpreted too broadly; if we say it is rich and productive like an ideal, that is the best way to put it.«28 And when he sent Zelter, in 1816, a new edition 27 Idem, Italiänische Reise. II (April 17, 1787) (Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. XXXI), pp. 147 f. [»[…] allein, eh’ ich mich’s versah, erhaschte mich ein anderes Gespenst, das mir schon diese Tage nachgeschlichen. Die vielen Pflanzen, die ich sonst nur in Kübeln und Töpfen, ja die größte Zeit des Jahres nur hinter Glasfenstern zu sehen gewohnt war, stehen hier froh und frisch unter freiem Himmel und, indem sie ihre Bestimmung vollkommen erfüllen, werden sie uns deutlicher. Im Angesicht so vielerlei neuen und erneuten Gebildes fiel mir die alte Grille wieder ein: ob ich nicht unter dieser Schaar die Urpflanze entdecken könnte? […] Gestört war mein guter poetischer Vorsatz, der Garten des Alcinous war verschwunden, ein Weltgarten hatte sich aufgethan.«]. 28 [Ders. zu Friedrich von Müller, 2. Juli 1830, in: Goethes Gespräche, Bd. IV, S. 287 f.: S. 288: »Man darf die Grundmaxime der Metamorphose nicht allzu breit erklären wollen; wenn man sagt, sie sei reich und produktiv wie eine Idee, ist das Beste.«]

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of the »Metamorphose der Pflanzen«, he advised him to take the work only symbolically, and »[…] always to think in reading it of any other living thing that progressively develops of itself.«29 Whether in this intellectual transformation which the theory of metamorphosis underwent during the course of the years Kantian influences played a role – whether the intimate association with Schiller and the memory of that first conversation with him had a part in it – we do not need to decide. On this matter there is not, so far as I know, any conclusive documentary evidence. But it seems at least very probable – especially since Kant’s influence on Goethe in his old age grew stronger and stronger and is unmistakable. Goethe himself said to Eckermann that it had been of great significance for his life that Lessing and Winckelmann influenced him during his youth, Kant during his old age.30 All that we know of the development of his philosophical, moral, and scientific views confirms this utterance. Kant was able to exert this influence on Goethe because at bottom the two agreed about dogmatic metaphysics. | Even Goethe’s Spinozism did not stand in the way. For the influence of Spinoza on his thought and feeling was far more ethical than metaphysical. He has himself described in »Dichtung und Wahrheit« what he found in Spinoza. »Do not misunderstand me here,« he says. »The closest ties link us to what is most opposite to ourselves. The all-harmonizing peace of Spinoza was in marked contrast to my own excited striving; his mathematical method was the opposite of my poetic way of feeling and expression, and just that orderly way of treatment which men judge unsuited to moral subjects made me his passionate disciple, his convinced admirer.«31 But where men expected and demanded of Goethe a dogmatic adherence to some particular religious, theological or metaphysical system, he almost always refused, and often with great harshness. He 29 Idem, Letter to Friedrich Karl Zelter, October 14, 1816, in: Werke, Sect. 4, Vol. XXVII, pp. 199 f.: p. 199 [»[…] denke dir immer dabey irgend ein anders Lebendige, was sich aus sich selbst fortschreitend entwickelt.«]. 30 Idem to Johann Peter Eckermann, May 12, 1825, in: Goethes Gespräche, Vol. III, pp. 203–205: p. 204. 31 Idem, Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit. Dritter Theil (Bk. 4) (Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. XXVIII), p. 289 [»Übrigens möge auch hier nicht verkannt werden, daß eigentlich die innigsten Verbindungen nur aus dem Entgegengesetzten folgen. Die alles ausgleichende Ruhe Spinoza’s contrastirte mit meinem alles aufregenden Streben, seine mathematische Methode war das Widerspiel meiner poetischen Sinnes- und Darstellungsweise, und eben jene geregelte Behandlungsart, die man sittlichen Gegenständen nicht angemessen finden wollte, machte mich zu seinem leidenschaftlichen Schüler, zu seinem entschiedensten Verehrer.«].

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came to a sharp break on this score with many of the friends of his youth, with men like Lavater or Fritz Jacobi. In 1786 Fritz Jacobi made one last attempt: he sent Goethe his newly-published book »Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung«. In acknowledging it Goethe did not conceal his dislike of anything dogmatic. »Your little book,« he wrote, »I have read with interest but not with pleasure. […] You have much to envy! – house, land and Pempelfort, wealth and children, sisters and friends […] But God has punished you with metaphysics and set a thorn in your flesh, while he has blessed me with physics, that I may rejoice in the contemplation of his works, of which he has given me only a few for my own.«32 This was always Goethe’s attitude. He had no desire to lay bare the secret of life; he rejoiced in life’s infinitely | rich surface. It was enough for him to describe life in symbols. The original plant became one more such symbol for him. »The True, which is one with the Divine,« writes Goethe in his »Versuch einer Witterungslehre«, »never permits itself to be known directly; we look upon it only in reflection, in example, symbol, in particular and related appearances; we become aware of it as incomprehensible life and still cannot renounce the desire to comprehend it.«33 Here is a point on which there was no conflict between the views of Goethe and Kant. What Kant aimed to set forth in the »Critique of Pure Reason« was the limits of pure reason. He had to solve this problem by logical means. He spoke as an epistemologist, limiting knowledge to its own domain, to the field of possible experience and to the principles of morality. All this Goethe could accept without reservation. He declared to Eckermann that of all thinkers Kant had incontestably been of greatest use, since he laid down the limits which the human mind is capable of attaining, and did not touch on insoluble prob32 Idem, Letter to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, May 5, 1786, in: Werke, Sect. 4, Vol. VII, pp. 212–214 [»Dein Büchlein habe ich mit Anteil gelesen, nicht mit Freude. […] An dir ist überhaupt vieles zu beneiden! Haus, Hof und Pempelfort, Reichthum und Kinder, Schwestern und Freunde […] Dagegen hat dich aber auch Gott mit der Metaphisick gestraft und dir einen Pfal ins Fleisch gesezt, mich dagegen mit der Phisick geseegnet, damit mir es im Anschauen seiner Wercke wohl werde, deren er mir nur wenige zu eigen hat geben wollen.«]. Jacobi’s estate was at Pempelfort, near Düsseldorf. 33 Idem, Versuch einer Witterungslehre. 1825, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. XII, pp. 74–124: p. 74 [»Das Wahre, mit dem Göttlichen identisch, läßt sich niemals von uns direct erkennen, wir schauen es nur im Abglanz, im Beispiel, Symbol, in einzelnen und verwandten Erscheinungen; wir werden es gewahr als unbegreifliches Leben und können dem Wunsch nicht entsagen, es dennoch zu begreifen.«].

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lems.34 The same sense of human limitation was strong in Goethe; but he felt and spoke as an artist. He composed that magnificent ode to which he gave the title »Gränzen der Menschheit«: » Denn mit Göttern Soll sich nicht messen Irgend ein Mensch. Hebt er sich aufwärts, Und berührt Mit dem Scheitel die Sterne, Nirgends haften dann Die unsichern Sohlen, | Und mit ihm spielen Wolken und Winde. […] Was unterscheidet Götter von Menschen? Daß viele Wellen Vor jenen wandeln, Ein ewiger Strom: Uns hebt die Welle, Verschlingt die Welle, Und wir versinken.«35 This is Goethe’s sense of humility and limitation. But it never led him to become a pessimist. For the insight into the finitude of human existence is not identical with the idea of the nothingness of that existence. Similarly Kant, the critic of pure reason, never became a sceptic. »The first step in matters of pure reason,« says Kant, »which marks its childhood, is dogmatic. The […] second step is sceptical and gives evidence of the caution of a judgment grown | shrewd through experience. But a third step is still necessary, which belongs only to the matured and manly judgment founded on firm maxims whose universality is assured […] through it not merely temporary checks, but the 34 Idem to Johann Peter Eckermann, September 1, 1829, in: Goethes Gespräche, Vol. IV, pp. 163 f.: p. 163. 35 »For against Gods / Let no man ever / Measure himself. / If he exalts himself / And if he touches / Stars with his head-top, / Nowhere, then, can he find / A secure footing, / And clouds and wind / Make easy sport of him. […] / What, then, distinguishes / Gods from all humans? / That waves innumerable / Before them billow / A stream eternal. / We are raised by the wave, / Overcome by the wave, / And sink beneath it.« Idem, Gränzen der Menschheit, in: Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. II, pp. 81 f.

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very limits of reason, ignorance not merely about one point or another, but in respect of all possible questions of a certain kind, is not only assumed but proved from first principles.«36 Such a »matured and manly judgment« Goethe possessed, especially in old age. »Our opinion,« he said in an essay on geology, »is that it well becomes man to assume that there is something unknowable, but that he does not have to set any limit to his inquiry […]«37 According to Goethe, the greatest happiness of the thinker is to have inquired into what can be known and to revere in silence what cannot be known.38 Kant thought and felt likewise. For him the key to the supersensible, to the »intelligible« world lay not in the theoretical but in the practical reason. But even of the categorical imperative he said that, while we do not comprehend its practical and unconditioned necessity, »[…] we comprehend its incomprehensibility, which is all that can fairly be asked of a philosophy which seeks to extend its principles to the limits of human reason.«39 In this conclusion Goethe and Kant could agree, despite all the difference and contrast between their natures. What makes the insight into this connection difficult for us is the fact that we are here still inclined to think in certain traditional and conventional terms. We see in Kant the culmination of abstract theoretical reflection, while in Goethe we see, to use Schiller’s term, the type of the »naive« poet and artist. But this formal contrast does not | suffice here. Certainly as an artist Goethe was »naive«. He says in »Dichtung und Wahrheit« that he had 36 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft p. 514 (B 789) [»Der erste Schritt in Sachen der reinen Vernunft, der das Kindesalter derselben auszeichnet, ist dogmatisch. Der […] zweite Schritt ist skeptisch, und zeugt von Vorsichtigkeit der durch Erfahrung gewitzigten Urteilskraft. Nun ist aber noch ein dritter Schritt nötig, der nur der gereiften und männlichen Urteilskraft zukommt, welche feste und ihrer Allgemeinheit nach bewährte Maximen zum Grunde hat […] wodurch nicht bloß Schranken, sondern die bestimmten Grenzen derselben, nicht bloß Unwissenheit an einem oder anderen Teil, sondern in Ansehung aller möglichen Fragen von einer gewissen Art und zwar nicht etwa nur vermutet, sondern aus Prinzipien bewiesen wird.«]. 37 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Karl Wilhelm Nose, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. IX, pp. 183–195: p. 195 [»Unsere Meinung ist: daß es dem Menschen gar wohl gezieme ein Unerforschliches anzunehmen, daß er dagegen aber seinem Forschen keine Gränze zu setzen habe […]«]. 38 Idem, Maximen und Reflexionen (No. 1207), p. 250. 39 Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, in: Werke, Vol. IV, pp. 241–324: p. 324 (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 463) [»[…] wir begreifen aber doch seine Unbegreiflichkeit, welches alles ist, was billigermaßen von einer Philosophie, die bis zur Grenze der menschlichen Vernunft in Prinzipien strebt, gefodert werden kann.«].

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had to accustom himself from youth on to understand his poetry as a »pure gift of nature.«40 This gift of nature he could not command at will; he had to allow it free rein. He could not follow the advice of the Theater Director in »Faust«: »Gebt ihr euch einmal für Poeten, / so commandirt die Poesie.«41 When he tried to he usually failed. But in this sense Goethe the scientist was not »naive«. To be sure, even as scientific inquirer he remained always the intuitive thinker. When the botanist Link tried to illustrate Goethe’s theory of the metamorphosis of plants by means of an abstract mechanical model, he vigorously objected. »[In such] efforts,« he declared, »only the last formless sublimated abstraction is left, and the subtlest organic life is joined to the completely formless and bloodless universal phenomena of nature.«42 For everything formless and without figure Goethe felt an inner aversion. The eye – as he said of himself – was the organ through which he possessed the world. Like the warder Lynkeus in »Faust«, he was »Zum Sehen geboren, / Zum Schauen bestellt.«43 Wherever he could no longer look and see, he could no longer comprehend and understand. It was this which always kept him away from mathematics – especially from the modern form of analysis discovered by Leibniz and Newton.44 »[…] no one can be more afraid of numbers than I,« Goethe once wrote to Zelter about a plan to substitute a numerical notation for the notes of music, »and I have always avoided and fled from any form of numerical symbolism […] as something formless and | depressing.«45 »Numbers, like our poor words,« he said another time in a conversation with Riemer, »are only attempts to seize and 40 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit. Vierter Theil (Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. XXVIII), S. 14: »ganz als Natur zu betrachten«.] 41 »If you claim to be a poet, let poems appear at your command.« Idem, Faust. Eine Tragödie. Erster Theil, S. 15. 42 Idem, Wirkung dieser Schrift und weitere Entfaltung der darin vorgetragenen Idee. 1830, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. VI, pp. 246–278: p. 262 [»[…] Bemühungen […] nur die letzte, bildlose, sublimirte Abstraction angeführt und das höchst organische Leben den völlig form- und körperlosen allgemeinsten Naturerscheinungen zugesellt wird.«]. 43 »Born to see, appointed to look.« Faust. Eine Tragödie. Zweiter Theil (Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. XV/1), p. 302. 44 See on this point my article »Goethe und die mathematische Physik. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Betrachtung«, in: Idee und Gestalt. Goethe – Schiller – Hölderlin – Kleist, Berlin 21924, pp. 33–80 [ECW 9, S. 268–315]. 45 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letter to Friedrich Karl Zelter, December 12, 1812, in: Werke, Sect. 4, Vol. XXIII, pp. 197–200: p. 197 [»[…] kann niemand zahlenscheuer seyn als ich, und ich habe von jeher alle Zahlensymbolik […] als etwas Gestaltloses und Untröstliches gemieden und geflohn.«].

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express phenomena, approaches forever inadequate.«46 In this sense Goethe understood and conceived his theory of color. In it he aimed, as he wrote Schiller, to include nothing but the world of the eye, which contains only form and color. Thus »[…] all reasoning is transformed into a kind of representation.«47 But if Goethe opposed mere reasoning, he by no means opposed theory. »The highest wisdom,« he says, »would be to understand that every fact is already theory.«48 Goethe recognized no sharp boundary between intuition and theory; for such a boundary would have contradicted his own experience as scientific investigator. For him the two realms were not separated. The Foreword to the »Theory of Color« already expresses this idea. »Merely looking at a thing,« says Goethe here, »can tell us nothing. Each look leads to an inspection, each inspection to a reflection, each reflection to a synthesis; and hence we can say that in every attentive glance at the world we are already theorizing.«49 This is not »naive« at all; it rather expresses the clearest insight of Goethe the scientist into the mutual relations of phenomena and theory, of »idea« and »experience«. »Time is ruled by the swings of the pendulum, the moral and scientific world by the oscillation between idea and experience.«50 By virtue of this attitude Goethe opposed what he called »formless […] abstraction«; but to the spirit of analysis as he found it at its keenest and highest power in Kant’s | »Critique« he had no need to object. »We may each of us […] say,« he wrote in his remarks on that noteworthy session of the Paris Academy of 1830, in which the controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire broke out, »that analysis and synthesis are two inseparable acts of living. […] the more vigorously these functions of the mind cooperate, 46 Idem to Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer, March 27, 1814, in: Goethes Gespräche, Vol. II, p. 223 [»Die Zahlen sind, wie unsere armen Worte, nur Versuche, die Erscheinungen zu fassen und auszudrücken, ewig unzureichende Annäherungen.«]. 47 Idem, Letter to Friedrich Schiller, November 15, 1796, in: Werke, Sect. 4, Vol. XI, pp. 262–264: p. 264 [»[…] alles Raisonnement verwandelt sich in eine Art von Darstellung.«]. 48 Idem, Maximen und Reflexionen (No. 575), p. 125 [»Das Höchste wäre: zu begreifen, daß alles Factische schon Theorie ist.«]. 49 Idem, Zur Farbenlehre (Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. I), p. XII [»Denn das bloße Anblicken einer Sache kann uns nicht fördern. Jedes Ansehen geht über in ein Betrachten, jedes Betrachten in ein Sinnen, jedes Sinnen in ein Verknüpfen, und so kann man sagen, daß wir schon bei jedem aufmerksamen Blick in die Welt theoretisiren.«]. 50 Idem, Aphoristisches, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. VI, pp. 345–361: p. 354 [»Durch die Pendelschläge wird die Zeit, durch die Wechselbewegung von Idee zu Erfahrung die sittliche und wissenschaftliche Welt regiert.«].

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like inhaling and exhaling, the better will science and its friends be taken care of.«51 Kant as critic of reason investigated the logical form, the principles of empirical knowledge; Goethe, as artist and as scientist, spoke of »ultimate phenomena« (Urphänomenen). In these ultimate phenomena he found the limit – a limit not only to thought, but also to vision. He asked the scientist not to transcend this limit – »to allow the ultimate phenomena to remain in their eternal peace and splendor.«52 »If the physicist can arrive at the knowledge of what we have called an ultimate phenomenon,« says Goethe in the »Farbenlehre«,53 »he is secure, and the philosopher with him. The scientist, for he is convinced that he has arrived at the limits of his science, that he is on that empirical height from which, looking backward, he can survey experience in all its stages, and looking forward, see into the realm of theory, even if he cannot enter it. The philosopher is secure; for he takes from the hand of the physicist an ultimate datum which becomes his starting point.« That this implies a certain renunciation, Goethe is clear. But this renunciation did not deter him. He saw in it a necessary theoretical demand, as he recognized it in practice as a moral command. »When I finally rest in the ultimate phenomenon,« he says, »it is but resignation; but it makes a great difference whether I am resigned at the | limits of man’s reason, or within a hypothetical limitation of my restricted individuality.«54 Goethe’s view of art was not the same as Kant’s, although he here felt himself very close to the Kantian theory, as Schiller mediated and interpreted it for him. But here too he sought far more for unity, while 51 Idem, Principes de philosophie zoologique, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. VII, pp. 165–214: p. 188 [»Möge doch jeder von uns […] sagen, daß Sondern und Verknüpfen zwei unzertrennliche Lebensacte sind. […] je lebendiger diese Functionen des Geistes, wie Aus- und Einathmen, sich zusammen verhalten, desto besser wird für die Wissenschaften und ihre Freunde gesorgt sein.«]. 52 Idem, Zur Farbenlehre, p. 73 [»lasse die Urphänomene in ihrer ewigen Ruhe und Herrlichkeit dastehen«]. 53 Ibid., p. 287 [»Kann dagegen der Physiker zur Erkenntniß desjenigen gelangen, was wir ein Urphänomen genannt haben; so ist er geborgen und der Philosoph mit ihm; Er, denn er überzeugt sich, daß er an die Gränze seiner Wissenschaft gelangt sei, daß er sich auf der empirischen Höhe befinde, wo er rückwärts die Erfahrung in allen ihren Stufen überschauen, und vorwärts in das Reich der Theorie, wo nicht eintreten, doch einblicken könne. Der Philosoph ist geborgen: denn er nimmt aus des Physikers Hand ein Letztes, das bei ihm nun ein Erstes wird.«]. 54 Idem, Maximen und Reflexionen (No. 577), p. 125 [»Wenn ich mich bei’m Urphänomen zuletzt beruhige, so ist es doch auch nur Resignation; aber es bleibt ein großer Unterschied, ob ich mich an den Gränzen der Menschheit resignire oder innerhalb einer hypothetischen Beschränktheit meines bornirten Individuums.«].

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Kant was seeking for difference. Goethe was certain that the power of thinking like that of poetry is innate. And even in scientific inquiry he emphasized the necessity of imagination no less than that of analytic understanding. »At bottom […] a truly great scientist is quite unthinkable without this high power,« said Goethe to Eckermann.55 » Wird der Poet nur geboren? Der Philosoph wird’s nicht minder, Alle Wahrheit zuletzt wird nur gebildet, geschaut.« This distich in the »Xenien« of Goethe and Schiller is entitled »Wissenschaftliches Genie«.56 Here Goethe was departing from Kant’s theory. For Kant had restricted genius to art, denying it to science. For Kant science has other sources; it rests on experience, observation, mathematical deduction, not upon intuition. Genius is the talent (a natural endowment) which prescribes rules to art. It cannot be learned, nor is it teachable. In contrast, every scientific proposition must have its fixed place in a definite system; it must be objectively grounded and demonstrable. This requirement marks science off from art. »In science the greatest discoverer is distinguished from the laborious imitator and disciple only in degree, while he is set off in kind from the man whom nature has endowed for fine | art.«57 For Kant there are a priori principles of taste, as there are a priori principles of theoretical knowledge. Nevertheless nature and art, truth and beauty, remain divorced; they cannot be reduced to one and the same denominator. For Goethe, on the other hand, there is no sharp division between the two domains. His motto remains the words of Shaftesbury: »all Beauty is Truth.«58 For him the beautiful is »[…] a manifestation of secret natural laws, which without its appearance would have remained

55 Idem to Johann Peter Eckermann, January 27, 1830, in: Goethes Gespräche, Vol. IV, pp. 196 f.: p. 197 [»Im Grunde […] ist ohne diese hohe Gabe ein wirklich großer Naturforscher gar nicht zu denken.«]. 56 Idem, Wissenschaftliches Genie, in: Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. V/1, p. 213. »Is none but the poet born? The same applies to the thinker. / All truth, in the end, is merely molded, beheld.« 57 Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (§ 47), p. 384 (Akad.-Ausg. V, 308) [»Im Wissenschaftlichen also ist der größte Erfinder vom mühseligsten Nachahmer und Lehrlinge nur dem Grade nach, dagegen von dem, welchen die Natur für die schöne Kunst begabt hat, spezifisch unterschieden.«]. 58 [Anthony Ashley Cooper, III. Earl of Shaftesbury, Sensus communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, in: Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Bd. I, 2., korr. Aufl, o. O. 1714, S. 57–150: S. 142.]

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forever hidden from our view.«59 Laws of nature and laws of beauty cannot be set off from each other in their origin or their meaning. The transition from the consideration of nature to the consideration of art is accomplished almost insensibly in Goethe’s mind. He constantly alternates between the two and finds satisfaction only in this alternation. For the interpretation of nature of which Bacon had spoken must for him be always at once both theoretical and aesthetic. »He for whom nature begins to reveal her open secret,« he says, »feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.«60 Kant’s position in the intellectual history of the eighteenth century forms a difficult and complicated problem. The influences he received and those which extended from him have been as yet by no means completely investigated and comprehensively set forth. We are accustomed to picture Kant as the lonely thinker, the philosophical investigator, who, immersed and entangled in his own problems, paid little attention to the outside world and the events of his time. But this traditional picture is by no means accurate; on essential points it stands in need of amplification | and correction. What passionate interest Kant took in the events of the French Revolution we know from the reports of his contemporaries. The deep influence Rousseau exerted on his intellectual development our preceding study has attempted to illuminate. It is true that Kant’s outer life was that of the closet scholar, that he never left the walls of his native city. But that by no means prevented him from following the intellectual movements of his time with sharp eyes. None of them seem to have lain wholly outside the sphere of his vision. Herder, who during the sixties was Kant’s pupil in Königsberg, has drawn for us a living and characteristic picture of his philosophical teaching at that time. From it we see that this teaching was by no means restricted to abstract problems, to questions of logic and metaphysics. It extended just as much to the fundamental questions of natural science, to psychology and anthropology, and it made full use of contemporary literature.61 To be sure, this interest was essentially restricted to Kant’s pre59 Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen (No. 183), p. 32 [»[…] eine Manifestation geheimer Naturgesetze, die uns ohne dessen Erscheinung ewig wären verborgen geblieben.«]. 60 Ibid. (No. 201), p. 35 [»Wem die Natur ihr offenbares Geheimniß zu enthüllen anfängt, der empfindet eine unwiderstehliche Sehnsucht nach ihrer würdigsten Auslegerin, der Kunst.«]. 61 See Johann Gottfried Herder, Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (Letter 79) (Sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Bernhard Suphan, Vol. XVII), Berlin 1881, pp. 402–408.

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critical period. In the most productive period of his life, in the twelve years of preparation for his »Critique of Pure Reason«, it slowly ebbed away. Kant’s acquaintance with the German literature of the eighteenth century stopped with Wieland. He seems to have known Goethe only as the author of »Werther«. But in that first period, which was just as much a period of receptivity as of productivity, and in which the two powers still preserved a balance, Kant received many stimuli which continued to act and which did not become philosophically fruitful in him until much later. The English literature on the idea of genius he followed and studied closely. In Germany Lessing had been the first to take up the fight against the younger generation, against the literary representatives of the ideals of the »period of genius«. »We have now even a | race of critics,« writes Lessing in the »Literaturbriefe«, with an allusion to Gerstenberg, »whose best criticism consists in rendering all criticism suspect. Genius! Genius! they cry. Genius transcends all rules! […] ›Rules suppress genius.‹ As though genius could be suppressed by anything in the world – and besides, by something which, as they themselves confess, is derived from it. […] Genius bears in itself the touchstone of all the rules. It understands and follows only those which express its own feelings in words. And this feeling expressed in words, we are told, can diminish its activity!«62 What Lessing here expresses in the form of an aperçu Kant brought into rigorously systematic form in the »Critique of Judgment«, and sought to demonstrate through an analysis of the judgment of taste and its meaning and validity. For him too »fine art« is the art of genius. But genius is by no means without rules or restraint in the sense of the Sto rm an d S t r es s er s . It is rather the origin and source of all genuine rules; it is »[…] the talent or the innate disposition (ingenium) through which nature gives rules to art.«63 In this definition of Kant’s 62 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Briefe, die neueste Litteratur betreffend (Pt. I, Letter 19), in: Sämtliche Schriften, ed. by Karl Lachmann, 3rd ed., newly rev. and augm. by Franz Muncker, 23 vols., Leipzig/Stuttgart/Berlin 1886 ff., Vol. VIII, pp. 1–285: pp. 48–53 [Zitat: ders., Hamburgische Dramaturgie (96. Stück), in: Sämtliche Schriften, Bd. X, S. 1–221: S. 190: »Wir haben […] itzt ein Geschlecht selbst von Critikern, deren beste Critik darinn besteht, – alle Critik verdächtig zu machen. ›Genie! Genie! schreien sie. Das Genie setzt sich über alle Regeln hinweg! […] ›die Regeln unterdrücken das Genie!‹ – Als ob sich Genie durch etwas in der Welt unterdrücken liesse! Und noch dazu durch etwas, das, wie sie selbst gestehen, aus ihm hergeleitet ist. […] Es hat die Probe aller Regeln in sich. Es begreift […] und befolgt nur die, die ihm seine Empfindung in Worten ausdrücken. Und diese seine in Worten ausgedrückte Empfindung sollte seine Thätigkeit verringern können?«]. 63 Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (§ 46), p. 382 (Akad.-Ausg. V, 307) [»[…] die angeborne Gemütsanlage (ingenium), durch welche die Natur der Kunst die Regel gibt.«].

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Goethe saw a significant change not only in the history of philosophy, but also in the general history of ideas. In »Dichtung und Wahrheit« Goethe aimed not only to describe his own life and to make clear for himself and others his own poetic development. He aimed to give at the same time a history of the entire intellectual and artistic culture of his time. In this history he attributed to Kant a significant, indeed a crucial position. He sees in his ideas the critical solution of the old conflict between »genius« and »rules«, which had dominated the whole poetics of the eighteenth century and left its stamp upon it. »[…] the word genius,« Goethe says of | his own youth, speaking of the period of Sto rm an d S t r es s , »became a universal watchword […] It was long before the time when it could be said that genius is that power of man which gives laws and rules through acting and doing. In those days it manifested itself only when it broke existing laws, overthrew established rules, and declared itself untrammeled. […] And so I found an almost greater obstacle to developing and expressing myself in the false cooperation of those who agreed with me than in the opposition of those who disagreed. […] the word genius was exposed to such misinterpretation that men thought it necessary to ban it completely from the German tongue. And thus the Germans, with whom what is base finds in general far more opportunity to spread than with other nations, would have lost the finest flower of speech, the word which only seems foreign, but really belongs to all peoples alike, if the sense for the highest and best, newly reestablished by a more profound philosophy, had not fortunately been restored again.«64 This is perhaps the finest appreciation of Kant’s critical philosophy to be found in Goethe’s works. It is all the more significant, in that 64 Goethe, Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit. Vierter Theil (Bk. 19), pp. 146–148 [»[…] das Wort Genie ward eine allgemeine Losung […] Es war noch lange hin bis zu der Zeit wo ausgesprochen werden konnte: daß Genie diejenige Kraft des Menschen sei, welche, durch Handeln und Thun, Gesetz und Regel gibt. Damals manifestirte sich’s nur indem es die vorhandenen Gesetze überschritt, die eingeführten Regeln umwarf und sich für gränzenlos erklärte. […] Und so fand ich mich fast mehr gehindert mich zu entwickeln und zu äußern, durch falsche Mit- und Einwirkung der Sinnesverwandten, als durch den Widerstand der Entgegengesinnten. […] und das Wort Genie eine solche Mißdeutung erlitt, aus der man die Nothwendigkeit ableiten wollte, es gänzlich aus der deutschen Sprache zu verbannen. Und so hätten sich die Deutschen, bei denen überhaupt das Gemeine weit mehr überhand zu nehmen Gelegenheit findet als bei andern Nationen, um die schönste Blüthe der Sprache, um das nur scheinbar fremde, aber allen Völkern gleich angehörige Wort vielleicht gebracht, wenn nicht der, durch eine tiefere Philosophie wieder neugegründete Sinn für’s Höchste und Beste, sich wieder glücklich hergestellt hätte.«].

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the Kantian philosophy was able to offer him personally far less than it had given Schiller. For Schiller it had been the study of the Kantian philosophy that brought to a close the tumult of his youth. Only through this study was he able to overcome the period of S tor m a nd Stress – to develop from the poet of »Die Räuber« and »Don Carlos« into the poet of »Wallenstein«. Kant’s theory became for him a great disciplining force. It gave him intellectual security and moral maturity. In Goethe’s life neither Kant’s philosophy nor any other played such a role. He was always dependent upon his natural poetic powers; they early filled and formed his existence. »[…] I had | rescued myself,« he writes in »Dichtung und Wahrheit«, of the first version of »Werther«, »more by this composition than by any other, from a stormy element which had tossed me forcibly to and fro, through my own fault and that of others, through accident and choice, through intention and haste, through stiff-neckedness and weakness. I felt as after a general confession, happy and free again, and entitled to a new life.«65 It was the will to form, and the power of poetic form, which from the beginning distinguished Goethe from his youthful companions, from poets like Lenz or Bürger. What he had found in his own poetry he later sought in the works of nature and in the works of the ancients. They stood for him on the same level; for he found in them the same inviolable consistency and necessity. »The consistency of nature,« he once wrote, »well consoles us for the inconsistency of men.«66 The same impression he derived from that vision of antiquity he had found in Italy. »These noble works of art,« he says, »were produced by men as at the same time the highest works of nature, in accordance with true and natural laws; everything that is arbitrary and conceited falls away; there is necessity, there is God.«67 65 Idem, Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit. Dritter Theil (Bk. 13) p. 225 [»[…] ich hatte mich durch diese Composition mehr, als durch jede andere, aus einem stürmischen Elemente gerettet, aus dem ich durch eigene und fremde Schuld, durch zufällige und gewählte Lebensweise, durch Vorsatz und Übereilung, durch Hartnäckigkeit und Nachgeben, auf die gewaltsamste Art hin und wieder getrieben worden. Ich fühlte mich, wie nach einer Generalbeichte, wieder froh und frei, und zu einem neuen Leben berechtigt.«]. 66 Idem, Letter to Karl Ludwig von Knebel, April 2, 1785, in: Werke, Sect. 4, Vol. VII, pp. 36 f.: p. 36 [»Die Consequenz der Natur tröstet schön über die Inconsequenz der Menschen.«]. 67 Idem, Italiänische Reise. III (Second stay in Rome, September 6, 1787) (Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. XXXII), pp. 77 f. [»Diese hohen Kunstwerke sind zugleich als die höchsten Naturwerke von Menschen nach wahren und natürlichen Gesetzen hervorgebracht worden. Alles Willkürliche, Eingebildete fällt zusammen, da ist die Nothwendigkeit, da ist Gott.«].

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When Goethe returned from Italy, when he again entered the sphere of his earlier life and work, he found even with his closest friends but little understanding and sympathy for all he had worked out for himself. He stood almost alone; he felt himself isolated and misunderstood. »From the forms of Italy,« he says, »I had returned to formless Germany, exchanging a bright sky for a gloomy one; my friends, instead of consoling me and drawing | me to them again, brought me to desperation. My delight in the most distant and little known objects, my passion, my laments over what I had lost seemed to insult them, I met with no sympathy, no one understood my language.«68 In this mood Schiller must have seemed to him to stand at the very antipodes. He found in him the representative of everything he had abandoned and thought he had overcome in himself. He saw in Schiller »a powerful but immature talent,« who »had poured out upon Germany in rapturous streams« precisely »those ethical and theatrical paradoxes« from which Goethe had sought to purify himself.69 It was many years before Goethe could master this feeling. All Schiller’s wooing of his friendship he rejected coldly and harshly. Then suddenly came the reaction. The day arrived on which he no longer saw in Schiller the antagonist but the ally. Here too the Kantian philosophy played a noteworthy if only a mediate role. The »Kantian« Schiller, the author of the »Ästhetische Briefe«, Goethe could understand and respect. For here he found his own experience confirmed in a quite different medium. Goethe’s classicism rested upon his idea of »inner form«. This form he found in the works of the ancients, whom he saw in the light of Winckelmann’s artistic views. It was for him the expression of an objective necessity. »There is nothing beautiful in nature,« he says, »which is not motivated as true by natural laws.«70 Schiller’s path was different. He developed his aesthetic theory out 68 Idem, Verfolg, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. VI, pp. 129–245: p. 132 [Zitat S. 131: »Aus Italien dem formreichen war ich in das gestaltlose Deutschland zurückgewiesen, heiteren Himmel mit einem düsteren zu vertauschen; die Freunde, statt mich zu trösten und wieder an sich zu ziehen, brachten mich zur Verzweiflung. Mein Entzücken über entfernteste, kaum bekannte Gegenstände, mein Leiden, meine Klagen über das Verlorne schien sie zu beleidigen, ich vermißte jede Theilnahme, niemand verstand meine Sprache.«]. 69 See on this point the essay »Glückliches Ereigniß«, p. 14 [»[…] weil ein kraftvolles, aber unreifes Talent gerade die ethischen und theatralischen Paradoxen, von denen ich mich zu reinigen gestrebt, recht im vollen hinreißenden Strome über das Vaterland ausgegossen hatte.«]. 70 Idem to Johann Peter Eckermann, June 5, 1826, in: Goethes Gespräche, Vol. III, pp. 272–274: p. 273 [»Es ist in der Natur nichts schön, was nicht naturgesetzlich als wahr motiviert wäre.«].

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of the Kantian concept of freedom: beauty meant for him »freedom in appearances.«71 But Goethe and Schiller could agree completely in the conclusion: since | for neither did »freedom« and »necessity« mean mutually exclusive opposites. They found between the two ideas a relation of correlation, not of opposition. This correlation Kant had revealed in the moral realm, explaining that ethical freedom is identical with »autonomy«, with self-imposed law. The classicism of Goethe and Schiller carried this view into art: it was rooted in the principle that only law can give us freedom. Here for both the circle of the »subjective« and the »objective« was closed. »The law appearing in phenomena produces, in the greatest freedom and in accordance with its own conditions, the objectively beautiful, which must indeed find worthy subjects to grasp it.«72 In the recognition of universal and necessary natural laws Kant and Goethe are completely at one. But their ways of establishing and justifying this basic assumption are quite different. Kant follows his logicoanalytic path. He begins with the analysis of the principle of causality, which he has to defend against the Humean doubt. He shows that if we make room for this doubt, experience would be transformed into a mere »rhapsody of perceptions.«73 But experience is in reality something quite different, and far more than that. It is no aggregate of sense impressions, but a system. Such a system must rest on objectively valid and necessary principles. »Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection between perceptions.«74 This construing of the concept of nature follows for Kant from his conception and definition of the understanding. The understanding is for him the »faculty of rules«; | and the empirical rules of nature are only particular instances and applications of the a priori rules of the understanding. In this way the special laws of nature become »speci71 See Schiller’s correspondence with Körner during 1793, Friedrich Schiller, Letter to Christian Gottfried Körner, February 8, 1793, in: Schillers Briefwechsel mit Körner, Vol. II, pp. 10–15: p. 14 [»Freiheit in der Erscheinung«]. 72 Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen (No. 1346), p. 279 [»Das Gesetz, das in die Erscheinung tritt, in der größten Freiheit, nach seinen eigensten Bedingungen, bringt das objectiv Schöne hervor, welches freilich würdige Subjecte finden muß, von denen es aufgefaßt wird.«]. 73 Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können (§ 26), in: Werke, Vol. IV, pp. 1–139: pp. 59 ff. (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 307 ff.) [Zitat: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 152 (B 195): »Rhapsodie von Wahrnehmungen«]. 74 Idem, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 166 (B 218) [»Erfahrung ist nur durch die Vorstellung einer notwendigen Verknüpfung der Wahrnehmungen möglich.«].

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fications of universal laws of the understanding.«75 »We must […] distinguish empirical laws of nature, which always presuppose particular perceptions, from the pure or universal laws of nature, which, without being based on particular perceptions, merely contain the conditions of their necessary union in experience; and in respect of these universal laws nature and possible experience are one and the same […] it sounds indeed strange at first, but it is nonetheless certain, when I […] say: the understanding does not derive its laws (a priori) from nature, but prescribes them to nature.«76 Such an absolutely ruling and legislative understanding Goethe did not recognize. Here too he is unwilling to stop with mere thinking and judging; he is compelled to see. Kant declares that nature is »[…] the existence of things; in so far as it is determined in accordance with universal laws.«77 Goethe cannot stop with such a nature, »natura naturata«; as artist and as scientist he desires to penetrate into »natura naturans«. The idea of metamorphosis becomes his guide in this great process of the inner productivity of nature. Goethe does not think like Kant in terms of mere relations; he can think only in intuitive forms. He begins by immersing himself in the fullness and multiplicity of the plant and animal world. But for him this fullness is not everything. In it he senses something different and more profound. »The particular,« Goethe declares, »can not be the model for the whole […] Classes, genera, species and individuals are related as instances to | a law; they are contained in it, but they do not contain or reveal it.«78 Even if we consider the implications of the form only in general, 75 [A. a. O., S. 138 (B 171): »Vermögen der Regeln«, u. 627 (A 128): »besondere Bestimmungen der reinen Gesetze des Verstandes«.] 76 Idem, Prolegomena (§ 36), p. 72 (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 319) [»Wir müssen […] empirische Gesetze der Natur, die jederzeit besondere Wahrnehmungen voraussetzen, von den reinen oder allgemeinen Naturgesetzen, welche, ohne daß besondere Wahrnehmungen zum Grunde liegen, bloß die Bedingungen ihrer notwendigen Vereinigung in einer Erfahrung enthalten, unterscheiden, und in Ansehung der letztern ist Natur und mögliche Erfahrung ganz und gar einerlei […] so klingt es zwar anfangs befremdlich, ist aber nichtsdestoweniger gewiß, wenn ich […] sage: der Verstand schöpft seine Gesetze (a priori) nicht aus der Natur, sondern schreibt sie dieser vor.«]. 77 Ibid. (§ 14), p. 44 (Akad.-Ausg. IV, 293) [»[…] das Dasein der Dinge, sofern es nach allgemeinen Gesetzen bestimmt ist.«]. 78 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Vorträge, über die drei ersten Capitel des Entwurfs einer allgemeinen Einleitung in die vergleichende Anatomie, ausgehend von der Osteologie. 1796, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. VIII, pp. 61–89: p. 73 [»Das Einzelne kann kein Muster vom Ganzen sein […] Die Classen, Gattungen, Arten und Individuen verhalten sich wie die Fälle zum Gesetz; sie sind darin enthalten, aber sie enthalten und geben es nicht.«].

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we should conclude without closer experience that living creatures very similar to each other must be produced by identical formative principles. While Kant looks for synthetic principles, for the highest principles of human knowledge, Goethe is looking for the productive principles of creative nature. » Freudig war, vor vielen Jahren, Eifrig so der Geist bestrebt, Zu erforschen, zu erfahren, Wie Natur im Schaffen lebt. Und es ist das ewig Eine, Das sich vielfach offenbart; Klein das Große, groß das Kleine, Alles nach der eignen Art. Immer wechselnd, fest sich haltend; Nah und fern und fern und nah; So gestaltend, umgestaltend – Zum Erstaunen bin ich da.«79 Just as Kant aimed to keep human knowledge close to experience and to limit it to the »conditions of possible | experience,«80 Goethe drew the same conclusion for vision and poetry. Here once more he found an unexpected confirmation of his own urge. As poet he had neither the power nor the desire to produce anything that did not arise out of his own experience. Poetic content, he declared, is the content of one’s own life. »In my poetry I have never been untrue to myself,« Goethe said to Eckermann. »What I did not live and what did not urgently demand expression and creation I have never composed or uttered.«81 In this sense there was for Goethe no difference between »poetry« and »truth«; and even the traditional opposition between »idealism« and »realism« he did not recognize as binding. »The spirit of the actual,« 79 Idem, Parabase, in: Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. III, p. 84. »Years ago with joy abounding, / Eagerly the spirit sought / To discover, to experience / Nature living as it wrought. / And it is the One Eternal, / Self-revealing, manifold; / Small is great and great is small, / Each in its distinctive mold. / Ever changing, still remaining, / Near and far, and far and near; / So in forming all transforming – / Thus to wonder am I here.« 80 [Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 142 (B 178): »Bedingungen einer möglichen Erfahrung«.] 81 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Johann Peter Eckermann, March 10, 1830, in: Goethes Gespräche, Vol. IV, pp. 229–236: p. 236 [»Ich habe in meiner Poesie nie affektiert. Was ich nicht lebte und was mir nicht auf die Nägel brannte und zu schaffen machte, habe ich auch nicht gedichtet und ausgesprochen.«].

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he says, »is the true ideal«; and his imagination he declared to be an »imagination for the truth of the real.«82 What we have here is a very strange analogy to Kant’s way of thinking and philosophy. Kant was always the philosopher of the a priori. But for him a priori knowledge disclosed no distinctive and independent realm beyond experience. The a priori is rather a moment in the structure of empirical knowledge itself; it is bound to experience in its significance and use. Goethe felt strongly attracted by this conception of the »ideal«: in his copy of the »Critique of Pure Reason« he underlined twice the passage in which Kant declares that everything the understanding derives from itself without borrowing from experience, it possesses for no other purpose than empirical use.83 The conclusion of Kant’s transcendental analytic can be stated after a fashion in a single proposition. It is the proposition that concepts without content are empty. But | according to Kant our concepts can receive a content only by being related to intuition – pure or empirical intuition. Without this relation we should indeed have forms of thought; but these forms would possess no objective meaning, no empirical value as knowledge. »Intuition and concept thus constitute the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition corresponding in some fashion to them, nor intuition without concepts, can give knowledge.«84 The pure concepts of the understanding are in themselves nothing but logical functions of judgment. If these functions are to pass from mere concepts into knowledge, they must be filled with intuition. »[…] if the concept could be given no corresponding intuition, it would be a notion in its form, but without any object, and through it no knowledge at all of anything whatever would be possible; because […] there would and could be nothing to which my notion could be applied.«85 82 Idem to Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer, 1827, in: Goethes Gespräche, Vol. III, p. 484 [»Der Geist des Wirklichen ist das wahre Ideelle.«], and to Johann Peter Eckermann, December 25, 1825, ibid., pp. 244–247: p. 245 [»Phantasie für die Wahrheit des Realen«]. 83 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 212 (B 295). 84 Ibid., p. 79 (B 74) [»Anschauung und Begriffe machen also die Elemente aller unsrer Erkenntnis aus, so daß weder Begriffe, ohne ihnen auf einige Art korrespondierende Anschauung, noch Anschauung ohne Begriffe ein Erkenntnis abgeben können.«]. 85 Ibid., p. 123 (B 146) [»[…] denn könnte dem Begriffe eine korrespondierende Anschauung gar nicht gegeben werden, so wäre er ein Gedanke der Form nach, aber ohne allen Gegenstand, und durch ihn gar keine Erkenntnis von irgendeinem Dinge möglich; weil es […] nichts gäbe noch geben könnte, worauf mein Gedanke angewandt werden könne.«].

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From the outset Goethe must have felt strongly attracted by this theory. He here stood to Kant in a far freer relation than German academic philosophy. For the latter saw in Kant’s thesis only the negative side, not the positive. To the pupils of Wolff and the adherents of the Wolffian ontology Kant was always the »Alleszermalmer,«86 as Mendelssohn called him. For he had declared that the principles of pure understanding were »mere principles for the exposition of phenomena,« and that therefore the proud name of an ontology which presumed to give in a systematic doctrine synthetic knowledge a priori of things in general, must give place to the modest name of a mere analysis of pure understanding.87 In contrast, Goethe saw in this Kantian critique of academic philosophy not a work of | destruction but a work of liberation. He found here the main tendency of his own »objective thinking«, which aimed not to abandon intuitions but to immerse itself in them.88 And the Kantian modesty was also quite congenial to his thought. He was satisfied with the »colored reflection,«89 and was convinced that in this colored reflection we possess life itself. »We live amidst derivative phenomena,« he says, »and do not know how to arrive at the ultimate question.«90 This negation of »absolute« knowledge meant therefore no loss to him, and it set no determinate limits to his way of inquiry. »Of the Absolute in any theoretical sense,« he declares, »I do not dare to speak; but I may assert that he who has recognized it in the appearance and always kept it in mind will experience great gain from it.«91 Was the idea Goethe formed of the Kantian theory adequate? Can we grant it objective historical truth? This question can hardly be answered with a simple yes or no. I should certainly advise no one to adopt Goethe’s conception and account of the Kantian philosophy 86 [Moses Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Dasein Gottes, in: Schriften zur Philosophie, Aesthetik und Apologetik, mit Einl., Anm. u. einer biographisch-historischen Charakteristik Mendelssohns hrsg. v. Moritz Brasch, Bd. I, Leipzig 1880, S. 289–537: S. 299: »des alles zermalmenden Kant«.] 87 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 217 (B 303) [»bloß Prinzipien der Exposition der Erscheinungen«]. 88 See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Bedeutende Förderniß durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort, in: Werke, Sect. 2, Vol. XI, pp. 58–64: p. 58. 89 [Idem, Faust. Eine Tragödie. Zweiter Theil, S. 7: »farbigen Abglanz«.] 90 Idem, Maximen und Reflexionen (No. 1208), p. 251 [»Wir leben innerhalb der abgeleiteten Erscheinungen und wissen keineswegs, wie wir zur Urfrage kommen sollen.«]. 91 Ibid. (No. 261), p. 47 [»Vom Absoluten in theoretischem Sinne wag’ ich nicht zu reden; behaupten aber darf ich, daß, wer es in der Erscheinung anerkannt und immer im Auge behalten hat, sehr großen Gewinn davon erfahren wird.«].

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in a textbook on the history of philosophy. Goethe himself has told us that when he occasionally became involved in conversation about the Kantian philosophy and advanced his own idea of it, the Kantians present would shake their heads. »It happened more than once that one or another confessed with smiling surprise: it was to be sure an analogue of the Kantian position, but a strange one.«92 More than such an analogue we may not seek in Goethe. He belonged to no philosophical school, and he swore by the words of no master. Here we must think of Goethe’s »Tame Xenion«: | » ›Was willst du daß von deiner Gesinnung Man dir nach in’s Ewige sende?‹ Er gehörte zu keiner Innung, Blieb Liebhaber bis an’s Ende.«93 In philosophy too Goethe remained the amateur. We can call him neither a Kantian nor a Spinozist in the strict sense of the words. But we need not on that account reject the inner truth of either his idea of Kant or his idea of Spinoza. Only we must then understand and define the concept of truth in his own sense. »What is fruitful alone is true,«94 says Goethe. And Spinoza as well as Kant was eminently fruitful in him. Much that Goethe said about Kant is peculiar to himself, yes, unique. But precisely in this individuality it is significant and illuminating. »If I know my relation to myself and to the external world,« says Goethe, »I call that truth. And thus every man can have his own truth, and yet truth is still one.«95 In this sense we can understand and appreciate how the great artists of the classical period formed in their minds different ideas of Kant. In the essay »Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert« – one of the finest characterizations of the eighteenth century – Goethe says that no scholar was able to reject with impunity the great philosophical 92 Idem, Einwirkung der neuern Philosophie, pp. 51 f. [»Mehr als einmal begegnete es mir, daß einer oder der andere mit lächelnder Verwunderung zugestand: es sei freilich ein Analogon Kantischer Vorstellungsart, aber ein seltsames.«]. 93 Idem, Zahme Xenien I, in: Werke, Sect. 1, Vol. III, pp. 229–244: p. 243: »What would’st thou? – that into eternity / Thy disposition one after thee send? / He belonged to no profession / Was an amateur right to the end.« 94 [Ders., Vermächtniß, in: Werke, 1. Abt., Bd. III, S. 82 f.: S. 83: »Was fruchtbar ist, allein ist wahr«.] 95 Idem, Maximen und Reflexionen (No. 198), p. 35 [»Kenne ich mein Verhältniß zu mir selbst und zur Außenwelt, so heiß’ ich’s Wahrheit. Und so kann jeder seine eigene Wahrheit haben, und es ist doch immer dieselbige.«].

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movement begun by Kant, to oppose it, or to despise it.96 This holds not only for the scholars but also for the artists. Very few of them remained wholly untouched by Kantian ideas. But each of them saw Kant in a new and different light and in his own perspective. Profound philosophical ideas | work not only in their own circle. They become sources of intellectual light, which send out their beams in all directions. But what becomes of these beams depends not only on the character of the source of light, but also on the mirror they encounter and by which they are reflected. The manner of this reflection was different for Schiller, for Goethe, for Beethoven. For Schiller the study of the »Critique of Pure Reason« and the »Critique of Aesthetic Judgment« was guiding and crucial. Goethe came to Kant by way of the »Critique of Teleological Judgment«; Beethoven was seized and carried away by the »Critique of Practical Reason«. They all read the same Kant – and yet for each of them he was new and different, because he stimulated and made effective in them different productive forces, forces of an intellectual, moral, and artistic character.

Sources and Literature The quotations from Kant’s writings are taken from my collected edition of »Kants Werke« (11 vols., Bruno Cassirer Verlag, Berlin 1912 ff.). The quotations from Goethe are taken from the great Weimar edition. I have used for the »Gespräche mit Eckermann« the edition of Flodoard Freiherr von Biedermann (5 vols., Leipzig, 1909 ff.). Goethe’s »Maximen und Reflexionen« were edited from the manuscripts of the Goethe und Schiller-Archiv by Max Hecker (Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, Vol. 21, Weimar 1907).

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Bergsons skrift »Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion« hör till de intressantaste, men även till de mest svårtillgängliga verken inom modern religions- och moralfilosofi. Vid en första bekantskap med verket framstå svårigheterna visserligen knappt för läsaren i hela sin räckvidd och i hela sin betydelse. Ty liksom i alla sina tidigare verk, förfogar Bergson även här över en bländande framställningskonst, genom vilken han förlänar även de mest invecklade problem en form, i vilken de förefalla lättillgängliga. Många frågor, med vilka moralfilosofin och religionsfilosofin ständigt kämpat i sin utveckling, få hos honom en ny formulering, som vid första anblicken är av bestickande enkelhet. Bakom denna klara yta stå visserligen många olösta problem och många oklarheter i själva grundbegreppen. Inom ramen för denna uppsats skola vi dock icke ingå på dessa frågor, som blott äro tillgängliga för en systematisk filosofisk analys. (Dessa frågor har jag tidigare ingående behandlat i två uppsatser, vilka under titeln »Henri Bergsons Ethik und Religionsphilosophie« publicerats i tidskriften »Der Morgen«, årg. 9, Berlin 1933.)2 Här skall jag icke söka ge någon kritik av Bergsons grund | tankar; jag vill blott utveckla dem så mycket, att läsaren kan bilda sig en tydlig föreställning om deras egenart och om den ställning, som de intaga i samtidens filosofiska tänkande. Under det att monoteismen höjer sig till tanken på e n Gud, ser den sig därmed ställd inför det svåra problem, som i det religionsfilosofiska språket betecknas såsom det »transcendentas« problem. Gud uppgår icke i världen och är icke identisk med dess tillvaro. Ser man I Gud alltings skapare, är det tydligt, att man icke kan föreställa sig honom enligt samma normer, som tillkomma hans verk. Han är höjd över det skapades värld och strängt avskild från den. Och detta gäller såväl när man betraktar den rena existensordningen som värdeordningen. Även alla värden härstamma till slut från Gud och hans absoluta bud. I denna mening är Gud den gemensamma grunden och därmed den sista och högsta föreningen av natur och sedlighet. Båda ha sitt ursprung i Gud, men båda förbli icke desto mindre till sitt väsen tydligt skilda från varandra. En filosofi som Bergsons kan emellertid icke medgiva [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Judisk Tidskrift 14 (1941), S. 13–18.] [Henri Bergsons Ethik und Religionsphilosophie, in: Der Morgen 9 (1933), S. 20–29 u. 138–151 (ECW 18, S. 229–253).] 1 2

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en dylik åtskillnad mellan existensordning och värdeordning. Ty som metafysiker är Bergson sträng monist. Han känner, liksom Spinoza, blott en verklighet: naturens verklighet. Allt tänkande, som söker sig utöver naturen, förlorar sig enligt honom i det tomma. Naturens värld är den enda som vi äga. Vi behöva icke fråga efter dess härkomst, och vi kunna icke lösa gåtan om dess ursprung. Allt vad tanken kan nå och eftersträva är att fördjupa sig i dess totalitet och tydligt utstaka den väg, på vilken den utvecklar sig. Denna väg har Bergson sökt beskriva i sitt metafysiska huvudarbete »L’evolution créatrice«. Här vill han visa, hur naturens ordning uppstår därigenom att livets ursprungliga kraft och dess skapande impuls träffa på bestämda hämningar, vilka härröra ur »materiens« passiva existens och motstånd. För att övervinna dessa hämningar slår »livssprånget«, »l’élan vital«, in på olika riktningar – och ur dem utvecklas växtvärlden, djurvärlden och slutligen människans värld. Ingen av dessa världar utgör en fullkomlig lösning av problemet; var och en av | dem uppvisar, vid sidan av vissa specifika förtjänster, som vidlåda den, vissa specifika brister. Vi skola här betrakta detta förhållande blott i den mån det beträffar människans värld. Karakteristisk för denna är, enligt Bergson, utvecklingen och den våldsamma stegringen av en enda grundkraft: intellektets kraft (»l’intelligence«). Intellektet är den egentliga skaparen av den mänskliga tillvaron och förblir dess herre. Men det är enligt Bergson ingalunda ett organ för blott och bar kunskap om verkligheten. Det eftersträvar praktiska, icke rent teoretiska mål; handlingen är den krets inom vilken det väsentligen rör sig. I stället för att erkänna tillvaron i dess väsen och betrakta den i dess formers totalitet, i stället för att hänge sig åt livet som sådant och fatta det i ren intuition, måste intellektet snarare bryta sönder livet i stycken för att kunna inverka på dessa stycken var för sig. Så snart naturens skapande liv beröres av intellektet, blir det därför för Bergson en rent mekanisk ordning. Allt vad vi kalla »vetenskap« kvarstår enligt honom till fullo innanför denna mekaniska ordning. Intellektet varseblir aldrig verkligheten, det rena »livssprånget«, »la durée réelle«; det fattar ständigt blott dess »disjecta membra«, dess brottstycken och sönderdelade detaljer. Härav framgår, att då människan anförtror sig åt intellektets och den blotta reflexionens ledning, slår hon därmed in på en väg, som är förbunden med de svåraste faror. Ty i stället för att därigenom förena sig med naturen, söndrar hon sig snarare från den. Medan alla andra väsen känna sig hemma i naturen och omedvetet följa sin ledning, har människan i och med reflexionens första uppvaknande blivit främmande för naturen. Djuret för ett starkt avgränsat liv, som är det föreskrivet genom särdragen i dess organism. Men innanför dessa skrankor, som

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äro satta för djuret, rör det sig med fullkomlig säkerhet. Även på de mest komplicerade och svåra frågor, som omgivningen ställer till det, finner djuret det rätta svaret. Ty det är icke intelligensen, utan instinkten, som ger detta svar, och denna är inom sitt område ofelbar. Det liknar en sömngångare, som utan att koppla in medvetandet går sin väg framåt, utan att vackla. Männi | skan däremot ser sig med den möjlighet att välja, som intellektet skänker henne, störtad i en avgrund av tvivel. Hur skall hon välja, då hon aldrig kan förutse alla omständigheter, och åt vilken ledning skall hon anförtro sig, sedan hon frigjort sig från instinktens naturkraft? I detta tvivlets och osäkerhetens dilemma måste hon som levande väsen tyna bort och gå under, om icke en annan makt skulle träda som räddare till hennes sida. Denna makt är, enligt Bergson, religio n en . Religionen lindrar och besvärjer de faror, för vilka människan utsatt sig därigenom att hon trätt ut ur naturens och instinktens område. Den ger henne vissa svar, som blotta förståndet som sådant icke skulle kunna giva henne. Den försäkrar henne, att hon icke blivit främmande för verkligheten, ulm som tillförne är förbunden, ja identisk, med dess djupaste grundvalar. Detta är den främsta uppgift, som religionen har att fylla. Hon utbildar en rad tröstande föreställningar, som lugna människan över hennes öde. Människan är den enda varelse, som är medveten om sin förgäglighet, sin ändlighet. Hon måste duka under för detta medvetande, om religionen icke kom henne till hjälp. Den tillförsäkrar henne, hennes ändlighet till trots, ett »evigt« liv, den skänker henne tron på odödlighet. Religionens funktion är här, enligt Bergson, besläktad med diktningen; den är an »fonction fabulatrice«, som skapar en värld av rena fantasigestalter. I dessa religionens bilder sveper människan in sig för att därigenom undgå rädslan för det tomma intet, som utan denna hjälp skulle förlama och förinta hennes hela handlingskraft. Men religionens väsentliga uppgift ligger för visso icke på den rena fantasiverksamhetens område, utan den ligger i organisationen av vil je- och gemenskapslivet, som först genom den möjliggöres. Här är det, som religionens mening och dess reglerande kraft framför allt träder i dagen. Den behärskar och genomtränger människans liv in i minsta detalj. Det finns ingen aldrig så ringa handling, i vilken den icke på ett eller annat sätt ingriper som medbestämmande och medverkande. Och härvid är dass främsta verkan av mera negativ än positiv art. När vi betrakta de primitiva religionerna, se vi vilken avgörande roll förbudet spelar i dem. Da äro alla genomsyrade av en mängd s. k. »tabuföreskrifter«, som förbjuda bestämda handlingar eller förrättningar, njutningen av viss föda, bruket av vissa ord, o. s. v. Genom allt detta dagligen och stundligen återkommande hänsynstagande blir människans liv små-

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ningom så insnört, att hon knappast förmår andas under bördan av dessa religiösa band och synes nära att kvävas. Men detta måste tagas med på köpet; ty blott på denna väg har människan över huvud taget kunnat nå fram till medvetandet om, att det finns något sådant som en »social förpliktelse«. Den första religionsformen är intet annat än uttryck för en sådan utifrån pålagd förpliktelse. Den behärskas helt av denna tanke, tanken på »l’obligation naturelle«, som den ständigt skarpare tillspetsar och utpräglar i högsta ensidighet. På denna religionens | första avsats är allting regel, bud, föreskrift. Religionens helighet ligger i att dessa regler äro absolut gällande, att det icke kan göras några undantag från dem. Religionen och den motsvarande moralen omsluter livet som an järnring. För den individuella friheten, för jagets frihet, finns här intet rum; jaget uppgår i gemenskapen och har gentemot den ingen självständig tillvaro och ingen självständig vilja. Men därmed stå vi, enligt Bergson, ännu ingalunda vid slutet, utan först i början av sedlighetens ovh religionens egentliga utveckling. Ty vid sidan av den s tat is k a religionen, som intet annat och intet högre mål känner än b ev ar an d et av en bestående, fastställd ordning, finns det en annan, som snarare tjänar den ständiga för nye l s e n av det sedligt-religiösa livet. Den låter sig icke uttala i en form av fasta dogmatiska trossatser och bestämda, oföränderliga moraliska bud. Ty dess mening ligger snarare i att avkasta alla dessa bojor och i stället för stillaståendet sätta andens fria rörelse. Denna religion är icke en det beståendes och den vilande jämviktens religion. Den är kraftens religion; det är en d y n am is k , icke en statisk religion. Bergsons verk vill visa, att den egentliga meningen i mänsklighetens sedligt-religiösa utveckling ligger i, att dessa båda tendenser, den statiska och den dynamiska, tendensen till bevarande och tendensen till förnyande, äro inbegripna i en ständig kamp med varandra. Men segern kommer slutligen att tillfalla den sistnämnda, den dynamiska religionen. Ty först den innesluter religionens egentliga ande – den ande, som århundraden och årtusenden igenom varit verksam hos alla sant religiösa naturer, hos de stora profeterna och religionsstiftarna. Ingen av dem ville skydda eller försvara det bestående, de ville bryta sönder gamla tavlor för att i deras ställe sätta en annan förkunnelse, som de trodde sig ha mottagit omedalbart av Gud. I detta omedalbara förhållande till Gud sågo de den religiösa frihetens väsen, som de ställde upp mot religionens gamla form, vilken blott var och ville vara ett band. De tänka och tala därför icke i en bestämd mänsklig gemenskaps namn och under trycket av en yttre social förpliktelse. De följa blott det gudomligas rop, som de kän | na inom sig. Och först därmed uppstår den mänskligt rena sedlighet och religion, som, enligt Berg-

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son, icke är identisk med den första formen, med den sociala sedligheten och religionen, utan till sitt djupaste väsen står i motsats till den. »Skillnaden mellan en social moral och en ren mänsklighetsmoral är ingen gradskillnad, utan en artskillnad. Det är den förstnämnda, som vi främst tänka på, när vi se oss stå inför en naturlig förpliktelse. [Men detta är icke allt.] I alla tider ha i historien stora undantagsmänniskor höjt sig, i vilka en annan moral och en annan religion förkroppsligats. Före kristendomens helgon har mänskligheten känt Greklands vise, Israels profeter, buddismens helige och ännu andra. Det är dem man ständigt åberopar sig på, när man talar om den fullkomliga moralen, som man bättre borde kalla den absoluta moralen. [Och här fatta vi genast hela skillnaden.] Den första arten av moral förefaller så mycket renare och mera fullkomlig, ju mera den kan hänföras till opersonliga formen. Den andra måste för att verkligen vara sig själv, förkroppsligas i en privilegierad personlighet, som blir till förebild och exempel. Den första moralen eftersträvar att leda till ett universellt antagande av en lag: den andra kan och vill intet annat vara än efterlevandet av en personlig förebild. Varför ha de heliga i alla tiden funnit efterföljare, som på detta sätt ivrat att leva liksom de – varför ha de stora och ädla andarna ryckt med sig mängden? […] De behöva icke mana, de behöva blott finnas till. Deras blotta existens innebär redan en maning och en väckelse. Ty detta år denna andra morals egentliga väsen. Medan den naturliga sociala förpliktelsen är tryck och påstötning, är den sanna och fullkomliga moralen en kallelse: [D]ans la morale complète et parfaite il y a un appel.«3

3 [Henri Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion, Paris 41932, S. 31 u. 29 f.: »[…] entre une morale sociale et une morale humaine la différence n’est pas de degré, mais de nature. La première est celle à laquelle nous pensons d’ordinaire quand nous nous sentons naturellement obligés. […] De tout temps ont surgi des hommes exceptionnels en lesquels cette morale s’incarnait. Avant les saints du christianisme, l’humanité avait connu les sages de la Grèce, les prophètes d’Israël, les Arahants du bouddhisme et d’autres encore. C’est à eux que l’on s’est toujours reporté pour avoir cette moralité complète, qu’on ferait mieux d’appeler absolue. […] Tandis que la première est d’autant plus pure et plus parfaite qu’elle se ramène mieux à des formules impersonnelles, la seconde, pour être pleinement elle-même, doit s’incarner dans une personnalité privilégiée qui devient un exemple. La généralité de l’une tient à l’universelle acceptation d’une loi, celle de l’autre la commune imitation d’un modèle. Pourquoi les saints ont-ils ainsi des imitateurs, et pourquoi les grands hommes de bien ont-ils entraîné derrière eux des foules? […] Ils n’ont pas besoin d’exhorter; ils n’ont qu’à exister; leur existence est un appel. Car tel est bien le caractère de cette autre morale. Tandis que l’obligation naturelle est pression ou poussée, dans la morale complète et parfaite il y a un appel.«]

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Skillnaden mellan dessa båda former av moral och religion år det egentliga temat för Bergsons verk och här präglas tydligast egenarten i hans tänkande.

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William Stern1 (Gestorben in Durham, North Carolina, am 27. März 1938) Zur Wiederkehr seines Todestages (1941) Der Aufforderung der Herausgeber der »Acta Psychologica«, an William Sterns Todestage seiner und seines wissenschaftlichen Werkes zu gedenken, habe ich mich nicht entziehen wollen. Aber ich komme dieser Aufforderung nur mit einem gewissen Zögern und mit einem inneren Vorbehalt nach. Denn ich bin mir bewußt, daß ich die Aufgabe, die mir hier gestellt wird, als Ganzes kaum zu erfüllen vermag. Freilich haben mich psychologische Probleme von den ersten Anfängen meiner wissenschaftlichen Arbeit an immer wieder beschäftigt, und das Interesse an ihnen mußte wesentlich verstärkt und vertieft werden, seit ich in enger Arbeitsgemeinschaft mit William Stern verbunden war. An seinem Beispiel habe ich zuerst, in unmittelbarer konkreter Anschauung, kennengelernt, was die moderne psychologische Forschung ist und bedeutet. Das Wachsen und Werden seines psychologischen Seminars in Hamburg konnte ich fast von Tag zu Tag verfolgen. Und immer wieder fand sich hierbei Gelegenheit, mit Stern bestimmte psychologische Grundprobleme zu erörtern und seinen Rat in vielen Einzelfragen einzuholen. Aber wenn ich hieraus ein gewisses persönliches Recht ableiten kann, über die Psychologie Sterns zu sprechen, so weiß ich doch, daß ich sie ihrem sachlichen Gesamtgehalt nach kaum zu überblicken vermag. Denn Stern gehörte noch zu jener Generation von Psychologen, die sich nicht mit der Lösung von Teilaufgaben begnügen wollten, sondern die die Psychologie als ein einheitliches Ganze sahen. Was er erstrebte, war | nicht nur eine Zusammenfassung der Einzelprobleme, sondern eine wahrhaft universelle und systematische Grundlegung. Erst am Ende seines Lebens, erst in den letzten und schwersten Jahren, scheint er dieses Ziel, das ihm von Anfang an vor Augen stand, wirklich erreicht zu haben. In einer Zeit der drükkendsten persönlichen Sorgen setzte er seine ganze Arbeitskraft und seinen ungebrochenen Arbeitsmut noch einmal an die Erfüllung der Aufgabe, die er sich gestellt hatte. So gelang es ihm drei Jahre vor seinem Tode das Werk zu vollenden, das in gewissem Sinne die Summe aus seiner psychologischen Arbeit zieht.2 Ich kann nicht den Versuch wagen, auf die Einzelheiten dieses Werkes einzugehen, denn hierzu [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Acta Psychologica 5 (1941), S. 1–15.] William Stern, Allgemeine Psychologie auf personalistischer Grundlage, Den Haag 1935. 1 2

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ist nur der psychologische Fachmann berufen. Ich will es statt dessen nur nach seinem allgemeinen philosophischen Gehalt betrachten und mir die Frage stellen, welche methodische Wendung es innerhalb der modernen Psychologie bedeutet. Was Sterns psychologische Arbeit bezeichnet und auszeichnet, ist, daß sie aus einer bestimmten F ra g e stellu n g erwachsen ist, an der sie, von Anfang bis zu Ende, unbeirrt festgehalten hat. Stern hat diese Fragestellung keineswegs als ein starres Schema verstanden, dem er alle Einzelprobleme einzuordnen suchte. Er wollte sie beweglich und bildsam erhalten, da er überzeugt war, daß sie nur auf diese Weise ihr Ziel erreichen und ihre eigentümliche Fruchtbarkeit bewähren könne. Jeder Rückblick auf Sterns psychologisches Gesamtwerk wird, wie mir scheint, an diesem Punkte einsetzen müssen. Wir werden hier weniger nach bestimmten Einzelresultaten als nach der allgemeinen Forschungsrichtung zu fragen haben, die Stern vertreten hat und der er zu ihrem Recht verhelfen wollte: ein Recht, das keineswegs von Anfang an anerkannt war, sondern das gegenüber starken Widerständen erkämpft und durchgesetzt werden mußte. Die Psychologie des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts stand, philosophisch gesehen, im Zeichen des Positivismus. Nur in diesem Zeichen schien sie zur Wissenschaft werden und sich als solche behaupten zu können. Aber der Psychologie fiel hier noch eine ganz besondere Aufgabe zu. Sie hatte einen längeren und beschwerlicheren Weg zu gehen als die meisten anderen | Disziplinen. Denn immer wieder drohte ihr der Rückfall in jenes Vorstadium der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis, das bei Comte als das theologische oder metaphysische Studium bezeichnet wird. Die Psychologie hat die menschliche »Seele« zu ihrem Gegenstand – und schon in dieser B e ne nnung scheint sie wieder bestimmten metaphysischen Vorurteilen zu verfallen. Nirgends haftet die Anschauung des »Animismus« fester als hier. Sollte die Psychologie den Gefahren des Animismus entgehen, so schien daher kein anderer Weg übrigzubleiben, als sie ein für alle Mal von der Vorherrschaft des Seelenbegriffs zu befreien. Sie mußte sich entschließen, zur »Psychologie ohne Seele«3 zu werden, um ihrer Aufgabe gerecht werden zu können. Nach langen und beharrlichen Kämpfen schien dieses Ziel endlich erreicht, schien die Emanzipation der Psychologie von der metaphysischen »Seelensubstanz« gelungen zu sein. Aber dieser Sieg über die Metaphysik mußte mit einem schweren Opfer erkauft wer3 [Friedrich Albert Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Bd. II: Geschichte des Materialismus seit Kant, 2., verb. u. verm. Aufl., Iserlohn 1875, S. 381.]

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den. Indem die Psychologie dem Seelenbegriff entsagte, hatte sie damit auch dem Ichbegriff entsagt. Auch das, was man bisher das »Ich«, was man die »Einheit des Bewußtseins« genannt hatte, war verschwunden. Man mußte sich entweder, im Sinne des strengen Behaviorismus, entschließen, das Ich als einen überflüssigen und irreführenden Begriff aus der Psychologie auszuschalten oder aber ihm einen Sinn geben, der, an Stelle der angeblichen Einheit des Bewußtseins, die Vielheit und Disparatheit seiner Elemente setzte. Die psychologische Analyse schien ihre Aufgabe nicht erfüllt zu haben, solange sie das Ich noch als irgendeine selbständige »Ganzheit« stehenließ, statt es aus seinen einfachen Elementen aufzubauen. Wie dieser Aufbau sich vollzog, läßt sich mit besonderer Prägnanz und Deutlichkeit an einem Werk wie M a c hs »Analyse der Empfindungen« ersehen. Mach geht als Physiker an sein Problem heran, und er will es mit physikalischen Methoden lösen. Als seine eigentliche Grundabsicht bezeichnet er es, den methodologischen Dualismus, der die Wissenschaft bisher beherrscht und der sie in eine »Naturwissenschaft« und »Geisteswissenschaft« gespalten hatte, zu überwinden. »Erst durch abwechselnde Beschäftigung mit Physik und Physiologie der Sinne«, so erklärt er, »sowie durch historisch-physikalische Studien habe ich […] in meinen An | sichten eine grössere Festigkeit erlangt. Ich mache keinen Anspruch auf den Namen eines Philosophen. Ich wünsche nur in der Physik einen Standpunkt einzunehmen, den man nicht sofort verlassen muss, wenn man in das Gebiet einer andern Wissenschaft hinüberblickt, da schliesslich doch alle ein Ganzes bilden sollen.«4 Um diesen Standpunkt festhalten zu können, bleibt Mach nichts anderes übrig, als das »Ich«, ebenso wie jedes physische Ding, in einen Komplex sinnlich-dinglicher Qualitäten aufzulösen. Jeder spezifische Unterschied zwischen diesem Komplex und jenen anderen Komplexen, die wir »physische Körper« nennen, fällt bei dieser Betrachtung weg, wenngleich wir bei der Beschreibung des Ich zu den Qualitäten von Farbe, Ton usf. noch die von Erinnerungsbildern, Spannungsgefühlen usw. hinzunehmen müssen. Man erinnert sich des bekannten Bildes , das Mach in der »Analyse der Empfindungen« von seinem »Ich« gezeichnet hat. »In einem durch den Augenbrauenbogen, die Nase und den Schnurrbart gebildeten Rahmen erscheint ein Theil meines Körpers, so weit er sichtbar ist, und dessen Umgebung. M e i n Leib unterscheidet sich von den andern menschlichen Leibern nebst dem Umstande, dass jede lebhaftere Bewegungsvorstellung sofort 4 Ernst Mach, Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhältniss des Physischen zum Psychischen (= 2., verm. Aufl. der »Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen«), Jena 1900, S. 21 Anm.

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in dessen Bewegung ausbricht, dass dessen Berührung auffallendere Veränderungen bedingt als jene anderer Körper, dadurch dass er nur theilweise und insbesondere ohne Kopf gesehen wird.«5 Eine solche Definition dessen, was »mein« Leib und damit mein »Ich« bedeutet, wird erst verständlich, wenn man sich die Te nde nz vergegenwärtigt, aus der sie stammt. Das Ich sollte aufhören, für die wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis einen »Staat im Staate« zu bilden. Damit dieses Ziel wahrhaft erreicht werden konnte, mußte es zu einem »Ding unter Dingen« gemacht werden, mußte es seine angebliche »Eigenheit« aufgeben und sich nach den allgemeinen, für alle Naturobjekte gültigen Merkmalen bestimmen lassen. An Einschränkungen dieses »Objektivismus« und »Physikalismus« und an Einwänden gegen ihn hat es freilich auch in der älteren Psychologie nicht gefehlt. Aber sie konnten | sich zunächst nur mittelbar und gewissermaßen auf einem Umweg geltend machen. Dem strengen Erkenntnisideal der Naturwissenschaft mochte und durfte man nicht entsagen; man hätte geglaubt, damit auch allen Anspruchs auf wahrhafte Objektivität verlustig zu gehen. Aber wenn in der Lehre vom Sein dieser Anspruch unbedingt galt, so schien doch die Wer tl e hr e einen anderen Maßstab nicht nur zu ermöglichen, sondern auch zu erfordern. Je mehr sich die Psychologie von der bloßen Gegenstandserfahrung wieder der Werterfahrung zuwandte, um so deutlicher wurde es, daß sie damit gewissermaßen in eine neue Problematik vorgestoßen war – in eine Schicht, in der die bisher angewandten Begriffsmittel entweder versagten oder doch einer Ergänzung zu bedürfen schienen. Denn hier erschien das Ich nicht mehr als ein beliebiger In h alt, der mit anderen Wirklichkeitsinhalten auf einer Stufe stand und sich gleich ihnen in die einfachen Elemente der Sinneswahrnehmung auflösen ließ. Man mußte sich entschließen, ihm wieder eine zen trale Stellung einzuräumen; man mußte in ihm, statt eines bloßen Produkts, wieder ein Selbständiges und Ursprüngliches sehen. Innerhalb der Psychologie des 19. Jahrhunderts ist es M üns te r be r g gewesen, der diesen Schritt mit voller Entschiedenheit vollzogen und der ihn mit Nachdruck verteidigt hat. Er lehnt jede Zerlegung des Ich in dasjenige, was uns die objektive Erfahrung als das »Gegebene« und »Vorgefundene« zeigt, mit Entschiedenheit ab. Aus solchen passiven Data läßt sich, nach ihm, das Ich nicht aufbauen; an sein eigentliches Wesen rühren wir erst, wenn wir es nicht als Ding, sondern als Akt, nicht als »Tatsache«, sondern als Tat ha ndl ung erfassen. Damit wird die Rückkehr vom Positivismus zum Idealismus, von Comte zu Fichte 5

A. a. O., S. 12 f.

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verlangt. Münsterberg war überzeugt, daß man nur mit dieser Wendung der Fülle und der echten Wirklichkeit des Seelischen gerecht werden könne. Im wirklichen Leben – so betont er – sind wir kein Empfindungsmosaik und kein »Bündel von Perzeptionen«.6 Unsere Wirklichkeit ist in unseren Willensentscheidungen in Bejahung und Verneinung, in Liebe und Haß, in Übereinstimmung und Gegensatz gegeben. Die Begründung für diese Anschauung hat Münsterberg in seiner »Philosophie der Werte« (1908) zu geben versucht, die ein vollständiges System und eine vollständige Hierarchie der | Werte aufstellen wollte.7 »Im wirklichen Erlebnis kennen wir uns selbst und die andern zunächst nicht als körperlich-seelische Dinge, die in den Naturlauf eingeschlossen sind, sondern als freie Persönlichkeiten, deren Handlung mit selbständiger Entscheidung zugunsten der begehrten Ziele einsetzt. Die Frage des Kausalforschers, was es verursacht, daß wir beim Akt der Wahl grade diesem und nicht jenem Motive nachgeben, kommt garnicht in unsern Gesichtskreis, solange wir nur wirken und nicht erklären wollen […] Das gleiche aber gilt für die Handlung des andren. [I]n dieser freien Betätigung, die zwischen Gegensätzen entscheidet, in dieser selbständigen Zuwendung zu dem Begehrten lebt die Persönlichkeit; im Wechselspiele solcher Persönlichkeiten aber bewegt sich unser wirkliches Dasein. […] An die Stelle von Abstraktionsprodukten, wie das physische Atom und die psychische Empfindung, tritt endlich wieder das wirkliche Leben mit dem Pulsschlag der Individualität. Die Geschichte tritt wieder in ihr Recht. Der wollende Mensch wird zum Ausgangspunkt und der psychophysische Mechanismus verschwindet endlich aus der Metaphysik. Dem Positivismus folgt der Voluntarismus.«8 Aber aus dieser Wendung von Münsterbergs Metaphysik vermag seine P sy ch o lo g ie keinerlei Nutzen zu ziehen. Die Psychologie bleibt nicht nur, was sie ist; sondern sie wird noch weit stärker als zuvor in den Kreis des Naturalismus und Positivismus gebannt. Denn ebendas selbständige, aktive, stellungnehmende Ich, die freie Persönlichkeit, bleibt ihr, nach Münsterbergs Lehre, für immer verschlossen. Es ist ihr unzugänglich – nicht auf Grund einer zufälligen, sondern einer wesentlichen Schranke ihrer Erkenntnismittel. Diese Schranke 6 [David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects (Buch 1, Teil 4, Abschn. 6), hrsg. v. Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge, Oxford 1896, S. 252: »a bundle […] of […] perceptions«.] 7 Hugo Münsterberg, Philosophie der Werte. Grundzüge einer Weltanschauung, Leipzig 1908. 8 A. a. O., S. 21 u. 36.

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wird der Psychologie durch ihre eigene M e thode gesetzt; denn diese Methode ist keine andere als die der objektivierenden Naturerkenntnis, die alles, was sie erfaßt, verräumlichen und verdinglichen muß. Daß die Psychologie an diese Art der Verdinglichung gebunden ist und daß sie von ihr nicht lassen kann, ohne sich damit selbst aufzugeben, | wird von Münsterberg in aller Entschiedenheit und in einer Schroffheit, wie selten zuvor, behauptet. Die Psychologie ist Dingwissenschaft, sie kann nie und nimmer zur »Personen-Wissenschaft« werden. Denn dieses Privileg ist der Metaphysik vorbehalten. Nur die letztere verschafft uns den Zugang zur »eigentlichen« Wirklichkeit; zu jener Wirklichkeit, die sich uns in der Welt der Werte, in der Geschichte, in der Kunst, im sittlichen und religiösen Leben, enthüllt. All dies muß für immer außerhalb des Horizonts der Psychologie bleiben. Sie kann es nicht nur nicht erforschen, sondern sie kann es nicht einmal erblicken, weil ihre Blick r ich t u n g die genau entgegengesetzte, weil sie allein der Sachwelt zugewandt ist. Die Psychologie wird zur Wissenschaft erst dadurch, daß sie sich der Fülle des subjektiven, persönlichen Lebens nicht zuwendet, sondern daß sie sich von ihm abwendet. In diesem »Absehen«, in dieser Abstraktion besteht ihre eigentliche und charakteristische Leistung. Für den Psychologen bleibt daher wahr, ja der Kern aller Wahrheit, was für den Metaphysiker als der Quell aller Täuschung erscheint. Er darf keine selbständigen »Ganzheiten« und keine freien, aktiven Zentren des Wirkens anerkennen. Ihm zerfallen alle derartigen Einheiten und Ganzheiten, in dem Augenblick, wo er sie berührt und wo er sie sub specie seiner Erkenntnismittel betrachtet, in »disjecta membra«. Statt des stellungnehmenden und wertenden Ich behält er nur eine Vielheit gleichartiger und gleich gültiger Elemente in der Hand. Die Psychologie gleicht in Münsterbergs Darstellung dem Haupt der Medusa, das alles, was in seine Nähe gerät, erstarren und versteinern läßt. Aber aus dieser Erstarrung, in der die Psychologie ihr Heil sucht, soll uns die Philosophie wieder erretten. Während die Psychologie es als ihr einziges Ideal betrachten muß, den gesamten Bewußtseinsinhalt als Kombination von Elementen aufzufassen, und ihre Aufgabe erst zu Ende ist, sobald sie zu diesen »Atomen« des Psychischen gelangt ist, bedeutet dieses Ende für die Philosophie erst den eigentlichen und wahrhaften Anfang. Die »Normwissenschaften«, die Logik, die Ethik, die Ästhetik leisten das, was der Psychologie für immer versagt ist – und mit dieser Leistung bereiten sie erst den Boden für eine Erkennt | nis der Wirklichkeit, für eine in sich geschlossene »Weltanschauung«.9 9

Zum Ganzen vgl. bes. ders., Psychology and Life, Boston, Mass./New York

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Vergegenwärtigt man sich diese Problemlage der Psychologie, wie sie um die Jahrhundertwende bestand, so kann man sich, wie mir scheint, an ihr unmittelbar zum Bewußtsein bringen, worin das Eigentümliche von Sterns Problemstellung liegt. Ihm erschien der Trennungsstrich, der hier zwischen der seelischen Wir k lich ke i t und der wissenschaftlichen Erken n t n is ebendieser Wirklichkeit gezogen wird, als seltsam und unnatürlich. Er sah in einer solchen Trennung nicht den Ausdruck der Wahrheit, sondern nur eine bestimmte methodologische Fiktion und Konstruktion. Aber ist eine solche Konstruktion wirklich notwendig – so fragt er –, oder haftet ihr nicht eine Künstlichkeit an, die sofort vergeht, wenn wir uns in die einfache Betrachtung der psychischen Ph än o m en e versenken und insbesondere das eigentliche »Urphänomen«, das Phänomen der »Person«, in den Mittelpunkt stellen? Muß nicht alle unsere Begriffsbildung, gleichviel welcher Mittel sie sich bedient und auf welche besonderen Probleme sie sich richtet, dem Ziele dienen, dieses Urphänomen in irgendeiner Weise zu beschreiben und zu erhellen? Hier sieht Stern die gemeinsame Aufgabe, der die Metaphysik wie die Psychologie zu dienen hat. Auch er will den Bannkreis des bloßen »Objektivismus« durchbrechen; aber er ist überzeugt, daß dieses Ziel nur erreicht werden kann, wenn Metaphysik und Psychologie, statt sich zu trennen und statt eine unübersteigliche Scheidewand zwischen sich zu errichten, sich wieder finden und sich zu gemeinsamer Arbeit vereinen. Aus dieser Grundanschauung heraus ist Sterns metaphysische Hauptschrift »Person und Sache« entstanden.10 Sie will die S y n t h e s e zwischen Psychologie und Metaphysik herstellen, die Stern als das eigentliche Ziel seiner wissenschaftlichen Arbeit ansah. Diese Synthese ist nach ihr freilich erst möglich, wenn man die bisherige Fragestellung umkehrt, wenn man in der Psychologie nicht mehr die Lehre von den | Daten oder Elementen des Bewußtseins sieht, sondern statt dessen zu der eigentlichen Grundschicht vorstößt. Diese Schicht gehört nach Stern weder der Sphäre des physischen Seins noch der des bloß »seelischen« Seins an. Sie ist vielmehr eine in sich undifferenzierte Einheit, die der Trennung in »Physisches« und »Psychisches« vorausliegt. Die »Person als uni-

1899 und ders., Grundzüge der Psychologie, Bd. I: Allgemeiner Teil, Die Prinzipien der Psychologie, Leipzig 1900. 10 William Stern, Person und Sache. System der philosophischen Weltanschauung, Bd. I: Ableitung und Grundlehre, Leipzig 1906; Person und Sache. System der philosophischen Weltanschauung, Bd. II: Die menschliche Persönlichkeit, Leipzig 1918; Person und Sache. System des kritischen Personalismus, Bd. III: Wertphilosophie, Leipzig 1924.

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tas multiplex«11 gilt Stern als jene »Koinzidenz der Gegensätze«, die die Metaphysik immer wieder gesucht hatte. Sie ist nicht »psychisch« o d er »physisch«, eines o de r vieles; so wenig wie die Form ihres Wirkens einseitig durch die Prädikate des »Kausalen« oder »Teleologischen« bestimmt werden kann. All diese gegensätzlichen Bestimmungen sind vielmehr in ihr zusammengefaßt und in ihm als notwendige Momente enthalten. Und eben hierin erweist sie sich, nach Stern, als der eigentliche Brennpunkt aller psychologischen Betrachtung. Solange die Psychologie den Begriff der »Person« entweder auszuschließen oder ihn auf etwas anderes zu reduzieren suchte, mußte sie selbst in disparate Gebiete zerfallen. Mit dieser Auffassung kann man nach Stern zwar »Psychologien« aufbauen, aber zu keiner eigentlichen Psychologie gelangen. »[Bis vor kurzem]«, so erklärt Stern im Vorwort zu seiner »Allgemeinen Psychologie«, »hatten wir lauter Psychologieen: Elementen- und Gestalt-Psychologie, verstehende und erklärende Psychologie, Tiefen-, Bewusstseins-, Verhaltens-Psychologie u. s. w. – aber nicht d ie allgemeine Psychologie.«12 In eine Erörterung oder Kritik dieser Grundanschauung soll hier, soweit sie sich auf rein metaphysische Argumente stützt, nicht eingegangen werden. Denn hierzu wäre eine eingehende Betrachtung erkenntniskritischer Vorfragen erforderlich, die im Rahmen dieses Aufsatzes nicht versucht werden kann. Stern hat diese Fragen nur selten gestreift, oder er hat sie zum mindesten nicht explizit behandelt. Denn für ihn lag der Schwerpunkt des Problems an einer anderen Stelle. Er fragte nicht nach den allgemeinen »Bedingungen der Möglichkeit« der Metaphysik als solcher, sondern er appellierte an die Metaphysik, um durch diesen Appell die Herrschaft bestimmter Begriffe zu brechen, die er als eine willkürliche Einengung der psychologischen Fragestellung empfand. Kant hat einen scharfen Unterschied zwischen dem | kons ti tutiven und dem r eg u lat iv en Gebrauch der reinen Vernunftbegriffe gemacht. Mit dem ersteren überschreitet die Vernunft die Grenzen aller möglichen Erfahrung und nimmt jenseits dieser Grenzen einen selbständigen, für sich bestehenden Gegenstand an, der von allen Bedingungen der empirischen Erkenntnis gelöst und in diesem Sinne »absolut« sein soll. Der regulative Gebrauch aber geht nicht in dieser Weise über das Ganze der Erfahrung hinaus. Er will dieses Ganze, statt es zu überschreiten, vielmehr erst in seiner Gesamtheit sichtbar machen. Wenn er nach dem »Unbedingten« fragt, so bedeutet diese Frage nichts anderes als die Forderung, bei keiner empirisch g eg e 11 12

[Vgl. Person und Sache, Bd. I, S. 161 ff.] [Ders., Allgemeine Psychologie, S. XXV.]

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ben en Bedingung stehenzubleiben, sondern die Aufgabe der Tot a l ität d er Bed i n g u n g en festzuhalten und sie als Richtschnur für die Erkenntnis zu brauchen. »Wenn wir demnach solche idealischen Wesen annehmen«, so erklärt Kant, »so erweitern wir eigentlich nicht unsere Erkenntnis über die Objekte möglicher Erfahrung, sondern nur die empirische Einheit der letzteren durch die systematische Einheit, wozu uns die Idee das Schema gibt, welche […] nicht als konstitutives, sondern bloß als regulatives Prinzip gilt. Denn daß wir ein der Idee korrespondierendes Ding, ein Etwas oder wirkliches Wesen setzen, dadurch ist nicht gesagt, wir wollten unsere Erkenntnis der Dinge mit transszendenten Begriffen erweitern; denn dieses Wesen wird nur in der Idee und nicht an sich selbst zum Grunde gelegt, mithin nur um die systematische Einheit auszudrücken, die uns zur Richtschnur des empirischen Gebrauchs der Vernunft dienen soll […]«13 Ich bezweifle, daß Stern, gemäß seiner Auffassung der Metaphysik, eine solche Unterscheidung zwischen dem konstitutiven und regulativen Gebrauch der Ideen hätte anerkennen können. Für ihn war die Idee der »Person« keineswegs nur ein regulatives oder heuristisches Prinzip; er war vielmehr überzeugt, an ihr den festen Ankergrund aller Realität gefunden zu haben. Aber wenn man lediglich seine Leistung a ls P sy ch o lo g e betrachtet, so findet man, daß er in ihr über den hier bezeichneten Kreis in der Tat nicht hinausgegangen ist. Die Grenzen des »Zugänglichen« und »Unzugänglichen« hat er hier bestimmt bezeichnet und sie in seiner wis | senschaftlichen Arbeit durchaus innegehalten. Die Annahme einer substantiellen S e e l e im Sinne der älteren Metaphysik und Ontologie wird von ihm ausdrücklich bestritten. Sie würde nach ihm verlangen, daß der Mensch eine substantielle Zweiheit, Seele und Leib, darstelle, und daß sich alles, was am Menschen besteht und geschieht, ohne Rest in Seelisches einerseits, Körperliches andererseits aufteilen lasse – eine Aufteilung, der der gesamte Inhalt von Sterns Psychologie unmittelbar widerspricht.14 Auf der anderen Seite will Stern bei dem bloßen Bewußtseins- oder Erlebensaspekt nicht stehenbleiben. Auch die Erlebenstotalität gilt ihm noch nicht als die letzte Ganzheit; sie ist vielmehr ebenfalls noch ein Teilganzes, das in der umfassenden Totalität der P er s on ruht. »[…] zu dem eigentlichen Begriff der Subjektivität kann man erst vorstoßen, wenn man fragt, was denn dies subjektivierende Erleben be de ute , 13 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, Bd. III, hrsg. v. Albert Görland), Berlin 1913, S. 459 f. (B 702 f.). 14 Vgl. Stern, Allgemeine Psychologie, S. 96 ff.

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welchen Sinn es im Ganzen des personalen Lebens habe. Sobald man diese Bedeutungsfrage aufwirft, verlässt man die Ebene der bloßen Bewusstseinspsychologie.«15 Beide Gesichtspunkte: die Negation der substantiellen Seele und die Überzeugung, daß die Bedeutung des Psychischen in keiner seiner einzelnen Erscheinungen aufgeht und sich somit in ihrer bloß empirischen Aufweisung nicht zureichend erfassen lasse, führen in ihrer Vereinigung auf die Sternsche Definition der Psychologie, nach der diese »die Wissenschaft von der erlebenden und erlebensfähigen Person [ist]«16 Damit soll zunächst die Psychologie aus ihrer I s ol i e r ung befreit und wieder als eine der philosophischen Grundwissenschaften anerkannt werden. Die philosophischen Fragen der Psychologie bilden, wie Stern immer wieder und mit Nachdruck betont, »[…] nicht einen abseitigen Bereich, um den sich der empirische Psychologe nicht zu kümmern brauche; sie greifen vielmehr von allen Seiten hinein in das Gewebe psychologischer Erfahrungswissenschaft, bringen in deren Befunde Ordnung und System, Sinn und Deutung. Andrerseits erfährt die philosophische Psychologie von der fortschreitenden Spezialforschung her eine Begrenzung, Konkretisierung und | Kontrolle, die vor den früheren Abwegigkeiten einer bloss spekulativen wirklichkeitsfernen Psychologie schützt.«17 Hier soll also in der Tat die Idee der »Persönlichkeit« ebenjene Leistung erfüllen, in der Kant das Wesen jeder »transzendentalen Idee« sieht. Sie soll die Erfahrung selbst, statt in ihr ein bloßes Aggregat oder Konglomerat einzelner Fakten zu sehen, zu einem in sich geschlossenen Ganzen machen und damit dem empirischen Wissen »die größte Einheit neben der größten Ausbreitung […] verschaffen«.18 Die Darstellung von Sterns »Allgemeiner Psychologie« hat, wie mir scheint, dieses Ziel in der Tat erreicht. Sie enthält zweifellos einen stark konstruktiven Zug; aber das Konstruktive will hier nirgends das Empirische vergewaltigen, sondern dem Empirischen dienen. Der Begriff der »Person« soll sich als ein gliederndes und organisierendes Prinzip der Empirie erweisen, das jeder Einzelerfahrung ihre bestimmte Stelle im Ganzen anweist. Es ist sehr interessant zu verfolgen, wie auf Grund dieser allgemeinen Tendenz des Werkes auch sehr bekannte psychologische Tatsachen und Probleme in ein neues Licht treten. Die Tatsachen, die man unter der Benennung des Weber-Fechnerschen Gesetzes zusammenzufas15 16 17 18

A. a. O., S. 724 u. 727 [Zitat]. A. a. O., S. 99 [Zitat], 799 u. ö. A. a. O., S. 13. Vgl. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 441 f. (B 672).

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sen pflegt, sind von allen Phänomenen der Psychologie wohl diejenigen, die am ehesten einer rein physikalischen oder physiologischen Deutung zugänglich sind, ja nach einer solchen geradezu zu verlangen scheinen. Aber selbst sie erfahren in Sterns Behandlung eine andere und neuartige Interpretation. Es gibt, wie er betont, einen Begriff der Schwelle, der nicht allein auf die Begrenztheit der Wahrnehmung bezogen ist, sondern auf alle personale Begrenztheit überhaupt: »Schwellen sind die Bedeutsamkeitsgrenzen der Welt für die Person, sofern diese Grenzen ziffernmäßig feststellbar sind.«19 Ebenso tritt das neue Motiv in der Kritik und in der Ablehnung des traditionellen Begriffs der »Assoziation« zu Tage. Dieser Begriff muß für die Deutung der zielgerichteten personalen Ta t en des Denkens und Wollens unfruchtbar bleiben, »[…] denn niemals lässt sich Tat in blosses Geschehenlassen, lässt sich Zielgerichtetheit in mechanisches | Geschiebe von Elementen verwandeln.«20 Als ein weiteres Beispiel für Sterns Bestreben, das Besondere stets an das Allgemeine anzuknüpfen und das Allgemeine durch die Beziehung auf das Besondere zu erhellen, kann seine Theorie des Sp iels angeführt werden. Sie geht – und schon dies ist bezeichnend – auf Schillers Erklärung zurück, daß der Mensch nur spielt, wo er in voller Bedeutung des Wortes Mensch ist, und daß er nur da ganz Mensch ist, wo er spielt. Den naturalistischen und biologischen Spieltheorien will also Stern eine »humanistische« Theorie gegenüberstellen. »In jedem menschlichen Gegenwartsaugenblick lebt Zukunft nicht nur dadurch, dass sie b ewu s s t vorausgesehen, erwartet, geplant, gewollt wird. Die personale Entelechie und die Zielgerichtetheit ihrer einzelnen Anlagen ist vielmehr vorbereitend wirksam […] lange bevor sie sich in zieladäquatem Bewusstsein darstellt. Als solche keimhaften Vor-Formen von Ernst-Funktionen sind die Spiel-Funktionen anzusehen. […] der spielende Mensch lebt bewusstseinsmäßig ganz in der Spielfreude des Augenblicks und ahnt nicht, dass sich in seinem Spiel Kommendes vorbereitet.«21 Ich habe diese einzelnen Beispiele, denen sich viele andere an die Seite stellen ließen, hier nur angeführt, um an ihnen die M e thode von Sterns psychologischer Forschung zu verdeutlichen. Wer, wie ich, Gelegenheit hatte, Sterns Arbeit aus unmittelbarer Nähe zu sehen, der war immer wieder überrascht davon, wie leicht und mühelos sich für ihn der Übergang zwischen verschiedenen Betrachtungsweisen vollzog, die man als methodische Extreme anzusehen pflegt. Er konnte in 19 20 21

Stern, Allgemeine Psychologie, S. 106 u. 244 [Zitat]. A. a. O., S. 298 f. A. a. O., S. 493.

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jedem Augenblick die »konkrete« Einstellung mit einer »abstrakten« Einstellung vertauschen oder von dieser zu jener übergehen. Alles Theoretische sah er sofort im Hinblick auf die praktischen Anwendungsmöglichkeiten; aber auch jede solche Möglichkeit führte ihn immer wieder auf rein theoretische Probleme zurück. Wenn man einmal dabei gegenwärtig war, wie er mit seinen Mitarbeitern den Plan zu einer gemeinsamen Arbeit entwarf oder eine Versuchsanordnung besprach, so schien er in solchen Augenblicken ganz der einzelnen Fra | ge, die es zu lösen galt, zugewandt zu sein; und man glaubte zu spüren, daß gerade das Detail einen besonderen Reiz auf ihn ausübte. Überblickt man das Ganze seiner psychologischen Arbeiten, so erkennt man sofort, welchen weiten Raum in ihm derartige exakte Detailuntersuchungen eingenommen haben. Die Te c hni k der psychologischen Arbeit hat er nicht nur vollständig beherrscht, sondern er hat sie, wenn ich recht sehe, auf vielen Gebieten erst eigentlich geschaffen. Viele der Methoden, die er zuerst angewandt hat, sind heute Allgemeingut geworden. Aber dies alles war für ihn nicht Selbstzweck, sondern Mittel zum Zweck. Als das eigentliche Ziel erschien ihm stets jene »allgemeine Psychologie«, deren Entwurf er in seinem letzten Werk gegeben hat und um deren philosophische Grundlegung er unablässig bemüht war. Hierdurch war seine gesamte Methodologie gekennzeichnet. Er kannte in der Psychologie keine Methode, der er absoluten Wert beimaß und auf die er sie gewissermaßen verpflichten wollte. »Methoden«, so erklärt er in der »Allgemeinen Psychologie«, »sind nicht um ihrer selbst willen da, sondern wachsen aus den Notwendigkeiten der Problemstellungen und aus den Möglichkeiten des Materials heraus.«22 Daher scheint ihm auch der in der Psychologie eine Zeitlang so lebhaft geführte Streit um die Grenzen der einzelnen Methoden, um die Grenzen des Experiments, der Selbstbeobachtung usf. kaum berührt zu haben. Er war bereit, jeden Weg einzuschlagen, wenn er zum Ziele führen zu können schien. Das Ziel als solches stand ihm in dem »personalistischen« Leitgedanken von früh an fest. Dieser Gedanke erfüllte hier wieder die Funktion, zur »Richtschnur des empirischen Gebrauchs« zu werden und der Erfahrungserkenntnis »die größte Einheit neben der größten Ausbreitung zu [geben]«23 Von allen Arbeiten Sterns prägt sich dieser Grundzug seiner Methodik – wenn ich hierüber ein Urteil wagen darf – am klarsten und am schönsten in den Monographien zur Kindersprache aus, die er gemeinsam

22 23

A. a. O., S. 66 f. [Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, S. 441 f. (B 672).]

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William Stern

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mit seiner Frau herausgegeben hat.24 Hier stützt er sich auf ein Material, das nur in sorgsamster und geduldigster Kleinarbeit gewonnen werden konnte – einer Arbeit, die sich über | viele Jahre erstreckte und die von Tag zu Tag, oft von Stunde zu Stunde durchgeführt werden mußte. Aber all dies wird beherrscht und organisiert von einer allgemeinen Problemstellung, von Gesichtspunkten, die sich nicht nur für die Sprachpsychologie, sondern auch für die Sprachphilosophie als höchst anregend und fruchtbar erwiesen haben. Wenn man Sterns psychologische Arbeit in diesem Sinne auffassen darf, so gewinnt sie bei all der fast unübersehbaren Vielfältigkeit, ja Disparatheit der Probleme, denen sie sich zugewandt hat, eine durchgehende Einheit und Geschlossenheit. Und dieser Zug der Einfachheit und Geschlossenheit prägte sich auch in Sterns Persönlichkeit und in seinem Leben aus. Was seine Freunde, seine Mitarbeiter und seine Schüler im Verkehr mit ihm als besonders wohltuend empfanden, war die schlichte Güte seines Wesens, deren man immer gewiß sein und auf die man vertrauen durfte. Ich selbst erinnere mich nicht, daß in der langen Zeit unserer Zusammenarbeit in Hamburg (1919–1933) jemals ein persönlicher Zwist diese Arbeit gestört hätte. Wenn einmal eine sachliche Meinungsverschiedenheit bestand, so durfte man sicher sein, daß sie nach einer kurzen Aussprache in der freundschaftlichsten Form beseitigt werden konnte. Hierbei half nicht nur die große persönliche Liebenswürdigkeit Sterns mit, sondern er bewies und bewährte in solchen Fällen auch die Gabe des echten Psychologen, sich in andere Individualitäten versetzen und aus ihrem Standpunkt urteilen zu können. Das Leben Sterns hätte man als besonders glücklich bezeichnen können, wenn es nicht in den letzten Jahren durch die Sorge um die, die ihm am nächsten standen, aufs schwerste getrübt worden wäre. Aber er harrte auch in dieser Zeit des drückendsten Kummers aus, und er blieb sich selbst treu. Er vermochte nicht nur seine literarische Arbeit fortzusetzen und weiter auszubauen, sondern sich auch als akademischer Lehrer unter den schwierigsten Umständen in einem neuen Wirkungskreis heimisch zu machen. Mit alledem hat er ein Beispiel aufgestellt, das ebensowenig wie sein wissenschaftliches Werk vergessen werden wird.

24 Clara Stern/William Stern, Die Kindersprache. Eine psychologische und sprachtheoretische Untersuchung, 4., neubearb. Aufl., Leipzig 1928 (Monographien über die seelische Entwicklung des Kindes, Bd. 1).

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15–16

Dear Edward Lasker1 (1942)

Dear Edward Lasker: You ask me a difficult question; and if you expect an answer from the philosopher rather than from the old friend, I am afraid I have to disappoint you. »Rerum cognoscere causas«2 – to know and to understand the reasons of things, according to Lucretius, is the principal | task of philosophy. But a philosopher is rarely inclined to analyze his feelings and predilections. Like all others, he is in the habit of taking his personal inclinations for granted. For this reason I had really never asked myself why of all the games in the world I liked Chess best. When, after receiving your letter, I considered this question, the answer seemed at first simple and obvious. Does not Chess satisfy the demands of our intellect in the highest degree? Nothing is left to chance; the consequences of every move obey definite rules; and thus reason and logic triumph. But this explanation, flattering as it may be, unfortunately does not apply in my case, though it may hold good in the case of Chess masters. It seems paradoxical, but the reasons for my love of Chess are not only different from but probably even opposed to those of a Chess master. The master has to solve a definite problem and concentrates on it with the greatest thoroughness and penetration. But all this would be lost effort for a poor amateur like me. I know very well that even after having done my best to find out the strongest move, I cannot rely upon my reasoning. I have to confide in that mysterious and unfathomable power that we may call the »Fate of Chess«. Sometimes that goddess smiles upon me graciously, and sometimes she works against me. However, I feel by no means discouraged by the uncertainty which threatens me on every move. On the contrary, I find in that uncertainty a particular charm – the charm of the »imprévu«, which according to Stendhal is one of the greatest. 1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Edward Lasker, Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood, Philadelphia 1942, S. 15–18.] 2 [Vgl. Vergil, Georgica (Buch 2, V. 490), in: Bucolica et Georgica (Opera, hrsg. v. Otto Ribbeck, Bd. I), Leipzig 1894, S. 59–208: S. 130.]

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Dear Edward Lasker

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I think it is just this opposition to his usual way of thinking and feeling which makes a game of Chess so enjoyable to a scientist and a philosopher. Both of them would undoubtedly be much ashamed if in their own fields of investigation they made such glaring mistakes as they constantly commit | when playing Chess. But here they do not feel the same responsibility. A game of Chess means to them a new and happy freedom of mind. They may know the strict general rules of Chess strategy, but they often indulge in all sorts of hazardous combinations, consciously violating the rules, but feeling happy in the carefree play of their imagination. In this freedom, I think, lies the aesthetic quality of Chess. A good game does not only satisfy our sense of logic, but also our desire for beauty. Kant, in his »Critique of Judgment«, says that beauty results from »a harmonious interplay of all the different faculties of the human mind.«3 When judgment and understanding are interwoven with fancy and imagination, helping and completing each other, there arises that perfect harmony of mind and sense perception, which is the outstanding feature of our feeling of beauty. We may apply this criterion of beauty very well to a game of Chess. Here too understanding and imagination are constantly cooperating and, in a certain sense, correcting each other. Thus the pleasure we feel in playing Chess is perhaps a rather complicated phenomenon which arises from various sources, but this multiplicity, no doubt, enhances our pleasure. Chess has often been condemned as one-sided. I consider this accusation quite unfounded and believe, on the contrary, that it is just the many-sidedness of Chess which gives it its high rank. I am not certain, my dear Edward, whether you will agree with me in this appreciation and justification of Chess, or whether you will consider it a travesty on the real art of the game. But I could only describe to you my own way of playing and enjoying Chess, though it may appear to you as a very amateurish conception. As a matter of fact, when engaged in a game, I always have the secret feeling that I am not playing Chess, but that I am playing with the thought and the ideal of being a Chess master, an ideal which I can | never attain but which, nevertheless, like other unfilled ideals and desires, gives me the greatest satisfaction. 3 [Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, hrsg. v. Otto Buek, in: Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, Bd. V, Berlin 1914, S. 233–568: S. 420 (Akad.-Ausg. V, 344): »alle unsere Erkenntnisvermögen zusammenstimmend zu machen«.]

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I am awaiting the appearance of your new book with much interest; without doubt it will give me the same pleasure as your »Chess Strategy«, which I read about twenty-five years ago. With kind regards, Yours, Ernst Cassirer4

4

[Im Original handschriftlich und in Versalien.]

407–408

601

Force and Freedom: Remarks on the English Edition of Jacob Burckhardt’s »Reflections on History«1 (1944) The first English edition of Jacob Burckhardt’s »Reflections on History« was published last year under the title »Force and Freedom«.2 This English edition comes rather late. The first draft of this book was made by Burckhardt in the summer of 1868 – about 75 years ago. If we take into consideration the radical changes of our political and social life made since that period the book seems to belong to a remote past. We may study it with the attention and respect due to a great historian; but we should hardly expect to meet here with anything that has a bearing upon our own actual problems. Yet when reading the book we find quite the opposite. There are only a few historical books that, at this very moment, are so much alive and so apt to arouse a keen interest as Burckhardt’s book. In a certain sense it is much nearer to our generation than it was to his own. For what we find here are not only general reflections on the character of historical knowledge. What Burckhardt gives is perhaps the first and most penetrating analysis of that great crisis of European civilization that began to develop in the second half of | the nineteenth century and that now seems to have reached its crucial point. Burckhardt was perhaps the only great historian of the nineteenth century who, instead of a genetic view, took a s ta ti c view of human history. He was not especially interested in the shifting scenes of historical life. His attention was engrossed in the great current and typical features. He openly defied that ideal of »specialization« that is one of the most characteristic features of the science of the nineteenth century. It was this mental attitude that led Burckhardt far away from the »positivism« of his own time. It was never his aim simply to collect facts and to know »all« the facts. »For the man determined really to learn, that is, to become rich in mind,« he declared, »a single source, happily chosen, can do duty, to a certain extent, for the whole multitude, since, by a simple function of his brain, he can discern and feel the general in the particular. […] He must believe that every dust-heap contains jewels of knowledge, whether of general value or of personal [Zuerst veröffentlich in: The American Scholar 13 (1944), S. 407–417.] Jacob Burckhardt, Force and Freedom. Reflections on History, ed. by James Hastings Nichols, New York 1943. 1 2

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value to us. A single line from an otherwise worthless author may kindle a light to guide all our further steps. […] But beyond the labor we expend on sources the prize beckons in those great moments and fateful hours when, from things we have imagined long familiar, a sudden intuition dawns.«3 Burckhardt’s life was rich in such great moments, and his work is filled with intuitions of that sort. As the American editor of the »Reflections on History« rightly remarks, every one of Burckhardt’s books was a new discovery – but in interpretation, not in documentation. What gives to these works their greatest and most characteristic value is not so much the collection as the selection of the material, of the »significant« facts. Burckhardt himself always saw the task of the true historian from this perspective. »Any specialised knowledge of facts,« he said, »possesses, in addition to its value as knowledge or thought in a particular field, a universal or historical value, in that it illuminates one phase of the changeful spirit of man, yet, placed in the right connection, it testifies at the same time to the continuity and immortality of that spirit.«4 For the spirit knows change, | but no mortality. It is never the same, and it is always the same; it is always building a new house, but its general structure remains invariable. In the beginning of his »Reflections on History« Burckhardt declares, paradoxically enough, that his study will, in a certain sense, be »pathological in kind«.5 As a matter of fact, after having begun as an historian of European civilization, he became, in his later period, more and more the pathologist of this civilization. He describes all the symptoms of the disease with an astounding lucidity and perspicuity. The editor of the English translation of Burckhardt’s »Reflections on History«, James Hastings Nichols, has inserted into his excellent introduction to the work a special chapter, entitled »Burckhardt as Prophet«. »As a penetrating and objective critic of the nineteenth century,« he says, »[Burckhardt] was in a position to make better guesses about the twentieth than the majority of men who wrote the newspaper editorials and the histories, delivered the sermons, the campaign speeches, or otherwise carried on their activities chiefly within the domain of the idols of theatre, market-place, and tribe.«6 [A. a. O., S. 97 u. 99.] Ibid., p. 94. 5 [A. a. O., S. 82.] 6 [James Hastings Nichols, Jacob Burckhardt, in: Burckhardt, Force and Freedom, S. 1–76: S. 31.] 3 4

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What Burckhardt foresaw and what he feared was the ever increasing ascendancy of the »collective« spirit over individual judgment. »The utmost effort and self-denial,« he declared, »will be necessary if [individuals] are to remain creatively independent in view of the relation in which they stand to the daily press, to cosmopolitan traffic, to world exhibitions. [As to t]he masses [they] want [only] their peace and their pay. If they get them from a republic or a monarchy, they will cling to either. If not, without much ado they will support the first constitution to promise them what they want.«7 Then a long voluntary subjection under individual Führers and usurpers is in prospect. People no longer believe in principles, but will, periodically, probably, in saviors. »For this reason authority will again raise its head in the pleasant twentieth century, and a terrible head.«8 »My mental picture of the terribles simplificateurs who will overrun our old Europe is not a pleasant one,« said Burckhardt in a | letter to a friend. »Now and then, in imagination I already see such fellows bodily before me and I will describe them to you […]«9 From these and other passages the American editor concludes that Burckhardt »[i]ndeed in 1871 […] understood 1941 better than most of us did in that year itself.«10 But even this judgment does not do full justice to his foresight and sagacity. For Burckhardt had formed the same opinion twenty-five years b e f o r e the war between Germany and France. »Believe me,« he wrote in a letter to Gottfried Kinkel on April 19, 1845, »the political nation to which some people boastfully appeal does not yet exist […] Instead of this there exists a mass, in which a great many splendid talents and characters are slumbering; but which, as a mass, could easily become an instrument in the hands of every rascal and then would behave like a wild beast. Sapienti sat!«11 Ibid., pp. 297–299. [Jacob Burckhardt, Brief an Friedrich von Preen vom 14. September 1890, in: Briefe an seinen Freund Friedrich von Preen. 1864–1893, Stuttgart/Berlin 1922, S. 261–263: S. 262: »Darum wird in dem angenehmen zwanzigsten Jahrhundert die Autorität wieder ihr Haupt erheben, und ein schreckliches Haupt.«] 9 [Ders., Brief an Friedrich von Preen vom 24. Juli 1889, in: Briefe zur Erkenntnis seiner geistigen Gestalt, mit einem Lebensabriß hrsg. v. Fritz Kaphahn, Leipzig 1935, 2. Teil [sep. pag.], S. 484–487: S. 485: »Mein Gedankenbild von den terribles simplificateurs, welche über unser altes Europa kommen werden, ist kein angenehmes; und hie und da in Phantasien sehe ich solche Kerle schon leibhaftig vor mir und will sie Ihnen schildern […]«] 10 [Nichols, Jacob Burckhardt, S. 51.] 11 [Jacob Burckhardt, Brief an Gottfried Kinkel vom 19. April 1845, in: Briefe zur Erkenntnis, 2. Teil, S. 131–134: S. 132: »Glaub mir, das politische Volk, an welches gewisse Leute prahlend appellieren, existiert […] noch nicht; statt seiner 7 8

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What was the reason for this deeper understanding of the forthcoming danger? It has been said that Burckhardt, as a Swiss and as a citizen of the small city-state of Basel, did not have to struggle with the same prejudices as the majority of the political historians of the nineteenth century. He saw the general development of our political life in a wider perspective and from a vantage-ground that gave him a real superiority of judgment. He was not blindfolded by national ambitions and vanity, and he was not prone to any sort of imperialism. All this is true enough, but it is only half of the truth. We must explain his attitude not by mere personal, but by universal reasons – by his general conception of the meaning and value of human culture. In the second half of the nineteenth century almost all the German historians were under the spell of the Hegelian concept of history. Hegel was regarded as the spokesman for all historical thought. For in his system history had been elevated to a rank and dignity that it had never possessed before. If we accept the Hegelian thesis, it is not nature, but history, which is the true reality: the manifestation of the »absolute Idea«. Universal History had been declared by Hegel to be »[…] the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree, and the taste and form of its fruits, so do the | first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of that History.«12 From the point of view of the great historians that was indeed a new philosophic interpretation of history – and a very fascinating one. But Burckhardt never was under this fascination. He regarded himself much more as an artist than as a philosopher. »In my whole life,« he says in a letter that he wrote as a youth of twenty-four years, »I have never thought philosophically […] If I cannot start out from an intuition, I am not able to do anything. […] Whatever I build up historically is not a result of criticism and speculation, but of imagination which tries to fill the gaps of intuition. Hence to me history, to a large extent, is still poetry; it is a series of the most beautiful and picturesque compositions.«13 ist eine Masse vorhanden, in der eine Menge herrlicher Keime und Charakteren schlummern, die aber als Masse in den Händen jedes Schuftes wäre und sich dann als Bestie gerieren würde. Sapienti sat.«] 12 [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, übers. v. John Sibree, London 1857, S. 18.] 13 [Jacob Burckhardt, Brief an Willibald Beyschlag vom 14. Juni 1842, in: Briefe zur Erkenntnis, 2. Teil, S. 59: »Ich habe mein Leben lang noch nie philosophisch gedacht […] Wo ich nicht von der Anschauung ausgehen kann, da leiste ich nichts. […] Was ich historisch aufbaue, ist nicht Resultat der Kritik und Spekulation,

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If there was any thinker whose general views were acceptable to Burckhardt, it was not Hegel, but Hegel’s strongest opponent, his philosophical antipode. Burckhardt used to speak of Schopenhauer as »th e philosopher«.14 But here we have to face a real paradox. How could an h istor ian – and an historian of the rank of Burckhardt – ever give such a judgment? »Like Schopenhauer,« says the American editor Nichols in his introduction, »[Burckhardt] felt that historical consciousness is what distinguishes the civilized man from the barbarian, and that the race has a sacred duty to preserve the memory of its greatest trials and triumphs.«15 This statement seems to me wrong. Burckhardt’s view is widely divergent from Schopenhauer’s. It is true that Schopenhauer had spoken of history as the rational consciousness of the human race. Yet on the other hand he emphatically denied any universal value of historical knowledge. According to him history has no reality and no truth. What it narrates is in fact only the long, heavy, and confused dream of humanity. Such a conception could not be accepted by Burckhardt. Schopenhauer spoke and judged as a metaphysician and as a Platonist. He drew a sharp line of demarcation between the sensible and the supra-sensible world, the world of »becoming« and of »being«, and since history belongs to the former it is devoid of all true reality. »The Hegelians who regard the philosophy of history as indeed the chief end of all philosophy,« he says, »are to be referred to | Plato, who unweariedly repeats that the object of philosophy is that which is unchangeable and always remains, not that which now is thus and now otherwise. All those who set up such constructions of the course of the world, or as they call it, of history, have failed to grasp the principal truth of all philosophy, that what is is at all times the same – all becoming and arising are only seeming; the Ideas alone are permanent […]«16 sondern der Phantasie, welche die Lücken der Anschauung ausfüllen will. Die Geschichte ist mir noch immer großenteils Poesie; sie ist mir eine Reihe der schönsten malerischen Kompositionen.«] 14 [Ders., Brief an Friedrich von Preen vom 2. Juli 1871, a. a. O., S. 339–341: S. 340: »der Philosoph« u. ö.] 15 [Nichols, Jacob Burckhardt, S. 75.] 16 [Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Bd. II (Sämtliche Werke in sechs Bänden, hrsg. v. Eduard Grisebach, Bd. II), 2., mehrfach berichtigter Abdruck, Leipzig o. J., S. 520: »Die Hegelianer, welche die Philosophie der Geschichte sogar als den Hauptzweck aller Philosophie ansehen, sind auf Plato zu verweisen, der unermüdlich wiederholt, daß der Gegenstand der Philosophie das Unveränderliche und immerdar Bleibende sei, nicht aber Das, was bald so, bald anders ist. Alle Die, welche solche Konstruktionen des Weltverlaufs, oder, wie sie

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Burckhardt finds permanence and truth in quite a different sphere. He does not seek it in eternal essences, in things in themselves or Platonic ideas. His field – the field of an historian, not a metaphysician – is man’s empirical existence. Hence he is, frankly and literally, anthropocentric. To him the world of human doings and human sufferings is no mere fugitive shadow; it is, on the contrary, the very core of reality. »We […] shall start out,« he says, »from the one point accessible to us, the one eternal centre of all things – man, suffering, striving, doing, as he is and was and ever shall be.«17 It is this conception of the character and task of history that is the distinctive mark of Burckhardt’s thought. It has put its stamp upon his whole work. It has determined both the choice and the treatment of his historical subjects. He became deeply engrossed in the art, the literature and civilization of the Italian Renaissance. For what he found there was the fulfillment of all his interests and his highest ideals. He saw the individual man in his struggle against all those traditional and authoritative powers that had hitherto determined his life shaking off his burden and looking around himself to find a new world and a new depth of his personality. All this is described in an incomparable and fascinating style in that famous chapter of Burckhardt’s book that deals with »the discovery of nature and man«: »To the discovery of the outward world the Renaissance added a still greater achievement, by first discerning and bringing to light the full, whole nature of man. This period gave the highest development to individuality, and then led the individual to the most zealous and thorough study of himself in all forms and under all conditions.«18 By this conception the centre of gravity of the historical world | was shifted. Hegel had concentrated his historical thought upon the political world. The State had become the only subject that admits of and that deserves a historical treatment. »In the history of the World,« he says in the introduction to his »Lectures on the Philosophy of Hises nennen, der Geschichte, aufstellen, haben die Hauptwahrheit aller Philosophie nicht begriffen, daß nämlich zu aller Zeit das Selbe ist, alles Werden und Entstehen nur scheinbar, die Ideen allein bleibend […]«] 17 Burckhardt, Force and Freedom, pp. 81 f. 18 [Ders., Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch (Kap. 4: Die Entdeckung der Welt und des Menschen) (Gesamtausgabe, Bd. V, hrsg. v. Werner Kaegi), Berlin/Leipzig 1930, S. 219: »Zu der Entdeckung der Welt fügt die Kultur der Renaissance eine noch größere Leistung, indem sie zuerst den ganzen, vollen Gehalt des Menschen entdeckt und zu Tage fördert. Zunächst entwickelt dies Weltalter, wie wir sahen, auf das Stärkste den Individualismus; dann leitet es denselben zur eifrigsten, vielseitigsten Erkenntnis des Individuellen auf allen Stufen an.«]

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tory«, »only those peoples can come under our notice which form a state. For it must be understood that this latter is the realization of freedom, i.e., of the absolute final aim, and that it exists for its own sake. It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses – all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State. […] Thus only is he fully conscious […] The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth.«19 This view of Hegel’s was in sharp contradiction to all Burckhardt’s personal ideals and to his conception of the meaning and value of human culture. He could not share this adoration of the omnipotent state. To say that man possesses his whole spiritual reality only through the State was to him blasphemy. He regarded this Hegelian deification of the state as sheer idolatry, which he resisted with all his intellectual and moral power. To Hegel the state was not only the consummation of history, but also of the moral order, the very incarnation of right and justice. »The state,« he says in his »Philosophy of Right«, »is the spirit that dwells and realizes itself in the world through consciousness, while in nature the spirit actualizes itself only as a stranger, as dormant spirit. […] it is the course of God through the world that constitutes the State […]«20 Burckhardt saw the problem in an entirely different light. To yield to the pressure of the omnipotent state was to him not an ethical demand, but a mortal sin. But Burckhardt’s voice – the voice of a very original and, at the same time, of a very lonely thinker – was scarcely heard among the historians of his own generation. Most of them had not only accepted but exaggerated the solution of Hegel. »The essence of the state,« declared Heinrich von Treitschke in an essay, »Bundesstaat und Einheitsstaat«, »is in the first place power, in the second place power, and in the third place once more: power.«21 These words, written in 1864, as Burckhardt was beginning to | write down his »Reflections on History«, are [Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, S. 40 f.] [Ders., Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse (§ 258), hrsg. v. Eduard Gans (Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten, Bd. VIII), Berlin 1833, S. 318–320: »Der Staat ist der Geist, der in der Welt steht und sich in derselben mit Bewußtseyn realisirt, während er sich in der Natur nur als das Andere seiner, als schlafender Geist verwirklicht. […] es ist der Gang Gottes in der Welt, daß der Staat ist […]«] 21 [Heinrich von Treitschke, Bundesstaat und Einheitsstaat, in: Historische und politische Aufsätze, Bd. II, 5., verm. Aufl., Leipzig 1886, S. 77–241: S. 152: »[…] daß das Wesen des Staats zum Ersten Macht, zum Zweiten Macht und zum Dritten nochmals Macht ist.«] 19 20

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characteristic of the period. Burckhardt found the same conviction among all the political historians of Germany. »Since the state comprehends all moral organisms,« said Constantin Rössler in his »System der Staatslehre«, »the doctrine of the state contains the whole objective ethics, or ethics in general. In so far it is distinguished from morality. Morality or subjective ethics (subjektive Sittlichkeit) belongs to theology.«22 At a meeting of the parliament at Frankfort, Dahlmann exclaimed, »The course of power is the only one that can satisfy and satiate our fermenting desire for freedom […] For what [the German] means is not freedom alone – it is rather the power that hitherto was denied to him, and which he longs for.«23 To Burckhardt the concept of securing freedom through power was very dangerous, or at least very naive. He did not look upon the State as »the Divine Idea as it exists on earth.« He had a keen feeling for all the demonic powers slumbering in the State. »Power,« he says in the beginning of his »Reflections on History«, »is [by nature] evil.«24 Burckhardt even went so far as to declare that a powerful political life and a truly cultural life are, after all, incompatible with each other. A people cannot hope to be culturally significant and politically significant at the same time. »Oh, how mistaken the poor German nation will be,« he wrote after the outbreak of the war between Germany and France, »if she thinks that at home she can set the musket in the corner and devote herself to the arts and happiness of peace! The device will be: ›More military training‹; and after a while no one will any longer be able to say what life is really for. […] What is most alarming, however, is not the present war but the era of wars into which we have entered, and for this the new spirit must be prepared. Oh, how much that has been dear to educated men they will have to throw overboard as spiritual luxury, and under what different conditions this new generation will grow up.«25 22 [Constantin Rössler, System der Staatslehre. A. Allgemeine Staatslehre, Leipzig 1857, S. 213: »Da der Staat alle sittlichen Organismen umfasst, so enthält die Staatslehre die ganze objective Ethik oder die Ethik überhaupt, sofern sie von der Moral unterschieden ist. Die Moral oder die subjective Sittlichkeit gehört in die Theologie.«] 23 [Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Rede über das Reichsoberhaupt am 22. Januar 1849, in: Kleine Schriften und Reden, Stuttgart 1886, S. 452–458: S. 457: »Die Bahn der Macht ist die einzige, die den gährenden Freiheitstrieb befriedigen und sättigen wird […] Denn es ist nicht bloß die Freiheit, die er meint, es ist zur größeren Hälfte die Macht, die ihm bisher versagte, nach der es ihn gelüstet.«] 24 [Burckhardt, Force and Freedom, S. 115.] 25 [Ders., Brief an Friedrich von Preen vom 27. September 1870, in: Briefe zur

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»We cannot share,« says Burckhardt in his »Reflections on History«, »that invitingly optimistic view according to which society came into being first, and the State arose as its protector, its nega | tive aspect, its warden and defender […] Human nature is not like that. […] the truth is […] that power is in itself evil. [Without the slightest regard for] religion, the privilege of egoism, which is denied to the individual, is bestowed on the State. Weaker neighbors are subjected and annexed, or in some way deprived of their independence […] And once on that road, there is no stopping. There is an excuse for everything, since ›mere peaceableness would have led nowhere […] and ›the others do […] the upshot of the whole process is the beautiful theory of ›unjustified existences.‹«26 Burckhardt could feel and speak in this way because he never was tempted by the idol of power. His was a cultural ideal; and his historical knowledge had taught him that the great ages of culture were not those protected by mighty states. »The first p e r fe c te d example of the modern State with supreme coercive power exercised on nearly all branches of culture is to be seen in the France of Louis XIV and in his imitators. […] At the same time the State acquired the habit of an aggressive foreign policy, of large standing armies and other costly instruments of force, in short, of a separate life completely divorced from its own higher aims. It became a mere dreary self-enjoyment of power, a pseudo-organism existing by and for itself. […] Literature and even philosophy became servile in their glorification of the State, and art monumentally servile; they created only what was acceptable at Court. Intellect put itself out to board in every direction and cringed before convention.«27 What made this judgment possible, and even necessary, was Burckhardt’s view of the aim of historical knowledge – and of the function of knowledge in general. He is one of the most recent witnesses to that classical ideal of a pure contemplative life which had been created Erkenntnis, 2. Teil, S. 334–336: S. 335: »O, wie wird sich die arme deutsche Nation irren, wenn sie daheim das Gewehr in den Winkel stellen und den Künsten und dem Glück des Friedens obliegen will! Da wird es heißen: vor allem weiterexerziert! und nach einiger Zeit wird niemand mehr sagen können, wozu eigentlich das Leben noch vorhanden ist.« Ders., Brief an Friedrich von Preen vom 31. Dezember 1870, a. a. O., S. 336–338: S. 336 f.: »Das Bedenklichste ist aber nicht der jetzige Krieg, sondern die Ära von Kriegen, in welche wir eingetreten sind, und auf diese muß sich der neue Geist einrichten. O wie vieles, das den Gebildeten lieb gewesen, werden sie als geistigen ›Luxus‹ über Bord werfen müssen! und wie eigentümlich anders, als wir sind, wird das neue Geschlecht emporwachsen.«] 26 Idem, Force and Freedom, pp. 110 ff. [Zitat S. 110 u. 115 f.]. 27 Ibid., pp. 179 ff. [Zitat S. 179 u. 181 f.]

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by the great Greek thinkers. He put the vita contemplativa on a much higher level than the vita activa. And history, when understood and studied in the right way, meant to him the consummation of a purely contemplative life. It cannot reach this aim as long as it is still infected with the greatest evils of mankind: with vanity, with ambition, and with greed. True historical knowledge arises only if we begin to rid our | selves of all personal desires and of all national aspirations. There are only two alternatives, between which we have to choose. One is the will to power, whose behavior towards the outside world can be seen in its most naive form in the ancient world potentates, who conquered and enslaved and plundered and pillaged far and wide. Followed by their booty and their slaves, they entered Thebes or Nineveh in triumph and were regarded as the beloved of God – till a new and yet more powerful potentate arose. For power »[…] is not stability but a lust, and ipso facto insatiable, therefore unhappy in itself and doomed to make others unhappy. Inevitably, in its pursuit, peoples fall into the hands both of ambitious dynasties seeking to maintain themselves, and of individual ›great men‹ […] i.e., of the forces which have the furtherance of culture least at heart.«28 On the other hand, we find the will to knowledge, and first and foremost, to intuitive – that is, to historical – knowledge. »The highest mission of the history of mankind,« wrote Burckhardt in a letter, »the evolution of the mind to freedom – has become to me a leading principle. Hence my study can never be unfaithful to myself nor can it let me sink downwards. It will remain my good genius throughout my life.«29 This ideal that Burckhardt had formed as a youth of twenty-four years remained the lodestar of his life and his whole work as an historian. To him it was not only an intellectual but also a high ethical idea. His conception of the educational value of history was based upon this view. We must safeguard our impartiality against the invasion of history by wishful thinking. The main obstacle in the way is the confusion of insight by our wishes, hopes, and fears, and the incalculable factor of mental contagions. »While, as men of a definite epoch, we must inevitably pay our passive tribute to historical life, we must at the Ibid., p. 184. [Ders., Brief an Karl Fresenius vom 19. Juni 1842, in: Briefe zur Erkenntnis, 2. Teil, S. 59–62: S. 60: »Die höchste Bestimmung der Geschichte der Menschheit: die Entwicklung des Geistes zur Freiheit, ist mir leitende Überzeugung geworden, und so kann mein Studium mir nicht untreu werden, kann mich nicht sinken lassen, muß mein guter Genius bleiben mein Leben lang.«] 28 29

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same time approach it in a spirit of contemplation.«30 Such a spirit will show us historical life in its true shape and reconcile us to its inevitable evils, its sufferings and miseries, its failures and crimes. Treated in this way our study of history is not only a right and | a duty; it is also a supreme need. It is our freedom in the very awareness of universal bondage and the stream of necessities. But in order to reach this freedom we must first get rid of those obstacles that constantly threaten it. We must renounce our personal wishes and idiosyncrasies, and even our national prejudices and ambitions: »If history is ever to help us to solve even an infinitesimal part of the great and grievous riddle of life, we must quit the regions of personal and temporal foreboding for a sphere in which our view is not forthwith dimmed by self. It may be that a calmer consideration from a greater distance may yield a first hint of the true nature of life on earth […] Bias, however, is particularly prone to make its appearance in the guise of patriotism, so that true knowledge finds its chief rival in our preoccupation with the history of our own country. There are certainly things in which the history of a man’s own country will always take precedence, and it is our bounden duty to occupy ourselves with it. Yet it should always be balanced by some other great line of study, if only because it is so intimately interwoven with our desires and fears, and because the bias it imparts to our mind is always towards intentions and away from knowledge. […] In the realm of thought, it is supremely just and right that all frontiers should be swept away. […] The truest study of our national history will be that which considers our own country in parallels and in relation to world history and its laws, as a part of a great whole, illumined by the same heavenly bodies as have shone upon other times and other peoples, threatened with the same pitfalls and one day to be engulfed in the same eternal night and perpetuated in the same great universal tradition.«31 Then we shall understand the real value of historical knowledge: »The mind must transmute into a possession the remembrance of its passage through the ages of the world. What was once joy and sorrow must now become knowledge, as it must in the life of the individual.«32 These words from the introduction of Burckhardt’s »Reflections on History« provide the best interpretation of his historical method. They account for the exceptional place that his work occupies in the historiography of the nineteenth century. As Friedrich Gundolf rightly 30 31 32

[Ders., Force and Freedom, S. 85.] [A. a. O., S. 88–90.] [A. a. O., S. 86.]

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says in his introduction to an unpublished work, »German Historians from Herder to Burckhardt«, Jacob Burckhardt is perhaps not the most powerful German historian of the nineteenth century (this title is due to Mommsen), but he is surely the most imaginative and most limpid mind – »the sage among historians.«33

33 [Friedrich Gundolf, Historiography. Introduction to an Unpublished Work: German Historians from Herder to Burckhardt, in: Philosophy and History. Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer, hrsg. v. Raymond Klibansky u. Herbert James Paton, Oxford 1936, S. 277–282: S. 281.]

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Ficino’s Place in Intellectual History1 (1945) The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. By Paul Oskar Kristeller. New York, Columbia University Press, 1943, pp. 441. I A comprehensive study of the philosophy of Ficino has long been a desideratum. Every student of the thought of the Italian Renaissance has felt the want of such a work. To be sure, we have had books dealing with Ficino’s life, his personality, his influence upon the culture of the Renaissance. Interest even in his philosophy has been steadily increasing during recent decades. On the other hand there are not a few authors who deny that the work of Ficino has any specifically philosophical merit or interest. They can find in it no new or original element of thought. The opinion is still widespread that the philosophy of the Renaissance was a mere eclecticism – a mixture of the most diverse and incompatible doctrines borrowed from various sources. I have tried to refute this traditional view in a study of Pico della Mirandola published in this »Journal«.2 As to Ficino, we cannot do full justice to his work so long as we continue to see in him only the founder of the Platonic Academy of Florence and the translator and commentator of Plato and Plotinus. The more carefully we study his philosophy the more it becomes evident that he was a genuine thinker. It is true that he never intended to break away from the general philosophical tradition – the tradition of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. But, on the other hand, he does not simply repeat or reproduce the ideas of previous thinkers; he poses his own questions and gives his own answers. In dealing with the culture of the Renaissance we find ourselves confronted at the very outset by a methodological dilemma. We must pick our way between Scylla and Charybdis, between a certain dogmatism and an exaggerated scepticism. There are still many scholars who maintain and defend the thesis of Burckhardt. They see in the 1

[Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Journal of the History of Ideas 6 (1945), S. 483–

501.] 2 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. A Study in the History of Renaissance Ideas, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 3 (1942), pp. 123–144 and 319–346 [In diesem Band, S. 67–113].

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Italian Renaissance the cradle of the modern spirit, a real rebirth, a »discovery of man and nature«.3 Opposed to them we find the strict »medievalists« who declare that the so-called Renaissance is a mere »flatus vocis« – an empty name to which there corresponds no historical reality. Both views have been defended with good arguments.4 But what we learn from this discussion is | only the fact that the period of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento is too subtle and too complicated a phenomenon to be described by any simple term or abstract formula. All such formulae are bound to fail. When we come to the real question, when we begin to deal with any special problem or any individual thinker, we must forget them. They turn out to be inadequate and misleading. In every particular investigation the question must be raised anew and answered independently. In his book on Ficino Kristeller has acted upon this principle. He makes no attempt to give a »definition« of the Renaissance. Nor does he begin by describing Ficino’s philosophy and his tendency of thought in general terms. Kristeller’s approach to the problem is strictly historical. He does not propose to judge and criticize his author, but to understand and interpret him. Of course, he cannot refrain from critical comments; but these comments are meant only to clarify Ficino’s ideas, not to correct them. Kristeller displays the work of Ficino in its complex structure and in all its ramifications. He has no predilection for special parts of Ficino’s philosophy. He undertakes a searching analysis of the whole system – of Ficino’s ontology, of his psychology and his philosophy of religion. The historical motives that contributed to the formation of Ficino’s thought are carefully balanced against each other. In Kristeller’s description Ficino does not appear as a mere Platonist. All the other elements of his thought – the Aristotelian, the Neo-Platonic, the Augustinian strands – are clearly revealed. On the 3 [Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch (Kap. 4: Die Entdeckung der Welt und des Menschen) (Gesamtausgabe, Bd. V, hrsg. v. Werner Kaegi), Berlin/Leipzig 1930, S. 202 ff.] 4 See the discussion in this »Journal of the History of Ideas« 4 (1943), pp. 1–74, »Originality and Continuity of the Renaissance«, by Dana Bennett Durand, Tradition and Innovation in Fifteenth Century Italy. »Il primato dell’ Italia« in the Field of Science, ibid., pp. 1–20; Hans Baron, Towards a more Positive Evaluation of the Fifteenth-Century Renaissance, ibid., pp. 21–49; Ernst Cassirer, Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance, ibid., pp. 49–56 [In diesem Band, S. 175–183]; Francis Rarick Johnson, Preparation and Innovation in the Progress of Science, ibid., pp. 56–59; Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Place of Classical Humanism in Renaissance Thought, ibid., pp. 59–63; Dean Putnam Lockwood, It is Time to recognize a New »Modern Age«, ibid., pp. 63–65; Lynn Thorndike, Renaissance or Prerenaissance?, ibid., pp. 65–74.

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other hand Kristeller is strongly opposed to the view that Ficino’s doctrine is to be regarded as a mere »syncretism«. »[…] even when [the old ideas] recur apparently unchanged,« says Kristeller, »they are not just mechanically repeated, but are recreated on the basis of a fresh and original conviction and in terms supplied by a new intellectual content.«5 To set forth this »new intellectual content« is the principal aim of Kristeller’s book. For this purpose he has to begin by organizing the scattered and seemingly unrelated ingredients of Ficino’s philosophy around a common intellectual center. As to where we are to seek this center there seems no possible doubt. Ficino himself has indicated it in the very title of his principal work: »Theologia platonica sive de immortalitate animorum«. But Kristeller is not satisfied with this answer. »Why does the immortality of the Soul,« he asks, »a problem recurring frequently in the history of philosophy as one among many metaphysical problems, become for Ficino the central problem, and why does it occupy a more important place in his system than it does in the thought of any other thinker before or after him? This question has never been raised by Ficino’s interpreters – at least in this form. But the answer seems basic for any real understanding of his philosophy.«6 | Kristeller’s answer is given in one of the most interesting and important chapters of his book, the one dealing with »Internal Experience«. If we are to understand Ficino’s metaphysics in terms of its living center, he declares, we must start from the phenomenon of »internal ›consciousness‹«.7 Here we find the real clue to Ficino’s philosophy – the fundamental fact and principle on which all his special doctrines depend. Ficino’s conception of the act of contemplation is the crucial point in his theory of God, in his theory of Being and Thought, in his theory of the human soul, in his theory of morals, art, religion. Any historical or systematic interpretation of Ficino’s philosophy must be directed toward this problem. The ideas of Soul and of God are the two foci of Ficino’s metaphysics. But these ideas are nothing but the subject and object of contemplation – transformed into substances. They are the two aspects of inner or spiritual consciousness, developed and made independent. If we accept this starting point of Kristeller’s interpretation – and to my mind he has proved his point by conclusive arguments – we 5 Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, transl. by Virginia Conant, New York 1943 (Columbia Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 6), p. 3. 6 Ibid., p. 346. 7 [A. a. O., S. 206.]

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have won a new perspective, a vantage point from which we may see the whole of Ficino’s system in a clearer light. Many questions that were highly controversial can now be answered in a better and more satisfactory way. This holds just as much for the historical background of his philosophy as for its systematic implications. If we judge Ficino’s understanding of Plato and Platonism by our own modern and critical standards we are necessarily disappointed. In his treatment all power of discrimination and all sense of proportion seem lacking. He speaks of Plato and Plotinus, of Porphyry and Proclus, of Dionysius the Areopagite as if they were all of the same mind. It would, however, be a mistake to assume that this identification is a mere confusion. For our much more comprehensive knowledge of the historical facts and motives it is impossible to overlook or neglect the differences between Platonism, Neo-Platonism, and Augustinianism. Yet in spite of these differences Ficino could find in all these theories a common basis. As to the general rôle they ascribe to the act of contemplation Plato, Plotinus, and Augustine are in complete agreement. To all of them this act is the gateway to the intelligible world. The form of contemplation, of course, is not the same in the three systems. Plato speaks as a dialectician, Plotinus as a mystic, Augustine as a Christian thinker. Plato describes the release of the human soul as a continuous process of thought that begins with mathematics, proceeds to astronomy and ends in ethics. Plotinus accepts all the presuppositions of the Platonic theory. But according to him the end cannot be reached by a slow and methodical progress. The soul must break its fetters by a sudden ecstasy. We must in the end pass beyond the limits of science and knowledge; we must arrive at a mystical vision in which all differences are overcome and extinguished. By this | ecstatic act the soul, liberated not only from the body but from the realm of finite form, returns to the true source of all being and all wisdom. She lives out a higher life and experiences a union with the divinity.8 This is not mere contemplation; it is rather a simplification and identification (»7πλωσις κα8 [9νωσις]«).9 All this is maintained in Augustine’s theory of knowledge. But in his version every act of human knowledge, even of mathematical and discursive knowledge, is based upon an act of divine grace. God alone is »pater intelligibilis lucis« and »pater […] illuminationis nostrae.«10 This is the Christian idea of contemplation; it finds its 8 Cf. Plotinus, Enneades (No. 6, bk. 9, chap. 11), in: Opera, ed. by Adolf Kirchhoff, Vol. I, Leipzig 1856, pp. 93 f. 9 Ibid., p. 94. 10 Aurelius Augustine, Soliloquiorum libri duo (Bk. 1, chap. 1, no. 2), in: Opera

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clearest and classical expression in the Augustian conception of Christ as the common heavenly teacher of mankind.11 In Ficino’s theory all these elements – the Platonic, the Neo-Platonic, and the Augustinian – are fused. But on this very point he proves to be not only the heir of the classical and medieval tradition, but also an independent thinker. He eliminates all those ideas that are not congenial to his own frame of thought and to his ideal of the speculative and religious life. This process of »unconscious criticism« is very clear in Kristeller’s exposition. By concentrating upon Ficino’s theory of contemplation Kristeller is able to clarify many questions that have hitherto remained highly controversial. In his book on the philosophy of Ficino (1923) Saitta emphasized the »immanentistic« aspects of Ficino’s doctrine. But to every reader of the »Theologia platonica« it must be clear that it is very hard to find any »immanentism« in Ficino’s system. On every page we find the strongest proofs of a strict and uncompromising »transcendentalism«. He had no intention of proclaiming a »this-worldly« philosophy. »A great thing thou art, oh Soul,« he says, »if small things do not fill thee […] Hence, seek thyself outside the world. […] So thou wilt return to largeness.«12 On the other hand, there is one element in the Neo-Platonic 9νωσις and 7πλωσις that Ficino could not accept, not at least without critical reservation. The soul may and must, indeed, transcend the world, but she cannot transcend herself. The level of contemplation is not surpassed, even in the highest act of consciousness. »For Plotinus there is in each contemplative act the distinction between the objective substance and the consciousness striving inward. […] For Ficino the contemplative attitude cannot be transcended at all, but can only be perfected within itself. To him, therefore, any reason for distinguishing between One and Mind ceases, since he moves entirely within the realm of what Plotinus calls Mind.«13 | This seems to me one of the most important results of Kristeller’s historical analysis. He gives us a much more »organic« view of Ficino’s omnia, post lovaniensium theologorum recensionem castigata denuo ad manuscriptos codices gallicos, vaticanos, belgicos, etc., necnon ad editiones antiquiores et castigatiores, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 12 vols. (Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, vols. XXXII–XLVII), Paris 1841 ff., Vol. I, col. 869–904: col. 870. 11 Idem, De magistro liber unus (Chap. 11 ff.), in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, col. 1193–1220: col. 1215 ff. 12 Marsilio Ficino, Theologiae platonicae, de immortalite animorum, in: Opera omnia, 2 vols., Basle without year, Vol. I/1, pp. 79–424: p. 158; cf. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, p. 218 [Danach zitiert]. 13 Ibid., p. 229; cf. p. 249.

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philosophy than we find in other writers. Kristeller makes no attempt to conceal the contradictions inherent in Ficino’s doctrine. But he shows convincingly that in spite of all its discrepancies Ficino’s work preserves its systematic unity. It is centered around a few fundamental problems which complete and elucidate each other. There is, however, one point on which I cannot agree with Kristeller’s appreciation of Ficino’s philosophy. He is right to emphasize the vital importance of Ficino’s theory of contemplation; but this emphasis has led him to a sort of optical illusion. As regards this problem he is apt to overestimate Ficino’s originality. »[…] for Ficino,« he says, »human knowledge is not limited to empirical objects, but rises above them to the sphere of the incorporeal and intelligible things, there to consider divine things: Ideas. Here, f o r the fi r s t ti me i n e pi s te mo lo gy, we notice the influence of inner experience.«14 This seems to me a very questionable and highly exaggerated statement. Obviously there was no need for Ficino to discover the meaning and nature of »inner experience«. There is scarcely a single great thinker – at least no great religious thinker – who had not felt and spoken in the same way. Ficino’s urge of »inner experience« had found its most striking and laconic expression in the well-known words of Augustine: »noverim me, noverim te.«15 These words could be used as a motto for Ficino’s whole epistemology and theory of religion. Man must have found his own center, he must know and understand himself before he can make any attempt to find God. This maxim set its stamp upon the whole philosophical and religious literature of the Middle Ages. Ficino was only one link in that great chain of thought which Étienne Gilson, in his Gifford Lectures on »The Spirit of Mediæval Philosophy«, has described as »Christian Socratism«.16 »He is not wise,« says Saint Bernard, »who is not wise for himself; let everyone be the first to drink at his own well. Begin by considering thyself and, better still, end with that. […] Thou for thyself art the first, and also the last.«17 Ficino is a representative of this Christian theory of self-knowledge, which we can follow from the fourth century down to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – from Augustine to Erasmus and Pascal.18 | Ibid., p. 238 [See note 68, on p. 635]. Augustine, Soliloquiorum (Bk. 2, chap. 1, no. 1), col. 885. 16 Cf. Étienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediæval Philosophy (Gifford Lectures 1931– 1932), transl. by Alfred Howard Campbell Downes, London 1936, pp. 209 ff. 17 [A. a. O., S. 215.] 18 »It is astonishing,« says Ficino in the fourteenth book of the »Theologia platonica«, »that whenever we are at leisure, we fall into grief like exiles, though 14 15

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On the other hand, there was one feature of the Platonic Academy of Florence that was really »modern«, that had no parallel and no equivalent in medieval thought. We must here make a sharp distinction between Ficino as an individual thinker and the influence of the Platonic Academy. In a sense the latter extended much farther than Ficino’s own philosophical doctrines. What the Platonic Academy created was a new atmosphere of philosophical and literary life. This proved more important and more decisive for the development of the modern spirit than any work done by the founders and the members of the Academy. That work soon became antiquated; but the atmosphere persisted. If the only merit of Ficino had been his renewal of Platonic doctrines, the value of his efforts would, indeed, be very dubious. Three years ago there was published an important study of Plato’s Theology by Friedrich Solmsen.19 If we compare this work with Ficino’s »Theologia platonica« we find scarcely any point of contact between our modern conception of Plato’s philosophy and Ficino’s interpretation. It is characteristic that the very name of Ficino is not mentioned in Solmsen’s book. But even if all the results of the Platonic Academy have been forgotten, the idea of the Academy still survives. Here was no corporation of scholars or clerics obliged to fulfill certain official duties and bound to maintain a fixed tradition. The Academy was a circle of friends who freely discussed their philosophical problems. Even between the two leaders, Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, there was never complete agreement; they differed on many significant points. What was of prime importance in the work of the Platonic Academy was not so much the particular doctrines developed by individual thinkers. These doctrines still contain many conventional features. It was rather we do not know, or certainly do not think of, the cause of our grief. Thus it has come about that man cannot live alone. For we think that we can expel our hidden and continual grief through the society of others and through a manifold variety | of pleasures. But we are only too deceived. For in the midst of the plays of pleasure we sigh at times, and when the plays are over, we depart ever more sorrowful.« Ficino, Theologiae platonicae, p. 316; Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, p. 208 [Danach zitiert]. In reading these lines we are under the impression that they are taken from a well-known chapter of Pascal’s »Pensées«. We need not, however, assume that Pascal was under the influence of Ficino. Pascal was no great reader, and it is highly improbable that he ever found the leisure to study a work like the »Theologia platonica«. The striking resemblance between Ficino’s and Pascal’s thought, and even between their style, must, in my opinion, be accounted for by going back to their common source, Augustine. 19 Friedrich Solmsen, Plato’s Theology, Ithaca, N.Y./New York 1942 (Cornell University Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 27).

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a new tendency of thought, a new spirit of free inquiry. This was, indeed, a »Renaissance«, a rebirth of Platonism. For in his Academy Plato had furnished the first great example of an entirely free organization of philosophical and scientific thought.20 The Italian universities of the fifteenth century were not able to live up to this classical | model. Among the professors of these universities there were great philosophical teachers, scholars like Pietro Pomponazzi, men of great sagacity and penetration and of independent judgment. But even these men were still bound with the heavy chains of an old and time-honored tradition. In spite of all their efforts they could not break away from this tradition; they could not contradict the great authorities of Aristotle or Averroës. Personally Ficino was no »free thinker«. He did not defend, he did not even conceive the ideal of the »autonomy of reason« or of a secular philosophy. He never went beyond the limits of a »philosophia pia«. »[…] ego certe malo divine credere«, he wrote in one of his letters, »quam humane scire.«21 In this respect his philosophy was much nearer to Augustine’s than to Plato’s. The deeper reason for this attitude was that in Ficino o n e factor was still missing. In his work we find no independent study of nature. A philosophy of nature, in the sense in which one was later developed by the thinkers of the Renaissance – by Cardano, Telesio, Patrizzi, Giordano Bruno – was unknown to Ficino. He always insisted that physics and cosmology cannot be put on the same level as ontology and metaphysics. In the hierarchy of knowledge physics must be content with a subordinate place. It is true that in Ficino we find no ascetic attitude, no contempt for nature. But his interest in nature is aesthetic, not theoretical or scientific. The value he ascribes to nature depends upon its beauty. This aspect of Ficino’s work became one of the great stimuli toward the new conception of art that developed in the first centuries of the Renaissance.22 But an apotheosis of nature, a »pantheism« of any kind, was impossible in his system. Augustine’s words: »Deum et animam scire cupio. Nihilne plus? Nihil omnino,«23 might still be used as a motto for his »Theologia platonica«. 20 See Hermann Usener, Organisation der wissenschaftlichen Arbeit. Bilder aus der Geschichte der Wissenschaft. 1884, in: Vorträge und Aufsätze, Leipzig/ Berlin 1907, pp. 67–102. 21 See Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, Leipzig 1927 (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, Vol. 10), p. 65 [ECW 14, S. VII–XI u. 1–220: S. 72] [Zitat: Marsilio Ficino, Epistolae, in: Opera omnia, Bd. I/2, S. 607–964: S. 783]. 22 For further details see »Individuum und Kosmos«, pp. 67 ff. [ECW 14, S. 74 ff.]. 23 Augustine, Soliloquiorum (Bk. 1, chap. 2, no. 7), col. 872.

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Yet in spite of this close relationship there remains one point on which the difference between the religious views of Augustine and Ficino is clear and unmistakable – and it is a point of crucial importance. Augustine was not only the author of the »City of God«, the founder of a Christian metaphysics and of a Christian philosophy of history. His aim was not only speculative but also practical – and the more he proceeded in his work the more the latter aim prevailed over the former. He had to organize the Christian faith and give it a firm dogmatic shape. Throughout his whole life he was engaged in this struggle. He had to attack and refute all those heterodox views that were endangering the unity of the Church; he had to fight against the Pelagians, the Donatists, and other heretics. In this contest he was relentless and uncompromising. »I believe in any articles only on | the Church’s authority«, he said in his polemic against the Manicheans; »may I believe in the Gospel itself merely on the same ground.«24 Such an identification of the Christian religion with the Catholic church was no longer possible or tenable for a philosopher of the Renaissance. The need for a reform of the Church was generally felt. Ficino’s »pia philosophia« could not be founded on the same arguments and could not consist in the same implicit faith as the religion of Augustine. Ficino’s idea of »catholicity« was far different from Augustine’s. He strove for a universal religion, not for a universal church. Everyone who worshiped and loved God was welcome. There were no heretics in this new religion. For what is essential in the religious life is not any dogmatic formula. According to Ficino the difference between formulae, between external signs and symbols, does not endanger the unity of faith; on the contrary, it confirms this unity. This was the common conviction of the religious thinkers of the Renaissance. We find it – almost in the same terms – in Nicholas of Cusa’s »De pace fidei«, in Ficino’s »De christiana religione«, in Pico della Mirandola’s defense of the libertas credendi.25 »Una veritas in variis signis varie resplendeat.«26 Every religion must be at the same time divine and human. It is divine in its origin; but it is human in its expression. The variety of these expressions cannot be suppressed, and 24 »Ego vero Evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae Ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas.« Idem, Contra epistolam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti. Liber unus (Chap. 5), in: Opera omnia, Vol. VIII, col. 173–206: col. 176. 25 See my article on Pico, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, p. 335 [In diesem Band, S. 102 f.]. 26 [Vgl. Raymond Klibanski/Herbert Jonas Paton, Preface, in: dies. (Hrsg.), Philosophy and History. Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer, Oxford 1936, S. VII f.: S. VII: »Una veritas in variis signis resplendet.«]

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ought not to be suppressed; for it is part and parcel of human nature. God himself graciously receives this variety and takes delight in the multifariousness of creeds.27 Kristeller speaks of the »natural religion« of Ficino;28 but we should perhaps better avoid a term that is open to much misunderstanding. In the system of Ficino there is no room for that type of »natural religion« that was developed and defended by later thinkers, by the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Herbert of Cherbury and his followers, the English and French Deists, distinguished natural from revealed religion; Kant spoke of a religion »within the limits of mere reason«.29 Both views were impossible for Ficino. For him every religion is revealed for it is always based upon a supernatural act, an act of divine Providence. But in comparison with the Middle Ages this revelation is understood in a new and much broader sense. It is no longer regarded as a particular historical event bound up with a special place and moment. The whole history of religion and philosophy is a continuous stream of divine inspiration. Six theologians, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, | Philolaus, Plato, »in wonderful order,« formed a unique and coherent succession in ancient theology.30 Thus the principle, »Extra ecclesiam nulla salus,«31 is abandoned. But this does not mean a secularization or »paganization« of the Christian religion; it means, on the contrary, a Christianization of paganism. Not a single moment in history, but the historical process in its entirety, is the true revelation of God. Without this continuous revelation man would be more miserable than any animal. But it is not right that the human race, which draws close to God, should be forever unhappier than the animals and deprived of such worship and far removed from 27 »Forsitan vero varietas hujusmodi, ordinante Deo, decorem quendam parit in universo mirabilem. Regi maximo magis curae est revera honorari, quam aut his aut illis gestibus honorari.« Marsilio Ficino, De christiana religione (Chap. 4), in: Opera omnia, Vol. I/1, pp. 1–77: p. 4. 28 Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, p. 318. 29 [Immanuel Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, in: Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, 11 Bde., Berlin 1912–1921, Bd. VI, hrsg. v. Artur Buchenau, Ernst Cassirer u. Benzion Kellermann, S. 139–353 (Akad.-Ausg. VI, 1–202).] 30 Marsilio Ficino, Argumentum in librum Mercurii Trismegisti, ad cosmum medicem, patriae patrem, in: Opera omnia, Vol. II/2, p. 1836; Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, pp. 25 f. [Zitat S. 26]. 31 [Vgl. Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, Epistola 73, Nr. 21, in: Opera genuina, Bd. I: Epistolae (Bibliotheca patrum ecclesiasticorum latinorum selecta, Bd. II), Leipzig 1838, S. 219: »salus extra ecclesiam non est«.]

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God.32 This is the pax fidei, the pax philosophica, and the pax christiana as understood by the religious thinkers of the fifteenth century – by Nicholas of Cusa, by Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. This leads to a further question eagerly discussed by the students of Ficino but hitherto without any clear and definite answer. Almost all historians of philosophy agree that Ficino’s teaching is a »mystical doctrine«.33 But the term »mysticism« is vague and ambiguous. We speak of the mysticism of Plato and Plotinus, of Saint Augustine and Eckhart, of Spinoza and Jakob Böhme. Obviously all these phenomena are widely different from and even incompatible with each other. Here too the best way to arrive at a clear insight into the character of Ficino’s mysticism is perhaps an historical approach. Throughout the whole Middle Ages we find a sharp conflict between mystical and »dialectical« thought. There was a permanent struggle between these two interpretations of the Christian faith. The mystics insisted that the mysteries of faith are impenetrable to human reason; the dialecticians declared that a rational explanation of these mysteries, once they have been revealed to us, is not only possible, but is imposed upon man as a fundamental religious duty. »Sicut rectus ordo exigit,« says Anselm of Canterbury, »ut profunda Christianae fidei credamus, priusquam ea praesumamus ratione discutere, ita negligentia mihi videtur si, postquam confirmati sumus in fide, non studemus quod credimus intelligere.«34 The famous ontological argument, as it appears in Anselm’s »Proslogium«, is followed by a prayer in which Anselm thanks God that by a special act of his grace God has made him understand what he formerly could only believe.35 But all these logical | and dialectical efforts are declared null and void by the mystical adversaries of Anselm and Abélard. They see in them nothing but a falsification and degradation of Christian faith. It is an unpardonable pride in man, says Bernard of Clairvaux, to think that by his own powers he can find an approach to God.36 In 32 Preface to »De christiana religione«, pp. 1 f.; Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, p. 344. 33 See, for instance, Walter Dress, Die Mystik des Marsilio Ficino, Berlin/Leipzig 1929 (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, Vol. 14). 34 Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus homo (Bk. 1, chap. 2), in: Opera omnia nec non eadmeri monachi historia novorum et alia opuscula, Vol. I (Patrologiae cursus completus, series secunda, Vol. CLVIII), Paris 1853, col. 359–432: col. 362. 35 »Gratias tibi, bone Domine, gratias tibi; quia quod prius credidi, te donante, jam sic intelligo, te illuminante; ut si te esse nolim credere, non possim non intelligere.« Idem, Proslogion seu alloquium de Dei existentia, ibid., col. 223–242: col. 229. 36 »Petrus Abaelardus christianae fidei meritum evacuare nititur, dum totum quod Deus est, humana ratione arbitratur se posse comprehendere.« Bernard

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the twelfth century this view prevailed; in 1140 the doctrine of Abélard was condemned by the Church and declared to be heretical.37 The thinkers of the Renaissance were still confronted by the same dilemma. They had to trace their path between these two different types of religious thought and feeling. But they had found a new approach to the problem. In his treatise »De docta ignorantia« (1444) Nicholas of Cusa had proclaimed his theory of the »coincidentia oppositorum«. In the light of this theory the question assumes a new form. Reason and Faith are opposites; but these opposites do not exclude each other. To find the unity of opposites is the highest aim of philosophy. Dialectical thought is not detrimental or inimical to religion; it is, on the contrary, an indispensable element of a contemplative, that is, of a true religious life. There remains a sharp difference between logic and theology. We cannot find the gateway to the intellectual world by syllogisms. If there were no other way than the way of Aristotle – of a logic based upon the principle of identity and contradiction – the gulf between philosophy and religion would, indeed, be insuperable. But we must not confuse speculative thought with discursive thought. Speculative thought is by no means »irrational«, but it is more than rational. According to Nicholas of Cusa there are different types of theology: a positive and a negative, a disjunctive and a copulative type. The last is the highest of all; for it contains and connects all the others.38 Ficino’s »Theologia platonica« belongs to this type: its highest aim is to develop a theologia copulativa that will allow philosophical and religious thought to reconcile all oppositions.39 | of Clairvaux, Epistola CXCI, in: Opera omnia, sex tomis in quadruplici volumine comprehensa, post horstium denuo recognita, aucta et in meliorem digesta ordinem, necnon novis praefationibus, admonitionibus, notis et observationibus indicibusque copiosissimis locupletata, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne (Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, Vols. CLXXXII–CLXXXV), Paris 1854–1879, Vol. CLXXXII, col. 357 f.: col. 357. – For all details see Étienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard (Chap. 3), transl. by Alfred Howard Campbell Downes, London/New York 1940, pp. 60 ff. 37 Cf. Axel Hjelm, Den helige Bernhard och Abälard. En dogmhistorisk studie, Vol. I, Lund 1898. 38 Nicolas Cusanus, De filiatione Dei, in: Opera. In quibus theologiae mysteria plurima, sine spiritu Dei inaccessa, iam aliquot seculis veleta et neglecta revelantur, Basel 1565, fol. 119–127: fol. 125. 39 I avail myself of this opportunity to revise a former statement made in my »Individuum und Kosmos«. In the second chapter I tried to show that Nicholas of Cusa’s philosophy exerted a strong influence on the general development of Italian thought in the Quattrocento. I still think this to be highly probable, but I should perhaps have spoken with more caution. I quite agree that, on the strength

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All this is not only contained in Ficino’s thought. We see its necessity as soon as we connect it with his theory of contemplation, which, as Kristeller has shown, is the keystone of his whole doctrine. Contemplation, as Ficino understands and interprets it, is an act that is neither merely »logical« nor merely »mystical«; it is rather a synthesis, a coincidentia, of these two attitudes. We may speak of Ficino as a mystic; but he is no longer a mystic in the sense of Bernard of Clairvaux; he is by no means an antidialectician. An adversary of dialectic thought would never have written the »Theologia platonica« – he would not have made such a tremendous effort to demonstrate the immortality of the soul and other fundamental truths of the Christian religion. From the point of view of the medieval mystics such efforts were not only unnecessary, but highly dangerous. Neither Ficino nor any other thinker of the Renaissance could accept the thesis which Peter Damiani had defended in his treatise »De sancta simplicitate«.40 To them it was impossible to think or speak of philosophy as an ancilla theologiae.41 An attitude of passive obedience, of complete submission to an external authority, was no longer intelligible to the religious thinkers of the Renaissance. Religion is based upon contemplation; and contemplation is always a free act of the human soul.

II One of the most interesting and provocative chapters in Kristeller’s book deals with the m et ap h o r s of Ficino. This is a point that, so far as I know, has not been adequately treated by any former writer. Ficino likes to illustrate his ideas by characteristic similes. These similes are very striking; they impress themselves upon the mind of his reader. But, as Kristeller points out, these metaphors have by no means of new historical evidence, we cannot give a direct and definite proof of this thesis. It is possible that Ficino conceived his general theory independently of Nicolas of Cusa. In this case the close rela|tionship between the two thinkers would be all the more important and interesting from the point of view of the general history of ideas. For it would show us the common background of the philosophy of the fifteenth century – the general intellectual and religious atmosphere of the Renaissance. 40 See Peter Damiani, De sancta simplicitate scientiae inflanti anteponenda, in: Opera omnia, collecta primum ac argumentis et notationibus illustrata, Vol. II (Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, Vol. CXLV), Paris 1853, col. 695–704. 41 For Peter Damiani’s doctrine see Joseph Anton Endres, Petrus Damiani und die weltliche Wissenschaft, Münster 1910 (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, Vol. 8, no. 3).

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a mere rhetorical value. They are not meant as sheer literary adornment. They have a philosophical purport and significance, for they are closely connected with Ficino’s ontology. »In Ficino’s choice of images,« says Kristeller, »there is a strange mixture of rigidity and delicacy that is quite distinct from Plato’s clarity and majesty and from the lofty strain of Plotinus, but seems to reflect the art of his period. More important than the impression, however, is the function of the metaphor, the relation between image and idea. For Plato, as well as for Plotinus, the metaphor’s primary task serves as a | means of making abstract ideas evident to intuition, and since the relation of the image to the idea is produced by an arbitrary act of thinking, the metaphor can claim validity only for thought, without stating anything definite about real entities. For Ficino, on the contrary, the relation of image to idea is not merely suggested by thinking but also corresponds to a real relationship existing among objects. […] In Ficino’s metaphors there is evidently a new, ontological element, and underneath the external connection of concepts is hidden an internal symbolism of things.«42 Kristeller gives a very clear exposition of Ficino’s theory of symbolism; but he makes no attempt to trace it back to its origin and to determine its place in the general history of ideas. As to this question I should like to make a few complementary remarks. Ficino’s general conception of the rôle of symbolic thought is still thoroughly medieval. It is penetrated with the spirit of Augustine and closely connected with the whole Augustinian tradition. Augustine was the first thinker who not only used symbols but also inquired into the principles of symbolic knowledge. He found these principles by going back to the Christian notion of the relation between the natural and the supernatural order. »Alles Vergängliche / Ist nur ein Gleichniß […]«43 – all changing and transient things are only allegories. Every object in space, every event in time is charged with a spiritual meaning. The material world is only a reflection and a mirror of the intelligible world. In modern thought nature is described as a chain of causes and effects; in medieval thought it is conceived as a system of signs and symbols. The truth of nature is neither logical nor physical, but religious, that is, symbolic. All natural things are »vestigial« and »nutus«, traces and hints by which God reveals himself and attempts to lead us back to our first source. »[…] o suavissima lux,« says Augustine in »De libero Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, pp. 93 f. [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Eine Tragödie. Zweiter Theil (Werke, hrsg. im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 1. Abt., Bd. XV/1), Weimar 1899, S. 337.] 42 43

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arbitrio«, »non enim cessas innuere nobis quae et quanta sis; et nutus tui sunt omne creaturarum decus.«44 This Augustinian theory has set its stamp upon the whole later development. It became a cornerstone of medieval thought. It was repeated time and again; and with every new step it became more and more subtle and elaborate. It appears, in various modifications, in all the scholastic systems, from the ninth up to the thirteenth century. In the doctrine of Johannes Scotus Eriugena the world is described as a »theophany«, a manifestation of God’s essence and will. »Omnia qua sunt, lumina sunt« – all things are lights. Every visible or corporeal object is a hint and indication of something incorporeal and intelligible.45 Hence the whole material universe is nothing but a counterpart and duplicate of Holy Scripture. | The same idea appears, more explicitly, in the scholastic systems of the thirteenth century. According to Bonaventura nature in not in itself divine but is the vestige of God. There must be some analogy between God and the universe he has created. This analogy appears in three different degrees – as shadow of God (umbra Dei), as vestige of God (vestigium Dei), and as image of God (imago Dei). With every new step the analogy becomes more and more perfect. There are various degrees of proximity and remoteness in the way in which creatures represent the Creator. The shadow (umbra Dei) is only a distant and confused representation of God, whereas the image is a representation which is both distinct and close. Material creatures can be shadows and vestiges, but they are not images, for they have not God for object; they have no idea and knowledge of God. Spiritual creatures alone are genuine images, because they have God as their object; but they are equally vestiges and shadows because they have him for cause. Following the trinitarian scheme introduced by Augustine that had determined the whole form of medieval thought, Bonaventura connects the three degrees of symbols with the three divine persons. »[C]reatura mundi,« he says, »est quasi quidam liber in quo […] legitur Trinitas fabricatrix […]«46 44 Aurelius Augustine, De libero arbitrio libri III (Bk. 2, chap. 16, no. 43), in: Opera omnia, Vol. I, col. 1221–1310: col. 1264. – See ibid. (Bk. 2, chap. 18, no. 41), col. 1263: »Quoquo enim te verteris, vestigiis quibusdam, quae operibus suis impressit, loquitur tibi, et te in exteriora relabentem, ipsis exteriorum formis intro revocat […]«. 45 »[…] nihil enim visibilium corporaliumque est, ut arbitror, quod non incorporale quid et intelligibile significet […]« Johannes Scotus Eriugena, De divisione naturae libri quinque (Bk. 5, chap. 3), Münster 1838, p. 430. 46 For further details see Étienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure

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This medieval theory is not forgotten or abandoned in the philosophy of the Renaissance. It still maintains its central place; and it is often expressed with great vigor. But the theory is modified in two directions. Both modifications are highly relevant and significant; they are typical witnesses to the general spirit of the Renaissance. The simile that the universe is a book in which God has inscribed his own ideas occurs over and over again in the literature of the Renaissance. As late as the sixteenth century Campanella gave it poetical expression in one of his sonnets. » Il mondo è il libro dove il Senno eterno scrisse i propri concetti, e vivo tempio dove, pingendo i gesti e ’l proprio esempio, di statue vive ornò l’imo e ’l superno; perch’ogni spirto qui l’arte e ’l governo leggere e contemplar, per non farsi empio, debba, e dir possa: – Io l’universo adempio, Dio contemplando a tutte cose interno.«47 This is exactly the same conception found in medieval thought – in Augustine, in Scotus Eriugena, in Bonaventura. But a new feature is added, in accordance with the new idea of revelation that began to take form among the religious thinkers of the Renaissance. This revelation is no longer understood in a strictly »orthodox«, narrow and dogmatic sense. It is not bound up with a single book or with a fixed and unique mode of expression. | It admits of many interpretations – and the human mind is free to choose between them. For all of them will lead man to the same end, to the knowledge of God. This is the conception of the vestigia Dei we find in Ficino’s work. »We can enjoy the divine mind,« he says, »through various Ideas, seek it through various traces (vestigia), travel toward that goal by various paths. … [God] so disposed the intellectual eyes and the tendencies of various Souls in different manners, in order that we may approach the different possessions of the manifold divine goods by different paths.«48 The other characteristic change concerns the new emphasis laid on the activity and spontaneity of the human mind. It is this spontaneity (Chap. 7), transl. by Dom Illtyd Trethowan and Francis Joseph Sheed, London 1938, pp. 204–237 [Zitat S. 214]. 47 Tommaso Campanella, Poesie, ed. by Giovanni Gentile, Bari 1915 (Scrittori d’Italia, Vol. 70), p. 16. 48 Ficino, Theologiae platonicae, pp. 353 f.; Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, p. 254 [Danach zitiert].

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that makes the mind an image of God and in a certain sense equal to God. Medieval thinkers could not understand and interpret this equality in the same way as those of the Renaissance. There remained for them always a strict boundary that could not be crossed. The mere attempt to pass beyond it was thought to be a dangerous temptation. Even the medieval thinkers, especially the mystics, always extolled the greatness of the human soul. They declared man to be an exalted creature, capable of participating in the Divine. Even the fall of man could not destroy this fundamental privilege. Through the fall the human soul has lost its purity and its rectitude; from an anima recta it has become an anima curva. But the greatness of the human soul is not entirely affected; it subsists after the fall. Nevertheless it would be an objectionable pride, an intolerable arrogance in man to speak and to think of himself as the image of God. He is made a fte r the image; but he is not this image. The only true and adequate image is the Logos, the divine Word. The Word alone is a substantial and subsistent expression of the Father; it expresses his justice, his wisdom, his truth.49 As for man, he stands always in a twofold peril – either of forgetting the dignity which constitutes his glory, or of forgetting that its source is not in himself. In the first case we lose our own true glory; in the second we glorify ourselves on account of what is not ours. Man’s greatness consists in bearing the image of God. But this greatness is not due to himself; it is there only by way of gift.50 The thinkers of the Renaissance did not attack this orthodox doctrine. But by changing the emphasis they gave it a new turn. They had learned | to see human nature and human history in a fresh light. They admired and praised human culture as the work of man rather than as the gift of God. Man’s true dignity consists in his creativeness, that is, in his capacity to produce images that have a specifically human character. This is the great new theme we find, in many variations, in the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, in Ficino, in Pico’s »Oration« on the dignity of man. According to Nicholas of Cusa God alone possesses a virtus entificativa; but the human mind is endowed with another 49 »[…] ut hoc [verbum] imago, illa [anima] ad imaginem sit. […] Verbum est veritas, est sapientia, est justitia: et haec imago. […] Est enim imago haec justitia de justitia, sapientia de sapientia, veritas de veritate, quasi de lumine lumen, de Deo Deus. Harum rerum nihil est anima, quoniam non est imago. Est tamen earumdem capax, appetensque et inde fortassis ad imaginem.« Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in cantica numero LXXXVI (No. 80), in: Opera omnia (Vol. CLXXXIII), col. 779–1198: col. 1166 f. 50 On this doctrine of Saint Bernard see Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard (Chap. 2), pp. 33 ff. and 224 ff., and the hints quoted there.

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power not inferior to it, with a virtus assimilativa. God is the creator of the universe; but man must in a sense recreate it. He possesses in his mind the seeds and elements of all things. He needs only to develop these seeds from their implicit state into an explicit one in order to know and to understand the world. This theory of complicatio and explicatio is the keystone of Nicholas of Cusa’s theory of knowledge, and of his ontology and metaphysics.51 It elevated human science to a new rank and dignity. In the mystical systems of the Middle Ages there had always lingered a deep distrust of human science. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of it as a turpis curiositas. To learn in order to know is scandalous curiosity, mere self-indulgence of a mind that makes the play of its own activity its end. All the »dialecticians« and scientists he charged with this fundamental error. »You will not learn to choose rightly,« said Saint Bernard, »in the school of Abelard, but only in the school of St. Benedict, in the school of Christ.«52 In the philosophy of the Renaissance this attitude has completely changed. Here we feel the influence of humanism. In its origin and in its principal aim humanism was not a philosophical movement. Among the famous humanists we find no great and independent thinkers. Their interest was literary and scholarly, not philosophical. Even Petrarch still regarded Cicero as one of the greatest philosophical authorities. But humanism was nevertheless able to perform an important service in the development of philosophical thought. The revival of classical antiquity had shown that man, without any supernatural help, could build up his own universe, the universe of human culture. This led to a new conception of man; to a »philosophical anthropology« far different from that of the Middle Ages. In the cultural world, in the universe of the arts and learning, we find definite and conclusive proof of man’s dignity and greatness. »Nostrae sunt picturae, nostrae sculpturae, nostrae sunt artes, nostrae scientiae, nostrae […] sapientiae,« said Giannozzo Manetti in his treatise »De dignitate et excellentia hominis«.53 In Pico’s »Oration« man is described as the sculptor who must bring forth his own form from the material with | which nature has endowed him: »[…] tui ipsius quasi arbitrarius honorariusque; plastes et fictor […]«54 The same idea appears in Ficino’s »Theologia 51 Cf. Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, Vol. I, Berlin 31922, pp. 21 ff. [ECW 2, S. 17 ff.]. 52 Cf. Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, pp. 64 f. [Zitat S. 65]. 53 Cf. Giovanni Gentile, Il concetto dell’uomo nel rinascimento, in: idem, Giordano Bruno e il pensiero del Rinascimento, Florence 1920 (Il pensiero moderno, Vol. 3), pp. 111–178: pp. 154 ff. [Zitat S. 176]. 54 [Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, in: Opera quae extant

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platonica«: »[…] humanae artes fabricant per se ipsas quaecumque fabricat ipsa natura, quasi non servi simus naturae, sed aemuli.«55

III Every historian or philosopher who has studied Ficino knows how difficult it is to find one’s way through the labyrinth of his opus majus, the »Theologia platonica«. I am sure this task has been made much easier by the appearance of Kristeller’s book. We now possess a clear and thorough analysis of all parts of Ficino’s system, of his epistemology, his ontology, his moral and religious views. But what to me seems even more valuable is the way in which Kristeller has succeeded in organizing all these various subjects. Through concentrating upon a few central problems – upon Ficino’s theory of contemplation and his theory of symbolism – he has given us a much clearer insight into the intellectual structure of Ficino’s doctrine and the systematic unity of his thought. In his introduction Kristeller deals with Ficino’s historical position. He briefly describes Ficino’s relation to ancient and medieval thought; but he does not explicitly treat the question of his influence on later thinkers. This problem is of great interest; but it was beyond the scope of Kristeller’s book. »[…] Ficino,« he remarks, »continued to exercise a subtle and anonymous influence through his translations and commentaries […] Everyone who read Plato and Plotinus in Latin absorbed, along with the ideas of these ancient thinkers, many ideas that actually belonged to their Renaissance interpreter. In this form Ficino’s influence continued at least up to the end of the eighteenth century. […] Further research will doubtless throw more light on many of these influences, and it is this broad historical perspective that increases our interest in a genuine understanding of Ficino’s own doctrine.«56 A detailed study of Ficino’s »anonymous influence« would indeed lead to important results. To my mind such a study should begin with the analysis of a single fundamental idea, the idea of »inner form«. This idea holds a central place in Plotinus’ philosophy. Plotinus starts from the idea of inner form in order to explain the beauty of the sensible world. »What is the similitude,« he asks, »between the beauties omnia: non tam literatis viris utilia, quam necessaria, in unum Corpus redacta, Bd. II, Basel o. J., S. 207–219: S. 208.] 55 Ficino, Theologiae platonicae (Bk. 13, chap. 3), p. 295. 56 Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, pp. 19 f.

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of sense and [the intelligible, the suprasensuous and] divine [beauty]? […] after what manner are the two beautiful?« The answer is that sensible beauty is beauty »by participation«. »[…] matter […] by its nature is ever averse from the supervening irradiations of form. [But w]henever […] form accedes, it conciliates in amicable unity the parts which are about to compose a whole; for being itself one it is not wonderful that the subject of its power should tend to unity, as far as the | nature of a compound will admit. […] But how can that which is inherent in body, accord with that which is above body? Let us reply by asking how the architect pronounces the building beautiful by accommodating the external structure to the fabric of his soul? Perhaps, because the outward building, when entirely deprived of the stones, is no other than the intrinsic form, divided by the external mass of matter, but indivisibly existing, though appearing in the many.«57 It was this definition of beauty given by Plotinus that exerted the deepest influence upon Augustine and his conception of the intelligible world. But Augustine could not accept the Neo-Platonic doctrine in its original sense. He had to adapt it to his own views and to reconcile it with the Christian dogma of creation. In Augustine’s philosophy the Platonic ideas are no longer independent realities that subsist in themselves and by themselves. They have become the thoughts of God. Hence the beauty of sensible things proves to be an immediate manifestation of God’s natura and essence. »[…] whatever delights thee in bodies and allures and fascinates thy corporeal senses,« says Augustine, »partakes in number. And if you inquire into the origin of number you must go back to yourself, and you will find that you cannot approve or disapprove what you perceive by the eye or the ear, if there are not within yourself certain laws of beauty to which you refer in regarding what you call beautiful in the world of sense. Behold the sky and the earth and the ocean: all that is shining and glittering in them has a form, because it has number. Take away this form and this number, and it is reduced to nothing.«58 »Equality and unity cannot 57 Plotinus, Enneades (No. 1, bk. 6, chap. 2), English translation by Thomas Taylor, An Essay on the Beautiful (From the Greek of Plotinus), London 1917, pp. 19–21. 58 Augustine, De libero arbitrio (Bk. 2, chap. 16, no. 42 f.), col. 1263 [»[…] quidquid te delectat in corpore, et per corporeos illicit sensus, videas esse numerosum, et quæras unde sit, et in teipsum redeas, atque intelligas te id quod attingis sensibus corporis, probare aut improbare non posse, nisi apud te habeas quasdam pulchritudinis leges, ad quas referas quæque pulchra sentis exterius. Intuere cœlum et terram et mare; et quæcumque in eis vel desuper fulgent, vel deorsum repunt vel volant vel natant; quia numeros habent: adime illis hæc, nihil erunt.«].

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be known and apprehended but by the mind itself […] and this intelligible unity is not tumid in place and unstable in time.«59 This theory of beauty reappears almost unchanged in Ficino’s work;60 and through him it was transmitted to modern philosophy. We can follow this intellectual process step by step. In England the work of the Platonic Academy of Florence was continued by the Cambridge Platonists.61 Shaftesbury, an admirer of the Cambridge Platonists, offered a theory of beauty that is close to Ficino’s and was, in all probability, influenced by him. From Shaftesbury the way leads to German literature of the classical age – to Winckelmann, Herder, Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt. The last step was taken in German Romanticism: in Schelling’s »Bruno«, in his oration: | »On the relation between the plastic arts and nature«, and in Hegel’s »Aesthetics«. Thus we have a long and almost uninterrupted tradition that reaches from antiquity to the Middle Ages, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, from the Renaissance to the modern world. But although we can see clearly the general outlines of the problem there still remain many questions that are in need of further investigation. The history of the idea of »internal form« (:νδον ε6δος) is still to be written. It would be a fascinating chapter in the general history of ideas. I hope that sooner or later Kristeller or another equally competent scholar will give us a book on this subject. In closing, I cannot refrain from making a supplementary remark on a minor point. Kristeller tries to connect Goethe’s doctrine of the »three religions« – the veneration for what is above us, for what is equal to us, and for what is beneath us – with Ficino’s theory of the »three loves« as developed in his treatise »De amore«. »It is by no means impossible,« he says, »that Goethe owed his inspiration to Ficino. He was not acquainted with Ficino’s original writings, to be sure. But we know that Goethe used Ficino’s Latin translation in reading Plotinus, and he may have done the same in reading Plato. The De amore is included in all the editions of Ficino’s translation of Plato. We may therefore suspect that Goethe at least noticed the suggestive passage.«62 This is a possible hypothesis, but it remains open to doubt, for there is only a very loose analogy between Ficino’s 59 Idem, De vera religione (Chap. 30, sect. 56), english transl. by Marcus Dods, Edinburgh 1871 [Nicht zu verifizieren]. 60 Cf. Individuum und Kosmos, pp. 67 ff. [ECW 14, S. 74 ff.]. 61 See my essay »Die Platonische Renaissance in England und die Schule von Cambridge«, Leipzig/Berlin 1932 (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, Vol. 24) [ECW 14, S. 221–380]. 62 Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, p. 113.

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doctrine of the »three loves« and Goethe’s description of the »three religions«. There is, however, another point on which we find a much clearer connection between Ficino and Goethe – a point that concerns Ficino’s fundamental problem, the problem of immortality. When first studying Ficino’s »Theologia platonica« I was surprised to find there an argument for the immortality of the human soul that recurs in a conversation of Goethe with Eckermann. Goethe was very suspicious of all the metaphysical proofs of immortality; he declared such proofs to be very weak and ineffective. Nevertheless, he admitted that the belief in immortality is deeply rooted in a fundamental instinct of human nature. »Man should believe in immortality,« he said, »he has a right to this belief; it corresponds to the wants of his nature, and he may believe in the promises of religion. […] To me, the eternal existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity; if I work on incessantly till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence when the present one can no longer sustain my spirit.«63 The same argument appears, in a much more detailed and elaborate form, in Ficino’s work. With Goethe it cannot be more than a casual remark; but with Ficino it is a cornerstone of his whole system. For with him it is based | upon the general postulate of the thoroughgoing and indestructible teleological structure of the universe. Kristeller has devoted a special chapter to the interpretation and systematic explanation of this postulate.64 As Ficino points out, every natural movement is able at some time to reach its goal; and every preparation related by nature to a form is able at some time to acquire that form. Hence the striving of the Soul toward God cannot be in vain, but must at some time reach its definite goal. And since during our earthly existence this happens never or only for a moment and then imperfectly, it must be realized in a future life. Hence the survival of the Soul after death is necessary.65 Curiously enough, the strength of this argument is not destroyed by Kant’s criticism of the »Paralogisms of Pure Reason.«66 In a modified form the argument still appears in Kant’s own philosophy, in the chapter on the immortality of the soul as a postulate of 63 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann, February 4, 1829, transl. by John Oxenford, London 1930 (Everyman’s Library Edition, Vol. 851), p. 287. 64 Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (Chap. 10: Appetitus naturalis), pp. 171 ff. 65 Cf. ibid., p. 340. 66 [Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, hrsg. v. Albert Görland (Werke, Bd. III), S. 273 (B 399): »Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft« u. ö.]

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pure practical reason.67 It may be that in this famous chapter we must see one more example of that »subtle and anonymous influence« which Ficino’s work continued to exert upon the development of modern philosophy up to the end of the eighteenth century.68

67 Idem, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, ed. by Benzion Kellermann, in: Werke, Vol. V, pp. 1–176: pp. 132 ff. (Akad.-Ausg. V, 122 ff.) 68 The criticism of Kristeller on p. 618 is based on an unfortunate typographical error. The printers omitted »Ficino’s« before »epistemology«. Had it been possible, this fact would have been called to Cassirer’s attention (John Herman Randall, ed.).

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Adela Silberstein [Dr. phil.], Leibnizens Apriorismus im Verhältnis zu seiner Metaphysik. Berlin, Mayer & Müller, 1904. 1 Bl. u. 75 S. 8°. M 1,60.1 (1904)

Die Frage nach dem Verhältnis, das zwischen Leibnizens Metaphysik und seinem »Apriorismus« besteht, führt unmittelbar in die Grundmotive und den gedanklichen Mittelpunkt des Systems. Denn der Apriorismus, wie Leibniz ihn versteht, soll die Antwort auf das Problem der rationalen Erkenntnis enthalten, soll die Wissenschaft in ihrem Gehalt und ihren ersten Prinzipien zur Ableitung bringen. Es ist somit die Beziehung und Abhängigkeit, die zwischen Metaphysik und Wissenschaft, zwischen der Monadenlehre und der Mathematik und Naturerkenntnis anzunehmen ist, die hier in Frage steht. Man begreift indes, daß das Thema, in dieser Weite und Allgemeinheit gefaßt, innerhalb des Rahmens einer Dissertation nicht zur Darstellung, geschweige zur Erledigung kommen konnte. Aus dieser äußeren Rücksicht läßt es sich verstehen, daß der Verfasser zur Lösung seiner Frage einen prinzipiell anderen Weg einschlägt. Die Monadologie allein soll, losgelöst von ihrem Ursprung in der Logik und Prinzipienlehre und abgesondert von ihren Zusammenhängen mit der konkreten wissenschaftlichen Forschung, die Antwort ergeben. Diese Antwort, wie der Verfasser sie formuliert, wirkt freilich zunächst wie eine Überraschung und Enttäuschung: Es stellt sich heraus, daß von einer einheitlichen Grundanschauung Leibnizens betreffs des Hauptproblems seiner Philosophie nicht die Rede sein kann – daß vielmehr zwei selbständige, einander widersprechende Gedankenreihen sich bei ihm beständig durchkreuzen und hemmen. Auf der einen Seite nämlich steht der Satz, daß das Bewußtsein alle seine Inhalte rein aus sich selber hervorbringt und gestaltet: daß es somit lediglich der eigne, innere Gehalt des Selbst ist, der sich im Fortschritt der Erkenntnis entwickelt und offenbart. In diesem Sinne sind nicht nur die notwendigen und allgemeinen Grundsätze der Wissenschaft, es ist auch jeder mögliche, b es o n d er e Inhalt des Wissens als »eingeboren« zu bezeichnen. Die direkte kausale Einwirkung eines absoluten äußeren Objekts auf unser Ich, die passive Bestimmung des Bewußtseins durch ein t ran s z en d en t es Sein bleibt ausgeschlossen; sie widerspricht, wie zutreffend ausgeführt wird, den eigenen unzweideutigen Erklärungen wie den bekanntesten Hauptsätzen des Systems. 1

[Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Deutsche Literaturzeitung 25 (1904), Sp. 1804–1806.]

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Bei dieser Erklärung indes, bei diesem Standpunkt des »absoluten Apriorismus« vermochte Leibniz nicht stehenzubleiben. Das apriorische Ideal des Erkennens wird durch »empiristische« | Motive in seiner vollen Entfaltung beschränkt. Die Erfahrung wird neben der Vernunft als eigene, selbständige Erkenntnisquelle anerkannt: Die Sinne sind es, die das Denken erst herbeirufen und zu seiner Tätigkeit anregen. In diesem Ineinanderwirken von Wahrnehmung und Begriff oder – nach der Deutung des Verfassers – von einem schlechthin »äußeren« und einem schlechthin »inneren« Erkenntnisfaktor ist der Dua l i s mus , der anfangs ausgeschlossen werden sollte, wiederum eingeführt und anerkannt. Sobald Leibniz »[…] mit der ›sinnlichen Erfahrung‹ als Ursprungsquelle für noch so zufällige Erkenntnis« rechnet, »gerät er dadurch in einen offenbaren Widerspruch mit seiner Metaphysik.« Wir befinden uns ersichtlich an diesem Punkte »[…] in einem der logischen Labyrinthe […] in welche uns Leibniz’ Philosophie[…] nicht gerade selten verwickelt.«2 Es genügt indes, wie ich glaube, eine einfache Erwägung, um sich den Rückweg aus diesem »Labyrinth« zu bahnen. Die Entscheidung darüber, ob der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis dem Bewußtsein immanent ist oder nicht, ist mit der Frage nach der rationellen oder empirischen Begründung des Wissens keineswegs gleichbedeutend. Die Sätze, in denen Leibniz die Transzendenz des Objekts abwehrt, könnten genau ebenso wie von ihm von – B er k eley behauptet und verfochten werden: Auch dieser müßte somit, wenn wir das Schema des Verfassers zugrunde legen, als »absolute[r] Apriorist[…]«3 bezeichnet werden. Wenn Berkeley dennoch die sinnliche Erfahrung nicht nur zufällig geduldet, sondern als einzigen Quell der Gewißheit erklärt hat, so ergibt sich hieraus deutlich, daß der m eta phys i s c he Gattungsbegriff des »Idealismus« an und für sich noch keine Entscheidung über den spezifischen Standpunkt der E rk e nntni s the or i e enthält. Auch dort, wo streng daran festgehalten wird, daß das Objekt dem Geiste immanent ist, daß es somit aus den Mitteln des Bewußtseins zu gewinnen und abzuleiten ist, bleibt doch die Frage nach der Ra ng or dnung dieser Mittel und Methoden offen; bleibt das Problem bestehen, ob es einzig die Empfindung oder aber die reinen Relationen des Denkens sind, die zu jenem im m an en t en Gegenstand hinleiten und für ihn einzustehen vermögen. Indem Leibniz sich dieser Frage zuwendet, indem er ihre Lösung in der Richtung versucht, daß er eine notwendige 2 Adela Silberstein, Leibnizens Apriorismus im Verhältnis zu seiner Metaphysik, Berlin 1904, S. 40 Anm. u. 43. 3 [A. a. O., S. 51.]

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Entsprechung und eine genaue Wechselbedingtheit zwischen »Vernunft« und »Erfahrung« annimmt, ist er damit seinem ursprünglichen metaphysischen Standpunkt völlig treu geblieben. Denn daß die bloße Anerkennung der Sinneserfahrung den Gedanken an eine absolute, transzendente Ursache notwendig einschließt: dies ist nicht, wie der Verfasser meint, ein selbstverständlicher Satz der Erkenntniskritik; es ist ein dogmatisches meta | physisches Vorurteil, mit dem er an die Deutung des Leibnizischen Systems herantritt. Man kann umgekehrt sagen – und der moderne »Empirismus« gibt ein deutliches Beispiel hierfür –‚ daß, je konsequenter der reine Erfahrungsstandpunkt festgehalten wird, um so schärfer jede Art des transzendenten Gegenstandes bekämpft werden muß. Es ist eine der fruchtbarsten Leistungen der Leibnizischen Erkenntnislehre, daß sie den alten Gegensatz des »Außen« und »Innen« überwindet, daß ihr die Erfahrung nicht mehr ein schlechthin Äußeres, das Apriori nicht ein schlechthin Inneres bedeutet, das der Entsprechung und Anwendung in der konkreten empirischen Wirklichkeit ermangeln würde. »Nichts ist drinnen, nichts ist draußen; / Denn was innen das ist außen«:4 das Goethische Wort erleuchtet den wahren Sinn des Leibnizischen ;ν κα8 π a1 ν. Ich bin daher durch die Darstellung des Verfassers nicht davon überzeugt worden, daß es – L eib n iz ist, der »von seiner eigentlichen Theorie des Erkennens keine rechte Vorstellung sich macht« (!).5 Den Schluß der Abhandlung bildet eine eingehende Kritik der Darstellung, die ich in meiner Schrift »Leibniz’ System in seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen«6 von Leibniz’ Philosophie gegeben habe. Es ist mir an dieser Stelle nicht möglich, auf die einzelnen Einwendungen des Verfassers einzugehen; ich beschränke mich daher auf eine allgemeine Bemerkung. Meine Darstellung sucht zu zeigen, daß die Keime und die inneren Triebkräfte der Monadologie in Leibniz’ w i s s e ns ch aftlich en Grundanschauungen zu suchen sind; sie stützt sich daher in erster Linie auf die Schriften zur Mathematik und Dynamik, in denen sie das Fundament für das gesamte metaphysische Gebäude der Monadenlehre erblickt. Silberstein dagegen hat diese Schriften von Anfang an ausgeschaltet und sich damit die Einsicht in das B ew e i s material verschlossen, auf dem meine Anschauung des Systems ruht. Seine Ansicht des Leibnizischen Apriorismus geht im wesentlichen 4 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Epirrhema, in: Werke, hrsg. im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 1. Abt., Bd. III, Weimar 1890, S. 88.] 5 Silberstein, Leibnizens Apriorismus, S. 46. 6 Leibniz’ System in seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen, Marburg 1902 [ECW 1].

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auf die »Nouveaux Essais« zurück, deren Darstellung nur hie und da durch die Berufung auf andere metaphysische Abhandlungen ergänzt wird: Aber selbst in der Entwicklung der Metaphysik sind Quellen von so grundlegender Bedeutung, wie der Briefwechsel mit Arnauld und de Volder, außer acht geblieben. Innerhalb dieses begrenzten Umkreises ist die Darstellung zumeist getreu: Sowohl der idealistische Grundgedanke wie die Schätzung, die die »Erfahrung« in Leibniz’ System erfährt, sind treffend gezeichnet. Die Einheit und der Zusammenhang beider Momente aber hätte nur auf Grund eines weiteren Unterbaus und einer genauen Rücksicht auf die logischen und wissenschaftlichen Quellenschriften begriffen und entwickelt werden können. Berlin.

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[Grußadresse der Hamburgischen Universität zur Kant-Feier der Universität Königsberg April 1924]1 (1924) Die Hamburgische Universität empfindet es als ihre liebe Pflicht, der Geburtsstadt Kants und der Wirkungsstätte seines Genius zu der Feier von Kants 200jährigem Geburtstag herzliche Grüße und Glückwünsche zu senden. Sie dankt der Stadt und der Universität Königsberg dafür, daß sie ihren Ruf zur Teilnahme an uns wie an alle anderen Universitäten ergehen ließ: Denn sie erblickt darin den Ausdruck der Überzeugung, daß die deutschen Universitäten gewillt sind, über alle trennenden Gegensätze hinweg ihre Einheit, die Einheit ihrer ideellen Aufgabe, zu behaupten und zu wahren. Für diese ideelle Einheit gibt es keinen höheren und keinen überzeugenderen Ausdruck als die Lehre Kants, die als gemeinsames Erbe der Pflege und der Obhut der deutschen Universitäten anvertraut ist. Wie Kant mit gleicher Klarheit dem Allgemeinen und dem Besonderen zugewandt ist, | wie er mit gleicher Liebe die grundlegenden Prinzipien und ihre konkreten Auswirkungen umfaßt, wie er das Wesen des Geistes und die Erscheinung, die er sich im geschichtlichen Leben gibt, in steter Wechselbeziehung denkt, so hat er sein methodisches Nachdenken nicht nur auf die Organisation und Gliederung der Wissenschaft, sondern auch auf die der Universitäten gerichtet. Er geht hierbei von der Überzeugung aus, daß das, worin der Geist sich äußert, für ihn niemals etwas bloß Äußerliches ist, sondern daß zwischen dem, was er ist, und den großen geschichtlichen Institutionen, in denen er sich verkörpert, ein notwendiger Zusammenhang gefordert werden muß. Ist dem so, so gibt es für die deutschen Universitäten der Gegenwart keine höhere Pflicht, als in gemeinschaftlicher Arbeit und in der Durchdringung geschichtlicher und systematischer Forschung die Probleme wieder aufzunehmen und weiterzubilden, die der klassische deutsche Idealismus der Philosophie, der Wissenschaft, dem Leben gestellt hat. Heute empfinden wir es deutlicher als je, daß diese Probleme nicht willkürliche, aus abstrakter Spekulation erzeugte Fragen sind, sondern daß sie nach wie vor die lebendigen gedanklichen und sittlichen Triebkräfte bilden, auf denen auch für uns die Hoffnung auf eine Erneuerung unseres geistigen | und nationalen Daseins beruht. Die Kant-Feier der Universität Königsberg soll zum Wahrzeichen dafür werden, daß jede 1 [Gedruckt bei der Hamburger Druckerei Lütcke & Wulff für die Königsberger Kant-Feier 1924.]

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deutsche Universität bereit und gewillt ist, an ihrem Teil und mit allen ihren Kräften, an dieser großen Aufgabe mitzuwirken und die akademische Jugend für sie zu erziehen. Hamburg, den 18. April 1924 Rektor und Senat der Hamburgischen Universität

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Hermann Cohen und die Renaissance der Kantischen Philosophie1 (1924) An dem Tage, an welchem in Deutschland und in der Welt der zweihundertjährige Geburtstag Kants festlich begangen wird, ziemt es sich, des Mannes zu gedenken, der unter denen, die eine Erneuerung der Kantischen Lehre im 19. Jahrhundert versucht haben, an erster Stelle steht. Was Hermann Co h en für die Wiedererweckung, für die Fortwirkung, für das historische und systematische Verständnis Kants geleistet hat, das bedarf heut keiner Darlegung mehr. Auch die Gegner, an welchen es diesem urkräftigen und kampffreudigen Gegner wahrlich nicht gefehlt hat, erkennen heut diese Leistung an – und es gibt unter diesen alten Gegnern wohl keinen, der nicht im Laufe der Zeit in irgendeiner Beziehung unvermerkt zum Schüler Cohens geworden wäre. Was aber Cohen für diejenigen unter der jüngeren Generation bedeutet hat, die sich ihm von Anfang an freudig anschlossen, die von seinen Kantwerken und von seiner Wirksamkeit als akademischer Lehrer unmittelbar ergriffen wurden: dafür darf ich vielleicht eine persönliche Erinnerung anführen, die mir von mehr als persönlicher, die mir von typischer Bedeutung zu sein scheint. Ich selbst erinnere mich deutlich der ersten Eindrücke, die ich empfing, als ich, als junger Studierender der Philosophie, in Universitätsvorlesungen die erste Belehrung über Kant suchte. In Friedrich Pa ul s e ns Vorlesung über die Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, die damals – es sind nun fast dreißig Jahre her – zu den am stärksten besuchten philosophischen Vorlesungen der Berliner Universität gehörte, erhielt ich den ersten umfassenden Überblick über das Kantische System. Hier sprach ein Mann, der als Lehrer und Forscher einen geachteten Namen hatte und der auch literarisch mit eingehenden Untersuchungen über Spezialfragen der Kantischen Lehre, insbesondere über ihre Entstehungsgeschichte, hervorgetreten war. Aber es war doch ein seltsames Bild, das man in seinen Vorlesungen von dieser Lehre erhielt. Denn bei aller traditionellen Hochschätzung Kants klang doch in allem, was Paulsen vortrug, immer wieder der Grundton durch, daß wir, daß die empiristische Philosophie in der zweiten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, es nun so herrlich weit über Kant hinausgebracht hätte. Alle Probleme, die Kant bedrängt hatten, die er in angestrengtester 1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Jüdisch-liberale Zeitung, Nr. 11, 25. April 1924, Beilage »Immanuel Kant«, S. 3 f.]

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Arbeit, in dunklen und schwierigen, oft abstrusen Deduktionen zu lösen versucht hatte: sie schienen nun mit einem Schlage völlig geklärt und kraft dieser Klärung überwunden. Kants Grundfrage, die Frage »Wie sind synthetische Urteile a priori möglich?«2 war durch die Fortschritte der modernen Entwicklungslehre ein für allemal beantwortet. Denn was Kant für apriorische Grundbegriffe des Verstandes hielt und was er vom Standpunkt der in d iv i due l l e n Erfahrung mit Recht so bezeichnen durfte, das war, durch die Psychologie und Biologie des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, insbesondere durch Herbert S pe nc e r nunmehr als das erkannt, was es eigentlich ist: als Produkt der Ga ttu n gserf ah r u n g . Die reinen Anschauungen und die reinen Verstandesbegriffe Kants, die Begriffe von Raum und Zeit, von Substanz und Kausalität, bedeuteten nach Paulsen in Wahrheit nichts anderes als aufgespeicherte und gewissermaßen kondensierte Gattungserfahrungen. Eine ganz andere Grundansicht von Kants Lehre trat mir sodann in Georg S im m els unvergleichlich feiner durchgebildeten und systematisch unvergleichlich tieferen Kant-Vorlesungen gegenüber. Simmel stand damals noch in der ersten Epoche seiner philosophischen Entwicklung – in einer Auffassung, die er selbst später verlassen und mit entscheidenden Gründen bekämpft hat. Auch er suchte das Ganze der Philosophie und das Ganze der Geisteswissenschaften vom Standpunkt bestimmter naturwissenschaftlicher, insbesondere biologischer Grundbegriffe zu betrachten und zu umfassen. So suchte er auch für die Erkenntniskritik, für die Ethik wie für die Ästhetik eine biologische Fundamentierung. Aber daß eine solche Grundlegung dem Sinne Kants nicht entspreche, daß die Fragestellung Kants auf einem ganz anderen Boden stünde – das wurde von Anfang an scharf betont. Und hierfür, für die Einsicht in das, was Kants »transzendentale Methode« bedeutet und ist, berief sich Simmel auf die Kantwerke Cohens – die ich in diesem Zusammenhang zuerst nennen hörte. Die Art, in der diese Werke erwähnt wurden, war nun freilich – Simmels Wesen und seiner Vortragsweise entsprechend – befremdlich, war zugleich anreizend und abstoßend. Denn Cohens Büchern wurde das tiefste Verständnis Kants und der höchste Scharfsinn in der Auslegung und Deutung nachgerühmt: Zugleich aber wurde gesagt, daß diese Bücher in einer so verwickelten und abstrakten Terminologie, in einer so schwierigen und dunklen Sprache verfaßt seien, daß sie im Grunde unverständlich seien und es vielleicht für immer bleiben müßten. Aber vielleicht war 2 [Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, (Werke, in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen u. a. hrsg. v. Ernst Cassirer, Bd. III, hrsg. v. Albert Görland), Berlin 1913, S. 45 (B 19).]

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es gerade diese eigenartige und paradoxe Form des Lobes, die nunmehr in mir den Wunsch erweckte, diese Werke aus eigener Anschauung kennenzulernen, und den Entschluß, von ihnen nicht eher zu scheiden, als bis ich ihren wesentlichen Inhalt bewältigt hätte. Mit diesem Entschluß war für mich mein Verhältnis zu Cohen und zu seiner Lehre entschieden. Je weiter ich im Studium seiner Werke fortschritt – es handelte sich damals, da Cohens systematische Hauptwerke erst einem späteren Zeitraum angehören, vor allem um »K a nts T he or i e der Erfah ru ng « (1871, 2. Auflage 1885), »K a nts B e g r ündung der Eth ik « (1877) und »Kan t s Beg r ü n d u ng de r Ä s the ti k« –, um so mehr erwuchs und befestigte sich in mir die Überzeugung, daß ich hier, | wenn irgendwo, einen wahrhaften Führer zu Kant gefunden hätte. Hier war bei aller Schwierigkeit der Darstellung, die sich doch für den, der einmal den eigentlichen methodischen Grundgedanken erfaßt hatte, alsbald in lichtvolle Klarheit auflöste, alles vereint, was den großen Lehrer ausmacht. Hier zeigte sich höchste Schärfe und Feinheit in der Zergliederung der Begriffe, aber zugleich ein starkes und unmittelbar fortreißendes Pathos der wissenschaftlichen, der sittlichen und philosophischen Überzeugung: Hier zeigte sich die höchste Bewunderung vor dem Geist Kants, die bis zur sorgfältigsten Beachtung des »Buchstabens« von Kants Lehre ging – und doch zugleich der Mut zur systematischen Kritik und zu systematischer Weiterbildung. Das ist das Große, was Cohen als Schriftsteller und als Lehrer geleistet hat, daß er einer Epoche, die sich auf Grund ihrer naturwissenschaftlichen Errungenschaften weit über Kant erhoben dünkte, die mit einem gewissen überlegenen Lächeln auf den »alten« Kant herabzusehen begann, erst wieder die rechten Maßstäbe für das, was Kants Größe, was seine Originalität und Tiefe ausmacht, gegeben hat. »Durch die Wiederaufrichtung der Kantischen Autorität«, so schrieb Cohen schon in der Vorrede zur ersten Auflage von »Kants Theorie der Erfahrung«, »würde den philosophischen Studien unabsehliche Förderung bereitet werden. Kant hat zwar selbst gesagt, dass es in der Philosophie keinen classischen Autor gebe. Aber durch eine solche Bemerkung wird nicht abgeleugnet, dass der Philosophie aus der genauen Bearbeitung ihrer Geschichte unentbehrlicher Nutzen erwachse: einmal für die Richtung der Probleme; dann aber auch für die Ausrüstung des Denkens. […] Ohne volle Hingabe aber lässt sich kein Geist begreifen, dem man nicht gleicht. Wenn daher der Philosophie, wie heutzutage Viele aussprechen, nur durch Kant wieder aufgeholfen werden kann, so thut vor Allem die Einsicht Noth, dass dieser ein Gen i u s ist. Dann wird alles kluge Besserwissen füglich schweigen, die eigene Weisheit sich gedulden, bis man mit Ernst und

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Eifer durch die schwierigen Sätze sich hindurchgedacht hat, bis man das Kantische Gebäude vom Einzelnen zum Ganzen und abwärts sicher durchschritten hat.«3 In solcher rein sachlichen Hingabe sind Cohens Kantbücher entstanden, und durch sie haben sie Schüler gefunden. Auch hier läßt sich die Wirkung der Lehre von der, die von dem Menschen Cohen, von seiner Geradheit, seiner Offenheit, seinem Mut und seiner leidenschaftlichen Überzeugung für seine Sache ausging, nicht trennen. In sachlicher Hinsicht aber ist Cohens Auffassung und Interpretation der »Kritik der reinen Vernunft« vor allem durch eine entscheidende Wendung bezeichnet. Von naturwissenschaftlicher Seite her war man auf Kants Aprioritätslehre vor allem durch die Untersuchungen hingewiesen und wieder zurückgeführt worden, die sich auf die allgemeine Wahrnehmungstheorie, insbesondere auf die Theorie der Ra umwah rn e h m u n g bezogen. Hier war um die Zeit, als Cohen hervortrat, der alte Streit zwischen »Empiristen« und »Ratwristen«,4 der Streit um die Frage, ob der Raum als eine »angeborene« oder als eine »erworbene« Eigenschaft zu gelten habe, noch ungeschlichtet. Wenn H elmh o lt z in seinen grundlegenden Untersuchungen zur physiologischen Optik auf Kant zurückwies, wenn er an ihn geschichtlich und kritisch anknüpfte, so sah er dabei Kants Lehre fast ausschließlich im Licht dieser ein en Frage. Und von den Fortschritten der Physiologie aus wurde nun auch die kritische Revision der Erkenntnislehre erhofft: Die Aufklärung des Prozesses, durch welchen sich die Gestalt unserer Wahrnehmungswelt nach bestimmten physiologischen und psychologischen Gesetzen aufbaut, schien allein die Entscheidung über die Gültigkeit und Wahrheit der Grundbegriffe der Erkenntnis bringen zu können. Selbst die Metaphysik ging diesen naturalistischen Weg – selbst bei Schopenhauer war es unzweideutig ausgesprochen, daß unsere gesamte Wahrnehmungs- und Vorstellungswelt nichts anderes als ein »Gehirnprodukt« sei. Und in diesem Sinne wurde jetzt fast allgemein die Kantische Lehre verstanden. Friedrich Albert L a ng e glaubte in seiner »Geschichte des Materialismus« keine bessere Darstellung und Begründung der Kantischen Aprioritätslehre geben zu können, als daß er das Apriori als ursprüngliche Anlage, als Produkt der physisch-psychischen Organisation des Menschen verstand. Hier griff Cohens Kritik und Cohens Einspruch ein. Er wies zuerst wieder mit Nachdruck und mit entscheidenden geschichtlichen und syste[Hermann Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Berlin 1871, S. VI f.] [Offensichtlich ein Satzfehler: in Frage kommen »Rationalisten« und »Naturalisten«.] 3 4

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matischen Gründen darauf hin, daß das wahrhafte »Subjekt« der Erkenntniskritik nicht der Mensch in seiner empirisch-psychologischen Existenz, sondern daß es die Wi s s en sc ha ft in ihrer ideellen Bedeutung sei. Kants Erkenntniskritik ist nach Cohen Theorie der Erfahrung – Erfahrung aber ist ihrem strengen und prägnanten Sinne nach gleichbedeutend mit mathematischer Naturwissenschaft. Die Bedingungen, die Voraussetzungen, die Grundsätze der mathematischen Naturwissenschaft zu ermitteln und sie in ihrer Allgemeinheit und Notwendigkeit sicherzustellen: das erschien jetzt als die eigentliche Aufgabe der Erkenntniskritik, die sie nicht sowohl mit den biologischen Wissenschaften, mit der Physiologie und der empirischen Psychologie, als vielmehr mit der L o g ik auf eine Stufe stellte und sie deren Geltungsbereich zuwies. Wie Cohen diese Wendung, die Wendung vom Psychologismus und Biologismus zur »transzendentalen Methode« vollzogen und wie er sie begründet hat, kann hier nicht im einzelnen dargelegt werden: Aber das eine läßt sich sagen, daß er mit ihr der Methodik der Philosophie eine neue Gestalt und eine neue wissenschaftliche Strenge verliehen hat.

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[Grußwort zum Vierten Kongreß für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. Hamburg, 7.–9. Oktober 1930]1 (1931) Meine Damen und Herren! Im Namen des Hamburgischen Ortsausschusses des vierten Kongresses für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft habe ich die Ehre und die Freude, Sie bei uns in Hamburg zu begrüßen. Der Ortsausschuß dankt durch mich allen denen, die seine sachliche Arbeit gefördert und die ihm durch ihre persönliche Unterstützung die Lösung der Aufgabe, die ihm gestellt war, erst ermöglicht haben. Mein Dank gilt in erster Linie dem Hamburgischen Senat, der unsere Bestrebungen in jeder Hinsicht unterstützt und der sein Interesse an unserer Arbeit auch dadurch bekundet hat, daß er vier seiner Mitglieder, die Herren Bürgermeister Roß und Bürgermeister Petersen und die Herren Senatoren de Chapeaurouge und Krause in den Ehrenausschuß des Kongresses entsandt hat. Herrn Senator de Chapeaurouge und Herrn Regierungsdirektor von Wrochem darf ich hier zugleich als die Vertreter der Hochschulbehörde herzlich begrüßen. Ich danke ferner dem Ehrenrektor unserer Universität Herrn Bürgermeister Dr. Werner von Melle, Herrn Oberbaudirektor Prof. Fritz Schumacher, Herrn Dr. Max Warburg sowie meinen Kollegen Prof. Lauffer, | Prof. Pauli und Prof. Sauerlandt, daß sie die Wahl in den Ehrenausschuß angenommen haben. Herr Pauli, Herr Lauffer und Herr Sauerlandt haben die Ziele unseres Kongresses auch dadurch gefördert, daß sie in den Museen, die ihrer Leitung unterstehen, aus Anlaß des Kongresses eigene Ausstellungen veranstaltet haben. Ich begrüße ferner alle diejenigen unter Ihnen, die als Vertreter von Ministerien und sonstigen staatlichen Behörden oder als Vertreter auswärtiger Universitäten und Akademien zu uns gekommen sind, sowie unsere Gäste aus dem Ausland. Sie alle werden, auch ohne daß ich ihre Namen einzeln nenne, unseres herzlichsten Dankes und unseres herzlichen Willkommens gewiß sein. Meine Damen und Herren! Der Ortsausschuß für den vierten Kongreß für Ästhetik tritt heute vor Sie, belastet mit einer sachlichen 1 [Zuerst veröffentlicht in: Vierter Kongreß für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. Hamburg, 7.–9. Oktober 1930. Bericht, im Auftrage des Ortsausschusses hrsg. v. Hermann Noack, Beilageheft zur Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Bd. 25, Stuttgart 1931, S. 11–14.]

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Verantwortung, die er keineswegs leichtnimmt. Denn seine Aufgabe bestand im wesentlichen darin, in eingehenden Beratungen und Vorbesprechungen das allgemeine T h em a für unsere Tagung zu erörtern und sodann die Redner für die Sonderprobleme zu gewinnen, die innerhalb dieses Themas behandelt werden sollten. Gewiß, wir hatten hierbei nur eine beratende, keine beschließende Stimme – die endgültige Entscheidung stand der Kongreßleitung, also dem Vorstand der Gesellschaft für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, zu. Aber da die Herren des Vorstandes unsern Vorschlägen in der Hauptsache gefolgt und da sie allen unsern Wünschen in der freundlichsten Weise entgegengekommen sind, so fühlen wir wohl, daß wir uns der Verantwortung für das sachliche Programm, mit dem wir heute vor Sie hintreten, nicht entziehen können und dürfen. Und wir müssen mit dem freimütigen Geständnis beginnen, daß wir keineswegs glauben, der Schwierigkeiten Herr geworden zu sein, die sich uns von Anfang an darboten. Wer von Ihnen einmal an der Vorbereitung und an der Organisation eines wissenschaftlichen Kongresses beteiligt war, der weiß, daß für jede derartige Organisation eine doppe l te Gefahr besteht, daß sie ihr Schiff gewissermaßen zwischen Scylla und Charybdis hindurchsteuern muß. Sie muß wählen zwischen den Geboten, die die Sache stellt, zwischen dem, was der Umfang des wissenschaftlichen Problems, dem der Kongreß gilt, rein objektiv erfordert, und anderen, persönlichen und subjektiven Rücksichten, insbesondere der Rücksicht auf die Arbeitsfähigkeit und Aufnahmefähigkeit der Teilnehmer, die in dem eng begrenzten Raum weniger Tage ein umfangreiches Forschungsgebiet überblicken und an seiner Gestaltung produktiv mitarbeiten sollen. Es ist verständlich, daß man, einmal vor diesen Konflikt gestellt, lieber zu viel als zu wenig tun will – daß man eher die Kongreßteilnehmer, die Redner und die Hörer belasten als der Sache Abbruch tun will. Und doch hat wohl andererseits jeder von uns bei der | Heimkehr von einem großen Kongreß gefühlt, daß weniger mehr gewesen wäre – hat er die Wahrheit des alten Wortes »