The Enlightenment within the framework of modern rationalism 3787316132, 9783787316137

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Panayotis Kondylis

Enlightenment in the modern age rationalism

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PANAJOTIS KONDYL IS The Enlightenment within the framework of modern rationalism

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PANAJOTIS KONDYL IS

The clarification within the framework

of modern rationalism

FELIX MY PUBLISHING HAMBURG

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Digitally printed “on demand” copy with identical content to the original edition. We ask for your understanding for unavoidable deviations in the equipment that are due to individual production. Further information at: www.meiner.de/bod

Bibliographic information from the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication

in the German National Bibliography; Detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://portal.dnb.de . ISBN 978-3-7873-1613-7 ISBN eBook: 978-3-7873-2799-7

© Felix Meiner Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2002. All rights reserved. This also applies to reproductions, transmissions, microfilming and storage and processing in electronic systems, unless Sections 53 and 54 URG expressly permit this. Overall production: BoD, Norderstedt. Printed on age-resistant printing paper, made from 100% chlorine-free bleached pulp. Printed in Germany. www.meiner.de

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Preliminary remark

The great educational book by Panajotis Kondylis was published in German in a bound edition in 1981 by Klett-Cotta and then again in 1986 as a paperback (dtv 4450). A Greek edition followed in 1987 at Themelio in Athens (3rd ed. 1998). The German editions have been out of print for a long time. The author could no longer prepare a new edition of this standard work on Enlightenment research; he died, all too soon, in 1998. Some of the key aspects of the book are briefly outlined below. For a long time, German Enlightenment research stood in the overwhelming shadow of Idealism, Classicism, New Humanism and Romanticism. Kondylis's book fundamentally changed our ideas about the Enlightenment. Kondylis does not undertake any epoch reconstruction; he transcends the national Enlightenment traditions (England, France, Germany); he foregoes a social history of authors and intellectual groups; rather, he examines the exchange processes between philosophy and scientific theory in the early modern period. The focus of his book is the reformation of philosophy from 1750 onwards. The book is oriented towards the reconstruction of the relationship between spirit and matter. Kondylis distinguishes between two phases of development of Enlightenment thought: First, the Cartesian separation of spirit and matter, of soul and body (res cogitans - res extensa) dominates early modern rationalism, which was replaced around 1750 by a rehabilitation of sensuality. The newly constituted sensualism abandons the older methodological ideal of mathematics and mechanistic physics and orients itself towards the new life sciences of biologism. Kondylis traces the theories of dualism or the unity of body and soul back to late European humanism, then discusses the influence of mechanistic physics (Newton) on the rationalistic system-building processes of the 17th century , and determines the relationship between mathematical me thodenideal to Neoplatonism and defines rational theology in the field of influence of mechanistic cosmic theories. In the middle of the 18th century, a serious conflict arose. Mechanistic intellectualism is in crisis. It is not the constructive reason of God that is supposed to be the origin of creation, but rather the self- organization of organic substances tends to

replace the mechanical

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Preliminary remark

clarification of God, cosmos, world and man. With this scientific-theoretical paradigm shift, Kondylis begins the second phase of development of the European Enlightenment: the criticism of metaphysics and intellectualism leads to an upgrading of the concept of matter and development as well as a complementary theory of nature and culture. Turning away from rationalism's arguments, which are indifferent to time and place, enables the new assignment of the categories of thinking and will, feeling and reason, nature, history and culture and leads to a relativization of the difference between facticity and normativity. By taking into account the relationship between scientific theories and philosophy, Kondylis expands the fields of reference and subject matter of the empiricist Enlightenment. By evaluating the results of French research from the 1960s and 1970s on the philosophy of science of the 18th century, Kondylis succeeds in proving that new sciences (natural history, ethnology, cultural history, sociology, history) can develop between the points of tension between nature and culture , which were only eliminated from philosophy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In this overview of the relationship between philosophy and the concepts of nature, history and culture, the philosophical traditions of England, France and Germany come close together, the German psonderweg. In the history of philosophy, it only begins (if at all) with German idealism or new humanism. Ferments between philosophy and scientific theory in the 18th century were the effects of the philosophy of Spinoza and Leibniz. At the same time, Kondylis succeeds in integrating Kant and Kantianism directly into the problem definitions of Enlightenment empiricism. A unified European axis of argument emerges, which begins with English empiricism, which is continued by French pre-materialism and which is completed by the organicist natural and cultural philosophy of Germany. In this concept, the boundaries between philosophy, natural theory, history, aesthetics, literature and culture become fluid. In this respect, Kondylis succeeded in analyzing the interdisciplinary argumentative potential of related sciences in the mirror of the mind-matter problem within the framework of a philosophical-historical study. With the replacement of dogmatic rationalism by empiricism in the philosophy of life in Europe The 18th century anticipated numerous interdisciplinary border crossings that we know from today's scientific discussions with.

Jörn Garber Ulrich Kronauer

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Table of contents

I. Basic concepts to capture the essence of the Enlightenment 1. Mind and Sensibility or Question of Being and Question of Value

2 D. The polemical character of thought in the Enlightenment and in 19

their interpretations 3. Rationalism

and irrationalism

36

II. Early thought structures of modern rationalism 1. Concept of modern rationalism. The double meaning of rehabilitation bilitation of meaningfulness and the suspicion of nihilism ..................

42

2. The appreciation of nature and the mathematics of natural science a) The Aristotelian-Thomistic dualism and the monistic countercurrents in the Renaissance ...... ...............

59

59

b) The mathematisdi-scientific model. which underlies him lying world ans diauli the decision and its polemical function

.................................................

80

3. The primer of anthropology and its ambiguous consequences. ...

..

119

a) Man as ruler over nature and natural science

li&e Modell ........ ....... ......... .

. .. ...... 124

b) Man as nature and skepticism ........................ c) The Natural Redit of the 17th Century and the Three Logisdia Possible

features of modern rationalism

........................

\ 47

III. Cartesianism and Anticartesianism The symptomatic significance of Cartesianism for the intellectual history of the Enlightenment .................... 2. Baselines

Cartesianisc

en thinking ..........................

170 174

3. Ambiguous character and ambiguous reception of Cartesianism.

The Cambridge Platonists ........................

191

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IV. The ontological valorization of matter and the simultaneous elimination of intellectualism and mechanisticism 210

1.General Remarks 2. Newton's anti-Cartesian approach in its worldview

Wirking a) Sources and implications of the decoupling of matter and extension and the transition from mechanics to dynamics. The magic of attraction... 213

226

b) The meaning of the fight against the hypotheses 3. From Nature-Mas‹:hine to Nature-Deity .....................

235

a) Newtonian synthesis, reformed theology and the emergence of new .............................. idea of the whole thing

235

b) The new idea of the whole, Cartesianism, sdiolastics and the partial reversal of the covenants

........................

248

4. The multiple roots and the anticartesian character of mate rialism of the Enlightenment ....................... ............ . a) Voluntary and involuntary

257

pioneers of materialism. b) Classical materialism, the new biology and the rejection

257

of the mechanism .......................... ............. 270

V. The anti-intellectualist is the main current the Enlightenment and its concept of rationalism 1. Preliminary remark ... ..........................................

287

2. Continuing the fight against hypotheses .......... a) The degradation of mathematics ..........

291

b) Ambiguities in the rejection of systems and polemis ‹:he

291

meaning of relying on empiricism ............................ 298

3. Rationalism in an anti-intellectualist perspective ............ a) The existential concept of

309

knowledge ............ ... b) The complex ‹: Control of thinking and willing or reason

309

and feeling and the content-related determination of reason ............ 325

4. The structure of the normativist concept of nature

342

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VI. The conflict between the causal and the normative 1. Absence

357

2. God between spirit and nature or the enlightenment between worship tion, neutralization and instrumentalization of God................................. 36t

3. Between instinct and reason. The Dilemma of Moral Philosophy..............381 a) General.................................................. ................................................ 38t b) The paradigmatic character of British moral philosophy

Debate .. ..... ...... . ..................... ....

385

c) The Difficulties of Optimistic Anthropology and the Ambiguity of Self-Love and 407

Happiness ........................ 4. The philosophy of history between eschatological confidence and relativistic resignation. a) The emergence . ...

42t

of the new historiography and the concept of the cultural 42t

whole ..................................... .......... b) Bayle Vico and the anti-Cartesian assumptions new ::

::::

:::

::

435 :::

::

c) Voltaire's Palinodies' : d) Montesquieu between natural law and determinism ............ e) The emergence and structure of the consistent idea of progress ::

:

::

::

:

::

::

Turgot and Condorcet's characteristic deviations from him

:

...

: 444 45t 459

5. The polemical and existential aspect of the oscillation between Opti mism and pessimism ..................................................... .................................. 469

VII. Forms of nihilism in the Enlightenment ..............................

essence of nihilism

490

2. The Benevolent One: Hume .................. ....... ..

495

3. The Consequences: La Mettrie and Sade ...........................

503

4. The logical dead end of moralistic materialism ............

5t8

VIII. Special aspects of the German Enlightenment 1. General 2.

remark

..............................

Forms of debate between intellectualism and empiricism in the early German Enlightenment ........................... his a) Wolff and opponents

....................................

537

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b) The anti-intellectualistic effect of religious currents and the wolffianistic inspired reform theology. Contrasts and points of contact ..................................................... 563

3. The monist approach of the late German Enlightenment. .

576

a) The rediscovery of Leibniz in its verse dilution with Shaftesbury's and Spinoza's 576

influence .......................... b) Lessing c) Herder ........ ......... ........................... d) Kant, the Nadikantians and the legacy of the Enlightenment

...................

abbreviations Verzeidinis

I.Sources

the

quoted

The side drive

.................................

.. ...... .. ............. .. . ..... .

650

652 652

II.Secondary literature ..........................................

659

IndexNominum................................... ............

693

Index

of things

..................................................

707

I thank Dr. F. Horst, who read the manuscript with friendly interest and helped the formulation to be concise. P. K.

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I. Basic terms to capture the essence of the Enlightenment

1. Spirit and sensuality or question of being and question of value

The question of the relationship between spirit and sensibility can to a certain extent be considered the central problem of all philosophy. From a historical point of view, the central importance of this question can be demonstrated by the reference to the orphanage of the first approaches to philosophy with their animistic approach to the world. The first organized and all-encompassing world view is dualistic, ie it arises on the basis of the 'discovery' of the spirit or spirits, which are to be separated from the sensually perceptible and to guide its spirit. It is therefore no coincidence that philosophers who have been decisive for the intellectual tradition of the so-called West,

pay homage to dualism, ie the fundamental opposition between spirit and meaning. It is enough to recall Platonism, whose original version was deeply connected to the animistic-religious thought of the Orphisdi-Pythagorean cult, especially in relation to the dualistic principle

'

P. Radin has shown that the animist world view must be classified as a philosophical achievement, both in terms of its question

(Origin and nature of the world, meaning of human life, rules of moral behavior etc.) and their ability to think abstractly as audi hinsi‹:ht1i‹:h their origin from the thought efforts of certain individuals. Radin refutes this

The view, represented above all by Levy-Brulil and Cassirer, of a prelogisdi mjrthisdien thinking that is supposed to be opposed to and inferior to the rational one - a view that, as Radin notes to Redit, only reflects the self-congratulatory assumptions and habits of thought of European scholars reflects (Primitive Man as Philosopher, insb. xxiv ff., 3o f., 99 ff., 208 f., 246 f., 252 ff., 292 ff.,

34s f.). In his criticism of Levy-Bruhl's separation between rational and irrational thinking, Ltvy-Strauss largely rejected the results confirmed (La pensée sauvage, see especially 1st chapter, first part of 8th and last part of 9.). As confirmation of the same position, the statements by Topitsdl about the continuity of thought structures in mythology and traditional philosophical metaphysics (On the origin and end of metaphysics, insb. 3 f., 18 f., 95 f., 221 f., 285 f.). '

See Leisegang, Plato', col. 2421, 2424, 2433. Cf. Nestle, From myth to Logos, 540.

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Basic concepts for understanding the Enlightenment

whose historical effect, not least through Christianity, was so necessary; The Cartesian separation of res cogitans and res exteosa 'as well as the Kantis between the intelligible and the sensitive' represent equally prominent examples of the same fact. It would be wrong to consider the question of the relationship between the spirit and sensibility to be central only if if a dualistic thought structure is present, or to assume that the priority of this question becomes apparent in the case of dualistic thought structures. The spiritualistic or materialistic precedents of the monistic philosophies known to us so far, which cannot be ignored, form an eloquent argument for the thesis that this is an attempt to overcome the antagonism of spirit and sensuality in the sense of the former or the latter - with others In other words: not only does this antagonism form the starting point and thus the sine qua non of the intellectual effort, but also its respective "overcoming" is basically only achieved through the absolutization of one of its competing members; It is therefore meant to be polemisdi, and therefore it cannot bring about the final end of the antagonism mentioned.

From the systematised side, the more general meaning that can be attributed to the question of the relationship between spirit and sensuality becomes more clearly visible if we consider the pairs of concepts into which the question mentioned could be resolved or translated: subject-object, God-world , Possibility-Reality, Soul-Body, Intellect-Senses, Reason-Instincts, Ought-To-Be, Normative-Causal, Reidi of God or Reason-Gesdii&te. All important problems of philosophy are represented in these pairs of terms, and this implies that a complete answer to the question of the relationships between spirit and sensibility must produce a cosmology, a morality, a theory of knowledge and also a philosophy of health that correspond structurally to one another if the thinker in question proceeds logically logically or in systematic abstention. However, this happens relatively rarely, because at the beginning of the thinking effort there is usually not the entire complex, but only one of the pairs of concepts mentioned which is of course dependent on the time and tempera menu. Because there is always an implicit connection with the other parts of the complex; The inevitability of this connection lies within the framework of a general study of logic and ideology

• S. in general v. Ivinka, Plato Christianus, esp. 68 f., 469 ff. ^

Descartes linked his separation of res cogitans and res extensa not least to the doctrine of Platonic

Inneism. But the p1atonis&e definition of the ;ténpo should also be known to you. S. Taylor, Platonism, 51 ff.; Gilson, Etudes sur le role 28 f.; Smith, New Studies, 194 n. 1. Cf. u. p. 182.

..., ^

The influence of metaphysics and religious traditions on the two-world doctrine

Kants has recently worked out Topitsd, The Presuppositions of Transcendental Philosophy, 21 ff.

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Spirit and sensuality

jj

Explain the connection between ethics and metaphysics. In the course of our investigation, the connection between ethics and ontology will be discussed repeatedly and in two ways: on the one hand, as a statement of the connection between the question of being and the question of value or the design of ontology in the context of moral needs and postulates, and on the other hand, as an insight into the results of this resulting structural parallelism between ontological and moral philosophical levels within the framework of the same philosophy. In addition , it is shown that the same structural parallelism also extends to the levels of epistemology or the philosophy of life, especially since these also represent individual cases of the general confusion between the question of being and value . When determining all of these structural connections, the criterion used is the question of the relationships between spirit and sensibility in their aforementioned metamorphoses; At the same time, its central systematic importance is demonstrated.

We can understand better why this question must be central to history and systematisdi when we take a closer look at the concept of spirit. We are not interested in finding out whether the mind exists (whatever that means) or what it is; We only want to trace the function of this term in the philosophical tradition in a purely descriptive manner. It would certainly seem impossible to discover a common thread behind the confusing ambiguity of the concept of spirit that could lead to the unraveling of its function. It is well known that in Greek antiquity the word nvcii;io never had its later meaning, but stood for a refined, but always still material, principle of life - a concept that remained alive in the Middle Ages and deep into the Modern times had an impact •. The supersensible was initially discovered and represented primarily through the concept of the voii9, while the nvcvtt'i, which was still understood materially by the Stoics, only finally achieved complete disensensification under the influence of Jewish-diristide thought good, so that it is now nothing

* The ancient idea of the material 'nvciiJio' (Jaeger, Das nvciiJm in the Ly keion, esp. 43 ff., ss ff.) lives on in a prominent place in the Stoa (PoHenz, Die Stoa, I, 73 f., 83, 85 f., 342 f.) and is adopted in Cicero's translation (spiritus vitalis, De Nat. Deorum, Lib. II, Cap. 45) from the “Christian” Middle Ages (see e.g. Thomas, Sum. Theol., III, Qu. 27, Art. 2, ad 1). This term also played an important role in modern times (see F. Bacon, De augm. scient., IV, 3 = Works, I, 605 f., and above all Descartes, Passions de 1'ime, I , 10 and 34 — AT, XI, 334 f., 354 f.).

* The essay by H. Siebe& on the development of the doctrine of spirit from the year 1880 was groundbreaking for research into this development (see Literature References). More than three decades later, Siebe&, taking into account the literature that had appeared in the meantime, supplemented his analyzes with a second treatise, in which he emphasized the importance of Philo, do& primarily the definitive disorientation of the pneuma concept Paul ascribes: writes (new contributions, esp. 5 f., 15). H. Leisegang has concentrated on Philo as a typical figure of the revolution and

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Basic concepts for the definition of the Enlightenment

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only the niiip o, but audi could be contrasted with the fry'. The Latin Middle Ages mainly used the term spiritus (as a translation of nveiipo) for the Holy Spirit, while the spirit as a higher human faculty is primarily used for expression through the term rriens , in which not only the stoisdiciceronisdie, but also the plato nis‹:h-aristotelis‹:je tradition of voii9 and 6tövoto continues to work •. By means of these and other terminological interrelationships and battles, the astonishing diversity of the concept of the spirit arises, which is taken over by modern times in order to be adapted to the new conditions. It can be shown, however, that when the social and mental health situation has changed, the needs that originally led to the acceptance and development of the concept of spirit have remained more or less the same, which, moreover, does not just mean the adoption of the old diversity , but explained in terms of traditional thought structures. It is precisely the establishment of this continuity that will enable us to appreciate the specific consequences of the approach to the elimination of the concept of spirit that has been ebbing away in modern times . on its relations to the religious ideas of Griedientum and partially audi Stoicism is pointed out, while he denies a significant influence of the biblical concept of spirit (The Holy Spirit, esp. 13 f., 75, 114 ff.). In contrast to Fr. Rüsche put forward the thesis that the desensualization of the concept of pneuma was not accomplished by Philo, who combined the Platonic-Aristotelian voii5 with the Stoic View of the pneuma vers&melze and thus, similar to Poseidonius, hödistens to the construction of the Li&tpneuma, but only through& Origen and before especially by Augustine, and indeed under the decisive influence of Platonic ideas; among the Neoplatonists a return to Philon's middle position can even be observed (Das Seelenpneuma, esp. 20, 23 f., 30 f., 42 f., 46 f., 55, 68; this Budi forms the summary and further development of research results, which were presented in two somewhat earlier works, see bibliography). G. Verbeke again asserted Philon's central role, but emphasized it he against Leisegang the biblical origin of his view of pneuma (L'Esolution de la doctrine du Pneuma, especially 172 ff., 219 ff., 257 ff., 510 ff.; against Leisegang especially 247 ff.).

® S. z. B. Paulus, 1 Cor. 2, 14; 1 Tliess. 5, 23; He. 4, 12. • Augustine's use of language was decisive for the Middle Ages (see the summaries of Gilson, Saint Augustin, 53 note 1; 282, note 2 and Rüsche, Das Seelenpneuma, 64 ff.). Cf. Bonaventure Definition, Journey of the Mind into God

I, 4 = Opera V, 297; cf. Thomas, Sentence. Lib. I, Dist. III, Qu. V = Opera I, 123 f. On Ciceron's reception and transformation of the Stoic psychological terminology informs Schindler, The Stoic Teaching esp. 84 ...,ff. (about the term mens), 93 (It is precisely the emphasis on the ethical that allows the upper levels of animus to be seen more clearly.) '°

In the last decades, this demand was made by both representatives of

ana1ytis&en philosophy (especially Ryle, The Concept of Mind, esp. 167 ff.) as audi raised by exponents of more or less biologically oriented anthropology

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Spirit and sensuality

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A first approach to grasping the function of the concept of spirit is offered by the observation that in the classical philosophical tradition the assumption of a spirit in man is tied to the assumption of a spirit in the metaphysic sense or a place . This connection explains why the true spirit is in Mens&en or&t or not noble1i& mls cognitive faculty, but rather the mls instance is considered, which stands above the cognitive faculty in the narrower sense and directs them with reference to its own higher postulates and twos "-

(Plessner does not stop at essential restrictions, The Stages of the Organi sdien 304 f.; Gehlen, Urmens&, 89 ff., and Portmann, Biology and Spirit, t ff. go much further). Also worth mentioning are tendencies such as the non Armstrong typisdi represented tene (ømental states are nothing but physical states of brain', A Materialist Theory of Mind, zi). The fact that in a Marxist-Fi-Leninist philosophical dictionary, such as the one edited by G. Klaus and M. Buhr, the word “spirit” never appears at all is not surprising. - I would like to point out these and similar tendencies here, because one of the thesis of our work is that the foundation and coronation do not represent trends that are essential for modern times as a whole and that are systematically reported in the Enlightenment to appear more strongly in the 19th and 20th centuries.

"Typisdi Plato in Tim. 4t cd, 69 cd. Au& Aristotle regards the voiíç as the sidiere Zeidien for the participation of humanity in the divine, de Part. Anim. 656 a 8, 686 a 28-29; de An. 408 b 29 ; de Gen. Anim. 736 b 28, 737 a 10. Cicero summarizes the Stoic view on this question in Tusc. Disp., V, Cap. 13 § 38 and Cap. 25 $ 70. For Augustine the spirit is in mens&en imago and particeps Dei, Enarr. in Psalm. XLII, $6 = PL 36, col. 480; cf. De Symb., I, $2 = PL 40, col. 628. Next to Augustin Bonarentura, In I. Libr. Sententiarum, Dist. IX, dub. IV = Opera, I, 189; cf. Dist. III, Qu. III = Opera, I, 75. See also Leisegang's analysis related to Philo, Der Heilige Geist, 93, 104 ff. ^

This is ultimately the meaning of the Platonic distinction between voiç, which has to do with the non

ønvcóç òp2jv (Politeia, 51t b) and is identical with the truth (Phil. 65 d), and 6vávovo (about sic Politeia, 511 cd ). The Aristotelian comparison of non voií9 and ÿaioví¡qt¡ has the same significance (Anal. Post. 100 b). The function of this distinction was to strengthen the moral and normative component of the concept of mind; in their perspective appears namely & a value-free thinking or merely rationally acting mind as unrollable: “It is itself “intelligent ølmmoralism”, whatever the au& may mean in each case, is therefore eo ipso Zei&en ontologisdier inferiority. And vice versa: “riditiges”, “true” Knowledge should always promote morality (as Jaeger put it in relation to Plato: "When it comes to knowledge, one should not think of the modern science, but of the spiritual sense of knowledge, which the Greek calls phronesis," Paideia, p. 1277 note 1. Au & Leisegang notes with Redit, in Plato , the Stoa and Philo are knowledge and virtue Wedisel concepts', The Holy Spirit, 118). Despite this central function, it is not surprising that this distinction runs through the entire philosophical tradition. Also Paul distinguishes between merely intellectual moderate and higher knowledge (t Cor 1, 19-21; cf. the pun in Eph. 3, 19). In hinb1i‹:k to the change of mind or appreciation of the Wones advents” it is

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Basic concepts for understanding the Enlightenment

The spirit thus appears as more extensive or different than the individual cognitive faculties; It serves not&t or nt&t merely as an organ or as a folder of empirically founded knowledge, but rather as a discoverer or carrier of the highest and ultimate truths, at least to the extent that these are judged to be accessible to humanity. In other words: the spirit of the philosophical tradition is not to be grasped primarily by epistemology, at least as long as the object of knowledge is not merely the perceptible world; Access to his higher cognitive abilities is taken into account when it comes to the ontological ground, the knowledge of which must be presented as objective and irrefutable above all if it is to underpin or justify a certain moralisticnormative value scale. Only the spirit reveals the 'true' world of being and ought. With regard to this double main task, it is irrelevant whether it is understood as purely intellectual or not (it is precisely for this reason that two different concepts of rationalism can be derived from its definition, as we will see below): the Ents. :heidung in this question rids itself of the respective mental health of the constellation or the respective opponent and initially has nothing to do with the acceptance of a spirit with the mentioned double main task. The ambiguity of the concept of spirit results, among other things, from the fact that it sometimes primarily encompasses the intellect in contrast to the drives and the body, sometimes primarily the mental functions in general in contrast to the physiological and physical functions. Depending on the scope of the mind, the

indicating that Paul, who not infrequently used the voii5 of ancient philosophy synonymously with the menten, in order to express the "higher" or "true" spirit (e.g. 1 Cor. 14, 15; Ro. 2, 2; 1 Co 2, 1), dodi always voii5 s&reibc when thinking of states of sweetness or depravity (e.g. 1 Co 14, 14; Eph. 4, 17; 2 Ti 3, 8). Augustine also has the thesis that the intellect directly affected by God is superior to discursive ratio (Sermo XLIII, II, 3—III, 4 = PL vol. 38, col. 254—256). Similarly, Thomas reports, si& following Aristotle: the intellectus relates si& directly and intuitively to the principia, while rztio and scientia proceed discursively and have to apply the principia recognized by the intellectus (Summ. Theol. I, Qu. LIX, Art. 1 od 1; II, II, Qu. XLIX, Art. V ad 3; De Ver., Qu. XV Art. 1 = Quaest. Disput. I, 418). In the philosophy of the modern age, the same constellation appears in the form of the antithetic pair of terms raison-entendement, reason-understanding, reason-understanding (cf. and note 17).

'• Plato's double or ambivalent attitude towards the question of the parts of the soul marks the two positions within which the philosophical tradition has mainly moved. As is well known, Plato divides the soul into three parts with regard to the internal organization of the ideal state (Politeia, 435 c - 444 a), while on the other hand he has to emphasize the unity of the soul when it comes to the problem of immortality, ie the opposite of the mortal body (Politeia, 611 M612 a). What was important for the further development of this problem was stoisdle psychology, which is based on the nodi elastic assets.

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Spirit and sensuality

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Scope of Meaning”, but the dividing line and the antagonism between the two always remain, especially since, as I said, even monist conceptions appear in the name of this or that. Since the spirit in the philosophical tradition, under whatever name, always refers to the true being and the "true" ought, yes, it is supposed to carry them within, its opposition to sensuality is not just a prerequisite for gaining it a definitive knowledge, ie knowledge freed from the contradictory variety of the sensual, but co ipso audi the defense of a scale of values against factors that are felt to be threatening. The threat certainly comes from sensibility, in whose determination the same connection between ontological and normative questions as with the concept of spirit emerges - only this time with negative precedents: sensibility in itself is seen as both a lower susceptibility of being and at the same time as an obstacle to the realization of it Morality - or at best as moralisdi indifferent syllable ”; only as sensibility spiritualized to varying degrees Zeno's teachings on the intellectualistic monism developed by Chrysippus (Pohlenz, The Stoa, I, 85 ff., 142 ff.). Paul, the wsii{io nidit only the ‹i‹iiitio, but audi which contrasts qro;t5 (see note 8), also spru&t in front of msii¡io at all, if he primarily has in mind its opposition to the body (Ro. 18, 13; 1 Co 7, 34; before all Gal. 5, 17; In 1 Co 12, 4 he openly speaks of several assets of the same one at the same time. All these, by the way, fluctuating distinctions and classifications aim at the independence or sovereignty of the higher or to theorize in pure spirit and at the same time to explain to some extent why In practical terms, this control is often absent. We'll see what happens for an important role such questions in the moral philosophical debate of *® J• •hundreds played. '^ How the mentioned pairs of terms imply sdion and how it reflects the diversity of Philosophical levels require the word “meaningfulness” in our investigation have multiple meanings. What is meant by this is biological sensibility; then the inner sensibility (according to Herder's apt expression, On Recognition and Feeling SW, VIII, 190, 239), namely the drives, sufferings, etc., which are traced back to the corporeal affinity of the human being and by which it is assumed that they would get in the way of the dominion or activity of the intellect stand ¡ thirdly, the geographic and social sensibility, as the sum of factors affecting the spirit of the geographisdi in a particular country and in a affect people living in certain societies; and fourth the cosmis, meaning, that is, the matter of the universe in contrast to the imagination From God. (Also, sensuality as a faculty of knowledge in the Kantian sense may not be forgotten.) Structural similarities of the different levels (of the anthropologis&en to social histor&en and cosmo1ogis&en), which result sid in addition to the use of sensuality in its respective sense, we want to determine with the help of this multidimensional definition of sensuality, to which an equally multidimensional definition of spirit corresponds. '• The ontological and thus also moral-philosophical disparagement of meaning is known to be a main characteristic of the Platonisdi-Dristlidian tradition.

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Within the framework of a spiritualistic monism or a consciously or unconsciously teleologically colored materialism, it can recommend it as completely dangerous in a normative-moralistic sense. Therefore, the defense of the spirit does not simply mean taking sides for a certain conception of being, but also - and rarely primarily - commitment to the values with which the latter is associated. Given the normative function of the spirit, which one should be aware of in its entirety and in all its metamorphoses, it is neither a coincidence nor a triviality if the fundamental difference between humans and (other) animals lies in the external presence of the spirit "was inherited from the former" - although this spirit is not merely as a value-free cognitive organ or instrument for self-assertion in the struggle for existence, but rather as a normative-moralistic colored and correspondingly obligatory instance. In this regard, it is significant that in the language of the philosophical tradition the very terms that refer to the spirit as an ontologically given entity or as a source of the highest ontological knowledge are consistently used to demonstrate the power of moral unity in people ma&en; Then they become confused beyond recognition with other terms, such as òp8óç kóyoç, ratio, reason, etc., some of which have a direct moral-philosophical-normative reference.

A& Aristotle reserves the power of the primum movens of the pure vórÿøvq for all appreciation of sensuality in comparison to Platonism, and accordingly the highest perfection of human life appears in the theory. In turn, sensuality is regarded as moralisdi indifferent or completely alien to morality, mensic arises as a mere friction of the mean causality. Then, as Kant's example shows, a new separation between the intelligible and the sensitive to secure morality is necessary (as Plato knew the opposition between causal òvò•t'xrÿ and autonomous voiiç, see e.g. Tim. 48 a). '° Typisdi the formulation of Aristotle, Pol. 12f3 a 10. " We encounter the synonymy of voiiç, tnvøJprÿ, øúveøvç and øe*wøvç in Plato when the hedonistic principle is attacked (see e.g. Phil. 21 b, 59 d, 66 b etc. etc.). Au& bci Aristotle is the morally active voiiç with yv‹í›tirÿ, øúvcøvç or øe w«vç identisdi (see e.g. Eth. Nic. 1143 a 2W28). On the other hand, voiiç and Xóyoç are just as much identisdi in a practical sense (both are supposed to be mr , ct. Pol. 12f4 b 5 with 1295 b 6, 8 and 1260 a 19) such as ó Oóç Xóyoç and øpòvrJøvç (Etfi. Nic. 1144 b 28). K. Bärthlein has shown, contrary to one-sided interpretations, da4 in the Corpus Aristotelicum and in the platonis&en writings the term ópfl6ç Xóyoç means both the øriditige knowledge' as au& dos objectively existing and ontolo gis&anthropologisdi well-founded moral law (Der OPOOZ AOFOZ in the great Etÿiik of the Corpus Aristotelicum, Irish. 239 f., 245 f., and: Der OPOOZ AOFOZ and the basic ethical principle in the platonic scriptures, esp. 129, 139, 141 f., 151 f.) It is again a question of the stereotypical equation between true knowledge and "real" action or the thesis, dos knowledge be defective, so-

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Then the concept of spirit becomes even more ambiguous. However, its ambiguity does not prevent it from fulfilling its normative task - on the contrary: it arises from the need to fulfill the task mentioned under different circumstances and against different opponents, and moreover it suffers from the confusion between ontological and normative levels. This darkening culminates or is rooted in the aforementioned connection Assuming a spirit in mendia with assuming a spirit in meta in the physical sense, that is, of a God, however he may be understood: in any case, he also represents a realization of the unity of ontology and normative, in that he is not only supposed to embody true being, but also the most humble wisdom and goodness. Thus, the normative function of the mind receives ontological support, that is, it serves as an inevitable consequence of its origin and therefore of its character. The connection between ethics and oncology taudit here in its class

as long as it does not agree with certain moral principles (see note 12). This is the reason why, in the Christian tradition, the terms that are intended to describe the ability of knowledge are only used synonymously with the terms intended for the higher spirit if it is assumed that that knowledge has already been completed or established through insight into the "true" being and should. Indicative of this is the double use of the word ratio, which can mean both the merely knowledgeable (see note 12) and also the higher normative knowledge. See Gilson's excellent analyzes (Saint Augustin, 141 ff.; Saint Bonaventure, 362 ff.), which capture the secular meaning of the problem. On the double use of ratio in Thomas s. Summ.

Theol., I, Qu. LXXIX, Art. IX, Concl. (Distinction between ratio superior and ratio inferior). In contrast to the statements quoted in note 12, the terms intellectus and ratio are used synonymously elsewhere (just as they are in Aristotle) when speaking of the control of the drives, that is, of the moral function of the higher spirit is in question (sz ß. Summ. Theol., I, LXXXI, Art. III, ad. 2).

'^

That is the meaning of the thesis that man is only able to live according to the commandments of the

divine or spiritual because the same is anchored ontologically in him or he acts morally because his own condition is basically moralis (see Plato, Politeia, 590 d; similar to Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1177 a 13-17). Paul expresses the same connection very succinctly by using the word time twice in a row, in order to designate once the ontological principle of life and once the normatively commanding authority (Gal. 5:25). In his book, which is always worth reading, Heinze briefly but clearly outlined the attempt at an ontological justification of ethics on the basis of the ancient Logos doctrine (The doctrine of the Logos, esp. 66 f., 145 ff., 19s f., 270 ff.; cf. his critical comments on this 264 f.). As we shall see, the need for an oncological or at least (after the elimination of traditional theology) anthropological justification of ethics was felt no less in the eighteenth century than in all the earlier ones.

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sis&en, until no& about two centuries ago. Given the long association between God and God, the elimination of the latter would, of course, endanger the latter directly. And in view of the fusion of the ontological and the normative on all levels (that of the good spirit and that of the divine spirit as well as their relationships to one another), the dispute over character and the south had to be addressed at the same time. Sal of the spirit into a battle and certain æoralis&-normative views. Nodi niehr: the danger to the spirit was taken all the more seriously by the idealist side, as they were forced to question the possibility of objective values at all. Even if there was a willingness to use the term "spirit ' Because of its ambiguity in terms of content, one could not help but search for new supernatural instances that could preserve the possibility of values and valuations. This was the last Defense of the meaning of life is felt and spent. Even after abandoning the spirit as the terminus tefinicus or even as a metaphysic entity, philosophy can remain true to its original orphanage with the animistic approach to the world, as it is attached to things wants to feel the main part of the spiritual, which she calls their “meaning”. She does not need to believe in God, nor in his assistants or adversaries, but in the masters who are behind or in things and their sins direct indiscriminately in order to maintain the connection to one's own source; the assertion that life or the world has a meaning is completely sufficient. In reality, this assertion, the concrete social relevance of which remains to be seen, is more comprehensive than any theo- or demonology (which is why it is much more hesitantly revealed than God), which, moreover, becomes evident in it the

'• The manner in which M. Stirner, for example, combines his nihilistic critique of traditional ethics with a polemic against the concept of spirit is particularly eloquent (The unique and his property, lo ff.). It is perhaps no coincidence that at the beginning of a treatise dedicated to the question of nihilism, Heidegger addresses the elimination of the spirit: the removal of the supersensible ends with a neither-no& in relation to the distinction between sense lidiem (ukHHjsóv) and Ni&t sinnlÿdlem (vopzóv). The deposition ends in vain. However, what remains is the undecided and insurmountable prerequisite of the deluded attempts to withdraw from the meaningless through a mere giving of meaning” (Nietzsdie's word , “God is dead”, in: Holzwege, 193). cf. or Arim. 10 *^ This was the case with Kant, who introduced the concept of spirit relatively early on (see Dreams of a Spirit Seer ..., AA, II, 351 f., cf. KdU, AA, V, 467 f.) and instead, in the mature work, terms such as øldi”, “consciousness in general” or “intelligence” are used. Nevertheless, this elimination of the term spirit did not lead to a rejection of the supernatural in general - and the reason for this was not just an epistemologist, but at least as much a moral philosopher.

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The latter serve precisely to interpret the meaning of life and prove to be unusable as soon as they can no longer fulfill this task for various reasons. — But regardless of whether the question of meaning or the spirit is given priority in one way or another, until recently it was considered self-evident1i‹:ii that the spirit was the developing, standardizing, that is, meaning-giving and -full authority. The attack against him, first in his divine dimension and then in his human dimension, therefore had to mobilize the entire philosophical front. The question of being was fought over like a question of value - and nothing else was to be expected, since the question of being and becoming were always considered together within the philosophical tradition. By orienting our investigation on the so far understood question of the relationships between spirit and sensibility, we touch one or more of the nerve points of philosophical thinking in general. And at the same time, we enter a topic area in which, beyond the disputes of the academic community, decisions of the greatest socio-political relevance are made.

2. The polemical character of thought in the Enlightenment and in its interpretations I would now like to put forward the thesis that the so-called Enlightenment was an attempt, or rather a variety of attempts, to answer the question about the relationships between spirit and sensuality. This point is, according to what has been said so far, neither incidental nor does it leave out the specificity of the Enlightenment (one could reply with Re:iiit that all times have tried to answer the same question). Quite the opposite. The aim is to show that in the Age of Enlightenment the problem of meaning is posed in a particularly urgent way, which is why the question of its relationship to the spirit acquires a hitherto unknown and, moreover, permanent intensity . The Enlightenment had to ask this question so urgently, since the rehabilitation of sensuality was one of its most important global weapons in the fight against theological ontology and morality. In turn, here lay one of the nerve points of modern thinking in general. Because the rehabilitation of the senses raised enormous logistical problems, the overcoming of which was all the more urgent, the more unavoidable and indispensable the above-mentioned rehabilitation was in this or that form. Because of the magnitude of the question of the relationships between mind and sense and the quasi- inherent power of the question to take many different forms, the rehabilitation of sense in the Age of Enlightenment initiated all levels of philosophical inquiry simultaneously

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feverish movement. In epistemology, the antagonism of intellectualism and empiricism or mathematics, geometry and experimental method comes to a head; in cosmology, the relationships between God and the world must be redefined; in anthropology and morality, reason and experimentation are required the recognition of individual rights and thus strengthen the relationships between ought and being, while in the philosophy of health the contrast between the causal conception of the course of life and its desired goal or end, captured in normative categories, becomes almost blatant .

It is now important not only to clarify the structural connection of all these levels in the work of every thinker and to justify possible deviations from the ideal type of the same work, but also and above all to address the logical character of the questions asked in the Age of Enlightenment to be able to measure in order to be able to understand the unity of the thought effort at that time in the diversity of ways of thinking. The unity is based not on the answers, but on the questions - a statement that is of the utmost importance for the sadistic understanding of that age and could save forestry from such a debacle. The diversity of answers arises from the diversity of basic attitudes and the polemic needs of the individual thinkers. In my opinion, the study of the sources shows that the intellectually sound interpretation of the various positions and counterpositions, based on the assumption that thinking is essentially poleisistic, can lead the most. For from this situation it is not only possible to fully explain the consistency, but also the contradictory nature of a certain way of thinking, which is particularly important for the study of the Enlightenment, in which the dualism is wavering, due to the embarrassment of the final consequences of the rehabilitation of sensibility conditionally, is on the agenda, means a special preference. The best way to understand a certain philosophy in a mentally sound manner is to take a clear look at its opponent and consider what it has to or wants to prove in order to put this opponent out of harm's way . In the polemic of all against all or of the philosophical parties against each other - depending on the goal of the polemic or the ideal in front of it the variety of variations on one and the same theme, that is, on the basic question around which the polemic revolves. The logical structure of the basic question forms the constant and at the same time unavoidable factor, the basic attitudes and the polemics are the variable and eliminable factors: so ent stands for the general intellectual picture of the time in its diversity, while the special picture of the work of each thinker results from the intersection of the logical structure of the basic question with the respective basic attitude. It is clear from the well-founded belief in the unity and diversity of the Age of Enlightenment that the widespread assumptions that this was the age of rationalism or optimism , etc., must prove to be of little help. Equally untenable in view of the “fironologis” series of publications

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The assertion, popular at the time, that the period of extreme Enlightenment rationalism was followed by that of pre-Romantic protesting feelings is highly misleading. In reality, that is, in the lidite of the sources, there are optimism and pessimism, even esdiatology and nihilism, belief in reason and the glorification of feelings, confidence in the strength of the human spirit and epistemology retis despair, one way or another motivated religiosity and atheism, moralism and eudaemonism, altruism and egoism are indispensable tendencies of one and the same age, whose equal sons are such venerable personalities and thinkers as Rousseau and La Mettrie, Herder and Loé, Fidite and Marquis de Sade. All these currents and opposite directions must, in their unity, be regarded as possible answers to the fundamental question which the rehabilitation of sensuality posed positively or negatively. Their coexistence is a fact, and it is not in their denial, but in their explanation that we find the key to an adequate understanding of the overall phenomenon that is usually called the Age of Enlightenment. In view of this sad situation, the further the discovery and the study of neglected sources advanced and above all the more certain rationalist positions that formed the ideological core of the older one-dimensional idea of the Enlightenment, the more the research developed - after two world wars and enormous ones Social upheavals have lost their suggestive power - they have found themselves in a dead end. It is therefore a double necessity that in recent years the demand for a radical separation from all linear conceptions of the Enlightenment has become ever louder

. The diversity and multidimensionality of that age

"S. above all Die&mann's well-founded criticism of the works of Hazard and Cassirer, who wanted to work out a possible closed intellectual picture of the Enlightenment, whereby they very often neglected facts and texts or (An Interpretation of the 18th Century, in: Studien, 218 ff.¡ au‹:h: The men and structure of the Enlightenment, in: Diderot and the Enlightenment, 4 ff.). Cf. Boas' review, esp . 246 f., which above all criticizes the teleological character of Cassirer's concept (Kant as the completion of the Enlightenment, etc.), as well as Price's good comments on the abstract-fictional trait of Cassirer's form of thought in the Enlightenment. (Cassirer on the Enlightenment, esp. 108 ff.). Cro&er has shown what errors the linear construction forces Hazard to make: he must put the crisis of enlightenment at its end, although it accompanies it from the beginning (Recent Interpretations, 434). — Paradoxically, Gay adopts the aforementioned critiques of Cassirer and Hazard (Rise of Modern Paganism, 426, 428) in order to make the same mistakes in method and content . Because he obviously wants to understand Edie's enlightenment as a preliminary stage of the modern philosophy of "critical rationalism", i.e. from the si‹:ht normativistis‹:her premises. read Thinking against the irrationality of myth and striving for autonomy against ‹:Christian‹:he authority (464, 495 f.) That is actually the reason why he

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were thus asserted; So far, in my opinion and knowledge, there has been a lack of a convincing explanation of this. It is the ambition of this work to provide this explanation with the help of the conceptual instruments developed here - namely by means of the two theses of the intertwining of the question of being with the question of value, as it is reflected in the perspective of the relationship between spirit and sensuality first service, and from the polemic character of thinking (philosophical as well as political).

The expression 'Age of Enlightenment' that we have used so far is intended to clearly indicate that the Enlightenment does not coincide with its age, but rather takes place in it. The age is therefore more extensive than the Enlightenment. What is currently suffering is the Enlightenment in its time, which therefore would not have been what it was without it. The fact that the Enlightenment belongs to its age means two things: that it is &aracterist for the age and that it is conditioned by& the age. But since the age is multidimensional, and since the Enlightenment contains statements on different aspects of it, it can no more be united in sidi than it can be identical with its age. One would therefore have to make a double distinction in order to delimit the area of the Enlightenment: on the one hand, the Enlightenment is to be understood as the intellectual currents that want to replace traditional theologies with a secular conception of the world or an explanation of the world that is as immanent as possible, and on the other hand - in the narrower sense - those currents that defend a normative-moral ideal, whatever that may mean, not only against traditional theology, but also against the skepticism and nihilism that arise during or from the secularization process itself. (Which aspects of Reformed theology can be attributed to the Enlightenment in the narrower sense or are motivated by it must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.) It is absolutely necessary to see that the immanent explanation of the world - in contrast to the transcendent explanation, in which God is ontological and was at the same time a normative and moral principle Neither 1ogis nor di geistes‹fiidit1idi must be connected with the acceptance of moral ideals. Moreover, belief in the magnitude of human reason does not eo ipso mean a commitment to a moral scale of values, since it remains open for the time being whether reason, by its very nature, must be bound to such a scale, as it is in the Platonic Diary and Aristotelianism -diristli'fien tradition was ", or whether it can simply act in a value-free and dual-crational way. The following analysis will illustrate how central the importance of elementary conceptual distinctions is using several examples. Their orientation function exists hardly wants to take note of the skepticism and nihilist aspect of the Enlightenment (cf. his unremarked polemic against crackers and the very brief mention of the work of Ron Vyverberg, 427 f. and 449) and why he only sees the differences between philosophers and one another complexity of synthesis' is able to discover (S. X). ^ S. o. Anm. 17.

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constantly teaching us about the necessity not only between the Age of Enlightenment and Enlightenment, but also between Enlightenment in the broader (negative, antitheological) sense and Enlightenment in the narrower (positive, normative) sense to draw the necessary boundaries". In this work we will not talk about the Age of Enlightenment in general, but about the Enlightenment in its two, often contradictory, meanings; the traditional-theological opponent cannot be dealt with, but he must in the remain in the background, because only a side glance at him makes many of the actions and reactions of the heroes of the Enlightenment stage understandable. This is now the age in which the Enlightenment takes place and thus gains its very specific features, can only be determined if we to some extent surveyed the nature and development of modern rationalism".

The distinction between the three levels mentioned in no way implies that the individual intellectual inventions or thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment can be classified into three groups without further differentiation. If we take the level of Enlightenment in the moralistic-normativist sense as an example, we find that its double opposition to traditional theology and nihilistic approaches brings into being a variety of thought structures, which differ depending on the concrete situation, yes Preference is given to argumentative means that differ considerably from one another in order to support the ideal that exists in front of us. Audi's radical skepticism is made up of understandable backsides and is nuanced in one way or another, that is, not always as open nihilism. On the level of theology, there is no evidence of a willingness to adopt positions of the normativist Enlightenment if you do so. promises the disarmament of the Enlightenment opponents using a soldier's tactics or at least believes that the concrete situation makes certain concessions unavoidable for one's own survival. From all of these approaches

°° Between the Enlightenment and its age, there is a fundamental distinction between Dieckmann, Religious and metaphysical elements in the thinking of the Enlightenment, in: Studies, 26i5, and: ..., Themes and structure in: Diderot, 15 f normativist enlightenment, so that he does not approach the nihilism question in the age of enlightenment logically and satisfactorily can. For this purpose, it is not enough to establish the coexistence of opposites in the 18th century (Dieckmann ibid., 11 f. speaks of this, following Dilthey, Friedridi der Große Ges.Sdir. III, 97...,ff., and Sdialk, Formen und Disharmonies especially 254 f., 265, 267). Delon examined the role of the Lidite metaphor, which originates from ..., mythical-religious ideas, in the explanation of the contrasts between philosophers, who also rightly drew attention to the fact that the existing contradictions in Enlightenment thought were not simply understood according to a dualistic Manichaean scheme are allowed to be used - which in turn means the light or darkness metaphor could tempt (Les Lumieres " p. ..., insb. 529 f., 533 f.). Chapter II Paragraph 1.

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The result is a picture of the highest diversity, as it is a diverse struggle on several levels at the same time. In reality, this constellation is, formally speaking, by no means strange or unique. For all the great epochs of intellectual science, once the initial enthusiasm that unified things was over, research gradually brought into play the diversity of the factors at work; it happened e.g. B. with the two legends of Greek service and of the Renaissance, which helped the bourgeoisie to achieve a historically based self-confidence ". To understand an epody as a tension-filled coexistence of different, even opposing positions (completely independent of whether there is a formal, naditräglidi - hermeneutisdi A regulatory framework or general term for several of these positions that can be constructed) is actually self-evident if one only realizes, from a socially intelligent perspective, the multitude of individuals and groups who, in every time and in their own way, are Maditanspr üc e raise and thus come into conflict with one another, and one also understands the function of thought structures in concrete existential situations concretely (ie without any fluidity into the idea reidi). The exciting diversity of the epody becomes self-evident if one understands the takes the thesis of polemics of the nature of thought seriously and recognizes that every position must attract a counterposition, and indeed that every position arises as a counterposition. The struggle and the wailing grouping in the friend-enemy relationship clarify the diversity in all great epochs of intellectual history - and the Age of Enlightenment is no exception. The unity that can be observed in the ranks of the Enlightenment on certain fundamental questions is not an indication against the polemic function of thought, since it is itself conditioned by polemics: it exists as long as a monolithic theological opponent stands up to it, and crumbles in the case where this is the case audi only presents itself as a biBdien willing to reform. The fictional or polemisdi-conditioned character of the unity of the Enlightenment comes to light when we take a close look at the respective common denominator of this unity. Terms such as reason or nature are so ambiguous that a subsumption of the Enlightenment between them can only be done purely formally; wanting to derive a essence of the Enlightenment from them in terms of content and connection would be roughly the same as if one wanted to define our century as the age of democracy and freedom because there are all parties This is precisely what shows that they are to be understood purely formally (or as empty formulas), which, incidentally, is proven by the fact that everyone who refers to them usually adds that he means

-• Cf. Rüegg, The Humanism Discussion, 31o ff.; Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought, l 7S f., 181 ff., 199 ff. -• Sdion Troeltsdi has traced the only prelatively unified character of the Enlightenment to the common struggle against Kirdilidian supernaturalism, The Enlightenment, in: Ges.Sdir. IV, 339.

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the respective 'true' reason or freedom. Not only with regard to the diversity of intellectual currents in the Age of Enlightenment, but also with regard to the formal character of the terms of the normativist Enlightenment itself, the term Enlightenment should be used rather than a conventional terminus tedinicus. if one has failed to make a strict distinction between the Enlightenment and its age. The need for periodization undoubtedly stems from scientific necessities, and it could not be eliminated even if one only wanted to see periodization as a great evil. We are dependent on fictions and abstractions, and the radical rebellion against them ultimately means that one cannot be satisfied with the condition of human beings: the cognitive faculty . With Redit, i‹:ii would think docb doesn't take this further. After all, the unavoidable fictions fulfill their hermeneutic task much better if one does not forget that they are fictions. This must be emphasized all the more in the interest of a scientifically diaftlien treatment, as the need for periodization very often turns into a hypostasis of an epody that serves ideological purposes. By means of a certain normativist view, statements based on history, i.e. in reality itself, are to be produced, so that the respective should is implicitly an irrefutable being. The reverse also happens: an entire epoch is demonized so that a later one can seek and find its own self-confirmation in the fight against it or in its "overcoming". The polemic nature of thinking is not only shown in the B1i&e on the Enlightenment, but in the same way when considering Enlightenment research. In the following I would like to briefly point out some misinterpretations that are typically caused by ideology. Here, of course, their ideological resistance and impact should not be disputed and even less the truth Those fighting on this or that front must come up with interpretations. We do not want or can keep these interpretations away from major philosophical politics, but rather from the framework of this investigation.

The mythology of liberalism involves, first of all, the identification of the Enlightenment in general with its moralistic-normativist version. The liberal view of the Enlightenment can, if necessary, rely on the alignment of the Enlightenment with its age, especially since it sees its own current justification in the presence of an always dangerous "obscurantist" opponent; ideologisdi töd1i‹:h would be everyone for them "-' After an apt suggestion by Belaval, L'htritage Leibniz, 255. •• Even Kant, who sometimes speaks of his own age as an "enlightened age" (Prolegomena, AA IV, 383), differentiates elsewhere between an "enlightened age" and an "age of enlightenment" (What is Enlightenment?, AA VIII , 40). See the good analysis by Stuke, Enlightenment, 265 ff.

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fundamental decoupling of the Enlightenment in the sense of the immanent explanation of the world or the disenchantment of the world from certain ideals and slogans, which, however, as we have already noted, do not always and necessarily belong together with this latter, neither logically nor mentally. The term Enlightenment must therefore never be used in liberal terminology as a mere technical term, not only because of the aforementioned identification of the Enlightenment with norms, but also because of the liberal belief that these do not exist only formally and as a rule, possibly non-binding in concrete situations, but rather they have a completely offensive content - precisely the one that the liberals mean in each case. From the perspective of the historical self-image of liberalism, the gradual establishment of those norms also appears as a matter of course , an indispensable consequence of the de-theologization of the worldview associated with a de-theologization of society, as the eternal gain of a forever liberated humanity °. But this is a short digression in two respects: because it is entirely conceivable that, firstly, de-theologization of worldview and society benefits completely different norms (i.e.: forms of rule) than the liberal ones (this possibility has now become reality on a large part of our planet), or that, secondly, the consistently carried out disenchantment the world has come to relativistic, even nihilistic conclusions. For the liberal Enlightenment mythology, it must be a bitter irony that modern nihilism found its first programmatic and consistent elaboration precisely in the Age of Enlightenment especially through La Mettrie and de Sade. It makes sense to view such phenomena as aberrations or as blemishes. Psychologically and ideologically this can even be successful, but the knowledge of the Enlightenment must suffer as a result, especially if it can be shown that that such and similar inventions, apart from their numerical power, only lead to completion, which even with moralistic minds

'°

A good example of this tendency is provided by Cobban in his Bu‹:h In Sear& of Humanity, passim. The critical comments from Cro&er, Recent Interpreta 452 f. In the spirit of ..., modern liberalism, Funke also uses the definition The concept of clarification in his treatise: Enlightenment - a question of morals Attitude?' His explanations should only show that behind the question mark of the title was just a rhetorical question. In addition, he identifies explanation and 18th century (p. 24 above), whereby intellectual creations that nidlt fit into the liberal-normativist concept, simply be kept secret. This unhistorical attitude is typical for all those who, like Funke (sz BS 33), in the ideological proximity of so-called critical rationalism; cf. z. B. Mittelstrass, Modern Times and Enlightenment, 87 ff.

•° Hobhouse, Liberalism, 32. °'

Le&y, Rationalism in Europe, II 375.

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clarifiers and which were used by them as a weapon against traditional theology. This is precisely what the liberal Enlightenment view must dispute: namely, that the world-view-ontological presuppositions of one's own norms (e.g. the primacy of anthropology over theology as soon as it assumes the form of radical atheism) could pull the exploitation of any norm nadi sidi. The Marxist (and Marxist-Leninist) interpretation of the Enlightenment must become entangled in similar difficulties to the extent that it focuses exclusively on the moral and normativist aspect of the Age of Enlightenment, which it regards as the ideology of the bourgeoisie and takes at its word , in order to enable oneself to see the bourgeois act of betraying one's own original ideals. The Enlightenment thus forms the ideological flag of the aspiring bourgeoisie, which is brought down by the victorious and conservative bourgeoisie. Marxism should now take up the legacy of the Enlightenment and substantively realize those ideals that the bourgeoisie could only proclaim formally, if only in the name of all humanity. In this view, two successive epodial terms come into play. Marxism must, as a matter of fact, regard the Enlightenment as a historical epody, because it sees itself as an epoch-making movement or as a concept of epoch, which, in accordance with the gradual progression of the development of humanity, follows a previous and more imperfect one. On the other hand, as an emancipatory movement, Marxism could never have inherited the legacy of the bourgeois Enlightenment if it could not be identified with certain fundamentally acceptable norms, even if they were purely formally intended by the bourgeoisie. This results in Marxism's double attitude towards the Enlightenment: insofar as it is the conqueror of the Enlightenment or

°• Engels, Anti-Dühring, in: MEW 20, 16 f. From Marxist Sidit, Besse, Marx, Engels and the French 18th century, insb. 159 f., 162 ff. ^ Engels, The Situation of England, in: MEW 1, 550 f. Under the periodization compulsion of the Marxist philosophy of the development of history, Krauss claims that, although a periodization according to the self-image of the individual epodes is fundamentally inadmissible, one nevertheless does so in In the case of enlightenment an exception is mad and whose (alleged) self-assessment as a unified, third epoch in the era of philosophy and progress must be taken at its nominal value (On the Periodization of the Enlightenment, VIII; elsewhere even Krauss doesn't say it): ht just from the self-image of the Enlightenment, but from that of the 18th century s‹:hle‹:hthin, see Siecle in the 18th century, 88 f.). However, Krauss only refers to certain statements made by enlighteners of a certain (normativistic) direction, and thus his evidence actually consists only of a tautology. In addition, he overlooks the fact that the systematic use of the Enlightenment as an epic concept only began in the second half of the 19th century. Century began (Stuke, Enlightenment, 244 ff.), and that it was precisely at that time that the Marxists discovered or constructed their dual relationship to the bourgeois enlightenment described above (Fets‹:her, Enlightenment, column 451) .

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as the originator of a new, nadi-bourgeois epody, he must identify the Enlightenment with the bourgeoisie; and insofar as he recommends it as the completer of the Enlightenment, he must of course adopt its normativist (emancipatory) version.

Both assumptions are sociologically and intellectually untenable. As far as the identification of the Enlightenment and the middle class is concerned, it does not affect the fact that, regardless of whether the rise of the middle class and the resulting repression of the social middle class to one degree or another of Kirdie and theology the prerequisites for creation from materialism and atheism, because the bourgeoisie as a whole was always suspicious and hostile towards social approaches; it perceived them as s‹3iädlidi or compromising and gave preference to wavering dualistic positions. Voltaire's and indeed Diderot's harsh criticism of materialists like La Mettrie and Helvétius is an expression of this citizen concern. But now the Marxist interpretation regards materialism as the truly revolutionary force in the bourgeois enlightenment*, which is also connected to the self-image of materialist Marxism as the heir to the best traditions of that age. This brings us to the second of the above assumptions, which has three points to counter. Firstly: if there is a necessary connection between materialism and "progressiveness" - not just in the anti-theological sense, but also, what is far more important here, in the moral normativist sense - then it would have to be shown that that the materialists were eo ipso more democratic than other philosophers. That is

°• "Enlightenment" is used as a kind of supra-historical term, cf. e.g. B. Ley's book, History of Enlightenment and Atheism, which begins with the Enlightenment in the ancient river cultures and in Greece (I, 45 ff., 155 ff.). Characteristic of the affinity between Marxist and liberal viewpoints with regard to the normativist understanding of the Enlightenment, which is emphasized here, is the fact that "critical rationalists" also speak of the 'Kersten', ie of the Greek enlightenment (e.g Mittelstrass, Modern Times and Enlightenment, 15 ff., apparently following Gay, Enlightenment, 72 ff.; since both in Gay, 207 ff., from the retreat of reason' and also in Mittelstrass, 76 ff., from the 'disorientation of reason t" during the If we are talking about the “Middle Ages”, there is obviously an implicit resurrection of the triadic schema of the course of history. On the devaluation of the Middle Ages as a topos of modern militant self-image, see chap. II, note 5). °• Engels, Introduction to the English. Edition of the Development of Socialism', in: MEW, 22, 203. Arguing in the same spirit, Krauss even goes so far as to say from d'Alem bert e.g. B. a militant materialist to ma‹:lien: "The replacement of Voltaire by":h Diderot and d'Alembert [in the direction of the encyclopedia] means the complete victory of materialism in this preparatory work of bourgeois triumph' (Introduction to the Study of the French Aufk., in: Studies, 199).

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not the case. Holbadi z. B. is in no way more democratic than, say, Voltaire, while conversely the democrat Rousseau fights materialism and atheism with suffering. Secondly: in view of the ideologically desirable togetherness of materialism and progressiveness - in the moralistic-noraiativist sense! — Marxism must deny the view that materialists have reached nihilist positions (when it comes to La Mettrie, for example, then the texts are simply violated ^), and conversely, skepticism must be treated as a mere precursor to materialism. Furthermore, it is not examined whether materialists who stick to normativism on the level of social and moral philosophy do so consistently, that is, do or not do in accordance with their metaphysics principles. Thirdly: since Marxism is presented not only as a continuator, but also as a conqueror of Enlightenment materialism, the latter must be described as incomplete or undialectical or medianicistic, the source of this medianicism being Descartes' natural philosophy. Our Analysis will, however, show that eighteenth-century materialism only became possible on the basis of the rejection of Cartesian medianicism. Audi the debate about the influence of Enlightenment ideas on Ausbrudi and

The course of the French Revolution was largely fought out in polemics. This becomes clear if we remember the very first statements about the topic, which incidentally came from those more or less directly affected. The revolution is viewed as a necessary consequence, indeed as the climax of the Enlightenment, both by revolutionaries, who did not want their own Sadie to be understood as a prosaic Maditan slogan, but as a noble struggle and noble ideas, as well as by conservatives or reactionaries who had previously fought against the ideas of the Enlightenment and therefore saw in the cruelty of the revolution only confirmation of their warnings against those ideas or who, in their (un)intentional blindness to deeper primordial causes, placed the main responsibility for what had happened on a handful

°• See chap. VII Note 68. The claim by Marx-Engels (The Holy Family, in: MEW 2, 138) that the materialists have the original goodness of humanity taught, is otherwise nadiweislidi falsdi, at least as far as La Mettrie and Helvttius are concerned. °' Engels on Hume, The Situation of England, in: MEW 1, 553; cf. Engels, L. Feuer in: ..., MEW 21, 276; cf. Engels, Ein1. to English Edition of the “Development of bad socialism”, in: MEW, 22, 295 f. ^ Marc-Engels, The Holy Family, in: MEW, 2, 132 f. (cf. Engels, in: MEW 22, 303).

°• Cap. IV, Absdin. 4 b. '° Brissot formulates es folgendermaßen: our revolution is not the fruit of an insurrection, it is the work of half a century of Enlightenment. The Enlightenment out of funds for Liberty etc.", Le Patriote Fran9ais, October 10, 1791, 426 (zit. von Trenard, Lumiéres et Revolution 10).

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Ideologists are tired of it." This type of polemic lasted a long time and found prominent representatives on both sides, "but gradually it was overtaken by another, or rather it became compatible with it, which was related to general questions of spirituality or, rather, philosophical philosophy. In order to be able to monopolize it and hodistilize it into their own glorious tradition, historians from the liberal bourgeoisie hypostatized the revolution, and in this they were followed by the Marxist theory of society, which was based on a hypostatized The "bourgeois" revolution was interested in supporting its sdiema from the ascending gradation of the seditious. Hinsiditlidi of the hypostasis of the revolution, which smoothly becomes a personnage metaphysique', show Liberal and Marxist views show the same partial and only deceptively paradoxical agreement as on the question of the Enlightenment in general - which was to be expected, since on both sides the attitude towards the revolution essentially shapes the attitude towards the Enlightenment, or vice versa. Just as the hypostatized Enlightenment is confronted with the concrete diversity of the age, so too must the hypostatized revolution of the two positions mentioned be opposed to the revolution as a concrete, diverse event. There is not a revolution, but a series of revolutions that do not just follow one another, but also develop side by side and pursue their own purposes." The enormous upheavals that are usually summarized under the name "French Revolution" were ignored benefiting the bourgeois revolution (although we should not forget that in France the bourgeoisie, unlike the ruling class in England, had to share its victory with the independently revolting peasants), does not excuse us from thinking of these upheavals as a bourgeois revolution in their entirety to denounce. Otherwise a metaphysisdi-teleologisdie treatment gains the upper hand and

" As one of the first Burke, Reflections, 211 f. About the conspiracy theory in in general see Epstein, Origins of Conservatism, 583 ff. •• Als Fortsetzer Burkes dürfen Taine (øSeveral million sausages are thus launched by a few thousand speakers", Les Origines ... II 351, ct. II, 77 f.: La Propagation de la Doctrine) and partly audi Tocqueville (L'Ancien Rtgime, I II, 1 — Oeuvres 11, 193 If.). Midlelet, on the other hand, shares the view Bristols, History of the Rev. French, Introd., V — I, 55 If.

^° Goodi, Gesdlidite and Ges‹:hi‹:htss&reiber in the 19th century, 200 f., 213 ff.

“

To& an apt expression of Furet, Le catédiisme rtvolutionaire, 279.

Furet criticizes Redit's teleology, the view of the origins and process of the

Revolution and notes that it is particularly important for Marxist interpretations Paradoxical' is, si‹:h na‹:h to ridi ten the self-understanding of the persons acting at that time (262 f.; cf. o. Arim. 33). •• Especially Lefebvre has both the variety of revolutions as au& the independent

Dependent or anti-bourgeois character of the peasant movement highlighted, La Revol. French and the peasants, in: Studies, insb. 248, 250, 260. Cf. Ferret, Le cats‹thisme, 282 f. und Cobban, Aspects of the Fren& Revolution, 22 If.

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the historian becomes, according to a dictum of Fr. Schlegel, a retrospective prophet. This first abstraction, which lies in the hypostatization of the revolution, unfortunately suggests a second one, namely the hypostatization of the Enlightenment, and finally a third one: if the revolution is uniform like the Enlightenment, then the latter is unified from this at least ideologically (for an extremely idealistic thinking historian even real) derivable. It is astonishing and at the same time amusing to observe how similar - albeit with the opposite precedent - a schematizing Marxism and an anti-Marxist antitimate

rialistic emphasis on the role of ideas in the revolution. For the former, the contribution of Enlightenment literature to the revolution can be "betratlidi enough", but under the aethodisdic condition that the Enlightenment thought is explained in such a way that its basic currents correspond more or less exactly to those of the revolution ; so in the first phase of the revolution in the ideological field the political theory of pure bourgeois enlightenment is said to predominate, but in the Jacobin phase Rousseauism is said to predominate ‘7

. The overall situation is not significantly different

constellation of researchers who, contrary to attempts to explain the revolution primarily in politicalsociological and not intellectual terms, want to assert the importance of the Enlightenment ideas". In both cases, the (same) correspondence between the historical process and ideology are present, regardless of which of the two factors has been assigned primacy

4° So Krauss, introduction, in: Studies, 201. 4 'Volguine, L'ideologie révolutionnaire en France, 217 f. Volguine develops a meaanistic conception according to the orthodox Marxist philosophy: the theoretical preparatory work of the ideologists is followed by practical political fermentation, and in the process the work of the Enlightenment philosophers contributes to the development of revolutionary consciousness "of the masses" significantly (206, 213). However, exactly how this process took place remains unclear. 4^ Peyre's Versudi in this ridicule is based on two erroneous assumptions: that France lived in relative prosperity before 1789, which is why the unrest could apparently only have had ideological reasons, and that the revolution fell into two phases dominated by Montesquieu and Rousseau's principles. (The Influence of eighteenth century ideas, 72 f., 77). As far as the first point is concerned, apart from the reference to the great famine of 1789, one can generally say that social (and not just ideological) tensions must not necessarily arise in a state of greatest need; As far as the above-mentioned classification of the revolution is concerned, it shows not only a neglect of the variety of concrete events, but also a mechanistic view of the effect of ideas: that Rousseau was also used by aristocrats (see note 50), is e.g. B. not mentioned. Instead of as weapons at the outbreak of the revolution, Peyre sees ideas as forces that determine its course. Nevertheless, he himself (73) quotes Desmoulins' statement, wonadi Before 1789 there would never have been ten Republicans in the whole of France.

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will. And in both cases, the fiction of 'the' revolution becomes a real 'obstacle epistemologique' when it comes to a concrete grasp of the Enlightenment".

The effect of ideas during the revolutionary period in France can be objectively assessed if one radically eliminates not only ideologically determined constructions such as those just mentioned, but also certain related and almost self-evident ideas about the health function of ideas in general . The effect of ideas is not to be understood in a straightforward way, that is, as an attempt to apply ideas that the person has read in books, otherwise experienced or even thought up. Arguing on this level is scientifically sterile and is the surest way to fall victim to an ultimately teleological argument. The application experiment takes place in the fight and through people fighting, and the fight has its own logic, to which the logic of the texts or preconceived beliefs must be subordinated if it wants to remain in the game at all. The fact that ideas are effective only means that certain people rely on them; It is not ideas in their first virginity that move the people inspired by them, but people who find themselves in concrete situations make specific use of them, e.g. T. already known ideas, which either have to be asserted selectively or have to be reinterpreted. To put it another way: ideas have an effect precisely because they are used in situations that are not the product of ideas, but rather existential-political seriousness in the purest sense of the word; the gravity of the situation makes the impact of ideas a serious matter. But at the same time, this is the reason why effective ideas cannot choose either the background or the circumstances of their effect in the sense of the straightforward scheme indicated above. They cannot determine their respective interpreters from the outset and therefore cannot determine the form and purpose of their respective appearance. They are basically only available weapons; who will use them, and when and how do not depend on them, and therefore the health of their effect, indeed their own history, is basically only the history of their interpretations. Without the interpretation of an idea in a concrete situation or without the struggling interpreter, there is no effect of ideas. A scientific understanding of this effect must be based on this. For straight-line idealistic or materialistic views of history, it must remain a mystery why it was possible that Rousseau, the favorite of the Jacobins, came to ideologize the conservative out of talk

•• The expression comes from Gusdorf, Les principes de la pensee, 22. The same thesis was developed in a witty way by Goulemot, who emphasizes that viewing the overall Enlightenment from the point of view of the revolution only permits a teleological and Manichaean view of it . Equally correct is his remark that the Enlightenment and the bourgeoisie do not identify one another completely and not as a matter of course. (De la Polemique sur la Revolution 238, 239 ff.). ..., esp.

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could render services”. One can, of course, speak here of "abuse" etc., but that could be asserted in relation to any party - let's think of the Jacobin terror, for example - and otherwise such morally nostalgic questions do not lead much further. After all, the relatively free interpretability of ideas in combat situations is a key to understanding their function as weapons and therefore also their effect — and at the same time it forms the strongest argument both against a materialist theory of reflection and against the various versions of the idealistic primacy of intellectual history (read: the spiritual in history). This insight into the extremely plastic function of ideas, which are used as weapons in the seriousness of a situation, should perhaps make it understandable that why stating their effect before and during the revolutionary period does not form an argument against the thesis that enlightened ideas could never have set the revolutionary upheaval in motion. It is the other way round: only the outbreak of the revolution made its revolutionary We

kung unavoidable - but only in the interpretations that the combat situation dictated. The complex of the French Revolution after 1789 must therefore be explained in terms of social history and not intellectual history. It is two different things whether certain Enlightenment ideas could trigger a revolution or whether some, even many revolutionaries had to resort to these ideas. The latter was, incidentally, because of the The role that elements of the new, especially petty-bourgeois, intelligentsia played in the events after 1789 is quite natural - a role that can be explained in terms of social history. It is better to ask how the bearers of certain ideas came into being than, conversely, how these ideas were pioneers If this were the case, the (fictitious) average of Enlightenment ideas would have to coincide with the (fictitious) average of the social content of the revolution. In the sense of the expressly political-social demands of the leading bourgeois Enlightenment, this would be The revolution had already been completed on the night of August 4, 1789, since it included neither Robespierre nor Napoleon - quite the opposite. The fate of the encyclopedists’ immediate collaborators and students is the best proof of this.” But the revolutionary period developed its own unique

*° In addition, see the excellent work of McDonald, Rousseau and the Joy Revolution, which also makes good comments regarding the impact or rediscovery and reinterpretation of ideas (3 ff., 20 f., 115 f., 155). See also Sozzi, Interpretations de Rousseau, esp. 190, 199 f., 205 ff., 217 f., 223; Barny, Rousseau dans la Revolution, esp. 65, 74 f., 83, 96.

•' Mornet, Les origines intellectuelles, 440 ff., 469 ff. Sée, The economic and social origins, 13. In his review of Mornet's book (366 ff.), Lefebvre makes important comments about the shortcomings of a purely intellectual approach, although he basically accepts the author's findings. ° Kafker, The Encyclopedists and Terror, 295; Mortier, The Heirs of the ,Philo sophen', insb. 55.

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"This is a real dynamic, which obviously cannot be traced back to the fact that masses came onto the stage who only then heard about Enlightenment ideas." It was precisely within the revolutionary dynamic that certain Enlightenment ideas were found, interpreted according to the needs of the concrete situation used as weapons, their own dynamic. This should actually be self-evident if one carefully avoids any hypostatization of the Enlightenment or the Revolution.

I would like to end this brief overview of the polemic-ideological misinterpretations of the Age of Enlightenment with reference to an intellectual current that was reported everywhere in Europe - and very early on - and found a particularly typical expression in Germany. It is about the distinction between Enlightenment rationalism and intellectualism, whereby the former is accused of suppressing life and the "living in humanity" in favor of abstract systems. Our analysis will show that the Enlightenment as a whole was not just intellectually oriented, but that it was not ultimately formed in the fight against Cartesian intellectualism. However, the accusation of intellectualism was made broadly against the Enlightenment because they wanted to combat certain substantive positions of the Enlightenment. It was therefore no coincidence that it was primarily the opponents of the revolution, who trembled at the roots of evil in the Enlightenment, who denounced its alleged intellectualism. In Germany, this type of criticism was also heard among (reserved) friends of the revolution ^, especially since the main current of the German late Enlightenment itself, which followed the decline of Wolffianism and the Sturm und Drang movement, for special reasons associated itself with a pronounced anti-intellectualist tendency and often expressed its national identity in a proud demarcation against French "seidism." “ sudite ". National consciousness and the fight against the alleged intellectua

^° Lefebvre, Revolutionary crowds 3 f., 13 ff. Rude, The Crowd in the Frendi Revolution, 199 ff. •• Burke, Reflections, 156; Maistre, Considerations on France, chap. VI—VI I Oeuvres, Sp. 49, 54. ^ p.z. B. Humboldt's remarks on the arbitrariness of enlightened-revolutionary reason in his "Ideas of a state constitution" from the year 1791 = work e I, 35 f. This type of criticism culminates in Hegel's development of absolute freedom and shredding' (Phenomenologie des Spirit, Works II, 441 ff.), after he had already found a metaphysically supported formulation in Hölderlin's Hyperion (cf. Kondylis, Origin of Dialectics, 338 f., 357 ff.). ^• See z. B. Humboldt's analysis of the French national actor in comparison to the German one, The 18th Century, in: Wer ke I, 448 f, 456 f. Herder credits the French with the ability for metaphysics or for higher (not just reasoning). ' Thinking in general (Journal - Works IV, 416).

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so they often go hand in hand. This attitude, understandably, governed leading thinkers of the Restoration period,' survived intact through the 19th century and even enjoyed a renaissance in the 20th. So were e.g. For example, the effects of the pillars of aestheticizing slander around Stefan George, as they spread particularly in the period between the two world wars, on the scientific understanding of the Enlightenment were devastating. Nationalist-minded representatives and followers of this current, following on from older life-philosophical positions and well-known polemics against the "Western spirit" from the years 1914-18 ®, which were also known to prominent scholars, have the "essence of the German spirit" in the Uber of the "cold" or "silky" rationalism of the West; this was obviously intended to be the ideal revenge of Germany, humiliated in Versailles and on the Ruhr. Rationalism was defined so narrowly that the term was almost meaningless, but the polemics became correspondingly easier against him. That Kant and Fichte were no less German than Goethe and Herder was either forgotten or not interpreted thoroughly enough, and it was also overlooked that the so-called reaction against rationalism absorbed essential elements of this same rationalism " . In the National Socialist period, this use of the Enlightenment experienced further spread for obvious reasons ", only to die out almost completely after the Second World War and the subsequent implementation of the liberal-enlightened or Marxist-enlightened ideology of the victors in both parts of today's Germany However, our memory of this current has no purely historical intention, but wants to show by a typical example that such widespread assumptions as the direct or indirect equation of rationalism and intellectualism are not to be taken in their nominal value, since they are polemical Ru&sights sprung.

However, a scientific clarification of this question is impossible without a fundamental discussion of the concept of rationalism.

•' Evidence in Stuke, Enlightenment, 323 f. ^ S. the collection of texts edited and introduced by K. Böhme: Calls and Speeches ..., passim. cf. Lübbe, Political Philosophy in Germany, 171 ff., especially 205 ff. ^• It is E. Cassirer's merit to have emphasized this, within the framework of a fundamental rejection of the legend of the one-sided intellectualistic character of the Enlightenment. p.z. B. his comments on the relationships between romantic historicism and the Enlightenment, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 253 ff. '° Typical passages in Korff, Geist der Goethezeit I, 24 ff.; Böhm, Anti-Cartesianism 42 ff., 77 ff., 129 ff., 235 ff.; Hildebrandt, Hölderlin, 35 ff.; Shiebe, The Crisis the Enlightenment, 4, 30, 33 ff., 53 f.

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3. Rationalism and irrationalism The ambiguity surrounding such central concepts as "rationalism" constitutes another significant obstacle to a proper understanding of the Enlightenment, which has so often been referred to as the rationalist age. This lack of clarity is, however, precisely a consequence of the extremely frequent use of the concept of rationalism in unavoidably different contexts and the resulting ambiguity. However, it would be naïve to want to eliminate the lack of clarity or ambiguity once and for all with the terminological amendments. For the respective use of the concept of rationalism is usually too organically connected with the substantive absidencies of thinking for a thinker to be willing to renounce his personal nuances of this concept and thus to surrender more or less essential points of his theories. The binding of rationalism to a specific content and to specific theses is one of the most important weapons in philosophical polemics and politics. It aims to make the ability to use thinking logically in general dependent on the acceptance of theories-specific content and to portray those who do not want to accept these theories as opponents of logical thinking in general or as rare or unreliable thinkers. Because of this polemical use of the concept of rationalism, it has become ambiguous, since it has been linked from time to time with the most diverse substantive theses; we betray no secret if we refer to what is elementary for a mental-physical consideration — even if philosophers do not like to mention it —

In fact, they point out that the logically procedural thinking has been put at the service of extremely divergent assumptions and absidites. It is left to the champions of this or that theory not only to question the opponent's theses, but also his ability to think logically, pathetically or in the name of the one reason (which, strangely enough, always coincides with his own). An understanding view cannot take sides in this dispute if it wants to remain understanding at all. It must therefore be based on a definition of rationalism that would not be content-based, but rather consistently formal and would offer a definition that could be applied to any rationalism, regardless of its content. There is no other way if one does not want to commit the absurdity of declaring Thomas Aquinas less rationalist than Hobbes, or Madiiavelli less rationalist than Kant (a serious thought about these and similar examples is enough to see the senselessness - in a purely scientific, not ideological sense - to make clear a connection between rationalism and certain contents of thought).

For us, rationalism would be the expedient, formally logical and flawless use of the argumentative means available to thinking

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provides, to underpin a basic attitude. This definition implies that the basic attitude or decision itself lies beyond logical justification, even if it is taken as proven from the point of view of militant rationalists: after all, that is the goal of their tying of rationalism to a certain content. Only the rationalization of the basic attitude can be carried out in a logically consistent manner, and therefore only this can be part of the scientific debate, not the basic attitude itself: for the ultimate questions are answered by power statements. So there can be as many kinds of logical consequences as attitudes; although the logical means remain the same from a formal point of view, they nevertheless serve to rationalize the content of various basic decisions. Since these are ultra rationem, they must be characterized as mystical in essence, which in turn implies the thesis that the mystical is not the opposite but the source or beginning of rational effort. In terms of answering the last questions, the distinction between the rational and the irrational loses all meaning; this distinction must therefore be limited to the level of intellectual execution or rationalization of the basic decision, especially since the decision in favor of the ratio is ultra ratio nem. Only at this level can there be a direct opposition between the rational and the irrational. The mystical, which stands at the beginning of the thought effort and forms its emotional source, is of course also irrational, but this mystical-irrational must be strictly distinguished from the logical-irrational. Since for us the criterion of the rational lies in the consistency of formal-logical thinking in the mental execution of a basic attitude, the rational does not stand in contrast to the mystical-irrational, but only to the logicalirrational. In other words, the mystical-irrational is deeper than the rational and the logisdi-irrational, both of which are on the same level and only because of this can they quarrel with each other. Because of this difference in levels, one must not confuse the mystical-irrational source of thought with its execution and infer from the rationality of the latter the rationality of the former—and vice versa: one must not interpret the logical irrationality as an effect of the mystical-irrational. From our point of view, therefore, only the logically irrational, not the mystically irrational, is the opposite of rationalism. This explains why religious systems of thought cannot be regarded as opposed to rationalism in general; Struggle arises only between these systems and certain types of rationalism defined in terms of content, which, however, means no fundamental difference in terms of the rationality of the two: for even non-religious rationalisms are no less hostile to each other than religious ones are to non-religious or anti-religious ones .

In an overall assessment of the previous disputes between rationalism and irrationalism, the purely polemic element in them should not be overlooked; since depending on the time and the people soon the rational

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When the irrational is soon used as a reproach, scientific research must not take the relevant statements in their nominal value. Our example shows why the strict opposition of rationalism and irrationalism is objectively inappropriate, if only the mystical-irrational and the logis-irrational are properly distinguished from each other. If the former lies beyond logical justification, the latter is in fact a much rarer occurrence than the rationalists, who pass off their own rationalism as the only possible one and want to believe it. By the logic of the irrational, I don't just mean the violation of formal logic rules (since this also occurs with rationalists), but also and above all the fundamental refusal to convert the mystical-irrational into a rational system or to rationalize one's own basic attitude. In my opinion, this refusal is meant primarily in a polemical way, ie by defending certain substantive positions that appear to be endangered as such by the rationalization process. The struggle against thinking is not actually directed against thinking as such, but against the connection of thought with certain contents - a connection that at certain times flourishes in such a way that the contents mentioned emerge from the mere use of thinking his.

Apart from this character, which is negative or declining depending on the circumstances, the other great disadvantage of logical irrationalism is that its decision against the rationalization of the basic attitude represented can hardly be realized. From the point of view of rationalism, of course, this decision cannot be blamed, for it inevitably involves contradictions as soon as it attempts to articulate itself argumentatively. The consistently logically irrational can hardly be pinned down precisely because its representatives never hesitate to communicate their position in arguments. Without this communication, their position would be unknown and therefore completely irrelevant; polemics against opponents labeled rationalists would be impossible, and irrationalism itself would be just as impossible, insofar as it only becomes conscious of itself in this polemic. Refusal of argumentation in this or that form would therefore mean abandonment of polemics and thus practical non-existence. Since people do not ultimately have to fight their battles against each other in the field of ideas, an irrational attitude in the sense of programmatic and complete reliance on reasons for redistribution (for a behavior or for communicable and thus practically relevant ideas) is one of the circumstances Because society at this level is always organized or based on norms and ideologies is simply impossible — I even dare the thesis that society directly or symbolically provides the tools for the rationalization of basic attitudes, yes, it demands them, since they only do that behavior of its members under control (this should apply to militant groups a for tiori: I remind you of the constant struggles of the Kirdie against the Apo

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lies of the mystic and irrational pure water as well as of orthodox Marxism against its utopian and warmer followers). The irrationalists make a serious mistake in that they want to separate the existential source of thinking, which they correctly place beyond argumentative thinking, from its outflow or assume that there is a foreign element in thinking: but this source can only produce thinking , and if she doesn't do it, then she simply remains silent and is forgotten. This is how things stand within the social organization, which is essentially rational or the rationalization and channeling of basic attitudes. This connection also explains why protests against rationality often result in an open rejection of culture as a soldier. In doing so, however, the irrationalists find themselves in new contradictions because they are forced to use a rationalized scale of values; They attribute special advantages to what they see suppressed by reason: what is suppressed is the real and natural, and therefore has a higher and deeper rationality (the word rationality here takes on a morally nuanced meaning, and we will see what is important role this played in the Enlightenment).

Apart from the fact that the existence of feelings, to which any approach to their own rationalization or self-redemption would be completely alien, could be doubted within the social organization, the protests of the irrationalists are in vain because the mysticirrational never actually exists is lost, but constantly passes over into the rational in order to satisfactorily animate it. This transition and this transsubstantiation is, as I said, unavoidable within culture, which is not ultimately shown in the very sophisticated chains of argumentation of the irrationalists themselves. Irrationalism can therefore only be a more or less rationalized irrationalism or a reluctant rationalism if it wants to be relevant and successfully carry out its one-way-motivated polemic against the opponent who is labeled as rationalistic with a few sidelines. Reason remains the most sinful weapon - and how could it be otherwise, since man has always derived his greatest pride or consolation, namely his superiority over the animals, from reason? — In our sense, rationalism is all-pervasive and omnipotent, and our thesis, based on the logic of its foundation, does not mean any gain for humanism or moralism, which relies on the power of reason . The battles between the rationalists against each other, which in terms of strength are in no way inferior to those between the irrationalists, constitute sufficient proof for anyone who wants to look at it unbiasedly that rationalism in itself cannot offer a common basis for understanding, precisely because of this its nature described here or its roots in a basic attitude. The rationalists tried to get out of the despair that this statement suggests by tying their rationalism to certain substantive positions. This is the establishment of a rationalis

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Basic concepts for understanding the Enlightenment

only allows the opposition of other-minded rationalists or irrationalists to wadis, and thus it only contributes to perpetuating the situation that it wanted to abolish. This critical analysis does not want to pave the way for a new, this time the "true" concept of rationalism, but rather to provide criteria that should allow the knowledgebased, value-free consideration of the historical rationalisms in their contrast to the corresponding irrationalisms structurally and functionally to describe. With regard to the following, two points in particular should be noted: a) that the respective rationalism is indicative of a basic attitude or decision based on the view of the world, which in turn is ultra rational and based on ultimate evaluations; b) that the respective rationalism is rooted in a basic attitude or -decision is eo ipso tied to a certain content that it is supposed to rationalize. This content is no more decisive for the general intellectual character of the respective rationalism than the choice of the capacity that the rationale is supposed to support. What this means is that rationalism and intellectualism do not necessarily belong together - a widespread implicit or explicit assumption that has caused much confusion in most previous comprehensive depictions of the Age of Enlightenment. It is precisely here that the significance of our analysis of the concept of rationalism in general for the concrete understanding of the Enlightenment movement comes into focus. As will turn out, the basic feature of this latter can best be understood if we consider its rationalism in its connection to certain contents on the one hand and in its (related) distinction from, and even opposition to, intellectualism on the other - an opponent that in turn, implies something specific in terms of redefining the relationships between mind and sensibility. Of course there is also intellectualistically oriented rationalism in the Age of Enlightenment, but this does not dominate the picture. In order to design this appropriately or to find the greatest possible common denominator that allows us to talk about an overall picture and not to undertake an intellectually sound classification of the Enlightenment movement based on its conception of rationalism, it must be determined exactly which one The content of the latter is bound to it or it cannot go past it, to prevent it it must take a positive or negative stand. The unity of the Enlightenment, understood in this elastisdi sense, can in turn be achieved as an ideal type in its polemic demarcation from previous, more or less uniform phases of modern rationalism.

Our work program results from all of this. We must first define the specifics of modern rationalism in general, namely as a common framework for the development of different basic currents, in order to then be able to compare and compare the specifics of the Enlightenment, also as a common denominator of different possible directions

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to be perceived in contrast. However, this does not mean that the Enlightenment as a whole differs qualitatively from the earlier thought structures of modern rationalism. On the contrary; the analysis of the latter will show that in the Age of Enlightenment only certain tendencies of modern rationalism come to Durdibrudi, which were inherent in it from the beginning along with others and as such long before the eighteenth century in the most diverse, more or less pure forms were available, so that an overall interpretation of the Enlightenment cannot do without a general discussion of modern rationalism - and so far they have in fact been extremely defective, if nothing has been proven wrong. In this ideal-typical elaboration of the specifics of the Enlightenment, we must also use the instruments developed in this one leading chapter and always ask the concrete questions: what is the content of the respective rationalism, specifically with regard to the problem of the relationship between spirit and sensuality in its entanglement with the value problem? This content is aimed at defending opponents, and how can it be understood and reconstructed from the perspective of this opponent?

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ß. Early thought structures of modern rationalism

1. Concept of modern rationalism. The double meaning of the rehabilitation of sensuality and the suspicion of nihilism

In my opinion, the view of rationalism in its relationship to the mystical-irrational presented above has a value that cannot be overlooked in terms of intellectual history. It frees scientific observation from the widespread and complacent prejudice of modern times be it the era of rationalism in general or par excellence (complacency makes it easy for itself here: it assumes the superiority of a certain style of thinking, taking the standards that support this assessment from the style of thinking in question itself) and as a result only puts us in the position to pose the question of what is specific about modern rationalism. It is clear from unmistakable statements from its greatest representatives that it is defined in a naedistic manner in contrast to what is apostrophized as "scholasticism", "authority", the Middle Ages", "mysticism"; in other words, its polemical character is shown in its constant, direct or direct appeal to an opponent as soon as he tries to present himself or legitimize himself. Since in this sense he lives from the opposition (even today: positivism" against "metaphysics"), he makes an effort to this one his to cultivate breeding ground; He does this by pointing out the ever-imminent danger from the diverse or changeable and yet constant enemy. This is the one, indirect side of the polemic, which paradoxically but necessarily consists in inflating the opponent, while the direct side is articulated in the persistence with which he is rational (at least the 'real' one) is agreed upon. In fact, the rationality of the opponent is not recognized or even recognized because it is in the service of an essentially different worldview or basic attitude. Important epistemological and scientific-theoretical contrasts are by-products of the ideological struggle and presuppose it logically (only within a certain overall view do the individual questions make sense) and psychologically. Whether modern rationalism, together with all of its scientific achievements, arises from a certain theologisdimetaphysical sidism as disastrous hubris or

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appear to be the work of the devil', he for his part shows that, as long as he wants to maintain his claim to worldview autocracy and does not want to allow science, which is presented as a redeeming power, to be transformed into the cognitive organ of a skeptical and nihilistic approach, he is in no way more inclined to allow justice to be meted out to his opponent and to take note of the rational in its thought production; the centuries-long struggle against sdiolasticism has now been followed by the struggle against the 'false prophets'. However, it is not even necessary to fall into the role of devil's advocate (which today often means the same as advocatus dei) to explain the striking rationality of theologisdireligious or metaphysisdi-philosophical theories, ie the formal-logically consistent use of thinking and at the same time the basic belief in the value of the use of thought in them, against the attacks of modern-day demonomadia. Medieval philosophy actually begins with Augustinian decision in favor of Platonic rationalism, the purpose of which was to eliminate the relativism lurking in becoming or in sensuality through the science of a thinking firmly rooted in ov —

a motif that was by no means lost within the Thomistic appreciation of experience. If, on the other hand, one were to understand rationalism as a belief in the power of thought, one would hardly have found a more impressive confession of it than the ontological proof of God (the late Hegel's recourse to it, precisely in the name of the modern principle of thought, speaks eloquently for that). The decisive difference lies neither in the assessment of the possibilities of thinking nor in the recognition of the necessity of making use of it; Medieval philosophy even surpasses the modern competition on this question by declaring the intellect to be capable of knowing not just mere ideas, but the essence of the world itself. The final guarantee for this, however, is the divine intellect - not in the sense that it leads the human intellect by the hand like a blind man, but rather in the sense that God is the guarantor of the fixed order of being and therefore also of the stability or security of it capture is '. Modern rationalism basically fights against this world view; he wants and must maintain the connection of the human intellect to the so-understood

' See the typis‹:den statements theologis‹:h minded thinker compiled by Willey, Seventeenth Century Ba&ground, 14 f• ° Gilson, Spirit of Philosophy. mtd., 235 ff. ° Op. city 249 ff. As Bonaventure put it: knowledge cannot be certain unless there is immutability on the part of the knowable, and infallibility on the part of the knower. Disp., De Scient. of Christ IV Concl. (- Works V, 23). Cf. Thomas, Quest. Disp., On Power, Qu. 7 Art. IX (= II, 275 f.); au‹:h Summ. Theol. What 1 Art. 5 to 1

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Early thought structures of modern rationalism

a fixed and fixed oncological framework (which, moreover, seemed to support concrete forms of dominance ideologically) in order to be able to to define this intellect according to the new tasks that fall to it within a different worldview, or to raise it to a principle. The polemical interest on both sides does not revolve around the fact that thinking is used by one and not by the other, but only about the question of what thinking is used for or what basic attitude towards the world, its use and at the same time its definition, which cannot be separated from the brew.

The detachment of thinking activity from the previous ontological-metaphysical In the eyes of modern rationalism, the frame forms the prerequisite for rational thinking or for thinking that really deserves this name. In this fundamentally polemical reference to a world view, modern rationalism appears as a world view

* The assumption is superficial that in modern times the actual driving force of the desire for knowledge turns out to be 'the movement of research and searching itself and as such' (according to Blumenberg, Legitim. der Neuzeit, 207). Blumenberg, striving to prove the intellectual independence of modern times and thus also the superiority of his preferred style of thinking, must of course overlook the ideological and content-related decision that made the modern attitude to the question of theoretical curiosity possible in the first place: the latter was only achieved through sets in motion the assumption that objects other than the divine are capable of rational grasp or worthy of intensive attention. There is no curiosity per se, but only a certain curiosity that is felt by specific people under specific circumstances. The fact that representatives of modern rationalism, whose self-understanding Blumenberg takes at its face value without any historical or psychological reservations, and even shares, wanted to present curiosity as an absolute magnitude is not mere Aristotelian reminiscence, but a polemical argument, which means that the right of the Individuals should be encouraged to detach their own thinking from the theological framework of orientation. (The argument even implies the highly aggressive thesis that one should or may prefer everything, even possibly pointless or sterile research, to sticking to the fixed priorities of faith.) On the other hand, we must already understand the close connection between science and knowledge in our self-image the early modern period; It clearly shows the connection of the thinking that supports and advances theoretical curiosity in the modern sense, not only to certain (worldly human dilidy!) purposes, but also to a specific object: because one can only have power over nature, not exercise over God (see Section 3a in this chapter). The worlddiaulid prerequisites are no less effective here because research becomes routine, whereby one no longer has to come across ultimate questions every day. The theological world of spirits also had its everyday practice, which presupposed a basic attitude towards the world without questioning it: in daily mass or at funeral ceremonies, for example. For example, if one simply accepted the truth of religion, one did not try to prove it every time.

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attitude in evidence. It is now a question of strictly distinguishing between rationalism as a world-view and the basic attitude and rationalism as its logicalargumentative execution. As will be seen, the mental rationalization of the rationalistic, world-view basic attitude is possible in different, mutually diverging ways, which means nothing other than that world-view, world-view rationalism has taken the form of several philosophical theories. This is completely understandable from our point of view, since, as already mentioned, the rationalization of the basic attitude towards the world is only subject to formal and logical limitations, but not limitations in terms of content. The basic ideological attitude, which contains a substantive answer to ultimate questions, lies beyond rationalization, even if ratio appears in it as the highest principle. The world-viewing contrast is therefore fundamental and irreconcilable at the same time. The rationalist appeal to let the Sadie die together from all sides through experiment and observation is neither impartial nor unselfish: it presupposes that the opponent must adopt a limine view of the world within which experiment and observation have meaning; thus he would have to give up his own rationalism and also his whole world view, before he could have fought for it. The ideological content of modern rationalism is reflected in the Tying central points of one's self-image to certain values is possible. The above-mentioned detachment of thinking activity from the ontologis-metaphysis framework of the opposing world view is presented as the liberation of thinking in general or as the emancipation of humanity; Modern rationalism therefore claims a higher ethical value for itself, and it is not by relying on this that it has often fought its battles successfully and won important thinkers for its goals. However, what has ethical value and what liberation or freedom means cannot be determined scientifically, but only in terms of worldview, and always with regard to the value scale of an opponent that is to be eliminated, which also serves as a negative standard. In other words, the opponent must be labeled as the epitome of the arbitrary and, moreover, the enslaved people of undurdiable authority if it is important to confront him with the autonomy and endurance of the conditions that serve as rulers in the world. (The opponent may only wait for insight and understanding when he has long since been defeated and is harmless and the victor has become involved in serious difficulties that raise doubts about the stability of his promises.) To shake off this, to resurrection

those killed by the enemy seelisdi are called upon to find a new vitality and a new existential intensity is promised. The new, autonomous, self-defined way of thinking is intended to express these ideas in the highest possible way sity - which in reality only refers to the inseparable connection of the Existential with the first and decisive decision of thinking in-

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within the basic ideological attitude. Just that kind of existential intensity now emerges as true freedom or as ethical valuable; What was previously viewed as the exaltation of humanity is now classified as slavery or, at best, as a noble - but therefore no less dangerous - illusion. In the gloomy depiction of an entire historical epoch, another seeks its own self-understanding and its legitimacy. The so-called Middle Ages certainly has its specific sociological characteristics that make up its ideal type or our image of it, but why it should be characterized as morally worse or better than other epochs cannot be clearly determined. Nor can it be determined scientifically whether the human spirit or human nature were suppressed at that time (the concrete forms of social domination are not being discussed here), since such research is based on value judgments (and not just on psychological or biological statements). about the nature of human beings. However, there can be no doubt that many people, and not the most narrow-minded ones, have without hesitation perceived as the fullness of their being or as an existential intensity, which from the ideological point of view of modern rationalism is heterono

mie or dehumanization must be presented. Even what the pure one

^ The expression 'media tempestas' ers': occurs for the first time in 1469, the media aetas' in 1518 and the medium aevum' in 1604; This is followed shortly by middle age', middle time' (1605) and moyen fige' in connection with moyen temps' (1640) (Burr, How the Middle Ages got their name, 813 f.; Edelman, The Early Uses of Medium Aevum etc 3 ff.; ibid., Other early uses, 327). The Renaissance consciousness and the Middle Ages concept are designed as hostile and at the same time correlative greats, that is, the humanistic representatives of the Renaissance derive their sense of self not least from the dark depredation of the time the decline of antiquity (Voss, The Middle Ages, 24 ff.; Varga, The Southern Lagoon of the Dark Middle Ages', 36 ff.). It is disgraceful that the humanists speak in a completely undifferentiated way about the enemies of culture that dominated the Middle Ages, and in doing so mix up or confuse Germanic peoples, Arabs, Turks and Möndles with each other at will (Weisinger, The Renaissance Theory of the Reaction against the Middle Ages, 462): They want to present the Dark Ages as a coherent unity as much as possible in order to provide a fixed goal for their own polemics through their hypostatization. The allusion to the battle between darkness and darkness, which sounds in the phrase “dark times” , comes from pictorial ideas of the dark business philosophy, whose representatives also speak of “dark and enlightened” times (Varga, The S‹ : buzzword, 5 ff.). Au‹:h the expression & medium aevum taudlt sd on - with a understandable function - in the esdlatologisdlen framework of the ‹:hrist1idlen Gesdlid tsphilosophie (Voss, The Middle Ages, 40 and literature references to it). These two pieces of evidence make clear enough the ideological role of the new periodization of the times, which was already widespread around 1600 and, over the course of the 17th century, replaced the traditional periodization of the four world circles or the sedl eras (Voss, The Middle Ages,

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As far as thinking is concerned, the complete investigation of a theological complex of questions will have given you less pleasure or a lesser sense of freedom than a scientific discovery did later. But such thoughts are idle for struggling worldviews; because

They don't make any effort to understand things and therefore that opponent, but rather the development of a self-image with negative resentment towards him and at his expense, which can be used as a weapon. Selfunderstanding arises and corresponds to an interest situation, and its objective function lies in rationalizing it satisfactorily and thus consolidating it. That is why there is no room in it for differences in formal-structural similarities with the opponent that relate to the nature and rationalization process of the world. And that is why it cannot be admitted within itself that whoever wants to replace his opponent is forced to take over some of his functions. The previous form of organization (regardless of whether in the area of society or of the spirit) must be followed by a new one, which also cannot do without a certain form of government. In this respect , fighting worldviews or ideologies have two sides: the emancipatory one, that is, the one that is consciously fought against the opponent, and another, which unconsciously contains the moments of impending dominion in its own right; because no ideology could replace the enemy in the long term if it were to prove incapable of shaping the area that is claimed to be dominant in such a way that the satisfaction of basic social needs continues to be a priority. The belief in authority, that is, in the supra-personal and unifying character of reason, whatever that may mean, fulfills this latter task in the structure of modern rationalism.

^ Today, critical rationalists also recognize the authoritarian and decisionist, even "religious" character of modern reason (see e.g. Popper, Conjectures, 7 f., 15 f.). If they nevertheless believe that they can spread the decisionist vicious circle by replacing polemical reason with criticism, which they themselves can and must question (Bartley , Retreat to Commitment, 150; Mirtelstrass, Modern Times and Enlightenment, 134 f.), then they show partly their theoretical embarrassment and partly their ignorance of the concrete historical effect of ideas. Because it is paradoxical, on the one hand, to be prepared to question reason itself and, on the other hand, to speak in a downwardlooking manner about the “Christian disorientation of reason” (see Chapter I, note 34). If reason questions itself in order to free itself from all “pun-reasonable” polemics and authority, then at the same time it must at least accept the opponent’s authority, which is a long-term suicide would equal. Modern rationalism would hardly have been able to enforce this if it had not been able to replace the old authority with a new one. A reason that would have questioned it from the beginning, that is, when the opponent was still gradually powerful (we are not talking about polemic agnosticism here, which we will get to know later), would rather impression of a sympathetic

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Reason and disobedience are synonymous as long as the opponent takes control. But reason and obedience should coincide as soon as the opponent's rule collapses. Now submission to the commandments of reason and freedom are presented as identical (the opponent also understood freedom to be identical with submission to one's own ideological principle!), and the majority, after the imposition of a worldview, comfortably falls into its categories and thinks naturally, finds this definition of freedom plausible. But restless spirits and black sheep keep appearing who don't want to admit the identity mentioned: Max Stirner was one of them.

Precisely because ideological rationalism wanted to hold out the prospect of a new existential intensity, it went hand in hand with the rejection of Christian asceticism. Here, too, we do not want to examine to what extent this asceticism suppressed the essence of man* or to what extent the manner and The way it was portrayed by its accusers corresponded to the real theory and practice of Western Christianity and the realities of everyday life for most people in the Middle Ages. It is sufficient to state twice that the rehabilitation of sensuality is not sensual, That is, for example, due to changes in the biological nature of the human being, but is spiritually determined, namely, it is part of a certain world view, and that the decision to do so is polemically motivated insofar as it was made in a fight against an opponent who had a different approach version attached considerable importance to this issue. Worldview rationalism and the rehabilitation of sensuality are initially linked to one another in a polemic intention; the deployment of sensuality forms the weapon of an intellect that wants to build a system of thought that, among other things, should turn against the scale of values of another world view (the paradox in this alliance of intellect and sensuality, which one might prima facie consider to be heterogeneous moments, is striking - and extremely promising).

bequeathed queer — and short-lived — buffoons. The current thesis of self-critical reason is basically a side effect of the historical weariness of Western rationalism and the liberalism that supports it politically. In addition, this thesis itself is only understandable and conceivable within the framework of the liberal polemic against all totalitarian monopoly claims in science and politics. The renunciation of ultimate truth, even of reason, is actually only a phase - and a weapon - in the fight of the open society against its enemies, to remind us of Popper. The fact that liberal reason itself has to question itself in order to be polemically effective is really not a good sign for its historical future. Because what Popper and his disciples recommend to reason to save oneself, namely to question oneself, is essentially the same as someone advising one to commit suicide in order to no longer have to fear being killed .

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The above-mentioned marriage of rationalism and rejection of asceticism under the common denominator of existential intensity is also connected with the polemical intention: just as authority and asceticism are supposed to make up the two components of heteronomy in the case of the opponent, here autonomy consists on the one hand in detachment of intellectual activity from the opponent's ideological framework and on the other hand in the consideration of human sensuality on the moral level. As forms of existential intensity that belong together, rationalism and rehabilitation of sensuality signify in their self-understanding a turn towards the immediate or living: neither the detour of authority to attain truth nor that of asceticism to gain morality are necessary; Truth and morality are potentially in us, in us. The human individual is therefore valued within this combination of rationalism and rehabilitation of sensuality; individualism is now an integral part of the whole ideological complex.

The thorny question of the moral implications of the rehabilitation of sensuality will have to be dealt with in detail later. With regard to modern rationalism as a whole, it is important to note that the rehabilitation of sensuality does not refer to the realm of morality limited (to various degrees) but also acquired a different meaning. It consists in the programmatic assumption that sensuality in general or nature is not only capable of, but also worthy of, complete grasp by reason. In this way, thought activity, having detached itself from the previous ontological framework, acquires a new permanent and independent object. And just as before the superiority of the "unum verum bonum" lay not least in the fact that it supposedly enabled a solid level of knowledge thanks to its ontological solidity, now the empirical world is being enhanced because it is in the eyes of the new conception of rational comprehension not reluctant. On the contrary, it becomes a space in which thinking activity can freely develop as an existential intensity or as a feeling of madness and joy that accompanies the solution of the world's riddles -

'

In his essay "Renaissance and Reformation" (Ges. Sdiriften, IV, 261 ff.) E. Troeltsdi saw the specifics of the Renaissance in the "contrast to the arid asceticism" and contrasted this view with J. Burdchardt's theory of individualism , connecting individualism and the rejection of asceticism in assuming an increase in the former through the action of the latter (272). In fact, the consideration of that time from the point of view of the rehabilitation of sensuality in philosophical or intellectual history is more fruitful (not necessary in political history) than the closest theory of individualism, because I believe that a sd Arfe juxtaposition would be out of place here; it becomes obsolete as soon as we introduce the concept of world-beating rationalism as a polemical complex of thought.

,

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and in fact it is so freer that it can feel much more elevated above its current object than the thinking activity that is in deep reverence for it »unum verum bonum' referred '. The above-mentioned alliance of intellect and sensuality, which is future-proof precisely because of its paradox, occurs not only in the field of morality, but also within the emerging natural sciences, namely in the form of the close cooperation of mathematical thinking and observation or experiment . This coming together of intellect and sensibility in both areas was unavoidable insofar as modern nationalism, as we explained above, must be based on two basic assumptions; The detachment of thinking activity from the old world-based framework will come to nothing without the rehabilitation of meaningfulness - in other words: the modern-day world Nationalism needs an empiricist flip side if it does not want to give up its polemics against medieval thought. In my opinion, this is the key to understanding not only its essence, but also its contradictory development. If the meaning and goal of detaching thinking activity from the old ontological framework are clear, then the rehabilitation of meaningfulness must remain ambiguous - precisely because of the polemic clarity in the new orientation of thinking activity. In order to be polemisdially consistent (and this kind of consistency was extremely important to him because of his ideological character), the new way of thinking had to reject both the contempt for nature in the form of asceticism and also the degradation of nature as an object of knowledge. in the first

n This is obviously the world view of the background to the formation of an independent epistemological discipline in modern times. Man should no longer stand in the cosmologically understood center, but rather in the epistemologically understood center (although it must not be overlooked that in the medieval world view man is not only the center and goal, but at the same time is and remains a modest creature that is classified in an unchangeable ontological chain is). The inferiority of the epistemological question lies in the priority of the oncological framework in antiquity and in the Middle Ages - and vice versa: the assumption that the old ontological framework collapsed thanks to the sovereign activity of thought forms the ideological basis for later development of epistemology. From the point of view of this negative connection between oncology and epistemology, Kant's speech about his Copernican turn actually becomes understandable; Otherwise it must sound paradoxical, since Copernicus is regarded as the destroyer of the anthropocentric image, while Kant wants to restore it. But the destruction of face occurs on the level of oncology, the restoration on that of epistemology. Kant understands his Copernican approach epistemologically and emphasizes its connection with turning away from oncological treatment (B, XVI = AA, III, 11 f.). The weakening of the epistemological question in modern times is remarkable, as soon as the ontological gains the upper hand in new forms (e.g. with the deification of faces, whereby the human being moves anew into the center of ontological events: kt).

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In the latter case, however, the rehabilitation of sensuality meant that man was nature, whereas in the latter case he stood above nature because he could intellectually grasp it and subject it to his practical purposes. Since free intellect and free sensibility are considered the two basic forms of the new existential intensity, their differences first become one from the other durdi conceals their alliance. Nevertheless, in the long run the thesis that man is nature had to result not only in a radically anti-ascetic morality, but also in an empiricist epistemology, while the assumption that man ruled over nature gave rise to the intellectualist epistemology and intellectualist morality. This process, whose intellectual roots we are trying to reconstruct here in an ideal manner, has not come to light primarily because the embarrassment that the ambiguity of the rehabilitation of sensuality brought with it was reflected in the creation of philosophers whose dualistic character should consciously or unconsciously take into account the aforementioned ambiguity and provide a remedy, quite apart from the fact that all sorts of combinations of the fundamental factors in their ideal-typical purity had to arise from the personal perspective and the particular situation of each thinker. The predominance of the conciliatory dualistic tendency is noticeable not least in the ambiguity of the central concepts (an important example of this, as we will see, is the Enlightenment concept of rationalism itself). Although the boundaries are now blurred for these and other reasons, the existence of two basic currents within modern rationalism cannot be denied. On the other hand, there is no terminological contradiction when one says that modern rationalism contains a rationalistic (intellectualistic) and an empiricist current. Rationalism as an ideological basic attitude based on the above-mentioned prosrammatic-polemical assumptions must be strictly distinguished from epistemological and moral rationalism (intellectualism). This latter is only one of the possible mental explanations or rationalizations of worldview rationalism, just as empiricism or sensualism is the other. The logical ambiguity of modern rationalism, which was not least the result of its polemical clarity and its ideological character, made it possible for two opposing directions to emerge in its womb, which can and may refer to it equally.

The common ideological origin is, however, highly binding. Neither does epistemological rationalism (intellectualism) go so far as to invoke the old oncology to justify itself, nor does moral rationalism take it upon itself to simply describe the sensuality or the passions as the domain of the devil when it sees their subjugation to it Reason demands. On the other hand, empiricism must be rational and argumentative.

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(as we know, the rehabilitation of sensibility was a rational and not a sensual act) and, beyond that, bring the rational into the sensibility itself (or vice versa), as long as it attaches importance to the theory of knowledge or moralization in a constructive sense to be relevant. How If a mathematical science of natural science has to save the phenomena, then the empiricism that appears in theory must respect the rules in purely logical terms. But this adherence to minimal common prerequisites is not a mere gentlemen's agreement, but largely arises from practical polemics and needs. Nod before modern rationalism as a whole has gained the upper hand, and although the old enemy has not yet been eliminated and will never be completely eliminated, a rapid process of differentiation begins within it, whereby its latent, diverging or even opposing logistical possibilities crystallize and appear grammatically and become the focus of new groups. What was previously just a current within a single global framework is now gradually acquiring the status of an independent global attitude. In this new context, rationalism (intellectualism) and empiricism or sensualism should no longer be viewed as mere philosophis and termini tedinici, but as the starting points of the two traditions within modern thought, one of which, in order to protect moral values, must reach the border of an idealistic oncology, while the other flirts with nihilism by asserting the rooting of the spirit in biology or in the social and thus also the complete relativity or insurmountable heteronomy of its undertakings. These are of course extreme positions, and it cannot be denied that the mediating experiments are in the majority; But it is also certain that the mediation takes place with regard to the extremes and from the distance in front of them: completely independent of the degree of their theoretical perfection, these extremes stand there like ghosts and motivate actions and reactions; one defends oneself against the anticipated ultimate consequences of a way of thinking, as if they were already a tangible danger.

The memory of the common Weltansdiaulidie origin therefore takes on a concrete polemical meaning under the circumstances of the process of differentiation mentioned: one accuses the other of betraying the common sad e. According to the respective opponent, idealism means a return to the arms of theology, while materialism is intended in its own way to endanger what has been achieved in the struggle against theological heteronomy, i.e. freedom (everyone familiar with the texts of the more recent Philosophy could substantiate our sdiematisd e summary with a wealth of quotations). No one can openly question the common basis, which according to our analysis contains both the message of freedom of thought and the rehabilitation of sensuality, without the now

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hated to hand arguments to brother; all, therefore, cling to it save the few who openly embrace one of the two extreme positions. But now this common base forms a battlefield that the new opponents have to have in common anyway. And Since everyone sees himself as the actual, true enforcer of the commandments of modern rationalism, the struggle initially revolves around the interpretation of its key concepts: what is reason? what is nature? — each side presenting its own version as the best weapon for defeating the old, common enemy. The fight against the old opponent is now applied with a side glance at the new one. This contributed to the fact that motives penetrated into the world of ideas of the two new opponents which were actually considered to be the intellectual property of the theology they were fighting together. In other words, the polemisde in the essence of thinking shows itself not least in the fact that one and the same thing does not appear to be acceptable in itself, but depending on its connection with certain content-related theses or depending on its possibility of being classified in the desired broader framework or not. The partial appropriation, admitted or denied, of old and once abhorred ideas in the course of the new struggles is, however, only a symptom of a larger and more important process. As the new opponents gradually acquire world-view status, their confrontation absorbs the previous one; basic patterns of thought live on in new forms - and this transference explains why the conscious or unconscious recourse to older ideas is not uncommon in modern thinking.

In order to provide an elementary explanation of the contradictory development of modern rationalism and the continued existence of traditional thought structures despite the sharpest contrast to the traditional thought content, it is necessary to discuss a very fundamental question, which is also a central one in the following Role play. It is about the origin and function of the idea of nihilism. The main reason for the emergence of the suspicion of nihilism has already been suggested and will be presented clearly enough in the next sections using textual analysis: the rehabilitation of the sensuality (or more correctly: a certain type of it) causes a repression of the spirit and thus a danger of free will, values and norms, especially since, as we know, all of this was inseparably linked to the concept of spirit in the philosophical tradition. But it still needs to be understood why, despite the fact that consistent nihilists were in reality extremely rare, the verdadit of nihilism was given such great importance in the modern conflicts both with the theological opponents and among the wings of modern rationalism. why people generally reacted extremely sensitively towards him. It is impossible to answer this question without advancing a very general anthropological or culturalphilosophical consideration.

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A dominant view of the world presents one's own scale of values or morality as the only possible one, ie as the scale of values and morality thereafter. Their representatives must therefore describe every fundamental attack against the same or against themselves as an act that undermines the foundations of dignified human life in general. This way of arguing (whose partisanship is understandably only noticeable when we are not using our own, but a long-defeated view of the world) is well-founded and effective insofar as it alludes with instinctive sensitivity to the fact that within culture (and because of the reflexive doubling of the world caused by it or the translation of all life factors into the ideal) the The instinct of self-preservation is blurred with the thesis that life has a meaning, so that anyone who questions the meaning of life has to deal with the dogged reaction of the human instinct of self-preservation. By presenting a world view as the defender of this sense (which of course can only be one, etc.), it actually appeals to man's instinct for self-preservation; and by labeling the opponent as a nihilist, she feels clearly that nihilism, as a challenge to the instinct of selfpreservation, can never prevail in the long term or as a system of thought, especially since no society operates without a system of moral norms, which in turn supports belief presupposes the meaning of life, can exist. But the opponent also feels this constellation, and no less clearly. He must therefore strive to show himself as a representative of constructive values that can strengthen belief in the meaning of life or free it from the shortcomings of previous views. The fact that an aspiring worldview outbids the one serving the rulers in the auction of values does not only or necessarily mean an apologetic or defensive attitude, but at the same time a courtship for it

• The concept of nihilism is often used in polemics and is then usually equated with the desire for destruction, as in this hypothetical argument of ours. In reality, those who want to accuse someone of nihilism in this sense are making a logical mistake by attributing something normative to nihilism (namely the thesis: everything should be destroyed) - quite apart from the fact that morally motivated destructive outbursts are not uncommon in the world have previous education. For the rest, no harmful movement has so far emerged under the banner of destruction, although this must understandably be claimed by some opponents. For these reasons, I use the concept of nihilism in this work to describe the thesis of the complete relativity of all values, which amounts to no ought (one of the ought to destroy). Although from this perspective life should not necessarily be destroyed, it is objectively meaningless. This nihilism can become a knowledge-based thought system, but like nihilism in the sense of the desire for destruction, it remains incapable of being implemented socially. When helpless skepticism takes hold, it is only a sign that one simply needs new certainties. In this case, the widespread nihilism or skepticism does not work for you, but against the prevailing values and for those to whom the future belongs.

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Souls of men — yes, a claim to rule. Since social mastery cannot be exercised without the establishment of a system of norms, and since this system must be logically based on belief in the meaning of life, it is evident that the defense of the meaning of life and of morality is a good thing ›is absolutely indispensable for everyone who raises claims to dominion or demands the elimination of dominion. Despite protests and protestations by the moralists, moralism and striving for power were by no means mutually exclusive - if one looks at them objectively, ie in their concrete historical function. Clearing out the taint of nihilism was therefore a primary polemic need indeed a question of survival - for modern rationalism. Its classic SD representatives are therefore constantly fighting on two fronts: against the theologian opponents and - often much more violently - against all those who show they are prepared to denigrate God (theology) directly or indirectly and the resulting primacy to draw skepticism or even nihilist conclusions about humanity (anthropology). Maehiavelli and Hobbes or La Mettrie and Stirner were fought primarily by champions of modern-day rationalism who felt compromised, while the conservative theologians and their followers, in extreme cases, wanted the tangible confirmation of their prophecies and the exposure of the moral quintessence who were delighted to see new ideas. Because their reaction against the latter was based primarily on the argument that sooner or later they would lead to relativism and thus to immoralism, since the elimination of God or the metaphysically anchored values logically implied that the locally and temporally conditioned, i.e. unstable, human being was now as a single measure of all things would remain. For the reasons given, both opponents are in complete agreement about the indispensability of the values, but not about their content. It should be noted, however, that if values at all, i.e. independently of their content, can only be justified on the basis of a specific way of thinking with ultimate arguments, both opponents then, since they stand up for values and for the meaning of life to the same extent, have to share certain fundamental thought structures. From this point of view and on the basis of the explanations in the last three paragraphs, it is now possible to understand better why not just conventional thought content, but other and, above all, conventional thought structures could live on in modern times and even start a new brilliant career. However, they did so by largely infringing on new content-related positions that e.g. T. diametrically opposed. The problem of the relationship of the modern to the traditional can best be assessed in this double perspective of the struggle of content and the continuity of certain structures of thought. Those who particularly appreciate the ideal indestructibility or the “inexhaustible fruitfulness” of Christianity tend to underestimate the content of the brother.

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or to forget the long, successful struggle against the supremacy of the Church, while the proud opponents of "metaphysics" tend to ignore the continuity of certain thought structures, which becomes particularly clear in the neuralgic question of norms. Both are ideologisdi braudibar and historisdi false".

' ° Because both positions serve ideological and apologetic purposes, they will also have their spokesmen in the future, which means that a generally acceptable solution to the secularization problem cannot be expected. In purely logical terms, it should be noted that the confusion that largely dominates is largely due to the confusion of thought structures and thought content. As far as the defenders of the legitimacy of the modern era are concerned, they are too tired of the apologetic's task when they campaign primarily against the crude view that the modern era is a mere metamorphosis of its substance (Blumenberg, Legitimacy, 18). It is a confusion of the formal and the content when, for example, the difference between diristlid esdiatology and modern progressive ideas is seen in the world transcendence of the former compared to the world immanence of the latter (Blumenberg, Legitimität, 23): Transcendents and immanents are contents without them Differently, it would not be necessary to talk about secularization at all (cf. Löwith's review, esp. 199, see also 198); The formal here is the idea of gradual, goal-oriented or teleological development. Blumenberg also doubts the genetic, conditional nature of the new, contemporary basic ideas of the Jewish and Jewish world of thought (Legitimacy, 23 f.); However, he only demands solid conditionality as proof because he sees secularization more as a direct and conscious adoption or metamorphosis of thought content, where the possibility of the unconscious survival of thought structures is not discussed at all. On the contrary, the question of genetic conditioning in Blumenberg's linear sense must emerge from our situation as a secondary issue. The real problem is whether certain central thought structures, which were fundamental to the theological world view, are in the modern context and under completely different precedents Regardless of whether they knew it or not, they had to re-emerge because modern nationalism has become known about norms and values and has used them as weapons of global dialogue. It was precisely the normative component of thought that was closely linked to Maditan's prudism that brought these thought structures into being within theological metaphysics. However, the identity of the function does not necessarily mean (direct) genetic conditionality, and in this sense Blumenberg is right when he clearly distinguishes the emergence of the idea of fortification from its “stepping in for the religious interpretation of health” (Legitimacy, 36). But he is wrong if he thinks that the belief in progress had its empirical basis in the progress of the theory of the creation of the world and in the performance of the scientific methodology. The genesis of the words 'Renaissance' and Middle Ages' (see above, note 5) shows that the most elementary form of the triad and at the same time teleologisdi gediten modern age diema far precedes the development of the modern science of science; The fact that in this situation the restoration of the original state (antiquity) is perceived as a step forward is no more a contradiction than the elimination of the consequences of the Fall through the latest Geridit. Blumenberg, the opposition between theology and reason

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If, in the above-mentioned double perspective , the opponents talk about what they have in common , then this is not just about that particular aspect of the secularization process, according to which e.g. B. the Jewish-district diema of Gesdiiditsdewlung&lung was placed in the service of the victory "of reason or of man or as a result the concise concepts of modern state doctrine arose from theology"*, but audi and above all is the

emphasized as a condition of the self-assertion of the latter to Redit (Legitimacy, 50), does not see in his linear-rationalist perspective that the commonality of certain fundamental thought structures does not negate the content-related opposition, but actually increases it. Because the Maditan sayings that exist on both sides are not based on the conscious thought content (we only speak openly and programmatically about reason, freedom and progress or about love, faith and redemption), but rather in the (mostly unconscious) thought structures: in these we encounter the separation between this world and the beyond, in the form of a contrast between reality and norm or ideal, between present and future - regardless of whether the ideal norm is created by God or by nature or reason, regardless of whether Future will be represented by the Last Judgment or Paradise or by the revolution and the classless society that dominates nature through science and technology. Regardless of the content with which this formal framework is filled, Mac tandspr üc e raises whoever wants to formulate or interpret the norms in a binding manner and thus show the "true" path into the future. Socially effective thought structures must therefore be designed in this way be that they allow the game of interpreting norms and justifying current actions with reference to future purposes; this is primarily served by the use of arbitrarily interpretable keywords or concepts (it is a significant gap in Blumenberg's work that he focuses on structure and The function of concepts such as reason and nature is not systematically addressed; however, such investigations would have shown him what the unconscious similarities of conscious opponents can lie). Because the opponents make equal claims to power, they must both share correspondingly created thought structures, because they But if they are opponents, they have to provide them with fundamentally different content, precisely for the sake of self-assertion (Blumenberg), i.e. the justification of the opposition. The commonality of the thought structure and the contrast of the content belong together, as paradoxical as it may sound, precisely because opponents can only be those who share the opposition: but the mutual Mac tantrum that creates the mutual opposition is how said, precisely laid out in the thought structure. '°' Löwith, Weltgesc . you. Heilsgesc ehen, inb. 175 ff. ; C. Schmitt, Polit. theology, 49. In Lübbe's beautiful little work, all the essential aspects (political, legal, cultural and scientific) of secularization as a process of emancipation of modernity from its diristical origins and ties are discussed one after the other (Secularization, 23 ff., 34 ff. , 56 ff.). Because the study is oriented towards conceptual history, it does not address the problem of secularization as the survival of certain thought structures in our sense, although the topic is hinted at (Secularization, 133) . Stallmann, for his part, very correctly distinguishes between the political-legal (transfer of ecclesiastical power or property rights to secular powers) and the intellectual-historical (solving ideas

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What is meant is the adoption of those thought structures on which the justification of values was traditionally dependent and which were least affected by the development of the new knowledge and technology. For example, the function of transcendence within traditional metaphysics should be pointed out here. She or God was the epitome and source of all values; Their rooting in God is precisely the guarantee of their objective validity and therefore their realizability: what is real can at least be realized again, even if only partially and on a different level. In modern times, this traditional transcendence has either been eliminated or its social effectiveness has been significantly reduced, but this has not eliminated the division between transcendence and immanence. It arose anew, implicitly (since the open confession of it could have been interpreted as a confession of traditional transcendence and therefore had to be avoided for polemic reasons), but clear enough; it announced itself precisely within that immanence which placed the old transcendence in the sphere, and had to fulfill the same normative function. To put it more concretely: That nature, which initially represented immanence in the struggle against the transcendence of God, soon became something more than the empiric world; it was given the status of a higher authority that transcends the simple sum of perceptible original ideas and explains it in a purely objective manner , what is good and evil; living according to nature now means just as much as obeying God's commandments, which are also universal and anchored in true being. But even modern reason, insofar as it claims to replace the divine commandments, is not understood empirisdi, ie as the reason of this or that person, but is also hodistilized into a supra-personal normative instance that transcends all empirically given and known forms of reason - whereby their seat and carrier must remain undetermined. Takes the place of sdiliefilidi

of the divine primacy of the primacy of the human being, so in turn this human being is no longer the empirically given, accidental human being on the road, but the idea of the human being, which in turn functions as an ontological source of an ought, since obligations and rules of behavior of the empirical human being are directly derived her off

originate from their original religious justification context and are derived from general reason) meaning of secularization and sets itself the task of explaining the transition from the former to the latter (What is secularization?, 5). However, his results are only relevant for a certain theological question that is associated with the names of Bonhoeffer and Gogarten (see also Lübbe, Secularization, 86 ff.). Also from a theological standpoint, Delekat tends to equate secularization with de-Christianization or with "atheism, antihumanism and nihilism" (about the concept of secularization, especially 38 f.). Behind this, however, is the assumption that only a diristical justification of norms can be thought of namely the content, not just the thought structure.

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to be directed. The existing distance between empirical human beings and the idea of human beings is then often referred to as "alienation" which is to be eliminated through proper education or at the end of a medical process. It is obvious and can be proved historically that the new-time transcendence, as it concentrates on certain key concepts (nature, reason, human beings), functions in a social way similar to the old one. The respective scale of values is drawn up with reference to them, and the master is the one who can interpret them in a binding manner. The (open) transcendent idea of God used to be nothing essentially different. And even now, social and intellectual struggles are not ultimately sparked by the question of the true interpretation of the key concepts mentioned. This would not have been possible if these latter did not have a transcendent aspect that goes beyond any empirically justifiable statement.

2. The appreciation of nature and mathematical science a) Aristotelian-Thomistic dualism and the monistic countercurrents in the Renaissance The modern rehabilitation of sensuality in general, in terms of its world-sensitive content, can best be pursued through the upgrading of the concept of nature, at the end of which there is the autonomization of nature, ie its complete emancipation from God. In order to grasp the specific features of this process, a brief reminder of the diriste view that had served until then is necessary - and not in its extremely ascetic and openly hostile to nature versions, but precisely where it shows itself in the nature-loving ideists: in the Thomas system. A Summary of Thomism At the same time, this would provide a first explanation of the hermeneutic guidelines developed in the previous chapter, as it represents a model example of comprehensive thinking, which is rooted in a concrete polemic, the question of the relationship between spirit and sensuality or the question of being in the interest of a particular one Position in the question of value is dealt with and a coherent multidimensional system is established, the levels of which (epistemology, morality and cosmology) belong structurally together. We don't need to go into the controversial questions here as to whether and to what extent

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There was a Latin Averroism '8b whether and to what extent Arabic Aristotelian or directly Aristotelian teachings were primarily perceived as contradictory to certain theological principles or whether and to what extent those thinkers who noticed similar contrasts were also willing to radically implement the separation between philosophy and theology and make it irrevocable. Tauache is that since the so-called Renaissance of t2. In the 19th century, an intellectual pluralism emerged, which was reflected in the tendency to allow philosophical theses to be valid (even if only as probabilitas and not as veritas) when they contradicted revelation. Although a doctrine of the The double truth was never formulated expressis verbis, "the revival of Aristotelianism - in whatever form - and its use as an independent frame of reference meant an immediate danger to the theological monopoly. "The philosophy that appeared as Aristotelianism had to either be fought from a PlatonicAugustinian point of view or be placed in a theological framework and thus rendered harmless. Thomas' feeling for the needs of the historical constellation decides in favor of this latter, more modern and long-term possibility, which gives rise to the old orthodoxy to serious accusations. Thomas proceeds as follows: he gives the traditional submission or

Neglect of philosophy, but to the extent that he recognizes the right of philosophy at least to its own methodology, he denies it the right to talk about the truths of faith or to want to prove or refute them using reason. Philosophy, as metaphysics, could constitute a kind of theology, this kind of theology

'°'

The one based on Renan (Averroés et l'averroisme) and by Mandonnet (Siger

de Brabant, especially I, 142 ff.) and also by Gilson (La Philos. au Moyen Age, 550 ff.) with some modifications the assumption of a Latin erasure Averroism', was questioned above all by Van Steenberghen, who pointed out the points of contact between the Christian thinkers and Averroes through the common rule on Aristotle wants to explain (Aristotle in the West, 201 ff.; Philosophy in the 13th century, 370 ff.). "

On this generally Haskins, The Renaissance of the twelfth Century, passim; Gandillac-Jeauneau, Interviews on the Renaissance of the 12th century, insb. 7 ff., 31 ff., 513 ff. '° Gilson, Etudes de philos. mcd., 51 ff. ¡ Painter, Metaphysis, the background, esp.

5 ff., 27, 42 ff.; Mac Clinto&, Perversity and Error, 79 ff. "

S. die konzise Darstellung von Gregory, Philosophy and theology in the crisis of the XI II century, insb. 6 f.

'• Details in Mandonnet, Siger 98 ff. ; cf. Van Steenberghen, The Philosophy in the 13th century, 430 ff. and the bibliographic information about it. '^ Quest. Quod1., Qu. 3 Art. XXXI (= S. 128)¡ de Trinit., Qu. II Art. 1 to 5

(- Opusc. III, 44 f.) ; of Rat. Fid., Chap. II (= Opusc. III, 253).

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but is inferior to that other one, which is based on the holy principle." The limits of philosophy are therefore reminded precisely at the moment in which it experiences its highest possible elevation. The prerequisite for the elevation is, of course, that philosophy is "healthy" that it namely ›exists alongside and under faith without questioning it "•; It is precisely the conviction of the (strategic) necessity and the (theoretical) possibility of a contradictory coexistence thanks to the diversity of levels that drives Thomas to his synthetic undertaking. The primacy of theology is undisputed, but it should be underpinned and made visible precisely through the use of worldly wisdom. The fact that this use can reach the point of formulating principles of revelation in philosophical terminology should not lead one to assume that one could Tho mas distill out a (diristlidie) philosophy. The debate about this is otherwise pointless, since Thomas is just as much a philosophical foundation of his theology (positively through the use of philosophical terms and negatively through the knowledge of the limits of philosophical reason) as a relatively autonomous processing of his philosophical statements, depending only on their respective relevance for which theologis conducted the overall construction".

This recognition of the (relative) role of philosophy, which in the current constellation was largely synonymous with Aristotelianism and therefore had to draw a direct (although Thomas was by no means slavish) Rüdt attack on him, gains its real point when we remind us that it was not just a methodological and formal decision, but rather a substantive decision. Since for Thomas, no less than for the representatives of the Averroist-Aristotelian current, "philosophy considers things as they are in themselves, while faith understands them in their relationship to God", the upgrading of philosophy automatically brings about an upgrading not just the autonomous-rational thought effort, but also the sensibility partly as an object and partly as the basis of it. This can be noticed on different levels.

'• De Trinit., Qu. 5 Art. IV ( = Opusc. III, 119 f.). "' Such a case is considered by Thomas a limine to be unthinkable; a philosophy that questions theology can only arise from error or ignorance (see e.g. de Unit. Intell., last paragraph = Opusc. I, 69). " Of the Trinity What II Art. III to 5 (= Opusc. III, 52 f.); They will feel Prol. What 1 Art. I (- I, 8). '• S. z. B. the exegesis of Ex. 3, 13, 14 on the basis of philosophical concepts esse und essentia, Contr. Gen., 1. 1 ch. 22 (= S. 24). '• Gilson, Thomisme 13 ff. and Van Steenberghen, Die Philos. in the 13th century, 323 ff. (also: Aristotle in the West, 157 ff.), who disputes the existence of an independent Christian philosophy. cf. the statements by Kluxen, Philos. Ethics in Thomas, 1ff. °° Control Gent., 1. II chap. IV (= S. 92).

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bar - always alongside the effort not to let the appreciation of sensuality degenerate into a threat to the spirit, which would have its counterpart in a threat to theology through philosophy. In Thomistic epistemology, the rejection of the anti-philosophical attitude of traditional Augustinism is reflected in the rejection of its innerism: the origin of human knowledge is the senses. However, the high estimation of the senses or empiric knowledge does not stop there In the sense, the higher truth of the knowledge of reason is contrasted and the self-activity of the spirit is emphasized, which does not only know things and themselves, but also what it knows. The intellect transcends sensory experience "since its judgments about things are ultimately based on eternal principles." Thomas knows exactly why he is allowed to hold on to the epistemological approach to empiricism until the end: the epistemological approach has certain consequences for freedom and morality. In a highly remarkable sentence it says: "Tota ratio libertatis ex modo cognitionis dependet', and then the self-activity and self-reference of reason is emphasized again, from which it is concluded: Customer totius libertatis radix est in ratione constituta ". Since the theory of knowledge in this respect is conceived for moral philosophy, the structural parallelism of these two levels is not surprising; Thomas himself points out the correspondence of the hierarchy of cognitive faculties to that of the mental appetite: ap petitus intellectivus and sensitivus are different in the same sense as ap prehensum per intellectum and apprehensum per sensum ". The freedom of the will, without which, as Thomas says, there can be no question of moral responsibility, "is based theoretically on this double classification; it is understood intellectualisti in the sense that free choice is presented as judgment or knowledge"; liberum arbitrium and liberum iudicium are synonymous, and despite all the fussy determination of intellect and will in moral

°' I am Theol., 1 Qu. Article 12 12 Resp.; De Verit., Qu. X Art. 6, cf. What Article 12 III to 2 (= Quest. Disp., 1 268 ff., 326 f.). ^

De Verit., Qu. 1 Art. 9 (= Quest Disp. I, 24 f.).

°° Contr. Gent., 1. II chap. LXVI (= S. 162). '• I am. Theol., 1 Qu. 84, Art. 6, to 3 De Verit., Qu. X Art. VI, ad 6 (= Quaest. Disp. I, 271). It is characteristic that Thomas himself rejects the antithesis of senses and intellect in Aristotle and uses it as an argument against the Averroists, de Unit. intel. = Opusc. I, 39 f. ^^

De Verit., Qu. Art. 24 II to resp. (Quest. Disp. I, 592 f.).

" Sum. Theol., I Qu. 80 Art. II to resp. De Verit., Qu. Art. 24 1 to resp. (= Quest. Disp. I, 587). ^

De Verit., Qu. Art. 24 1 to 1 und 17 (= Quest. Disp. I, 588, 590).

°° S. z. B. I am Theol., 1 Qu. 50 Art. II to resp. Ibid. audt der Satz: wherever there is the intellect there is free will". Cf. die Analyze von Wittmann, Die Ethik des Hl. Thomas, 106 ff.

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This act remains the former qnobilior' ". On the other hand , the ap petitus sensitivus also comes to its conclusion in the moral philosophical discussion as well as the senses in epistemology. Not only be suffering

They are not evil, but they are not based on virtue. As a unity of soul and body, man should realize virtue and happiness with his sensual part. The perfection of virtue depends on reason and "Not to be expected from nature", just as the soul only has to do with the body as a form of the body and not in toto in it goes ": the Thomistic anthropology, in its ambiguity, therefore shows the same structure as that of epistemology and moral philosophy. Let us now turn to the main object of our interest, namely Thomas's cosmology or natural theory. Once again we encounter a clear appreciation of sensuality, in the form that natural things However, under certain conditions - self-activity is promised. Against those who make mere factoids out of the creatures with reference to the omnipotence of God, Thomas argues that this means that these same creatures are deprived of the best that they have, namely actionem ad aliquem effectum pro ducendum'. Natural things want God similar in that they do not appear merely as passive effects, but rather as active primordial states. If carried out consistently, this thesis would of course amount to the complete autonomization of nature. Thomas must therefore take back with one hand what he gallantly served with the other. First of all, it is the case that the property of natural things to act as a cause for others was given to them by God together with their being; So it is not actually a self-evident saying, but a sign of the immeasurable goodness of the Creator. If what works has the power of God , then God himself is the cause of the work of all things. An action of God as the first cause without nature or the causae secundae would certainly be possible, since it is God's will to work through the mediation of nature. With this reservation

°' I am Theol., I, Qu. 82 Art. III Concl. und IV Concl. °° I am Theol., 1, 2 Qu. 50 Art. I und II but on the contrary. °° Of evil, Qu. Article 12 1 to 5 (= Quest. Disp. II, 615). ^* Virtue. in Comm. Art. 8 to resp. (= Quest. Disp. III, 236). ^ Of the Spirit. It creates Art. II to 4 and 19 (= Quest. Disp. III, 37, 38). Thomas schließt jede continuation, composition oder colligatio von Seele und Leib aus (Contr. Ghent. 1. Chapter II. LVI—LVII - S. 1#6 ff.). •° Contr. Gent., 1. III chap. LXIX (= S. 297). •' Contr. Gent., 1. III chap. XXI (= S. 239). ^ Control Gent., 1. III chap. LXX (= S. 299). °• Contr. Gen., 1. III ch. 67 (= S. 293). •° De Pot., Qu. 3 Art. VIII (= Quest. Disp. II, 70).

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Sprid t Thomas mandimal, following Aristotle, of nature as an autonomous and expedient acting ‘t , on the other hand, it suits the Ter person minus natura naturans, especially since its spread was related to that of Averroism ^, very distrustful of and wants to exclude the sd sacrificial

activity of God know ^. He finds the harshest words for representatives of pan-theistic tendencies, such as David of Dinant, whose work was burned in 1209 . Despite this attitude, one cannot resist the impression that the cosmological revaluation of nature in Thomas is not an end in itself or does not result from a pure love of nature, but has a concrete function within the framework of his overall strategy”•. Just as epistemological empiricism and the knowledge of the limits of human reason ultimately served to leave God to faith, so does the revaluation of nature, taking into account the latest developments in the theological-philosophical front and with the most modern theoretical equipment, the central one tackle the question of theodicy and thus strengthen the position of theology. God is relieved by making the effect of the causae secundae responsible for the imperfections and evils of the world ". Thomas even denies the existence of the evil at all, since what appears as Elbel either encourages good intentions or unknowingly helps good ends to be realized". Everything that is is, by virtue of its being, good and true". Thomas has to assert this, because in spite of all the independence of nature and precisely because of the belief that this independence can reach impermissible dimensions, he then realized the omnipresence of God and indeed in the Totality of his being — valid ".

But he must once again offer the separation between God and nature in order to, in addition to exonerating God, distance himself from the Bible and its immutability.

•' By e.g. B. the Aristotelian expression j Qtiut5 oi6tv Jmzr¡v Lover (De Caelo 290 a 31 or 291 b 13 etc.) (e.g. Contr. Gent., 1. II cap. LV = p. 145). •' Siebeck, Biber the origin of the terms natura naturans and natura naturata, insb. 275 f. I am Theol., I, II, Qu. 85 Art. 6 to resp. •• Contr. Gent. 1. I cap. XVII (— p. 17) ; cf. Sum. theol. I, Qu. III Art. VIII. General information about Thomas' criticism of pantheism in Sertillanges, Thomas, 230 ff., 270 ff. (from a Thomistic perspective). ••' As Gilson puts it (Thomisme, 237): in defense of the rights of the Thomas sees nature as the only way to defend the rights of God. •^ Contr. Gen., 1. III ch. 71 (= S. 300). •^ Ibid. •' Contra. Gen., 1. III ch. VII (= S. 228); About Verit What Art. 21 III (= Quest. Disp. I, 512 f.). •• Contr. Gen., 1. III ch. 67 I (= S. 295); Sulu Theol., I. Qu. 8 Art. 1 insb. to 3

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In other words, if nature were not relatively independent and left everything to God alone, he would have had to diversify in order to bring about various effects. Thomas' overall argument must therefore constantly move between two positions, which in their own right extreme form. Because the appreciation of sensuality and nature must not endanger the spirit in its human and divine dimensions: it is the originator and creator of the universe, and its good therefore forms the ultimate goal of this universe.

In order to be able to better understand later controversies about Aristotelianism and S&oasticism, we must here recall an essential point in Aristotle's physics and epistemology, which also explains why the theologian Thomas could, in good conscience, follow the pagan Aristotle. As is well known, Aristotle connected the concept of natural beings with the self-movement. But this does not mean that every movement of natural beings is based on their self-movement or that nature, understood as Ursadie, is identical with the cause of nature. The Be The movement of natural beings is namely selfmovement in the sense that the specific nature of each natural being can only tolerate a type of movement that is peculiar to the respective natural being: the human being, for example, as a human being, that is, must move according to his human nature Primitive movement triggers in a natural being that chain of reactions that are in accordance with its way of being: therefore, a single external cause can set different movements in motion in different natural beings. Seen from this

,

point of view, externally caused movement and self-movement are not opposites. which at the same time implies that the self-movement of natural beings is not to be understood in the absolute sense, but is entirely compatible with external causation and cannot be imagined without it. This also explains the necessity of the first mover despite the self-movement of natural beings.

The ultimate source of movement lies in him, but he can only move the natural beings according to the way that corresponds to their respective specific constitution". that the activity of the First Mover oidit consists in setting the world in motion once in the past and it itself since then

^° Contr. Gent., 1. III., chap. LXIX (= S. 296). °° Contr. Gent., 1. And ch. I (= S. 1).

•' Phys. 192 b 13—14. °' S. Wieland's fine analysis, Die aristotel. Physics, 234, 236 f. Wieland quoted (239) a passage from Thomas' physics commentary (II, 1.5), which shows that Thomas Aristo understood teles in this sense. So listen to Thomas, sz B. Question. Which 1 Art. 7 to 2 (= S. 15): »God moves all according to their manner.

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to have left. The beginning of the movement is not thought of in time, but causally. the first mover must, as Aristotle says, move forever ^, since the respective movement requires a simultaneous cause and ends with its cause itself". The aristotelian world therefore, despite the self-movement of the natural beings, needs the constant presence of God no less than the thomistian. The concept of the first mover later had to undergo a radical reinterpretation, when this conception was replaced by that of the world-machine. Au& the epistemological dualism of Thomas has its aristotelisdies precedent. Aristotle is namely not able to explain the nous, namely the nous poietikos, in a satisfactory way genetically on the basis of his seosualistic presuppositions. He himself gives up such a versudi when he expressly says that the nous has penetrated from outside ". He is the divine in itself, and his presence in the crowd is the bridge between him and God, gives a pre-gesduna& of the divine; what for him Human beings, however, could only be a temporally limited exaltation, was a permanent condition for the nous as god. This view also has its normative consequences: the nous, the origin of the world, is the good sdile&thin ^. Ontological and normative reasons therefore demand that Aristotle make a logical leap in his epistemology. To the extent that he abandons Plato's philosophical ideal, namely: the firm knowledge of an eternally unchanging ontological foundation, despite all rejection of the theory of ideas, he must hold on to a Platonized concept of nous. His difficulty arises because, in contrast to Plato, he wants to discover the substance in individual things and thus also has to upgrade the lower cognitive faculties. The adoption of the above-mentioned Platonic ideal made it necessary for his nous theory, even at the price of a logical leap. All of this must be mentioned in connection with Thomas, because the question of his relationship to Platonism, which has been much discussed recently, cannot be satisfactorily resolved as long as Thomas's "Platonism" is viewed as a complete contradiction to his Aristotelianism or that Platoniswhich is overlooked in Aristotelianism •'.

* Phys. 266 a 13: zvveiv 6ncvpov gpövov (cf. Met. 1073 a Z). ^° Wieland, The Aristotle. Physics, 314 f., 336 f. Cf. Düring, Aristotle, 330 f. ^° Of gen. face. 75b b (8opo8ev zia‹tva‹j,• cf. Before. 413 a 6 ff. •' Metaph. 1072 b 15. ^ Metaph. 1075 a 38 ^• Düring, Aristoteles, 580, 583. •° On the Platonic component of Aristotelianism, which also in Thomism Hirs&berger (Platonism in the Middle Ages, esp. 126 f.) has aptly put it over pointed out. On the other hand, Henle in particular has more recent attempts, Thomas has one Platonists, refuted on the basis of detailed text interpretations (Thomas and Platonism, xviiiff), pointing out that Thomas, according to the needs of his argument, now finds the similarities and now the differences between them

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There is no doubt that Thomas's appreciation of nature and knowledge of nature contributed to the new, future-oriented currents by trying to absorb them and thus try to encourage us. Following his teacher Albertus °', Thomas emphasizes the necessity of studying nature, but at the same time he wants to put it in the service of the knowledge of God - and that means: the theological world view framework -; deepening in nature ultimately means a deeper understanding of the direst meaning of life Through deeper insight into the will and nature of God.** However, it was not just this attitude, but due to the substantive difficulties in the reception of Aristotle, the Thomistic appreciation of nature was limited; a prominent example of this is Aristotelian doctrine of eternity the world, which has to cause difficulties for the spiritual creation: Thomas can only escape them by saying that the creation of the world by God is a question of faith. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising if in the Thomas conception of nature there is one Change in relation to previous bristle positions, but not the departure of the natural philosophy of the Renaissance can be felt. The enhancement of nature often seems like an exercise in duty, part of a well-considered theoretical strategy. This was not a lack of eiosi&t, but rather a we1tans‹:bau1i&e necessity. Even with the greatest possible rehabilitation of meaningfulness on all levels, dualism had to be maintained.

Plato and Aristotle tend to emphasize (423 ff.); Thomas not only recognizes the value of Platonic intellectualism as a weapon against skepticism (314) and therefore knows when it is necessary to moderate Aristotelian empiricism (320 f.), but he also knows and is happy to share the common points of the Platonic and Aristotelian views regarding the ontological foundation of the unum bonum separatum (411) Thomas also practices restraint in his criticism of the Platonic doctrine of the soul, since he sees its advantages for the Christian idea of immortality understands (398 ff.). Why Thomas was still unable to abandon Aristotelian empiricism is understood from his concrete polemical arguments. The partial degradation of the human intellect by pointing to its extensive dependence on the senses is not only intended to theoretically justify the necessity of belief in a God who has now become unknowable through the intellect, but also the arroistic identification of the human and the divine intellect, which had to imply a denial of individuality and thus the personal immortality of the individual soul (cf. Douglas, Phil. and Psych. of Pomponazzi, 46 ff.).

°' on Albertus' nature studies Pieper, S&olastik, 157 f.; Gilson, fitudes de la phil. Med., 117. °° Contr. Gent., 1. II ch. I II (= S. 92); Of Verit., Qu. XIV Art. IX ad 8 (— Quest. Disp. I, 402). •^ Dijksterhuis, Me&anisierung, 146 f. •• I am. Theol., 1 Qu. Article 46 II.

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A general remark is in order here, which has a key function in understanding further developments. Even though the "continued dirittlidute" theological position regarding the problem of nature had to pay homage to dualism, at the same time every open or hidden attack against it had to endanger theology, at least in the long term. This ceases to be a banality when we realize that cosmo1ogical dualism could be questioned not only from the side of nature, but just as well from the side and in the name of God. The real opponent of theology was monism, whatever the circumstances. In a time in which spiritual and worldly power of religion and the church were omnipresent, it was natural that monism was not initially seen as atheism, but on the contrary as a radical religion with mystic and pantheist traits of various origins stepped. The deification of the world brought about a dissolution of the divine person as a concrete governing authority, that is, as a prima vista localizable source of concrete norms and concrete rulership: but it was precisely these norms and this rulership that the traditional, churchly idea of God was supposed to defend. (Similarly, the spiritualization of the world caused the specificity of the spirit as an essence and function to be lost precisely through its spread.) None of this was intentional and was undertaken by Christians who wanted to do a good service for their own faith. However, the paradox arose that this defense or interpretation of old content gave rise to certain conceptual structures that were in contrast to those with which the traditional content was connected, and which, as a result, could help positions based on new content to prevail, who needed the new conceptual structures for their own articulation and rationalization.

In other words: conceptual structures that emerged for certain psychological and social reasons in dealing with theological content could have completely opposite content in other concrete situations . i.e. serve anti-theo1ogical intentions. A spiritualist monism only needs reversed precedents to transform itself into a materialistic one. Our analysis will show several times how important this point of view is. After all, the clear distinction between conceptual structure and content forms an indispensable prerequisite for understanding the extremely complicated effect of ideas, by providing an insight into the medianisms of the heterogony of the two and in this area of the healthy activity of people .

We now want to examine the various forms of exploitation of monistic conceptual structures that were decisive for the natural philosophy of the Renaissance. ^^ The presentation of the pantheistic tendencies of the Renaissance in Marxist and Leninist literature is noteworthy. p.z. B. Wollgast, Der deuu&e Pantheismus, esp. 151 ff. and Lemper, Böhme, esp. 119 ff., 150 ff.

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You can follow this briefly using a few typical examples. Cusanus' teachings is the most serious case where the radicalization of theology does not intend its elimination, but, as the orthodox opponents equally suspect, suggests it. The destruction of the Aristotelian-Thomist ten worldview takes place here through an extreme intensification of the concept of God, which "

until had only had its precedent in the mysticism of the 13th century.

The mediating instances of the (neo)Platonisdian tradition (Welueele, Spirit of the universe etc.) are eliminated so that a direct connection can be established between God as the only principle of things and every individual thing, between absolutes and empiricists •°. It is precisely the direct dependence of the individual thing on God that makes it, insofar as it is located in God, a unity, indeed God ••. The absolute intensification of the concept of God, which does not tolerate any mediation, leads to the deification of individual things. The Sdiema: Gauzes parts thus replaces the idea of the hierarchically structured universe. It is telling how Cusanus, precisely at a point where he is trying to ascribe the harmony of the universe to an ascending sequence of stages, adding that God is at the same time at the top as at the bottom of the same, he shuts them down in the same way" . into being at the same time and not the spirit first, then the soul, etc. ". The universe has no center ", and since the hierarchy lies shattered, each individual thing that is in itself whole, if also less fully in relation to others coming is "putting center stage and enjoying one's own uniqueness".

However, these statements do not lead to an identity of God and world out. For Cusanus distinguishes between the complicatio and the ex plication of God, namely: I between the being of things in God and being

^ Vansteenberghe, Le øDe ignota Litteratura' de jean Wen&, insb. 11 ff., 24 ff., 29 f. •' upon E&harts Einflufi on Cusanus s. Gandillac, Nicholas von Cues, 88 f., 91 f. 340, 342, 347 f., 356, 361. Dr. fire II, 9-1ø 0: one principle of all things in which all things and through whom they are everything' (= Werke 1, 60). S. die Analyze non Rotta, II cardinal Nicolò di Cusa, 332. Dr. Ign., II, 3 (= Werke I, 43). '°

Dr. Ign., III, 1 (= Werke I, 72 f.); cf. II, 5 (= Werke I, 47).

"

Doctor Ign., II, 4 (= works I, 46); cf. II, 3 (= works I, 42), the passage: guna est therefore the complication of all ...'. °^

'^

Dr. Ign., II, 11 (= Werke I, 61). Dr. Ign., II, 2 (= Werke I, 41).

'^ Doct. Ign., III, 1 (= Werke I, 72).

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of God in things". Since in God being and earthly beings are one, the impression could arise as if God were everything. But this is not so: creation lies between being and nothings", it is only infinitum privativum, while God an infinitum negativum is ”; between the two infinita there is no proportion ". Nodi more: things are nt&ts without God , but God is also without things ". Transcendence is thus expressly saved, and one can even understand Cusanus' position as dua1istis& with good reason *•. To what extent Cusanus got himself into logical difficulties because of this retention of transcendence, we do not want to examine here . More relevant to our context is the elucidation of the reasons why he insists on transcendence - even at the price of having to pass off the lack of logical consequence very often as deeper-seeing docta ignorantia. In short : it is the reference to the question of value that prevents Cusanus from a complete abstraction of transcendence. In analogy to God, who is indeed in everything, but does not enter into it with matter in any way misdit nodi as a form ", the human also forms a micrograph of the universe ^, on the other hand he rises through the spirit , which alone God's image is •', over the sensual creation. Only the spirit is able to give value to the world - "valor' is Cu sanus' word - only he made it godlike to men". From the same attitude there follows Cusanus' epistemology.

Cusanus autonomisien nature nidit nodi he personifies it ". He designs a monistic structure that will later serve the personification and absolutization of nature. Another step in the same direction was the animation of the universe, which initially nodi im within the framework of a cosmological dualism in a rather lyrisdi-diditeristic way: we see here how spiritual currents, which, from a purely logical point of view, lie far apart, dodi sdilieBlidi - and independently of their respective origins -

'^

Dr. Ign., II, 3 (— Werke I, 42 f.). '• Dr. Ign., II, 2 (Werke I, 40). " Dr. Ign., II, 1 (= Werke I, 39). “' ®

Dr. Ign., II, 2 (= Werke I, 40).

'• Dr. Ign., II, 3 (= Werke I, 43). •° This thesis was best represented by ron Vansteenberghe, Le Cardinal Nicolas de Cues, 305 ff. "

In addition, the good analysis by Hommes, The philosophical basic teachings of Nikolaus Kusanus, 149 ff. •' Dr. Ign. III, 2 (— Werke I, 74). ^* Dr. Ign. III, 3 (Werke I, 75). ^* De Mente, IV (= Werke I, 245). " Cassirer, Individual and Cosmos, 46. "^ De Mente, IV (— Werke I, 246). "' Rotta, The Cardinal, 446.

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common goals — to be subsumed under a newly conceived common denominator, to flow together in the crucible of a different way of thinking. Ficino can be cited as an example of the tendency to develop spirituali stis&-panpsy&istis&e approaches within a (free) Pla tonisrnus, who wanted to be understood as being in accordance with the thornistiskirdi1i‹hen teaching ". One could s & on With regard to the structure of his main work, he says that his thinking revolves around the sharp separation of spirit and sensuality, which, however, is related to normative-moral principles; it forms the basis or goal of virtue * • , and it also guarantees the morally indispensable immortality of the soul that is directly related to God because of its immateriality". The cosmo1ogistic implications of dualism are obvious : God s&afts the world ex nihilo "he moves and he holds it". The respective proximity to God, the highest spirit" '°, depends on the degree of materiality or immateriality of the beings, which is thus taken as a standard for the construction of the hierarchy of beings (in essendo grada tio) ". It is now precisely the idea of the hierarchy, which proceeds from a strictly dualistic principle, which mitigates this same dualism in essential points, even seems to abolish it whose contrasts lose their sharpness. The symbolic conception of the archetype-image relationship also contributes to the strengthening of the bonds between the levels of being, but above all the necessity of mediation emphasized by Ficino". It is at this important point that the monistis function of Ficino's spiritualism emerges. Because the soul is that mediating entity that connects all levels of being, the higher and the lower, with one another to form a whole". But this activity of the soul arises from its divine origin and affinity and therefore from its striving to unite itself with God "God is therefore ultimately the originator of unity, since he himself is unity. And since he is at the same time the highest goodness, this means

^® On the question of Fieino's direct reliance on Thomas, see the detailed text compare in Collins, The Secular is Sacred, 116 ff. ^ Theol. Plate VIII, 8 (= I, 298). •° Theol. Plat. V, 10 (= I, 194 f.); cf. V, 13 (= I, 203 f.). •' Tlieol. Plate XYIII, 1 (= III, 175 ff.). •° Theol. Plate. II, 7 (= I, 91 ff.). °° Theol. Plate XVIII, 2 (= III, 183): the supreme spirit. •• Theol. Plan II, 3 (= I, 80); XII, 7 (= II, 189). •• Kristeller, Die Pbil. des MF, 71, 76 f., 82 ff. ^ Theol. Plate III, 2 (= I, 137 ff.).

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ben of the soul striving towards the good ' 7

. The unity of being is therefore in

Evidence of a radical theodicy. Everything is durdi God »vim vivificatn et motricem' dur&dürtt '8 and, although nature itself lacks reason, "dodi "vivitur totum mundi corpus' "'. The spiritualization of the world becomes world affirmation, since it is based on the belief that everything is beautiful and divine . Sensibility is rehabilitated precisely through the detours of spiritualism and its symbolism. If the image or symbol of eternal beauty and goodness is inherited in it, then any diristlidiasceticism towards it becomes unnecessary. Durdi the spiritualism of Ficino simmers a cheerful paganism in Hindi.

The natural philosophy of the late Renaissance takes up these currents, which are presented in the examples of Cusanus and Ficino paradigmatisdi, in a different way, but it is not simply their product. The difference arises from the different general attitudes of humanists of the 15th century and natural philosophers of the 16th century. But in addition there is this

self-confident appearance of a radical Aristotelianism of a nonmaterialistic nature, which rebels against the orthodox-Aristotelian separation of form and matter or against the degradation of the latter and is therefore compatible with both the Thomas-dualist Aristotelian Aristotelianism and also with Platonism or Neoplatonism Conflict arises. For these two, within the framework of the desired solution of the supersensible-transcendent, uphold the clean separation of form and matter, which in some ways went hand in hand with the Platonic confrontation of idea and empirical world and not least as the basis of the desired agreement between Aristotelianism and Thomism and Platonism functioned '°'. But while those who strive for balance assert healthy, ie dualist Aristotelianism, an extremely anti-Aristotelian tendency wants to show

• Theol. Plat. XIV, 1 (= II, 247). °^ Theol. Plat. IV, 1 (- I, 147). "° Theol. Plat. XI, 4 (= II, 118). '°°Comment. VI, 3 (— p. 202). However, this does not mean the identity of God and the world. Elsewhere Ficino writes: “Nec per mundum Deus, sed mundus per Deum, quatenus potest, extenditur” (Theol. Plat. II, 6 = I, 88). Nadi Saitta, who most strongly influenced the pantheistic tendency in Ficino's thinking and e.g. T. has emphasized too much, Ficino would only be prepared to eliminate the transcendent if nature and spirit were identisdi. With Ficino, after all, nature begins to emerge as an incarnazione dello spirito or as an "obbietivazione di Dio" (La filosofia di MF, 92, 104). '°' Gentile, Bruno and the thought of the Renaissance, 3 f.

'°' Na‹:ll Cusanus ist die Materie an sidi nur "possibilitas", und zwar "possibilità contracted" (da die "possibilitas absolute' Gott sei), nee deo coeterna" (Doct. Ign. II, 8 = Werke I , 54); listen to Ficino's spri&t der Materie Aktivität und Form from (Theol. plat. V, 4 = I, 177).

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The definition of form and matter is an absurdity and therefore Aristotelianism in general must, at least indirectly, lead to materialism - although it is in negative agreement with radical Aristotelianism and unintentionally provides an excuse for it. We can see how complicated the situation becomes when we think about the relationship between Patrizzi, this somewhat belated new Platonist humanist, and Telesio. In his extensive polemic against peripatetic philosophy, whose danger to diriste teaching is underlined right from the start, Patrizzi points out the separation of form and matter with e.g. T. shrewd arguments back& '^. But while his remarks at least imply that a solution to this problem must lie in a monistic approach, he is not striving for an interpretation of Aristotelianism in this sense, but rather wants to prove its philosophical unworkability. His own solution falls far short of the expectations aroused by his Aristotle critique, ie it means only a return to the neo-Platonistic gradation of being, within which it should take place. The unclouded union of form and matter is said to be an entity that is both corporeal and incorporeal and acts as a soldier between the higher Reidi of the supersense and the lower of the sense can convey, although the dualism of Ubersinnlidiem or Transcendent and sensual or immanent is presupposed and even emphasized. It is of no interest here to find out whether this corporeal-incorporeal entity is Lidit or Space, according to Patrizzi's Ansidit. The union of form and matter takes place somewhere in the middle of the gradation of being, at the summit of which stands Unomnia , which contains everything seminali ter '°' and the idea of the good or the world-opening Son of God generates '°', and at the end of which passive matter is found. The source of the movement is only the incorporeal '°; at the level of pure forms there is no matter (except as a formal idea)"'. The important difference between Patrizzi and Telesio is that that the former falls back on the Neoplatonis, the sequence of stages of being, in order to abolish the separation of form and matter halfway through the mediation of their ontological& fundamentally different extremes, while the latter radicalizes the Aristotelian approach in a monistic&-materialistic approach and precisely there-

'°° The one-word passages (from: Discussionum Peripateticarum, Vol. IV, libr. II—III) zitiert Fiorentino, Telesio, I, 371 ff. '°• The former is assumed by Kristeller (Eight Philosophers, 119 f.), the latter by Fiorentino (Telesio, I, 392 ff.). cf. Cape. IV, note 9. '°• Panardiia, lib. VII (= Rixner-Siber IV, 25). '°• Panardiia, lib. IV (= Rixner-Siber IV, 23). '°' Panardiia, lib. XI u. XII (— Rixner-Siber, IV, 28, 34). '° 8 Zit. bei Fiorentino, Telesio I, 392 Anm. 1. '°° Panardiia, lib. XIII (= Rixner-Siber IV, 39).

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The (negative) agreement between the two in relation to the criticism of Aristotelian separation of form and matter confirms our thesis that outside of the other Neoplatonic thought structure there are monist approaches ge give "'; However, Telesio's argument is groundbreaking in that, although it starts from Aristotelian criticism, it does go beyond the conventional philosophical constructions. These considered the loimanente from the Sidit of the transcendent as a source of movement and life, Telesio now wants to examine nature juxta propria prin cipia, as SDion says in the title of his main work. In other words, his criticism of the Aristotelian separation of form and matter amounts to a narrowing of the gap between transcendence and immanence - quite logically, since Aristotelian form had retained something - or a lot - of the Platonic idea within itself . Telesio sees that the transcendence of the primum movens must make any truly independent, immanent activity of the form impossible."' The radical turn in Telesio's view occurs, however, when precisely two defenses of the immanent activity of form - the orthodox Aristotelian distinction between form and matter itself will be undermined. The Aristotelian form exists as a counter-concept to privatio, and it must lose its distinctive features if its counter-concept is revived. "°

It is misleading to make this very important difference between Patrizzi and

Telesio is to be overlooked or only to emphasize their common rejection of Aristotelian form theory. This is what Fiorentino (Telesio, I, 37o) does in his endeavor, au‹:h To red-do Patrizzi among those who are essential to overcoming the old cosmology would have contributed. That is why he also treats the metaphysics of Patrizzi as a foreign body to his natural philosophy (Telesio, I, 406). Dennod can only do that Fundamental-versus-dedicated attitude of the two thinkers to the question of the sequence of stages of being or of the metaphysical presuppositions of natural philosophy those fundamental ones Explain the difference between them, which Fiorentino himself formulates epigrammatisdi: Telesio had supposed the matter; Patrizzi deduces it' (Telesio, I, 402). Dieselbe An undifferentiated presentation of Patrizzi's natural philosophy can be found in Cassirer (Knowledge problem, I, 214 ff.), which follows Offensi&tli& Fiorentino. The interested one In his contemporaries, Telesio's modernity was durdiaus in comparison to Patrizzi bewuBt, sz B. Bacons Aussagen über die beiden (On principles and origin, Works III, 85 and 114) as well as their direct comparison (Adranc. of Learning III, 4 = Works IV, 359), where it is aptly said of Telesio that he turned the weapons of the Peripatetics against themselves". Similar sympathies bring Bruno at one point expressed where he speaks of the two next to each other (De la Causa, III = Opera I, 202). "'

For this reason, the (neo)Platonisuius soon proved to be dangerous, which is why the Church of the Counter-Reformation did not accept his good offices. S. u. Note 175.

"• Rer. Nat. IV, 20 (= Il, 61). Cf. Fiorentino, Telesio, I, 218 ff.; Gentile, Telesio, 66 ff.

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is caught. Telesio does not accept that privatio is to be thought of as a mere non ens; it must also be granted existence and activity '". If the only cause of movement and change is form, then why is matter even necessary? And how can the change in the forms themselves, which are clearly defined, be explained without the involvement of another factor? "' In order to avoid both members of the Aristotelian dilemma (either let the forms move from outside, then they are ultimately passive, or they are active, and then the matter is superfluous), Telesio replaces them aristote1isd›e triad »Matter FormPrivatio' dur& the triad »Matter-Heat-Cold' "' and names the at the latter naturae agentes "•. They represent the antithetic pair that sets the movement in motion, and moreover, which is said to have a substantial advantage over the rigid forms, they can blend into each other"'. In comparison to their activity "matter seems to be passive ". But since the movement is supposed to arise from the heat, which for its part cannot exist at all without matter, the overall construction remains twofold and problematic. Equally problematic are Telesio's experiments to cope with the individual natural phenomena with the help of his elementary terminology theo retis&: it seems more like an improvised way out of the impasse of traditional natural philosophy.But that is not what is most important with Telesio, but rather the fundamental connection between the two the principle of immanent movement and the rejection of the dualism of form and matter or idea and ethnic world "'. Consequently, Telesio radicalizes Aristotelianism not only in cosmological terms, but also in epistemological and anthropological terms. He notes the contradictions between empiricism and intellectualism in Aristotle and develops a purely empiricist epistemology. "* Rer. Nat. III, (= I, 190). Ibid., Telesio claims to be in agreement with the Peripateticorum praestantissimis in this view. The fact that he was not alone with his radical Aristotelianism is in fact widely attested . See the information quoted by Fiorentino (Telesio, I, 220 note 2 and 221 note 1). "^

re. nat. II, 1 (= I, 108 f.). The different attitude of Telesio and Patrizzi is evidenced by the fact that he did not only criticize Telesio's sensualistic epistemology, but also his theory of the changeability of forms (Fiorentino, Telesio, II, 5 ff.).

"• Rer. Nat. I, 4 (= I, 18); III, 2 (= I, 181 ff.). "• Also, the term "formae" is used, but now it has the meaning that it has within the new framework of thought (Rer. Nat. II, 20-I, 154 ff. ). .

"'

Rer. Nat. I, 4 (=’ I, 19 ff.); I, 6 (= 24 ff.). "^ "°

"°

Rer. Nat. I, 5 (= I, 22 f.). Rer. Nut. IV, 18—22 (= II, 54 ff., insb. 57, 61 ff.). Rer. Nat. VIII, 11-13 (= III, 116 ff.).

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theory "'. In this connection he also emphasizes the dependence of the human mind on sensuality "' and combats the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul as a form of the body "', while at the same time seeking a solution to the moral problem in a natural1istic way, ie endeavored on the basis of the principle of self-preservation "•. All the more astonishing after all is his confession to the Kirdilidian doctrine, which comes out in the theses dru& that God created the world "', and there is also a second, higher soul in mankind created by God, the bearer of the free or moral will, form of the body and immortal is "'. These theses have been interpreted as a mere medieval remnant, as a sign of personal piety, or as an understandable acknowledgment of the Inquisition . Nevertheless, this turn of phrase remains unmediated and theoretically completely unfounded; it exists alongside the naturalphilosophical explanations of Telesio and hardly touches it. Irrespective of whether it was a creed malgrê soi or a deceptive maneuver, it shows eloquently enough what the moral-normative value was of defending the spirit in the cosmos and in man. Social-institutional pressures and personal hesitation work together and made a very complicated and contradictory process out of the fight against the kir‹fili‹fie doctrine.This can also be observed in the example of Cardano, who in terms of temperament has little to do with the diristlidien credo redit, like his autobiography "' witnessed.

His picture of nature is very close to Telesios and also arises from a radicalized Aristotelianism. Nidit of finely graded emanations and

”'

re. nat. VIII, 1-4 (= III, 87 ff.); The cognitive functions of humans and animals are basically the same

VIII, 14 (= III, 127 ff.). "-' Rer. Nat. VII, 2 (- III, 2 f.). '^

"^

Rer. Nat. V, I-7 ( = III, 105 ff.). Rer. Nat. IX, 4 (= III, 199 ff.).

*^ Rer. Nat. I, 9-10 (= I, 36 ff.). "°

Rer. Nat. V, 2-3 (= II, 99 ff.) and VIII, 15 (= III, 131 ff.).

'^ So Fiorentino, Telesio I, 320. ""So Gentile, Telesio 90. '^ For what concrete reasons caution was required, one can at Garin nadilesen, The philosophical culture, 442 ff.

'•° Opela, I, 1-54. Even where Cardano asserts his religious faith, he speaks diaracteristically of the “Charybdis” of doubt (cap. XXI I = loc. cit., 15 a). '°' Clinging to Aristotelianism explains why Cardano, like Telesio, does not question the geocentric thesis and the division of the cosmos into a celestial and a sublunar region. Cardano follows in the great whole Telesio when he accepts matter, warmth and activity as the trinity of the world principles, where worms originate from the celestial region and activity is supposed to occur in the sublunar (De Subtil. Lib. II = Opera, III, 373 b Rixner -Siber II, 25 and 35).

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We are talking here about artistic classifications of spirits, but about stones, metals, plants and animals, and not about hierarchy, but about unity in eternal movement and change. The commitment to the basic teachings of Kirdilia is not forgotten, but it stands alongside the development of one's own natural philosophical thoughts, without it being possible to deduce these from logical necessity. We do learn that the primeval matter was created by God, but that is not Cardano's first concern, but Nadi knows that the primeval matter, whose existence can be proven by the constant transformation of one thing into the other, can never perish and is Although in relation to the form potentia, it itself is not deprived of all predicates, since it has quantity in any case and therefore always exists under some form, i.e. actu. The movement does not come from the soul, but from nature itself."' We also learn that humans, as creatures of God, are higher than other beings," but this is again put into perspective by pointing out the striking similarities between humans and animals ; The human being is fundamentally viewed as a biological being that fights for its existence in various geographical locations using its physical means; The differences in race, culture and culture are attributed to physical or social factors . Nature was not modified for the sake of mankind, although he could exploit it." The same applies to Cardano's theory of knowledge: he leaves the cognitive process, which in its lower stages depends on the senses, only in the intellect culminate in the divine dimension "', but he is far more eloquent when he describes the activity and function of the senses in great detail "•.

Unfortunately, one can only find a hermeneutic approach to Bruno's protean and therefore controversial work when one sees in him the crossing point of all three currents (radical theology, neoplatonist pan-psydnism and the radicalized Aristotelisnius) that official theology and cosmology wanted or unintentionally undermined. Taken as a whole, it had to be afflicted with a double contradiction, since the currents mentioned contradict each other and are also contradictory in their own right. But not only their double contradiction, but also their great common denominator, ie the monist theorem, is particularly clear in Bruno: in this one could see his intellectually healthy meaning, which, however, does not necessarily represent a hodudi etching of the logic

'°• De Subtil. Lib. I = Opera, III, 358 b-360 a (= Rixner-Siber II, 22 ff.). ° From Subtil. Lib. IX, XI = Opera, III, 545 a, 550 b. "• De Subtil. Lib. XI 549 a—550 a, 551, 553 (= Rixner-Siber II, 186 ff.). '^ Die Variet. Lib. Chapter VII I XLII = Opera III, 156-160 (= Rixner-Siber II, 226). '^"

De Subtil. Lib. XIII = Works, III, 570 ff. (= Rixner-Siber II, 215 ff.).

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or substantive quality of his work implies. The monistic intention is so strong with him that with the pathetic emphasis on the thesis that there is basically only one thing and nothing outside of it ", a deduction or explanation of the empirical diversity proves to be highly prob1euiatis&. The deification of 1

nature couples si& strangely enough with a disjointed vernacular omission of the concrete creation of nature, which as such is hardly ever spoken of.Bruno stays within the humanistic tradition, at least insofar as he works with texts and not with phenomena.

In his first work, Bruno starts from the p1otinic theory of emanation, to which he gives a similar turn to that of Ficino z^; and in his later writings he again modifies Neo-Platonism in such a way that he tacitly leaves aside the gradual denial of the primordial in the lower stages of being su&t in the coincidentia oppositorum the mediation,

". Straight However, he does not have many words to say about the doctrine of creation, because he remains influenced by Plotinus and Cusanus in all important dissents, gains his criticism of the Aristotelian separation of form and matter (which, for the reasons mentioned, also leads him to reject the Plato's theory of ideas z ' z accompanies) nt&t that materialistic radicalization that she had experienced with Telesio, for example. The effect of emanatism results here - similar to Patrizzi, one might say - a union of form and matter not from below, but g1ei‹:team from above. Bruno remarks against the forma substantialis that without matter it would consist only of accidents^; So there is actually only a forma accidentalis, since something should not be considered as a substance that is, like the form, only realized in the composition with something else". Only this composition can With

1

'^

De la causa, V = Opere I, 247 ff.

z Vtdrine, The Design of Nature &ez B., 109.

• Mi&el, La Cosmologie de B., 88. It is interesting to note Mittels (78) that Bruno would put Plotinus and Parmenides on the table as the originator of his own monism, because he hesitates between two different views of the one, cf. Olsdiki, Bruno , p . La cultura philosophicala, 433). 1 '° Védrine, L'influence de Nicolas de Cues sur B., esp. 211 f., 217; La conception 2

of Nature, 70 ff. 1* »Plato's fantastic ideas”, De la Causa IV = Works I, 243, cf. 244 (»ideal seals, separated from matter'). "• De la causa III = Opere I, 210. '^ Of the cause II, IV = Opera I, 190, 245 f.; cf. Acrot. Camoer., Art.

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perish, nt&t the matter on si& '^; Substance is therefore rather the matter that forms a constant in the constant change "', is infinite" and can neither be created nor destroyed "'. - At this critical point, Bruno's deviations and his Neoplatonic heritage are now noticeable. To substantiate the infinity and indestructibility of matter, it falls back on the plotting distinction between incorporeal and corporeal matter and ascribes those attributes only to the former; only it is actus in contrast to the passivity and transience of corporeally perceptible matter "'. The identity of matter and (universal) form in the one "' means two things in turn: infinite matter contains or produces the special forms '•' and can be regarded as identis& with created nature"'; but the forma universalis must have the same stems, which, as said, differ from infinite matter within the framework of the One nt&t too, but in relation to finite matter the active one moment is "'. When Bruno once says that the activity of the universal form is conditioned in the production of the particular forms and by the respective nature of the matter, he is at least halfway there in that he replaces the substantial forms with the universal form lets kick or this as world soul has a double status: on the one hand it acts immanently, on the other hand it finds itself outside of matter and guides it '^. Accordingly, Bruno's theory of movement must falter. In every body there is a double movement at work: one's own or ultimate movement and that of the divine. When the first mover disappears, the soul remains the source of the movement, so that the double character of the movement emerges as the double character of the effect of the moving soul - in its absolute essence and in its relationship to the nature of the body.

^

De la Causa IV = Opere I, 245. De Immenso III, 7 = OL I, 1, 372. '^° De Immenso Il, 8 = OL I, 1 = 283 f. 'Libri Physic. — OL III, 311; cf. De Vinculi, OL III, 695 f. De la Causa III, IV = Opere I, 207 f., 234, 239. '•• De la Causa IV = Opere I, 236 f. • De la Causa III = Opere I, 212 (cf. 222 f.). '•' ibid. '

'°• Of Cause IV = Opere I, 241; Acrot. Camoer., Art. X = OL I, 1, 104 f. '^ De la Causa II = Opere I, 180 f.; cf. Seal II - OL II, 2, 202 f. '•• »according to the diversity of the dispositions of matter and according to the faculty of the active and passive material principles', loc. cit., 189. '^ place. cit., 181. De l'infinito V = Opere I, 405. '^' De Magia IX = OL III, 461. For the entire complex of movement and soul theory, see the analysis by Védrine, La Conception de la Nature &ez B., 198 ff.

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All this makes a complete identity of God and nature a limine impossible for Bruno. When he calls God and nature in the same breath, he does so with the caveat that nature is God only insofar as he is found in things, whereby he is apostrophized as the nature of nature '••. Nature stands in and above the final things as divina potestas materiarn exagitans "', and in the same way God stands in and above nature. But without a doubt she makes an effort Bruno, due to his basic monistic attitude, uoi the greatest possible unity, and he does this not in the end in the same way, namely by asserting the structural connection of macrocosm and microcosm as well as the omnipresence of God oiit Na&dru&. For our particular question and with regard to the disputes of the 18th century, Bruno's conviction is important that Monisoius or the direct or indirect overthrow of the traditional God does not necessarily represent a threat to morality if it only takes the form of a radically optimistic ontology logy (which merges with or replaces radical theodicy) comes onto the scene. If the One is oiit truth and goodness by definition identisdi "', then morality can simply be understood as the adaptation of the soul to the laws of the universe '°'. As for the reasons that Bruno gives from an equation of matter and one held, one should remind many people that he does not only call God the intellect of the world soul, but also the intellect the sun of the human soul .

.

b) The mathematical and scientific model. The underlying ideological decision and its polemical function These, as I hope, typical examples should provide an insight into the diversity and heterogeneity of the currents that have gradually and in various detours undermined the Aristotelian cosmology. Since it is now known that it was the oiatheoiatis':je science of natural science that put an end to the old cosmology, there is an underestimation of that current.

'•8 Spaccio II I, 2 - Opere II, 187, 192. Deus naturaque universalis" werden De Use Iminenso II, 12 (= OL, I, 1, 307) synonymously '^° Of Immense VI, 10 = OL I, 2, 193 (cf. VIII, 10 = OL I, 2, 312). '°° Dealing, Ep. Exp. — Works II, 9 ff. '°' From Immenso II, 12 = OL I, 1, 305; cf. Of Cause V = Opera I, 252. '•* »agree his thoughts and gestures with the symmetry of the law inherent in all things', Eroici Furori I, 3 = Works II, 361.

'• ibid. (Islands of intelligence in the soul"); iiber den lntellekt der Welueele s. De la Causa II = Works I, 179.

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They are indeed a sdiedite figure, yes mandually, they give the impression of vorsintf1ut1i&er monsters, if one takes the question of method or the related question of 1ogis&en coherence particularly seriously, of the survival of the mystic&-hermetic tradition to be entirely silent in them"'. Under these circumstances, one understandably falls into the temptation to draw a straight line between the forerunners of the mathematical treatment of nature in the 14th century and the natural sciences of the 17th century, bypassing the currents mentioned, and using progress in measurement as a criterion. :banization of the world view "'. This formalistic analysis has its justification on a purely logical level, but it only takes into account one aspect of the sadie and simplifies the factual process to the point of falsification, which it otherwise teleo logisdi, ie from the The beginnings of the 14th century came to a halt halfway because they lacked an independent theoretical basis that could have sovereignly disregarded theological barriers—and vice versa: natural science of the 17th century could

'•• Thus Olsdiki explained in detail the irreconcilable contradictions and logical gaps in Bruno's thinking. Olsdiki undoubtedly has a point in Sadie, and he also has a point when he claims against Dilthey that Bruno represents his time not as an ideal figure, but as the embodiment of its opposites (Bruno, 8). But that doesn't say the decisive thing about Bruno's intellectual significance. To confuse this meaning with the question of logical intelligence is actually just a symptom of positivist-scientist naivety. Massa has shown with a good example how Bruno's work contributed to the elimination of traditional natural philosophy (Bruno's Ideas in 17th century England, esp. 231 ff.). '^ Dazu Yates, Bruno and the hermetic Tradition, insb. 144 ff., 169 ff. '°° This straight line was drawn first and most decisively by Duhem, for whom the natural scientists of the 1st century n'étaient, bien souvent, que des tinuateurs et, quelquefois, des plagiaires' (Syst. du Monde , VII, 4). In his materially rich and interesting treatises, Audi Nobis leads in a rather one-sided manner, in which he traces the earliest approaches to the medianization of the world view up to the 17th century, without discussing the significance of general mental health factors or, for example, the natural philosophy of the 19th century ( The transformation ..., esp. 41 ff., 54 ff.; Early modern understandings of nature, esp. 42 ff., 48 f.). How misleading a straightforward view on this issue can be ..., Maier durdi her criticism of Duhem clearly & made, in which she drew attention to the adversity of the respective pweltansdiaulidian framework (Predecessor Galileo, 1 ff.; see note 197). Maier herself proceeds in a formalist manner in that she compares two ideal-type, stylized conceptions of nature rather than explains the contradictions of the transition from one to the other ; 15th and 16th centuries are therefore almost completely excluded from their investigations (see Luporini's comments, La Mente di Leonardo, 158 f., note 8).

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precisely because the worldansdiaulidie question had been largely clarified in the meantime. The conviction that nature or sensibility is the worthy, indeed the most and possible, object of precise, definitive knowledge stood firm, and, as we shall see shortly, it has even proved to be indispensable for the application of mathematical methodology. Apart from individual aspects (criticism of the substantial forms and the Aristotelian theory of motion, thesis of the infinity of the world, etc.), which generally benefited the natural sciences of the 17th century, the intellectual-physical achievement of the previously paradigmatically discussed currents consisted in that they have contributed to the clarification of the worldview question slowly, but essentially, by understanding nature to one degree or another and in one form or another as a self-sufficient whole , but also indirectly, in that the disavowal or elimination of dualism led to the idea of the autarkic whole in general and thus gave rise to a conceptual structure that, at a given time, contrasted with what was previously understood as nature in contrast to God, for example , could be brought in. The world-viewed & secluded autarky of nature made them first

capable and worthy of knowledge that is self-sufficient, i.e. self-sufficient and no longer in need of theology. In a formalist analysis, this elementary fact must of course be neglected, and yet without its emphasis, the science of natural science itself can only be described as a lie. An essential drawback of the currents mentioned was their inability to develop a truly new style of their own. Their groundbreaking ideas were largely expressed using (neo) Platonic or Aristotelian terms, and these in turn had a long theological background behind them sidi had, the content of the compromises was partly determined by the form . Recent research has dispelled the legend that a refreshing Platonism would have freed people during the Renaissance from the oppressive sdiolastic Aristotelianism. In the absence of a third language, Platonism and Aristotelianism form the indispensable discourse framework of the long Iberian '°' Cassirer, Knowledge Problem, I, 206, 208. It is Dilthey's merit to have emphasized the importance of the pantheistic currents for the elimination of the theological worldview, Ges. Sdir. II, 283 f., 326 ff. In this context one should remember Galileo's advocacy of Cardano and Telesio, although it has more of a moral rather than a scientific character ( Saggiat ., 9 = Opera VI, 236 f.). '^

... the story of the birth of modern science cannot be fully told before inquiry is made into the causes of the rising tendency to see life in a ,dynamic' vision; before it is explained how the belief in the universe as an immovable, God-given order was overcome by the idea of a decentralized, infinite universe ...”. Baron, Evaluation of the 15th Genttiry Renaissance, 36.

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transitional period, and in the variously nuanced terminology of the two both attempts to conserve and to renew found their expression. Their original two-sided character made possible their double impact during the Renaissance as well as divergences and coincidences na‹:h constellation and opponents"'. If in Platonism z‹nq aqö9 and ;ts0e5t5 compete with one another and those who have achieved ontology only seem to find each other through the activity of the world soul, then in Aristotelianism there is an empiricism ‹:he and an intel1ectua1istis‹:he side or matter and form opposite. So one could play off Platonic‹:he idea and Aristotelian‹:he form together against matter in order to defend dua1istis‹:h-idea1istis‹:he positions digen ' 7 °; Also, aristotelian intellectualism, especially in its averroist form, came close to neoplatonist positions ”', while in the field of moral philosophy the common intellectual trait of Platonism and Aristotelianism si‹: h in agreement of both sides hinsi‹:htli‹:h '7 '. On the other hand, the division of Aristotelianism into an intellectualist and an empiricist wing, which was noticed by contemporaries, was a fight against the theory of ideas and at the same time Alliance between Platonism and Aristotelianism from an empiricist standpoint. Telesio is an example of this, but apart from Pomponazzi, who out of his naturalist Aristotelianism, Platonism, Thomism and Last but not least, the intellectualist Aristotelianism of the Averroists was refuted at the same time and with the same consistency. Ahn1i:h is the same with the effect

'•° Kristeller, Renaissance Thought II, 104 f.; Hönigswald, thinker of the Italian Renaissance, 54 ff. ' 7° A good example of this tendency within the Florentine Academy is Niccol6 da Foligno's treatise on Ideas. See Thorndike's analysis, Science and Thought, esp. 174 f. ' 7' Hönigswald, Italian thinker. Renais., 56, 59. "• Garin, The Italian Humanism, 154. Examples of the fusion of Platonism and Aristotelianism in the field of aesthetics, where ontological and psychological questions also play a significant role, see Hathaway, The Age of Criticism, 341 ff. ' 7• See Andrea Cesalpino's comments quoted by Fiorentino, Telesio, II, 53 note 1. '

7• Douglas, The Philos. and Psychol. of Pomponazzi, 80 ff. For the possibility several combinations of thought motives depending on the opponent in question Noting that Pomponazzi enters into an alliance with Thomism when it comes to refuting Averroist intellectualism (ibid., 147). Cassirer has aptly remarked that Pomponazzi would bring the biologist Aristotle back into honor against the metaphysician, Individual and Cosmos, 148. On the materialistic tendencies that emerged from radical Aristotleism, cf. Dynnik, Vanini et l'ari stotelisme de Padoue, esp. 83 f., 85 f. On the double relationship of Pomponazzi and Telesius to Aristotle cf. Kristeller, La tradizione aristotelica, 29 ff.

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of equally two-sided Platonism. Here panpsydiism could be deployed precisely against the Aristotle's separation of form and matter, which at the same time removed the original difficulties from the Platonic separation between idea and world. The energetic distancing of the naditridentini sdien Kirdie from Platonic panpsydiism "• forms in itself an eloquent argument for its long-term effect. But when conservative Aristotelians pointed out this side of Platonism, which is dangerous for traditional theology, and when conservative Platonists, for their part, pointed out the actual danger for the If they wanted to inherit religion in the empiricist vein of Aristotelianism, then the dualist position of both of the above-mentioned tendencies was undermined together, even though they often fought each other. The logic of the ambivalence of Platonism and Aristotelianism makes it possible how said, this hö‹:Is complicated and often strange game; But what sets it in motion and keeps it going is the need to somehow give expression to the ideological decision about the enhancement of nature in the absence of an independent language with the help of the existing, ad hoc reinterpreted terminology.

Things are not any less complicated when we think about the debates over the question of method, which became increasingly central in the 16th century. This is where the problem of the influences of Platonism comes into play and Aristotelianism with that of the role of the humanists. The significance of their contribution to the elimination of the non-Sdiolastist-Aristotelian syllogistic as a method has been diminished, even questioned, since research into the sources has made the development and impact of the non-Sdiolastist Aristotelian Aristotelianism of the late Renaissance in its entirety obsolete. As early as the 15th century, an Aristotelian movement emerged that was emancipated from theology and reached its climax in the school of Padua. For obvious reasons, it is particularly linked to medical and biological research, but beyond that, its future-proof achievement lies in the systematic development of a method, following this

"• On this in general, Luporini, La Mente di Leonardo, 81 ff. In the light of these statements, Patrizzi's churchly condemnation must be understood, see Firpo, The Flowering and Withering ..., esp. 278 . '*° Ein €tberbli& rers‹:hafft Sdunitts Critical Survey and Bibliography. Typ pis& for a very positive assessment of the role of padovan Aristotelianism Randall, Paduan Aristotelianism, 199 ff. and Nardi, Saggi sul aristotelismo padovano, passim. The enthusiasm over the discovery of this effect of Aristotelianism led an important Aristotle researcher to the exaggerated thesis that the Middle Ages had misunderstood the true Aristotle, so that he could only be properly discovered and evaluated in modern times (Düring, The Impact of Aristotle's Scientific Ideas, esp. 121, 124 f., 129 f.). The ambivalence of Aristotelianism and thus the (relative) legitimacy of its sdiolastic use is overlooked in this way .

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Aristotle's logical texts. Decisive approaches to the resolutive-composite method are still there in l5. century, whereby Aristotle's demonstrative method is transformed into a method of discovery. Zabarella fafit summarizes and complements these approaches; he identifies logic and method and at the same time separates them from ontology by treating them as the order of knowledge and not of things"'. How close these conceptions were to the mathematically oriented procedure can be seen from the fact that the geometrical the deduction in the - century often with the

aristotelian deduction "'. The clearest proof for the

The importance of this work of the Aristotelian school in the field of method is, however, the usage that Galileo made of the insiders of Zarabellas. The meaning of emancipated Aristotelianism as a whole touches Lidit most vehemently when Galileo finds the valiant words in a single small text not only for his logisdi-methodisdien, but also for his empiricistdi-antiauthoritarian aspect '8 ' . If one looks at the emergence of the new science of science from a formalist-scientist standpoint, one tends to think that the humanist movement has little to do with it, even if it has not benefited it at all '8 ' . This view seems to be confirmed by the theory that the humanists, by concentrating primarily on rhetorical and philological research, surrendered the neuralgic area of cosmology and natural science to the sdiolastism without a fight. Their repeatedly expressed aversion to natural science was coupled with the lack of systematised and durable overall positions in their ranks or with the fragmentation of their movement, so that the loud protests against authority etc. were contrary to churchly Aristotelianism but could not pose a serious threat to it"'; in fact, sdiolastism did not just shrink under the threats of humanism, but even experienced it

in l5. and l•centuries a wet blossom, so that (new) sófiolastics and humanism are not to be seen as chronologically consecutive, but rather as parallel phenomena '••. However, these statements are the problem

..., insb. 186 ff., 196 ff. "' Randall, The Development of Scientific Method "^ Sehiiling, Axiomatisdie Methode 42 f. "° Dialogue I = Works VI1 75 f; Speeches and Demonstrations III = Works VIII, 212. '^ Brief an Liceti vom 15. 9. 1640 = Opere XVIII, 248 f.; cf. Mac&ie Solar II =

Opere V, 138 f. '"' So Thorndike, Science and Thought, 12 f.; Randall, The Development of Scient. Method, 178 f. '•• Kristeller, Humanism and Renaissance, I, 46 f., 93 ff. '^ Prantl has right from a crei&en Na&bliite” of the s&olastis&en logic bxw. of scholasticism in general was mentioned during the Renaissance , Ges‹:hd Logic, IV, 173 ff.

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still not exhausted by the intellectual function of humanism; audi the reference to the editing of the activity of humanists who brought ancient mathematic texts back to life and thus helped the mathematic approach of Platonism to Dur‹fibrudi or methodologically enlivened the discussions '^, is not enough to solve the problem mentioned. The question is whether the general world view and the long-term impact of humanism have contributed directly or indirectly to the formation of the world view decisions that also made mathematics and science possible. Of course, this question is not asked at all by those who follow the development of the method from their formalistic point of view without bothering about its prerequisites. But if one asks the question at all, one must also answer in the affirmative. Although the humanist movement is by no means directed against diriste religion (the example of Valla shows that the relationship to church was not just as untroubled), it as a whole must not be viewed as a fundamentally religious movement or even as a religious reaction against extremely profane religion currents understood '^, but rather has to be attributed to the secularization trend '•*. Since within the world-view complex of modern rationalism, the revaluation of nature and the revaluation of the individual organically belong together"', humanistism had to promote the transfiguration of sovereign man co ipso that attitude which in nature scientific endeavor and through it the liberation of man from old rulership or his own rulership over nature and in the method the irresistible power of the human intellect at work would have appeared. Humanism opens up - in white detours and with resistance always - the subjective world, while the natural sciences the objective World valid madit - and both come after the turn

credited to immanence '*•. With regard to the long-term ideas '•• Schüling, Axiomatic Method, 35 ff.; Dijksterhuis, Me&anisierung des Welt bilder, 250 f. '•• Toffanin in particular tried to present the humanist movement as a &rist1i‹:h spiritualistic reaction against anti-religious, science-friendly tendencies such as e.g. B. to soothe Averroism; most detailed in his history of Hu manism, here and there.

'^ Cf. Kristeller's balanced judgment, which includes both Toffanin's thesis and Nardi's aptly rejects the one-sided emphasis on Renaissance Aristotelianism, Changing Views ..., insb. 37 ff., 4o, 41 f. '•' See paragraphs 1 and 3a of this chapter. '

Gadol's good comments on this, The Unity of the Renaissance, esp. 396 f., 426. Contemplation of nature and consideration of man&li&en belong together in terms of worldview and must influence each other. In an important one Stürner's work has shown that s&on in the 12th-14th centuries. Century the approach to the autonomization of nature with the approach to the autonomization of human actions in the

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For the results - and apart from subjective absidencies or sympathies - it is relatively incidental that humanism and emerging nature science are largely alien to each other or even fight each other; We have seen that in the area of cosmology, Platonic panpsydisism and radical Aristotelianism, despite all their opposition, exist didi achieve comparable effects. Humanism completes the turn towards immanence above all through the demand for existential intensity and immediacy. It forms the starting point or the moral rediting of the humanistic attack against the sdiolastic syllogistic, in which the essence of the sdiolastic polemisdi-unveredit shortened, sarcastic identification of sdiolastic and abstract syllogistic arose ' 8 ', which, as we will see, has also become typical of the Age of Enlightenment. An expression of the demand for existential immediacy is precisely the humanistic (e.g. Valla) juxtaposition of logic and rhetoric, since the object of the latter since Aristotle and Cicero has been the human being in all the glory of his flexible and impressionable passions. Audi emphasizes the experience or the

"Sadien' against the logical abstractions (e.g. Vives) arises from the demand for immediacy and subsequently leads to that antisdiolastist separation of logic and ontology which, as I said, we also encounter in Zabarella."°. It can be assumed that the humanistic discrediting of the sdiolastic syllogistic created the intellectual climate in which the Aristotelians, emancipated from theology, were able, and even compelled, to give Aristotelian logic a different status and a new, "living" function according to modern standards to give it a life diance at all and to demonstrate the vitality of Aristotelianism in general.

The process of implementing the mathematical method in the natural sciences confirms the thesis that Platonism and Aristotelianism are the discourse framework of the transition period or that certain aspects of them only became effective as weapons against traditional theology when they were animated by a new basic attitude towards worldview. However, their classification into a new concept simultaneously caused their atrophy, and beyond

contemporary political philosophy: human forces and motivations are viewed in their immanent roots (nature and society in the thinking of the High and Late Middle Ages, especially 185 ff., 218 ff.). '•• About the humanistic designation of the s&o1astic syllogistic as »bar barisch' etc.s. Garin, The philosophical culture of the rinasc., 466 ff. *°" Cassirer, Problem of Knowledge I, 98 ff. Rhetoric had a completely different status within the intellectual life of the Middle Ages, and its revaluation by humanism was not least an expression of content-related contrasts to scholasticism, s. Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy, 178 ff., 218 f., 226 ff.

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The spradilidy and content-based crystallization of the new world-based position allowed Platonism and Aristotelianism to wither away as wholes of thought or overall views despite the incessant exploitation of their ideas within the new contexts and in view of the new needs. Whatever panpsydiism and radical Aristotelianism may have contributed to undermining theological dualism, the cosmological model of the mathematical sciences of natural science has eliminated both in one fell swoop. — Audi the appreciation of mathematics during the transition period mostly takes place with reference to Platonism, which man which led Forsdier to simply attribute it to the revival of the Platonic tradition in the fight against the dominating Sdiolastist Aristotelianism. Obviously, this is a short-cut. For Platonism, with its predilection for mathematics, had existed for almost twenty centuries, and for most of that time in a spiritually dominant position, without any mathematical or natural sciences resulting from it. The decisive combination of mathematics and physics is only possible on the basis of the conviction or decision that nature is a worthy and manageable, ie completely structured, object of knowledge. In the theological position (regardless of whether it was Platonic or Aristotelian), the certitudo obiecti retained the upper hand over the certitudo modi procedendi. This means two things: God, as the by definition s&first object of knowledge, eo ipso guarantees the most substantive and highest knowledge, even if the human or finite cognitive faculty does not have a completely sidier, worldly&-rational method for grasping this highest object of knowledge. And vice versa: because of its ontological inferiority, nature cannot convey any real knowledge, even if the most perfect methodical means imaginable for the human ability to know were available Discussion about durdisdiauen, which was sparked off in the course of the 16th century by the question of whether the certitudo obiecti or the certitudo modi procedendi was the most important and which, at the latest since the beginning of the 17th century, has increasingly led to the conclusion that certainty of knowledge is higher assign a "'.

This conclusion, however, implies a devaluation of theological metaphysics - whose dignity was based on the dignity of its object - and, accordingly, an appreciation of physics. Why the decision in favor of the certitudo modi procedendi had to be accompanied by an upgrading of physics with the simultaneous application of mathematics to it becomes clear when we consider that in view of the general

'•' Evidence from Schüling, Axiomatic Method, 76 f.

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I am convinced that the first method is mathematics, and that there was no other way to the final rehabilitation of nature than the application of mathematics to physics. One must keep in mind that the theological tradition - Augustinian and Thomas alike - never disputed the thesis that mathematics grants the highest certainty of knowledge, especially during the critical debates of In the 16th century, it was emphasized by theologians that only the basis of cognition, not the basis of being (i.e. not the certitudo obiecti) served as the standard for this evaluation again because of the diristlidian view of the ontological inferiority of the natural lidi-senses. As Thomas says, natural science can never arrive at definitive, completely abstracted knowledge, since its subject itself is moving, that is, impermanent and unsidual"'. In contrast to For you, mathematics relates neither to perceptible matter nor to movement; it is therefore above physics—and below theology". Precisely this intermediate position of mathematics renders the acknowledgment of it as the highest possible certainty of knowledge ultimately empty. One can indeed not much to do with it if, on the one hand, the higher cognitions of theology hardly require mathematics (which still always remains attached to meaning, since, according to Thomas, it is an abstraction from meaning), while on the other hand, mathematics, precisely because of its emphasized superiority Physics is left in the same light without a solid object. From this deterioration of the theological position it becomes clear what the peak of the opposing position was: not the defense of the highest certainty of knowledge of mathematics, which in any case nobody doubted, but the appreciation of nature, namely through the belief that mathematics can be applied to physics, nature matures even with everything that is said to be logically structured and operable, i.e. the object of higher, final knowledge.

The importance of the international diaulidien decision to upgrade the Nature for the advancement of mathematics. Nature knowledge is developed through

the memory of the borders clearly, in which sidi the approaches to a

'"• Typical passages in Augustin, De lib. arbitr. II, 8 $ 21 = PL 32, 1251 f.; Thomas, in Libr. Poster. Analyt. Ezpos., Lib. I, Cap. I, Lect. I , 10, and Chapter XXXI, Lect. XLII, 3 (= Opera I, 140, 310). '•• Na& a formulation of the Jesuit Pererius; quoted in S&üling, Axiom. method, 48. ‘°'

De Trinit., Qu. V, Art. II to 4 (= Opusc. III, 107 f.).

'•* De Trinit., Qu. V, Art. III ad 6 (— Opusc. I II, 115). On the position of mathematics between theology and physics in Aristotle, see Metaph. 1026a6-32, 1061a28-1061b32; De Caelo 306a6-18. Audi for (the later) Plato, mathematics (which is attached to the sense lidiem) stands under dialectics, Politeia 510M511 d.

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mathematisdien Naturbetradit had to hold from the 12th to the 14th century. Through the (neo)platonis the hodis-calculation of mathematics was stimulated and also under the influence of the Biblical and Plotinian cal-dia-metaphysics, the explanation attempts were undertaken, above all in the field of optics mathematis. Denno& also remained within this (neo)platonic approach, just as within the Aristotelian classifications, optics (and with it astronomy and music) one of the mathematica media, ie one of the mathematical fields of knowledge which, because of their application to natural phenomena, belong neither to pure mathematics nor to were attributed to the actual physics. The mathematical analysis of the phenomena remained, so to speak, beyond the phenomena themselves, which incidentally explains why those concerned were only marginally concerned with the experimental verification of their theses. Rather, their attention was directed to questions of method, the discussion of which in turn served to clarify the fundamentals of the relationship to theological cosmology, so that the priorities typical of the theological framework of thought remained untouched. Instead of forming the starting point for a new development, If these methodical investigations had ended up in a final deadlock (because for the time being, ie during the 15th century, they are in any case), Galileo and his contemporaries would not have given the cognitive interest a new direction. However, it was also due to the basic attitude toward the world that the Methodistic insights gained from the 12th to the 14th century were hardly ever exploited. This can be seen in the example of induction, which was conceptually worked out relatively early on and taken seriously on a theoretical level. The main obstacle to its scientific use was precisely the conviction, caused by theological priorities, that physics had to do without measurements or be exact measurements

'•• Crombie, Augustine to Galileo II, 129, 126 f. About approaches to mathematics Naturwissens‹: imprisonment in the 12th—14th Century I, 46 ff., II, 97 ff. It is surprising that the same Crombie who offers a differentiated picture of overall development in the passages cited also wrote the succinct sentence: “the natural philosophers of Latin Christendom in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries created the experimental science of modern times' (Grosseteste, 290). Nevertheless, on the other hand, he must state that the second wave of the knowledgebased revolution is not just a method of disdi-theoretis, but also a purely experimental dimension and therefore also

have a much closer proximity to nature than the first (in the 12th - 14th) left), which is more interested in general methodical considerations; between the two waves there is also a time lapse (Grosseteste, 295 f.). These statements are with the Thesis of the rectilinear development incompatible. Crombie's position is interesting, because they just the unconscious vacillation between the formalist and the histor s&e treatment reflects. Crombie does have an inkling of the meaning of worldview Factors (so spri‹:Ster von direction of interest', Augustine to Galileo, II, 128, 129), but it stays that way.

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in principle impossible or only reserved for God, because concrete nature cannot be reduced to mere quantity, always contains something indefinable. The naturalists of the 14th century did not presume to have that sovereign survey of the concrete natural diversity that their followers in the 17th century allowed with the greatest of self-evidence."' It may sound paradoxical, and it is so, that the world-analysisontology of the total appreciation of nature had to add an ad valuation of the same nature in its qualitative diversity - because only its elimination, ie only the quantification of nature could make it completely operable and therefore also the highest object of cognition Um brudi. The earlier approaches retain their full meaning, especially if one wants to consider the development logisdi-formally. Dennodi became aware of the possibility of their lifting and working - and thus aud: their reinterpretation and modification - after their slumber in the 15th century .century only throughd the clarification of the international question, which took place in many detours, was given. Otherwise they would probably have had a similar fate to that of their valuable heritage from the Hellenistic period, which had to remain buried for centuries since then. The inability of the (neo)Platonistic mathematical approach to bring about the Umbrudi of its own accord is not only testified to by its long, rather unfruitful prehistory of natural science, but also by its extensive absorption in the mysticism and magic of numbers of the Renaissance. This widespread flow is characteristic of the transitional period in two respects. Their refusal to see the highest possible object of knowledge in empirical nature per se, ie without any association with supernatural instances, results not only in the swaying between monism and dualism, but also in stopping at the traditional language, which at the same time under the pressure of the need for a new one it just becomes more confused. For those observations of nature that use the mysticism of numbers, nature does participate in the supernatural (insofar as and

'°' About the problem of measurements and the use of induction

see Maier, Metaphysisdie BACKGROUNDS 397 f.; About the first introduction of mathematical methodology, see ibid., On the border of sdiolastics and natural sciences, 257 ff. Maier uses the term "basic attitude" here (276, note 50) to express the absence of the practical and physical application of the grundsätzlidi known inductive tive method to explain. Audi Grosseteste considered precise measurement in physics to be impossible (Crombie, Grosseteste, 100 ff. ¡ on inductive and deductive procedures in the 12th hs 25 ff., 34 f., 61 ff.). The distrust of the generalization of individual cases and thus of the idea of the uniformity of nature, which Crombie (Grosseteste, 293) explains the non-application of induction, means nothing other than the predominance of the qualitative consideration, since only consistent quantification can the concept of consistent uniformity logical

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the quest for the appreciation of nature and monism has been done), but on the other hand it is in his spirit, it forms his hieroglyph or his symbol. The exploration of nature is therefore equivalent to the deciphering of a hieroglyph, which in turn should lead to the discovery of “true” being. But this is not the mathematically grasped law, which reigns supreme in mere empirical science, but rather the substantially understood original source of the unity and harmony of being; It is not the abstract legality, but rather the ontological substrate that forms the condition of the unity of the world that is to be achieved magically . The task of numerology in the magical process can therefore not be in the formulation of the legality of a quantified world, but in guessing that secret rationality or . Proportionality exists, which is the effect of the substantial primal reason and in which the world is founded in the diversity of its qualities, which is deeply harmonious. The conviction that empirical nature does have a supernatural background (however closely it may be connected to it). can therefore not be an independent and final object of knowledge, blocks the way here for the complete quantification of it and thus also for the implementation of the new mathematics. Because with a complete quantification of nature, there remains no other background for the empiricism than the abstract, That is, there is no legality to be hypothesized - even if one were to assume God as the founder of the same: then his activity would be completely rationally plausible, and the decipherment work in the sense of magical numerology would no longer have an object. It would perhaps be hermeneutic appropriate to see Kepler's development or distancing from number mysticism from this point of view. If, especially in the beginning, the (neo)Platonisdi religious belief in the inner harmony of the universe inspired his research '*', on the other hand he soon transformed the harmony concept into the clearly developed concept of law, in which the need for binding the agility of the universe went against the mysticism of numbers Mathematics emphasizes empiricism analysis, so empiricism is no longer seen as a kind of "lower" reality in the theosophical sense. With this hodisification of the independent cognitive value of

'•* Cf. the comments made by Hönigswald, Italian thinker, regarding Cardano. Renaiss., 99 f. A similar structure of thought also limits the belief in mathematics in Cusanus, whose relation to magic is apparently not so close (see nevertheless Thorndike, History of Magic, IV, 337 ff.) ; see Gandillac, Nicolaus of Cues, 153, 165, 167 f., 170 f. '°° About Kepler's british inspiration in general, see Hübner, Naturwiss. as praise for creation, especially 337, 339 ff., 346. '°° S. Cassirer's analysis, knowledge problem I, 347 ff. It is &aracterist& that Kepler's belief in the inner logic of nature appears in the religious form of belief in the perfection of God's works: chance in nature would be for him nihil aliud nisi contumelia summi et omnipotentis Dei” (De Stella Nova XXVII = GW I, 284). We see here how smoothly the transition from the pla-

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Empiricism combines the abolition of its former substantial background, which feeds the magic of nature; so will e.g. For example, Kepler's Platonic ideas only revealed Ar&etypeii in the sense of mathematical relations. But this also asserts the complete, so to speak, direct recognizability of the completely quantified or conjured universe and thus accessible to the new mathematics: since the laws of mathematics are knowable, indeed inherent in the human reason itself, this brings us closer to the knowledge of the divine to '°'. We encounter the same train of thought in all purity and consistency in Galileo, especially since, according to his own statements, the sudie nadi secret harmonies or the aestheticdi-religious (iieo)platonisdie motif hardly plays a role"'. The focus of his considerations is rather the Elimination of the old metaphysical basis of the empirical world, namely the concept of substance. From what we have said, it should be understandable why the revaluation of nature first took place indirectly by giving preference to the certi tudo modi procedendi over the certitudo obiecti; This is also the case with Galileo '°'. Caution was required, since ultimately God himself stood behind that objectum. But on the other hand, and as soon as this obiectum with all honesty or dutiful expressions of respect were rendered irrelevant in practice, the effort was concentrated primarily on giving the new scientific object of knowledge, to which the alleged modus procedendi should now refer, the full dignity of the old one. Silesslidi is openly asserted—most eloquently by Galileo

—, that the Na

Tonisdi-religiously conceived harmony was the same legal concept in natural science, so that the decisive argument could be made to the latter without shaking the religious convictions of the researcher. (We will talk about the psychologically obvious and reassuring reinterpretation of the topoi in the sense of the new natural science later in this section. See also note 307.) — Audi with Kepler, as with Galileo or already Leonardo, pairs the belief in the inner logic of nature or its ontology with the epistemological appreciation of empiricism: a priori speculations should be "conci liari" with experience, we read in the letter to Hohenburg of December 12th. 7. 1600 = GW XIV, 130.

'°'

Harm. Mundi IV, 1 = GW VI, 216.

•°° Letter to Hohenburg Rome September 14, 1599 = GW XIV, 73. ^° Sagg., 38 = Opera VI, 319; against the number mysticism Dialogo I = Opera VII, 35. •°• Dialogo II = Opera VII, 260 f.; How the development of the concept of substance affects the investigation of physical questions is shown, for example. E.g. in Mac‹: die solari III Opera V, 187 f. For Galileo it is of course‹:h clear which can be the only object of rational or serious thinking: "proprio oggetto della filosofia' sei il gran libro della natura" , Dialogo, Epist. Ded. = Opere VII, 27. '°^ Dialogo I = Opera VII, 128 f. The subject matter of theology is higher, but the certainty of knowledge is greater, we read in the long letter to the Grand Duchess of Toscana from 1615 = Opera V, 324 f .

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ture, just as before the highest object of theological metaphysics, therefore the uiodus procedendi can grant the desired certitudo, because it is itself logically structured, i.e. because it forms a perfectly ordered course "', acts with necessity and is against its own laws violates ••', sid uses the simplest means '°' etc. etc. Nadi (stilled weigender) Elimination of the metaphysisdi-substantial foundation of nature was to be expected to result in its revaluation in a refined sense. For it is precisely in comparison to this original ground that nature or eupiria represents the ontologically inferior, irrational and irremediable. Since it is no longer itself, its essence being distinguished by its simplicity and necessity, mathematics forms the same characteristics is, the self-understood modus proce dendi of the science of natural science - the solidity of which is ultimately based on the firm logical nature of the new high and worthy object of knowledge. In a direct polemic against Aristotelian opinion, Galileo himself establishes the connection between the logical nature of nature and the use of mathematics in natural science, while elsewhere he says that matter can be treated mathematically because it is unchangeable. . Related to these theses is his belief that man can know just as deeply and accurately, i.e. just as intensively, as God, even if man's knowledge must remain much more limited in its extensiveness than divine knowledge. The defense of the uiathematistic ideal of knowledge in natural science is, especially in Galileo, closely linked to the ontological appreciation of nature. This is the reason why the reference to his “Platonism” is by no means sufficient when it comes to explaining his mathematical attitude. It is true that Galileo often refers to Plato when he swears against his sdio lastisdi-Aristotelian opponents the use of the mathematical method in the field of physics. But then he only wants to present and substantiate his own approach, so to speak, historically; he refers to Plato in one in a very general sense and sees him, just like his teachers and his circle, as more of a great symbol of the mathematicsfriendly direction

•°° Dialogo I — Opere VI I, 43. Here you can see that the analysis of concrete natural phenomena, such as e.g. B. the movement, starts from the general thesis of the inner logic of nature. °°' Letter to Castelli dated December 21, 1613 = Opere V, 283. ^^ DISC. ß demonstrated III Opere VIII, 197. '°• Dialogue I — Works VII, 38. -*° Disc. and demonstrated I = Works VIII, 51.

°" Dialogue I = Works VII, 128 f. "' Framm. = Opera VIII, 613 f.; Dialogue I = Oeere VII, 35. ^° Koyre, fatudes galil., III, 117 ff.; Metaph. and Meas., 35 ff. Koyre betont zwar rightly the identity of mathematics and ('true') Platonism, as they say

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a comprehensive system of thought, from whose inner 1ogis&er necessity arises the higher value of mathematics. As an ontology and metaphysics, Platonism is not only unknown to him in detail, but is also valid. The example of Hobbes, who praises Plato's preference for mathematics just as much "', even though as a thinker he stands at the antipodes of Platonism and otherwise hardly finds warm words for Plato "', shows clearly how free or polemic against the sdiolastic Aristotelianism What was meant was the appeal to the mathematical aspect of Platonism and how little it satisfies to be able to call the person concerned a Platonist - if we want to take this word seriously. No more: we have to realize that only the (unconscious) rejection of Platonic ontology leads to the (conscious) appeal to it

Mathematical Platonism possible — and fruitful: tbar — madite. This means, as we know: only the modern revaluation of nature permitted the implementation of the Platonic project of a mathematical science of nature. For for Plato himself, nature, as the lower level of being, contains something irrational and accidental in itself, the dominion of necessity in it is not total; Even the mathematics applied to physics can therefore only determine truths. Despite his contrast with Aristotle on the use of mathematics in physics, Plato is much closer to him than to the great natural scientists of the 17th century when it comes to the crucial question of the extent to which this use can produce completely different results.

Galileo's point of view appears, but he himself makes the mistake of only emphasizing the mathematical component in Platonism, which is why he declares Galileo a Platonist in the absolute sense or without further differentiation. In addition, the difference between magisAem and mathematis: the Platonism that Koyre, again rightly, asserts against Burtt (see note 226 below), does not suffice for a proper overall interpretation; for a distinction must also be made between the importance of mathematics in Plato's metaphysics and in the modern scientific framework: they become (see note 216 below). "• Lex. XLVI = EW III, 668, Six lessons VI = EW VII, 346. Lev. 31 = EW III, 357. °'• Shapere correctly underlined this in his criticism of Koyre's undifferentiated view of Galileo's Platonism (Descartes and Plato, 575). As some passages from Timaeus (46e, 53b, 56c) show, Platonic necessity does not encompass the entire realm of nature, and accordingly the work of the demiurge can only be perfect within certain limits. Die platonis‹:he nature contains an essentially irrational element: nothing in it can be described exactly by reason, and in particular by mathematical concepts and laws; and any deviations from those concepts or laws are inherently inexplicable. True, mathematics enables us to deal fairly well with this world, but still it gives only a 'likely story'. “In regard to this view modern science is profoundly anti-Platonic: it rejects the ‹: aracteristically Platonic view that nature cannot be explained completely by scientific or mathematical laws” "^

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The mentioned connection of the certitudo modi procedendi to the certitudo obiecti with a simultaneous redefinition of this latter was not loudly propagated, partly out of traditional reverence for the old divine obiectum, and partly out of current fear in front of its earthly administrators, but it was worldly ansdiaulidi and logically unavoidable. In their case there is the Koperni canis, the turn in which the belief in the simplicity or logical structure of nature goes hand in hand with the belief in the simplicity as a necessary advantage in the explanation of nature. Copernicus not only considers fixed symmetry to be the most important thing in nature and praises its subtlety, which allows multiple effects to arise from a single cause, but in his eyes it also represents the “ratio ordinis et mundi totius armonia”. decisive argument in favor of the heliocentric hypothesis "'. What bothered him about the Ptolemais system was the ever-increasing complexity, which he was unable to reconcile with his mathematical sense of harmony (and before the development of algebra, mathematics primarily meant geometry) and with his view of the nature of nature. So he tried one Interpretation that required simplicity and symmetry, whereby in many important points he did nothing other than transform the Ptolemy system from the side of the heliocentric hypothesis "'; Kepler even said that Copernicus had Ptolemy rather than nature interpreted *'. However, the phenomena known at the time could also be explained on the basis of the Ptolemaic system and Copernicus did not even succeed in radically simplifying it - to say nothing of the fact that he had no physical explanation for the planetary motion he had described mathematically ,

(Shapere, 574). In this interpretation of the Platonic position, Shapere to such an outstanding Plato expert as Cornford (Plato's Cosmology, 162 ff.) appointed. Audi Cassirer, who generally emphasizes the Platonic moment in early natural knowledge, has pointed out that the prerequisite for the widespread application of mathematics was an ideological reconciliation of viewpoints, which took place in the separation between scientia and sapientia the traditional subjugation of the former to the latter is expressed (Originality of the Renaissance, 51). On the question of the difference between Plato and Galileo, see Crombie's good comments (Augustine to Galileo, II, 152). 1 De Revol. Epistle gave = S. 5: "the most important thing, this is the form of the world and certain symmetry of its parts. ^ 1^ From Revol. I, 10 (= S. 24).

"• De Revol. I, 9 (= S. 21); cf. I, 10 (- S. 26). "° Butterfield, Origins of modern Science, 28, Dreyer, Hist. of Astronomy, 342 f.; Hall, Scient. Rev., 63.

••' Astron. Nova II, 14 (= GW III, 141). Kuhn, Copern. Revolution 180; Hall, Scient. Revol., 65 f. "° Kuhn, Copern. Revol., 170; Dijksterhuis, Me&anisierung, 327 f.

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offered (this explanation was only made by Newton). It is precisely when one considers these southern countries that the effort to create a new interpretation characterized by simplicity and its purely worldly roots become even more noticeable. Because Copemicus made no important new observations and relied largely on the old ones. His attitude must therefore be derived from the Weltansdiaulidian core of the new way of thinking ^', in

•" Kuhn, Copern. Revol., 121, 153¡ Hall, Scient, Revol. 67 f., 102; Butterfield,

Origins, 30 f. ^° °'°

Dreyer, Hist. of Astron., 310. In his challenging Budi, which was not least for that reason fruitful for later research, Bunt pointed

to the Neoplatonisdi-Pythagorean mathematics cult as the intellectual source of the Copernican turn and to the importance of religious-philosophical motives for the development of modern natural sciences (on Copernicus see p. 43 f.). The connection cannot generally be disputed, and it is to Burtt's great credit to have referred to it so nadi drü&1idi. But I think Burtt will win it out of the blue.

He misses a decisive moment because he treats the world view factor in a fairly undifferentiated way, that is, he does not address it at its most po1emic point against an opposing view of the world. The scientific achievements of Copernicus cannot be easily deduced from his Platonism, although this was a subjective prerequisite. Platonism had a long history behind it, during which the Ptolemaic worldview was hardly questioned, and the representatives of natural philosophy of the Renaissance were in turn no less Platonists or Neoplatonists than their contemporary Copernicus, but without therefore adopting his thought process and his ideas conclusions to be reached. In reality, Platonism could not create new perspectives in the long term unless it had consciously or unconsciously merged with the spirit of the new basic attitude towards the world. What is important here is the version of Platonism that best expressed this spirit, and not Platonism itself. The new worldview position was the decisive factor (in Copernicus it was condensed into a suspense of simplicity or clarity), although in the self-image of the individual researcher Platonism may have retained the upper hand as a worldview attitude.'(The feeling of a new beginning in knowledge Incidentally, it began to spread in Copernicus' time and manifested itself in the increasing frequency with which the adjective novus appears in Bn&titles, see Thorndike, Newness and Craving for Novelty, 584 f.). — Because Burtt does not differentiate between the world as a thought structure and the world as content, he makes his position vulnerable. For example, Strong has B. against Burtt, the fundamental difference in character between Platonics and the new understanding of mathematics was worked out (Procedures and Mctaphysics, 4 ff., 15 ff., 185 ff.). Now, however, Strong himself is in the error of assuming that the incompatibility of mathematics in the new sense with metaphysics in Burtt's sense means that metaphysics in general has been eliminated, which means that he implicitly adopts Burtt's undifferentiated view of the latter ma‹:ht. Strong doesn't ask si&ma W. the question, weldies

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which, as I said, the simplicity of nature and the simplicity of the explanation of nature go hand in hand. At the same time, the simplicity of the explanation is intended to express the increased, direct power of the intellect that is now related to nature; It therefore means the revaluation of the subjective side, just as the simplicity or logic of nature itself manifests the revaluation of the objective side , which has been elevated to the status of a hodistic object of knowledge . The As Sdion remarks, the factor 'existential intensity' or feeling of power was represented within the orientation of the modern intellect, among other things, by the sudie nadi the living and the immediate. This is closely related to the preference for what is simple or what can be introduced without much fuss, although rationalism seems to be based on an almost eidetic concept of logos. The simplicity becomes a value and at the same time a weapon against the syllogistis—the reasoning of the sdiolastic. In Galileo and Descartes this important feature of modern rationalism will emerge in all its purity .

As shown, the programmatic connection between mathematics and physics was both a consequence and a support of the ideological-oncological rehabilitation of nature and sensuality in general. We now want to examine certain aspects of this complex of thought in more detail in order to perhaps find an explanation for the paradox that consists in the fact that the world-based diaulidi-ontology, the upgrading of empiricism in the mathematics of natural science - in contrast to other currents of modern rationalism - is not pure Empiricism or even Sensualisoius in the area of epistemology amounted to. This development becomes more understandable when we look at the polemis Consider the function of the alliance between mathematics and empiricism, which completely explains its internal tensions or even contradictions. Leonardo's example can be instructive here. Reason (= mathematics) and experience are both indispensable to him in his fight against (Sdiolian) authority. He argues that experience and not authority is "maestra vera" in order to take the same authority elsewhere from the standpoint of reason: whoever appeals to authority in a controversial issue is using his memory rather than his ,

understanding '. Reason and experience therefore work together in an emancipatory sense and intention; both equally fulfill the demand for liveliness and immediacy. Even more: in both cases the immediacy is transformed into an existing "certezza", which leads to the unfruitful argument about the supernatural

The ideological prerequisites of the new application or conception of mathematics are: we are, however, talking about the belief that nature is structured according to the Logisdi law. '•' Tageb., 12, l4. ^^ place cit., l4.

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should end. The meaning of this latter remark by Leonardo is, however, that the cooperation of experience and reason within the framework of the new way of thinking entails or presupposes the development of that which constitutes the highest and most worthy object of knowledge for the opponent . In order for them to be able to turn together against their common enemy, reason and experience must be dependent on one another at least in some important points. The first aspect of the connection between reason and experience (the second is discussed in the next paragraph) says that only the latter is recognized as a scientifically legitimate object of the former and that the former can only be truly "reasonable" if it is not in things loses, the non si posson dimostrare per nessun essemplo na turale' ^°. The praise of experience is basically a constant reminder of reason, which should and may be its exclusive sphere of activity. And vice versa: Whoever looks for something in experience that is not in it, cannot proceed rationally"'.

The postulate that 'true' reason should remain with experience as its sole object is now supported by the thesis, all knowledge take its beginning from the sensual experience or from the sensations"'. Although the thesis seems to be meant purely epistemologically, the polemical-emancipatory intention lives on in it, which we encountered in the form of the demand for liveliness and immediacy Reference to the 'certezza di ciascuna cosa che passa per li sensi' serves expressly to expose problems like the 'assenzia di Dio e dell anima e simili' as pseudo-problems .However, Leonardo also knows another, richer concept of experience, which is not only the naive-everyday sensual experience, but at least potentially encompasses the entire organized complex of knowledge, within which it is no longer the senses that are decisive, but rather the "truly reasonable" reason in the above-mentioned sense. When he says, the mere intellectual sciences (meaning obviously the syllogistic) do not contain any truth, because they do not contain any experience, he emphasizes in the same style, that no investigation is true science if it does not proceed with mathematical proof, and that certainty can only be had where mathematics is applied or referred to ^ • . What began as sensualism ends as a commitment to reason. The alliance of reason and (sense-

"° loc. cit. 34 (supreme certainty of mathematics), 26 (experience, mother of all certainty). '•• place. quote 36. °°' place. quote 28. °°° place quote 26. °•• ibid. °°• place quote 30.

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li&er) Experience that is closed in combat against the enemy becomes vague and ambiguous now that it is about the relationships between the allies themselves. For where are the binding criteria on the basis of which it can be decided in each concrete case where sensual knowledge ceases to be helpful and mathematics must take precedence? More than that: is it always reliable and usable, or are the mathematical proofs sufficient without proof? Leonardo assures us that without relinquishing experience (in the narrower sense) , one can attain real knowledge if one only knows the Ursadien and follows their effects mentally. The context of this statement is very interesting for the worldwide assumptions of this intellectualistic turn of phrase . Leonardo writes: »Nessun effetto é in natura senza ragione; intendi la ragione e non ti bisogna sperienzia' . Trust in the intellect, then, is based on belief in the logic of nature — or: the epistemological degradation of empiricism is paired with the ontological appreciation of nature. (It was exactly the same within the theological worldview, regardless of whether it was of Platonic or Aristotelian provenance: the sensory experience was meaningless when it came to what was considered the epitome of the divine logic of being, namely God, etc. What the new attitude of the... The old differences are the new determination of the onto logisdi Hödist.) Because nature never breaks its own laws, because it prefers the simplest path, because its guardian is necessity ^', a properly working intellect and experience must agree. it's coming "Only the correct" interpretation of the sensible experience, which in itself cannot be wrong - only our judgments are wrong. Precisely because this is the case, the main interest of the scientist is not in the sensible experience itself, but in its interpretation, the activity of the Reason, indeed the subjection of sensory experience to the postulates of reason. Before we speak of the connection of the two in the sense that experience raises a claim to discrimination as an object of reason and thus claims the truth for itself, the orientation of the reason. The second aspect of the similar connection stands in the demonstration of the supremacy of reason, since experience depends on its interpretation in the light of the postulates of logic and necessity of nature. In all of this there is no feeling that empiricism becomes somehow betrayed, even if reason must distance itself from it and judge it differently than the senses themselves do. For Leonardo, a powerful indication of the empirical closeness of "true" reason, even in the case of an extensive reinterpretation of sensible experience, is the practical application of the insights gained through reason

location since 32. The comments of Luporini, La Mente di Leonardo, 25 f. ^• loc. eit. 32. ibid.

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ten — namely the Tedinik. In it, both mentioned aspects of the connection between reason and experience are discussed. The astonishing similarity of the ansidites of Leonardo and Galileo about the Relationships between reason and experience, although the former was not a scholar of knowledge in the modern sense, while the latter was perhaps the scholar of knowledge par excellence, proves our thesis that the statements, although apparently purely epistemological, have a worldview-diaulidic background or that the debate about them is within the general worldview The conclusions fell so that they only had to be deduced and formulated. As far as our problem is concerned, it doesn't matter whether Leonardo made a contribution in the scientistic-positivist sense"'.

Quite the opposite: the (ridiculous) statement that he hardly contributed anything in this sense makes the world-based anti-Diauli background of his allegations and his theoretical agreement with Galileo - which has never been disputed by anyone and has been worked out by mandiem - emerge more clearly, especially since This agreement does not concern related statements about this or that

— so much so

question, but concerns the train of thought itself, which starts from the same axiomistic assumptions. In Galileo we find in a prominent place the alliance of reason and experience against the authority to which the opponent relies . Not only the autonomy of reason is asserted against them, but at the same time the thesis that the object of this reason is the world sensitive. But not only in this form, but also in the narrower epistemological sense, experience is used as esperienze sensate together with the dimostrazioni necessarie against authority '^. The possibility of stopping at the Sensualis-

'° ® loc. cit. 40. At the same time, both the leading role of knowledge in relation to practice (la scienza é il capitano e la pratica sono i soldati) and the rooting of mathematical knowledge in mechanics (la mecanicca it is the paradise of the mathematical sciences, but with that we come to the mathematical fruit). ^°

Randall emphatically denies this, The Place of Leonardo, 192 f. Sdion before Olsd ki, Literatur der Technik, 410 ff. On the other hand, Luporini, La Mente di Leonardo, I. Chapter, which continues Ruggiero's argument against Ols&ki's view (La Cultura Scientifica del Rinascimento, in: La Critica, XXVI, 1928). In general, the balanced judgment of v • Jaspers is to be agreed (Lionardo as a philosopher, 20 ff.). ’*°

Cassirer, Erkenntnisproblem I, 318 ff.; Mondolfo, Figure and idea, 3 ff. "' Dialogue II — Works VII, 139: come on with the reasons and with the demonstrations ... not with texts and naked authorities, however our discourses have to be around the sensible world". '•' S. the letter to the Grand Duchess of Toscana from 1615 = Opera V, 341 f.; cf. Macchie Solari II = Opere V, 139 und Sagg. 48 = Work VI, 339, 341.

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This must be concluded from the application of mathematics to physics, which for its part, as we know, in Galileo and Leonardo is equally theoretically based on the belief in the logic or necessity of nature. Dadurdi created the prerequisite for turning to intellectualism. In Galileo, for reasons to be discussed later, it takes on the whole a much more extreme form than in Leonardo, which only shows what the inner tendency of systematic natural science was . From the belief in the inner logic or truth of nature (dialectically, the terms natura' and pvero' are used by Galileo sometimes side by side and equally synonymously '^), there is at least in both cases the certainty that one can sensate osservazioni durdi discorso substitute "'or the knowledge of the origin is sufficient to predict the effects, without any recourse to experience"'. Proper thinking can even be superior to experimental procedures, since these are often exposed to randomness or factors that impede, even distort, its course. Because an effect is necessary, its occurrence can also be asserted without experiments. The thought experiment thus takes the place of the fact-adilidien. But not only this, but also the essential scientific process, the hypothetical process, only becomes possible through belief in the necessity or logic of nature; for the complete rationality of

the hypothesis is a prerequisite for its establishment and at the same time an anticipation of its tenability in the face of the assumed rational and manageable behavior of nature, so that even an empirical falsification does not call into question the theoretical validity of a demonstration based on a hypothesis distrust of nature would result in narrow-minded empiricism, i.e. an eternal stopping at induction; also because of the practical impossibility of exhausting all individual cases one after the other, pure induction would not only be unattainable, but also useless "'.

It must not be assumed that Galileo would thereby succumb to extreme intellectualism. Not just the polemic sense of appeal to experience, not just his ever-wavy feeling for the relationships between knowledge and knowledge, but also and precisely his belief in the inner, if often secret, logic and thus reliability of empiricism

'•° Disc. e Dimostr. I = VIIl, 131. ••• place cit., 105. -** Disc. and Demonstration IV — Works VIII, 296. '•• Brief an Ingoli (1624) = Works VI, 545 f. "* Dialogue II — Works VII, 171. °•^ Brief an Carcavy vom 5. 6. 1637 = Opere XVII, 90 f. '^° Consid. apart. to the book of Mr. Vincenzio = Works IV, 701.

°•° Olsdiki, Galilei, 148 ff.

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prevents him from doing so. For him too, as earlier to a much lesser extent for Leonardo, it is important to correctly interpret sensory experience. Because alone it can only show whether something is, but not in what way or why it is "'; as the senses are often deceived, they are to be corrected by reason, which, by mathematically explaining the cause or course of a phenomenon, reveals the reasons for the delusion of the senses'*. This interpretation of sense experience is known to have progressed to the separation between primary and secondary qualities. If the qualities perceived by the sense organs only exist in us, then only shapes, numbers and movements remain as reality "'that the book of nature is written with geometric figures'^. The questioning of sensory experience raised enormous epistemological problems, so that One important source of modern epistemology must be seen in it (the other is the question of the limits of human knowledge, which arose automatically as a result of the polemically necessary rejection of the old concept of substance and the knowability of substance); this could only be done by accepting these difficulties but to arrange the world or matter in such a way that mathematics could be applied to physics. Ubi materia, ibi geometria, Kepler had already postulated "', with which he announced the transformation of matter from quality into quantity, that is, into something homogeneous and measurable." '. Thus, paradoxically but logically, the defenders of the traditional worldview were often able to emerge as defenders of the qualitatively concrete and use the argument of immediacy or liveliness in the sense of their own views. It was most ironic that the rehab

°•' Koyr e seems to overlook this connection when he emphasizes Galileo's intellectualism somewhat one-sidedly (Etudes Galil. III, 126, 128). On the other hand, the good comments of Clavelin, Philos. nature. de Gal., 428 ff., 434 f. °^• Brief an Liceti vom 23. 6. 1640 = Opere XVIII, 208. •^ Brief an Leopoldo (1640) = Opere VIII, 511; Dialogue II = Opere VII, 280 ff.; Of hell. in the orb of the moon - Opere III, 393 ff. •^ Essays. 48 = Works VI, 350, 347. •^ Sagg. 7 = Opera VI, 232; Elsewhere (letter to Liceti from January 1641 = Opere XVI II, 295) Galileo writes that the Bu‹:h of philosophy (so this time not the Bu& of nature) was written with geometrical figures, which, however, implies that for him, knowledge and the world belong structurally together. How Galileo's separation of primary and secondary qualities made the basic insights of ancient atomism fruitful can be seen in Löwenlieim, The Influence of Democritus, especially 253 ff. ••• Quoting from Cassirer, Problem of Knowledge I, 351 Note 2. The mathematical intention also moves Kepler to replace the soul with force, although the direct physical gain from this is not exactly great, Dijksterhuis, Me&anisation, 347. ^* S. Cassirer's beautiful presentation, Problem of Knowledge I, 387 f. ¡ cf. Maier, Metaph. Backgrounds, 340 f.

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The development of meaning within the natural sciences could not be achieved by relying on direct experience . Sensibility only proved to be a worthy object of knowledge in the fight against sdiolastism if it allowed itself to be grasped by mathematics. But thematic analysis showed its full power in the description of pure relations that never appear in direct experience. Meaningfulness as an object of knowledge therefore has logically comprehensible structures (without this assumption, the science of natural knowledge is unthinkable - which is why, in order to develop it, it requires a fight against the thesis that only the unum verum bo num is capable of absolutely logical comprehension), while sensibility as a faculty of knowledge seems to be misleading. It therefore had to be more or less put aside, which happened precisely in the name of the worldbased belief in the logical structure of the world in general and thus ultimately also of sensuality. For the rehabilitation of meaningfulness in the sense of natural knowledge, W. completely eliminates the thesis that empiricism is a more worthy or extra-dilievable object of knowledge. Epistemology and empiricism do not essentially belong here, as is the case with the rehabilitation of meaning through the other wing of modern rationalism. In this way, the turn to mathematical intellectualism in the science of natural science is carried out with a clear conscience and is not treated as a abandonment of empiricism or even a return to the syllogistis-deductive method of the opponent as was often the case in the 18th century in the fight against Cartesianism. For the basic difference to the opponent consisted in the determination of what was considered the most humble and seditious object of knowledge, and the dispute over the method was only the inevitable accompaniment of the world-based contradiction. As long as this remained alive, no feeling of betrayal against empiricism could arise: since Veräditer of empiricism was by definition the opponent, every attack (even intellectually led) against him also by definition constituted a defense of empiricism. Why Galileo went the way of mathematics with such consistency

can be better understood if one takes into account the intensity and irreconcilable nature of his polemic, which sought to destroy the old cosmology as a whole and replace it with a new whole . Everyday experience did not refute Aristotelian world view, and no observation could refute it as long as the way of looking at it or the basic attitude did not change. It is therefore not surprising if the attack against Aristotleism consisted primarily in the criticism of his theories, which, however, was not supported by reference to Tatsadien; the criticism of the Tatsadien was a chapter for sidi, and only much later was a fundamental connection between

^^ Butterfield, Origins, 4 f.; about the relationship between the point of view and Data selection and utilization Kuhn, Structure scientific Revol., 161 ff.

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sdien these two types of criticism produced ^'. Tydio Brahe, who was the first to systematically begin collecting empirical material in the field of astronomy, remained an opponent of Copernicus and tried to save the geocentric construction with his own system, while Kepler, who was able to utilize Brahe's material, did so The conclusions are not our own. The theoretic path of empiricism is shown by the deutlidist where, as with Telesio, it emerges most radically precisely because it is essentially not just an epistemological position, but rather a world-wide confession or an act of rebellion against it Authority and its metaphysics represents "'. The empiricist Telesio places mathematics under physics "', but at the same time remains with Aristotelian cosmology or stand with geocentrism. Even opponents of mathematics like Bruno*' had to emphasize that the old world view cannot be refuted by the sense data and the movement of the earth around the sun cannot even be proved"'. Characteristically, Galileo attacks the unreliability of the senses precisely when it comes to the Copernican theory. Galileo's consistent mathematical turn comes from the belief that a new cosmological whole cannot be established through mere empiricism. But it is precisely the effort to create a unified whole that determines his entire thinking. It even overshadows the interest in providing flawless evidence with regard to the details. If necessary, he ignores the individual problems that arise in the effort to achieve a unified whole in order not to detract from his central idea. Dadurdi reserved the foundation of classical mechanics to Newton, but Galileo presented the new world view as a convincing, all-round alternative to Aristotelian-sdiolastic theory be the first to apply '•'. In other words, the polemic sdie is very strong in his thinking; he understands his positions as opposing positions and avoids the open, clear comparison nt&t. Not only the title of the main work 'Dialogo sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo' confronts the reader with an unavoidable decision, since obviously tertium non datur, but also the dialogical form of the same is anything but mere pla-

'*° Hall, Scient, Revol., XV. °•° About Brahe and its geocentric system Dreyer, Hist. of Astron., 359 ff., Kuhn, Gopern. Revol., 200 ff. '°' About this aspect of Telesio's empiricism, Gentile, Telesio, 64 f. -°^° De rer. born VIII, 5 (= III, 99 f.). '•• Cena, V = Opere I, 112 f.: It is one thing to play with geometry, another to verify with nature'.

•^ De länfinito I = Opere I, 288 f.; De immenso I, 4 and II, 8 (= OL I, , 214 u. 285).

°^ Dialogue II = Opere VII, 280 ff. Gillispie, The edge of objectivity, 50.

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tonisdi-humanistisreminiscence; it reveals the polemical point and thus also the existential intensity of Galilean thought. He is not concerned with partial improvements and new readings of the text, but with the 'nuova filosofia' as a whole; he wants nothing less than "rifar i cervelli degli uomi ni'"'. And he knows exactly who is standing in his way: the deliberate use that he makes of the word "avversario' madit"', speaks eloquently for it. The mathematical science of natural science abolished the ontological and epistemological dualism that had previously served as the dominant force. Because the quantification or The mathematization of empiricism raised its knowledge to the level of complete certainty, which was previously reserved only for the higher, i.e. intelligible, being, and thus made the intuition, at least per implication, a true being, i.e. being marked by necessity. A unification of the world picture was achieved through this The leveling of the old hierarchies, which were based on the opposition between the intelligible and the sensible, was the result, as it became apparent in the separation of the higher, heavenly region of the ancient-Duistlidian cosmos. Galileo's groundbreaking achievement does not ultimately consist in the connection that he between astronomy and mathematics of physics. He underpinned the heliocentric system through a physicalist conception and thus unified the world view; neither the - despite their fruitful germs - lean Copernican argument nor Kepler's bias in the concept of the cosmos could force this Durdi brudi ”'. Durdi the thesis that the physical laws that apply on earth are just as important for the celestial bodies, he destroys Aristotelian Di-Ptolemaic's division of the universe into two very different regions "' and brings the decisive standard to the conception of the world as a unified one, ie durdi The whole is regulated by a uniform law. A pointed formulation by W. Heisenberg, based on Newton, could perhaps make the significance of this argument clearer: “Today we can hardly imagine what an extraordinary experience it was for the researchers of that time It must be to recognize that the movements of the stars and the movements of bodies on earth can be traced back to one and the same simple system of laws; anyone who has not felt a little of the significance of this miracle can never hope to gain anything from it to understand the spirit of modern natural science.

'•' Dialogue I = Works VII, 82. °^ Particularly typical of this polemical attitude is the one that is also important in terms of content Point in the letter to the Grand Duchess from the year l61f = Opere V, 341 f. ••e Boutroux, On the Idea of Natural Law, 13f f.

-'° Koyre, Metaph. and Measurement, 8, 11. °" Dialogue I = Works VII, 62 ff. * 7 ' Heisenberg, Changes in the Foundations, 32.

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Audi founded the new theory of movement in the world-wide appreciation of nature and made a significant contribution to the unification of the worldview. Since, according to Aristotle's own argument, the explanation of movement represents the be-all and end-all of the explanation of nature in general, the implications of the rehabilitation of nature had to come into being primarily in the new theory of movement if the core of the opposing view was to be fatally struck. Ontological dualism and the metaphysis-related superiority of rest over movement were closely linked in Aristotle. The polemis, the reversal of both parts of his position, results, at least in the long term, in a resolution of that dualism in that the unmoved mover is initially put out of service and then eliminated, as well as a primacy of the Movement as the life principle of nature compared to the calm that reaches its absolute climax in the transcendent. The victory of movement over rest therefore means the victory of rehabilitated nature over the old transcendence. With Aristotle, however, rest was not just a prerequisite for movement (in the double sense). sense of the unmoved mover "' and that stationary point with the help of this and in relation to which movement takes place in general and is recognized as a solid "'), but also the natural ': ever, if also the temporary end of the same "'. In the Aristotelian-Sdiolastist tradition, the metaphy-conditioned superiority of rest is reflected in the view that within nature, which is always moving as a whole, the bodies strive to regain rest in their respective locus naturalis ^'. From the polar opposite reversal of this view arises the new thesis that not rest, but precisely movement, can be the natural state or, as Galileo says, the "natural inclination" of a body. The reinterpretation of the principle of inertia confirms and seals this dramatic change.

While the Aristotelian di-sdiolastic principle of inertia assumes that a body tends to remain in a state of rest when it is in it and to come to it when it is moving, the modern asserts that

-'° Phys. 200 b 12—15. "• Phys. 256 ab. "^ Düring, Aristoteles, 337 f. "• Although motion in nature as a whole is eternal, each individual motion has a beginning and an end (Solmsen, Aristotle's System, 224). Only circular motion can last forever (Phys. 241 b 18-20), which otherwise is the first movement at all (Phys. 260 b 15 ff. and 261 b 27 ff.). However, the rule in nature is the alternation of movement and rest (Phys. 254 ab). How are the two doctrines of the eternity of Wieland discussed (The Eternity of the World, 299 f.)•

°" Maier, Metaph. Backgrounds, 369 f. "^ Macdiie solari II = Opere V, 134. Ibid. states that this movement arises ,per intrinsic principle and without the need for a particular external motor.

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that a uniformly moving body does not strive for a state of rest, but on the contrary wants to remain in motion '•. Something radically new is implied here , which had to break even the most conservative boundaries of the traditional world view , as can be seen from the comparison between the modern principle of inertia and the Luipetus theory, this most daring step within the sdiolastist framework . Attempts to derive the former from the latter without further ado do not only overlook the formal-structural differences between the two, but also the enormous change in the world's diaulidian attitude that occurs in between. In contrast to the self-preservation of movement in the newer inertia principle, the impetus theory assumes the necessity of a movement both for the extraction and for the preservation of the movement; What distinguishes the dialastics of Aristotle's * century is theirs Reluctance to assume an internal motion where no external force could explain a definite movement. But the luipetus remains the origin of the movement, which must stop when it stops (Buridan's thesis of the permanence of the impetus did not abolish this causal relationship), while the movement according to the modern principle of inertia is itself perpetuated."° This difference The question of the (permanent) necessity of movement reflects the different general assessment of the autonomy or autarky of nature. Because of the impetus theory alone, one could not arrive at the decisive thesis, movement, in the 1st century and rest cannot be the natural state of a body. had the rest still not lost their ontological status because the throne of the unmoved

Bewegers nodi always stood there unshaken. It is noteworthy that within the more or less monistically oriented currents of the transitional period, the primacy of calm remained largely unchallenged, at least in theory, precisely because of its close connection with the traditional -*° Nadi of a formulation by Maier, An der Grenz von Scholastik, 18 p. Significantly, Kepler, who introduced the terminus pinertia', sticks to its old one sense (Crombie, Augustine to Galileo, II, 202), so that Newton can no longer understand him (Koyré, Newt. Studies, 70, note 1).

'^• Maier, precursor of Galileo, 64 ff., 132 ff., 142 f.; Two basic problems, 306. Maier's theses refute Duhem's straightforward view that Syst. du Monde VI II, 200ff. '•' Not only for Ficino (Kristeller, Die Philosophie des MF, 160), but also for Cusanus, rest is more perfect or a prerequisite for movement (via the Movement as an explication of rest Doct. Ign. II, 10 = works I, 60). The amalgamation of impetus and spiritus in Cusanus is intellectually interesting, with im Ans&luß to the Platonic togetherness of soul and movement (Phaedr. 245 c) the secondary tendencies of Aristotelian theory of movement are overcome in a panpsy-fiistic direction (cf. Gandillae, Nikolaus ron Cues, 77 f.). In Leonardo's case, too, the autonomy of the movement is gained not least via the detour of panpsychism (Luporini, La Mente di L., 67 f.).

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Conception of God's sovereign immutability. Just as here and in all halfmeasures approaches to valorizing nature were unmistakable and in whatever way they contributed to the development of that world-dialed attitude that was indispensable for the new natural science - so the impetus theory also contained approaches that were considered valuable The impulses could be understood and further developed, especially after the original sdiolastis, the framework within which the impetus theory emerged and to which it was logically bound, had ceased to be self-understandable or, in the absence of an alternative, ineluctable. The fundamental logical-structural difference of the impetus theory from the modern principle of inertia does not constitute an obstacle to a general effect of the former in favor of the latter - for the simple reason that the effectiveness of a conception does not necessarily - if at all - depend on strictly rational factors is determined. If the reinterpretations of an older idea often prove to be legally necessary or tactically expedient and au& succesful '^. The contribution of the new theory of movement to the unification of the world view becomes understandable if we consider the connection between the old cosmos and the aristotelian dualistic cosmos. Since the movement of the different bodies in the earth, according to Aristotelian assumptions, could only be explained by the assumption that the center of the earth was also the center of the universe, Aristotelian theory of motion was consistent with geocentrism and at the same time with the idea, of a finite universe connected, since an infinite could obviously have no center. The final universe also had to represent a plenum, since the vacuum should have made a transfer of movement, which according to Aristotle can only take place through contact, unpossible.'••. In contrast, the new theory of movement justifies

which, as I said, leads to the thesis of the self-perpetuation of the movement

° ®° This overlooks e.g. T. Maier, because she concentrates - with great success, by the way - on elaborating the formal-structural difference between the impetus theory and the inertia principle. And Dennodi herself points out the repeated use of the impetus theory in the 16th century (Telesio, Bruno and also Galileo) against Aristotelianism, even though the S&olastics had declared their claim on it (Two Basic Problems, 304 f. ) . This is a sure indication of their possible function, even if not, as Maier rightly emphasizes, of their logical structure. Characteristic is also Galileo's misunderstanding of the old and new concept of impetus (Two basic problems, 310; cf. Clavelin, La Phil. nat. de Gal., 259 f.) as well as Thomai's rejection of the impetus theory (Two basic problems, 138 ff . ) . . Dijksterhuis is therefore right when he distinguishes between the logical and the effective aspects of this question (Me&anization, 205 f.).

On Heaven, 296 b 8 ff.

Phys., 213 a 12 ff.

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runs, a completely different cosmology: that of the infinite universe"', in which there is no longer a center and also no separation into a changeable sublunary and an imperishable celestial sphere - a separation which in turn is associated with the idea of the finite world or of this The Sdii‹:ksal of this latter is of particular interest for our question, since its fall under the beginning of the end of pure spirit (vöy a‹$ vojae‹»9 ) . means the suffering of the rehabilitated nature or sensuality

It is immediately clear that its radius of action is determined by the principle of inertia, at least insofar as its moving effect does not have to continue - as it had to according to —, Aristotelian conditions - but can be limited to a first, one-off impulse. The meaning and function of the first mover therefore change drastically. But now this relaxation of God's relationship to the movement raises its teleological character. As Aristotle himself says, his theory of movement was not ultimately intended as a defense against materialism, which was expressed, among other things, in the connection between movement and entelediy or expediency. If the Aristotelian movement had a beginning and a goal1, the new one is just as free as it is incessant1i‹:h; it even becomes two&free precisely because it is unceasing — ceaselessly1i‹:h and all-encompassing. The logical end of this development can be found in a younger contemporary of Galileo's, who did not shy away from the consequences he had learned: Hobbes "'. For him, rest actually no longer exists as the opposite of movement; rest and movement are just opposite names, because in reality there is no rest in the movement, but only movement in the way.^' From this it must be concluded that rest can only be brought about by resistance, which must itself be movement^'

•"^ Koyré is known to have laid the core of the scientific revolution of the 16th-17th centuries. century as a turning point from the closed world to the infinite universe. He also hints at the philosophical and ideological background of this turn of phrase (On the closed world, 8, 12), although unfortunately he does not go into detail about it. Kepler's rejection of the infinity of the world (63 ff.) and Galileo's wavering position on this question (especially 94 f.) are particularly interesting because of their decidedly metaphysic reasons. Koyré rightly insists on Bruno's role in this process (46 ff.), which confirms our thesis about the intellectual impact of Renaissance natural philosophy. ®° De Caelo, 279 b 4 ff. °•' Metaph. 998 b 22 ff. °^ Phys. 200 b 25 ff.; 224 b—225 a.

•

"Galieus was the first to open for us the first gate of all physics, nature." motus', De Corp., Ep. Ded. = OL I (without Seitenzahl). De Corp. II, 9 $ 7 — OL I, little. •°' So Tönnies, Hobbes, 141. Spragens gives a good overview of Hobbes' theory of movement and its central importance for his overall thinking in the 2nd chapter.

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Movement now produces rest - not the other way around. A fortiori, movement can only be brought about through movement "'; the first mover can therefore no longer be immobile, and thus he inevitably loses his old dignity. For even if one were to assume that God is actually the first mover (Hobbes also gives it (though hardly any effort is made to prove this), then it would have to move and thus be a body like any other. In connection with his view that only bodies can exist as parts of the universe, Hobbes comes to the conclusion that God is either a part of the universe universe or this itself ^'. In the latter case it is practically eliminated anyway; but the former also has important implications that cannot be overlooked, which the consistently thinking Hobbes must have seen, although he understandably denies them. God is necessary If it is only a part of the universe, then it cannot possibly exist before it and not have existed there; the part cannot exist before the whole of which it is a part.

Only through the implementation of the mathematical method and the subsequent unification of the world view did the new world view, based on the rehabilitation of nature and sensuality, present the basic attitude in the form of a well-founded and coherent intellectual structure that could have competed with the ruler . An ideological reason This attitude can be impossible to maintain in the long term if it is inadequately rationalized - all the more so if the opponent can understand behind such a solid theoretical wall as, for example, B. formed Thomism. It must be able to be convincing in polemics, which does not always and necessarily depend on its truth content nor on the stability of its inherent criticism of the opponent's positions: enough if it appears as an all-round and at the same time accepted alternative Sudie nadi der

( Inertia and the End of the finite Cosmos”) seines Buches The Politics of Motion, 52 ff. °°• By Corp. II, 9 $ 7 = OL I, 110. °°° Answer to Bramhall = EW, IV, 349. '°' In other words, the promising alternative must be a paradigm or at least clearly imply one. Kuhn's scientific research have confirmed this view of the function of the paradigm. A core point of his analysis is the thesis that the act of judgment that leads scientists to reject a previously accepted theory is never based solely on a comparison of that theory with nature. The decision to reject one paradigm is always at the same time the decision to accept another, and the judgment that leads to this decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other" (The Structure of Knowledge Revol., 110 f. Kuhn's statements about the structural similarity between political and scientific debate are very interesting (128 ff.). Now Kuhn tends to reduce the change in the natural science paradigm in the early modern period to intellectual factors or at least to exclude it to con-

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Truth takes place in the context of the fight against an opponent, and since this stands in the way of the truth, the latter necessarily becomes polemisdi; That's precisely why it has to be presented in the form of a systematic theory

center, and in this respect objections to his position are not entirely unjustified (the objections were recently raised by Wolff, Ges&. der Impetustheorie, 48 ff., who in turn takes up older Marxist approaches; see above all Zilsel, The Social Origins 49 ff., 88 ff., and the somewhat more differentiated view of Bernal, Science in History, 253 ff.; 1ehrrei&, if you look at it as a third party, there still remains the controversy between Borkenau, the transition from Rome to the bourgeois. Weltbild, esp. 1 ff., and Grossniann, Die gesellschaft&. Basics, esp. 190 ff., 210 ff.). Against an orthodox Niarxist interpretation, however, it can be asserted that the broadly indisputable connection between paradigm change and te&nik-related practice in the 17th }h. nt&t may be interpreted in the sense of the reflection theory. As Wolff himself remarks (58), the initiators of the paradigm change - despite Galileo (see fn. 250), one has to say - were not always familiar with or interested in developments in the field of medicine. So the sa&e is much more complicated before si&. Within the fermentation process, which is triggered by social changes on several levels at the same time, the need for a new overall attitude or a new paradigm is felt by several unequal groups and individuals, so that the formulation and satisfaction of this need is not (only) possible through which are directly affected by the latest developments, but can also be tackled by scholars with heterogeneous motivations. As it is clear that this motivation cannot trigger the social fermentation process, it can be shown on the other hand that the logical structure of the new (which, by the way, is unconsciously presupposed even in purely sociological or Marxist undertakings and guides them with an unseen hand) nt&t by investigating the world of thoughts of those subjects who directly bear the change in an area that is considered central, but can only be determined and understood by& engaging with intellectually stunted and interesting people. Bruno (I deliberately use this extreme example of foreignness to technology and mathematics) means more for the phjrsiognomy of the Umbrudian period than the rielleidit pious-katliolis&e attitude of a craftsman familiar with the latest machines from Rome at the end of the 16th century. One should therefore avoid both the hermeneutic sterility of the theory of reflection and the misleading one-sidedness of researchers oriented towards ideas. The conceptual elaboration of a worldview beyond the constraints of the reflection theory has audi, as the analysis here hopefully shows, not least with regard to the understanding of sociological: rtc

Factors gain their advantages by recognizing the po1emis&e value of the all-round paradigm. The polemic conclusion leads to generalization and not the increasingly abstract results of technology-related practice. Because the polemis&e is authoritative, especially in a 1ogis& consistent form, scholars without tedinis&e experience have been able to design easily usable natural knowledge&aftlidie paradigms. In my opinion, it was precisely the bias in the reflection theory that prevented Forsdier from sadilidizing the concrete role of the polemic

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alternative, which far exceeds the scope of perfectly formed knowledge: otherwise it would be denied its all-roundness, this inestimable weapon. This view could be confirmed, at least ex contrario, by the reception of the Copernican thesis. Their establishment did not bring about a downfall and even remained largely unnoticed in learned circles until the beginning of the 17th century. The heliocentrism thesis implied a lot of new things, both in terms of method and physics, but this was developed very little, if at all, consistently by Copernicus. This thesis was not an obvious threat to the balanced and all-round world view, which can explain why it was received with benevolent interest even in certain Catholic circles , it had to appear as a component - perhaps the most spectacular one - of an overall conception of cosmology that challenged the rulers across the board, quite apart from the fact that it actually required a whole new cosmology to completely justify itself.

Since the first comprehensive solution of the new world view was achieved and won in the field of natural science, the natural knowledge model had to acquire a general paradigmatic significance, in two respects. Methodologically, the collaboration between experience and intellect was noticed, whereby the primacy of the latter in the cognitive process was in no way impaired by the appeal to the former, while the new world view, this time viewed as a structure, was based on the numerous friends of the new world view who were not scientists. an almost magical effect vermodite. A close connection was of course established between these two meanings (methodological and structural) of the natural science paradigm. It was assumed that the harmony of the structure, which is considered a value, could only be achieved through the application of the natural science method. This explains why Spinoza ignored the more recent Bible, which focused on the value of religious harmony

appreciate. — In this context, the important book by Specht must also be mentioned, which preferentially portrays the nature of paradigmatic or systemic subjective worlds that can differ from those of other subjects in terms of content, although they fulfill similar functions (innovation and consequential burden, especially 21 ff., 50 ff.). Ida would only object that Spe&t is content with the correct, but almost tautological, one might say, statement that the variety of philosophies can be justified with the variety of subjective worlds of their own and explanatory contexts (25), without looking at the causes of this double variety enter into. That's at least one reason why the role of polemicist is hardly mentioned directly in his work.

•• Stimson, The Gradual Acceptance, passim.

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Reference to the naturwissensdiaftli method has wanted to justify. (This point of view prevailed in the 19th century, although of course the mature, ie Newton's, model of nature was now in front of our eyes.) Characteristically, the demand (and raised by theologians) for the application of the model was applied early on axiomatisdien method directly against the sdiolastisdie disputatio in utramque partem, which was denounced as the originator of unfruitful disputes and therefore of skepticism. The methodology with which the natural knowledge diaftli':je model was seen to be connected was therefore alone able to counteract the tendency to To put an end to the skepticism that arose from the insight into the unfruitfulness of those struggles that were waged in the name of absolute or religious truths. But also that skepticism that, in the eyes of many, was at least negatively related to the former and in the denial of every absolute truth, this thinking could only be cured by mathematisdiaxiomati. In the 16th century, this ni‹:st was only used against the teachings of moralistic relativism or private (libertinism) or politisdien (Madiavellism) immoralism called for "'. We will come back to this in the discussion of the natural speech of the 17th century. It should be noted that the matheniatisdi-axiomatisthe methodology is precisely was considered suitable to support normative statements at a time when, due to the emergence and spread of a skepticist tendency among the nihilistic people, it fell to modern rationalism as a soldier and as a whole. In accordance with the polemic needs of this concrete situation, the image of a unified whole is created, which is obtained through an intellectualist-oriented method that avoids the skeptical implications of extreme empiricism and, from a structural point of view, is subject to a few simple laws mere fact, but also as a value, as a model worthy of imitation, which should be the basis for all attempts to shape life worthy of humanity. Here the paths of nature and morality cross in the process of rationalizing the new worldview. Only as a systematically organized whole could the new nature achieve knowledge-philosophical status, that is, become capable of connection with normative statements in such a way that the value scale of the new world view

Tractatus VII (=Opera III, 98) : "I say that the method of interpreting Scripture by hand differs from the method of interpreting nature." ^' S. z. B. d'Alembert's comments on the scientific treatment of histo research Materials, Elements III u. V$VI Works II, 24 ff., 103 ff. °•^ Evidence from S‹:hüling, Axiom. Method, 78 ff. '•• Evidence in S‹:hüling, Axiom. Method, 94 ff.

°°• Representatives of epistemological empiricism were clear about its skepticism's consequences early on, see Cassirer's analysis of Campanella's epistemology, epistemology problem I, 245. The problem of skepticism will be present in all future epistemologies: hen disputes play a central role.

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could appear as a necessary component of a solid explanation of the world and thus as firmly founded: the all-roundness of the value scale requires the all-roundness of the world explanation. The creation of a methodically gained, systematic and powerful whole was therefore the most important contribution that natural science made to the new world view. (We disregard the importance of a general orientation framework for scientific research in detail here.) The natural science dialogue model expanded its tactical and ideological advantages by effectively countering the verdadit of atheism. In a time in which belief in morality and belief in God are still largely degenerated (since this identity is no longer selfevident for everyone today, we must strive to grasp their unbiased logic and history if we want to change the intellectual climate and To some extent understand the spiritual struggles of the early modern period ) , the verdadit of nihilism could not be convincingly refuted without a theorizing, as was always done, of the belief in God . It was precisely the very forward-thinking approach of the representatives of the natural science diaftli model (even Hobbes, as we saw, only dared to hint at certain implications) and thus his at least externally relatively conservative character in this regard, which gave him the tactical agility and potential for success at a time when which, as must be repeated, atheism and nihilism are the two sides of the same coin.

It is questionable whether a bluntly atheistic model of nature could have been accepted so clearly in the world and socially under the conditions that prevailed at the time. Apart from the considerable inner shortcomings of the monistic currents within the natural philosophy of the Renaissance, there was above all the dangerous relationship between atheism and pantheism in the way of their dissemination (the south of Spinozism in the 18th century, in which they moved ideas much more freely than before, shows unmistakably how difficult it must have been for pantheism in the 17th or even in the 16th century). the monistic tendencies that paved the way for the mathematical model of nature in a world-wide view (appreciation of nature, establishment of the idea of a unified whole etc. etc.), differed however

The idea of nature as a model of pantheistic monism was fundamental, indeed it was fatal for it: the image of the model suggests the thought of a designer or first mover. But not only this thought of the great mediatic or architect (enuprediating the respective Metaphor) helped the natural science model to remain within the framework of theism and thus also the worldview acceptable to broader circles. The commonplaces were reinterpreted in such a way that they could be of use to the new conception of nature. Nothing was done in this way a °°' S. u. Chap. VI, Absdin. 2. °•• Collingwood, Idea of Nature, 100.

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open brethren with the church is avoided as far as possible, but a polemical advantage over her is gained by being able to refer to some of her teachings precisely in support of the theses she has rejected (since by and however the church was indirectly denied the decisive monopoly of interpretation audi nt&t could remain unpunished). A reinterpretation of diriste commonplaces in the sense of the new view is e.g. This is the , case, for example, when Galileo demands the practical replacement of theology by physics or the recognition

of nature as the truest object of knowledge in the form of the pious demand that the study of the works of God should be given priority over the study of his words, especially as one direct knowledge of the divine will surpasses our ability to think. Enthusiasm for the visible work of God (which is later diverted into physicotheology) is thus transformed into a religious redefining of natural research in a new sense. The idea of the perfect order of being also serves the same purpose, in which the wisdom and omnipotence of God are to be reflected. It is now claimed that this very order proves the mathematical structuring of the universe. "Posuit Deus omnia in nu mero, pondere et mensura', writes Galileo in a note . That means: God is undisputedly the creator of the world - but in the way that the new natural science sees the world. The creation by God thus becomes an argument for the validity of their positions. — The examples of reinterpretation of commonplaces can be multiplied at will. They represent brilliant casuistic achievements, but rarely do they form evidence of difficult personal struggles for the reconciliation of loyalties that are objectively already falling apart °•'.

•° It is precisely the Church's monopoly on interpretation that Galileo questions, despite all the declarations of piety, when he says that i veri sensi” of the Bible, as he interprets it, is compatible with the Copernican theory (see the letter to Castelli of 21. 12. 1613 = Opera V, 282 f., 284 f.; ct. the Brief of Dini from 23. 3. 1615 = Opera V, 302 ff.). Brief an Diodati vom 15. 1. 1633 = Works XV, 24 f. Interpr. of Nature, I = Works III, 219 ff.; Advanc. of Learn. II — Works III, 4z8 ff.

°°• Work IV, 52. ^' The much-discussed question of the religious belief of the great founders of modern natural science must be seen in the light of these statements. The honesty of this belief can hardly be doubted, because at the same time the tonal shift in it must be established. It is personal, ie faith dependent on one's own interpretation of the religion, even if it knows or strives to know that it is in agreement with the Church teachings; it is therefore not the opposite of research, but precisely its correlate, belief and research become essentially related forms of existential intensity, and as a result they coincide with the experiential content of modern rationalism. In this

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In order to properly use the appeal of the new model of nature, we must visualize the age of the religious wars in all possible concreteness. It lasted more than a century (even much longer if one takes into account important consequences such as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes) and severed the lives of all important European nations. Apart from the everyday cleansing activities of the organized Counter-Reformation, the cruelty and extent of mutual destruction during the wars or civil wars in France, the Netherlands, Germany and England (to the extent that the civil war here was a religious war) to an extent at which the moral nourishment, at least in certain circles, could not be left out "'. It was reasonable to assume that in these wars the true spirit of the old world culture would have been shown; traditional wisdom, authority, religious philosophy , religious fanaticism and the like were thrown into the same pot (the moral and political aversion was too strong for many to leave time and desire for finer conceptual distinctions), reduced to their alleged essence and treated as the cause of misery "' . The chaos of discord and the

There is that side of religious faith that has a driving force forward under the new circumstances. The assumption would be wrong, the entire personal credo would have been relevant to the historically relevant activities of those people. There are moments in it that are theoretically irrelevant, despite their great subjective importance. The epochdefining ideas are sparked at the intersection of the personal credo with the specifics of the new world attitude, however disguised the latter may be: in this way it remains able to repurpose originally heterogeneous ideas in its own way (the church therefore had to use it from its own Sidit Redit, when she did not believe the bold confessions of some natural scientists; she knew that the worm of a different style of thinking in them had become too sedated). The person in question remains unaware of this constellation not least because what we call worldview the basic attitude can only be grasped after its complete development as an independent structure.

In general, Lecler, Gesdiidite of religious freedom, passim. °°° Typical passages in Bacon, Essays III (On the Unity of Religion) in connection with the 1st Essay (Of Religion) of the ron 1612 edition (— Works VI, 382 fu 543 f.); cf. Hobbes, Behemoth III (= EW VI, 343) in connection with Lev. XLVI (= EW III, 664 ff.). The lawsuits against sterile and related tlieologisdie disputes were most impressively summarized and expanded in the period between the religious wars and in the age of enlightenment by ron Bayle (see the Presentation by ron Labrousse, Bayle, II, 417 ff., cf. 317 ff.). In the century they continue to form a commonplace of ancient propaganda (typical passages in Vol taire: dies querelles des tliéologiens sont derenues des guerres de cannibales”, Essai sur les Moeurs CXXVIII = OC XII, 284, cf. CLXXX u. CXCVII = OC XIII, 62 , 177; heard by Rousseau, p. especially the letter to Beaumont = OC IV, 974 f.).

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Destruction, which now seemed to be the necessary consequence of the old world view, was almost automatically opposed to the harmony and unity of the new model of nature, which existed in its simplicity; in it the opposites were settled through the effect of general laws accessible to reason or made fruitful in the sense of the whole. The new spirit should therefore also work for the harmonization of opposites in the times of reason. (How strong and lasting the influence of this way of thinking, which emerged from the experiences of the religious wars, was shown by such an important thinker as Leibniz; his attempts to bring the Churches closer together on the one hand and to settle all philosophical contradictions within a universal system on the other hand originate from the same Worries "'.) A norm of human behavior is derived from the nature of nature, and an ought is derived from a being. This is made possible by the following assumption: since the natural model mentioned is the work of the new world-viewing spirit, it must also express the essence of this spirit. herrsdite in the natural model unity and harmony, so must the essence of the new spirit composed of unity and harmony; he should therefore be left to manage the world trade. This train of thought is flawless insofar as there is, of course, a close connection between the nature of a way of thinking and the structure of its knowledge or the structuring of its objects of knowledge, but the representatives of the new world view did not want this position to be understood as a mere objective statement that in... Otherwise, it could be interpreted in terms of the relativity of worldviews. In their eyes, the above-mentioned connection appears to be an agreement between evaluative reason and the objective nature of the world. The values that reason endorses therefore have objective validity because they are intended to be a transfer of the world's relationships to human relationships: unity and harmony under the sign of the law or reason, which grasps the law and is therefore essential to it. In this way, reason in the sense of the new world-based attitude becomes just as binding as the law of the new natural science. Again, reason as freedom and law as necessity should not be opposed. Because the concept of necessity is just as important as that of freedom po1ernis& gedadit; both turn against a common opponent and not against each other. Necessity here means that the opponent's freedom is arbitrary and therefore the cause of anardy and strife, while one's own freedom is the only true and possible one. The appeal to necessity should not restrict one's own freedom, but should restrict the opponent's concept of freedom from any objective concept

°'° On Leibniz' Okurnenism Hazard, Crisis, 262 ff. and Naert, Penste politique de L., 74 ff.; more recently the monograph by Eisenkopf, L. and the unification of Christianity, passim.

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withdraw basis. This is a point of grave importance if we are to understand the strange play which was made in the glorification of law and necessity in the name of liberty. In reality, the deepest connection of these concepts does not take place on the basis of an ontological-objective, but on that of a polemisdi-subjective dialectic, regardless of whether the latter is designated as objective (which incidentally only serves to increase its polemic dilemma). The attacker must establish this connection; This was not only shown in the 17th century, but also in the 19th, when the liberal individualist took the concept of freedom under consideration with reference to the legal legality.

3. The primacy of anthropology and its ambiguous consequences a) Man as lord over nature and the scientific model In its organizational connection with a specific conception of the position and purpose of man in the world, the natural science model reveals its normative component at a critical point . In fact, the anthropological justification or supplement to the natural science diaft li di model was unavoidable, since it was based on the world-dialed decision to rehabilitate nature: the latter had to be accompanied by an increase in the status of man, because in the traditional theological framework of thought, nature - and human perception were mutually dependent. The polemical contradiction between the old and the new positions can ideally be summarized as follows. The appreciation of nature makes it an object of systematization, especially deterioration or even exclusionary harassment. But only a soldier's employment with her allows her to be controlled. The mendi (as a species) can only attain the status of lord dier if his efforts are directed towards nature. As long as he remains spiritually bound to God in one way or another, he must accept the role of a subject, since he cannot think of a mastership over God. Since within the theological position the elimination of nature as the main activity and thus precisely the direct relationship to God condemned people to dependence (the hope of salvation however, could make this dependency seem attractive and rewarding - but in any case the Lord's diaft had to be mentioned here), so it had to be

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The new option with regard to the main object of human interest must necessarily be linked to a change in the status of human beings (as a species). This change became socially visible, among other things, in the gradual dissolution or dissolution of the concrete rulership of the church, that is, that institution which derived its measure from the self-imposed task, the direct relationship of mankind to God - while excluding nature as the main area of activity — to supervise or manage. The process described here was not without a certain paradox. In view of the unavoidable use of mathematical methods for the creation of a unified and powerful cosmological whole, the endeavor to place nature at the center of human interest had to lead to the quantification, ie the medianization and elucidation of nature. Nature turned into a desolate realm of blind necessity; it was incomprehensible to the desires and hopes of people,"' especially since it could no longer be influenced by way of the decree of God directly against the comforting belief that nature was created by Providence for the sake of man and with due regard to his needs. The new position thus seems to imply that man, helpless in the face of the merciless majesty of nature, is more likely to fear than to give

had hoped for. We shall find it difficult to understand why what was indubitably a loss in this way could be counted as a gain if the polemical aspect of the consideration escapes us. Since the theological opponent by definition embodied dependence or submission, and since the causae finales formed an essential part of his teaching, their rejection eo ipso had to be classified as a contribution to promoting human emancipation. On the other hand, the loss of the security of the causae finales could be accepted all the more calmly, as the new world view had to put something at least of equal value or equally tempting and sweetly soothing in its place: the promise that

°" S. Galileo's statements against the anthropomorphic conception of nature, various -ragm. = Work IV, 24; Dialogue I - Opus VII, t26 f. Uber Descartes su Cap. IV, Absdin. 3 b. °"

Bacon refers to the investigation of the Scient. III, 5 = Works, I, 571). For Hobbes, the causae finales are nothing other than causae effieientes (De Corp. II, 10 § 7 = OL I, t17), in which he follows Descartes (Med., Quint. Resp. = AT VII, 374). Laporte (Le rationalisme de D., 343 ff.), who really wants to believe in the cartesianis‹:lie rejection of the eausae finales nt&t, misunderstands Son Descartes' position because he understands the polemical sense of his statement that he knows them God's goals are not completely overlooked and accordingly taken at their face value (op. cit. 349, note t).

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Men could become "comme maitres et possesseurs de la nature", as Descartes put it "' - through Tedinik and industry "'. The desolation of nature, which initially threatened to make people orphans, proves to be an advantage in the perspective of his future rulership. The completely medianized nature functions on the basis of simple laws, and the simplicity can be easily controlled because it can be easily controlled. In the same way, natural necessity contributes to the controllability of natural processes by making them controllable from the outset and with considerable precision. In this sense , the de-souling of nature strengthened the certainty of mastery over it, and this certainty in turn provided the decisive impetus for the victory of homo faber. The option for mastery over nature through technology obviously has a worldbased background, at least insofar as it involves an upgrading of this world, in the form of an effort to make it more pleasant, and a corresponding downgrading of the world beyond, often with poverty and poverty Illness on earth is included in the purchase of bliss "•. If utilitarian, sociological points of wisdom to be determined were largely at work in this option, their ideological underpinnings should in no way be neglected. Because they often set very practical and socially concrete goals at sidi, but by relying on great inspiring ideas through& which, taken at their face value, sometimes only seem to be very loosely connected with those goals. An idea that enormously promoted modern knowledge and technology was certainly what was considered the ideal of the Prometheus human beings. Here the shattering of the hierarchies of the conventional cosmos and the astonishing

°'° Discourse VI = AT VI, 62. °" This attitude appears in Bacon's typical form. See Farring ton, Bacon, Philosopher of Industrial Science, passiv. °'^ Arendt, Vita activa, 287 ff. *!* On this worldly background of the option for the Tedinik, see the apt comments from Spedit, Innovation and Consequential Burden, 95 ff. For reasons that are also mentioned in the text, i& Spe&t's downplaying of the importance of the "promethean selffeeling" in favor of utilitarianism&er Don't fully accept points of view. Men's societies were often in dire straits before the 17th century, without this resulting in a penchant for technology in the modern sense. Furthermore, Sp•&t himself relativizes the importance of the strictly utilitarian aspect when he points to the world-changing background of the option for technology : the turn to this world was not the result of the utilitarian attitude, but rather just the other way around. — On the question of the utilitarian aspect in early modern natural science, see Brown, The utilitarian uiotive, esp. 182, 185 f., 190 ff., which in the utilitarian attitude shows an essential commonality between Baconian and Cartesian theory in all known ones Differences emerged cf. Clarke, Science and social welfare, passim.

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I felt the discovery of the infinite universe as a moral challenge to the people who had become free, to measure their strength against this infinity and accordingly - promptly - to raise it has. The infinity of the world becomes the infinity of the task - and the infinity of the confidence (the latter, however, here too is motivated more politically than logically: for it arises - especially since the task is, as I said, infinite - not actually from the certainty of an imminent program according to the program the achievement of a clearly defined goal, but rather the mere setting up, the mere theoretical formulation of this goal itself, which makes the ideological fight against the opponent possible. The Promethean self- feeling is typically expressed in Bruno's example, whose example is particularly instructive because, although he is not actually a representative of the mathematics and natural sciences directly linked to Tedinik, he does not ultimately see its chance in the individual activity of man , "dio della terra"". For an overall assessment, it is important to note that Prometheus's sense of self does not only refer to the position of modern man in the universe, but also to that in society as a whole. Galileo expressed it with all desirable clarity when, rejecting the supremacy of authority, he suggested that newer opinions might be better because they arose in a more mature phase of the development of humanity." The modern man has thus gained the status of the perfector of science. It is no coincidence that we encounter the same idea, formulated in a very similar way, in Bruno and Campanella as well as in Bacon and Descartes."

°" Cassirer, Individual, 198 ff.; in general, Rice, Wisdom, 93 ff. °'" Spaccio III — Works II, 152. Cf. Mondolfo, The idea of human progress in GB, in: Figure e idee, 223 ff.; Rüfner, Man second God, insb. 267 ff. °'• Fragments of Works VIII, 640. °'° Gentile informs about these authors, Veritas filia temporis, in: Bruno e il pensiero del Rin., 227 ff. Gentile's statements are to be supplemented by at least two references. Decades before Bruno, the same view was expressed by a humanist like Vives (De caus. corrupt. art. I, 6 = Opera VI, 41 f.); It is hardly surprising, however, that it can be found in Hobbes (Lex., Rer. and Concl. = EW, III, 712). Baron, Querelle of Ancients and Moderns, especially 8 ff., 14 f. provides information about its connection with the humanistic - cyclical or linear - conception of history. The paradox in the humanistic conception is that in it the new age is perceived as more mature , at the same time (idealized) antiquity is viewed as a model (see Leyden, Antiquity and Authority, esp. 482 ff., 49i f.). This logical difficulty becomes understandable in its necessity when one considers the polemic goal of the entire concept: both the glorification of antiquity and the claim to maturity or autonomy of modern times turn against the Church, even though they contradict each other. (Cf. Chapter VI Ab sdin. 4 e.)

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A confirmation of the thesis of humanism's cosmopolitan contribution to the exploitation of the natural science model is the striking coincidence of the humanistic glorification of humanity with the conception of the place of humanity in the universe, which, as just shown, is contained in the concept of the natural science model (in the possibility of a solid concept in general) was necessarily implied. For all the piety of the humanists, which they diligently promoted, their constant singing of praise for the greatness of humanity, however rhetorically and practically non-committal it was, must have at least indirectly bordered on that hubris which, according to theological conceptions, arose from the dreams of the lordship of Homo Faber made me so bold. Manetti's text De dignitate et excellentia hominis, written around the middle of the 15th century, which polemicized against the diristli doctrine of human impotence, which was extremely advocated by Innocent VIII (De contemptu mundi), was clearly on the index of the Spanish Inquisition in 1584 "'. An activist tone sounds in Pico's Oratio de dignitate hominis, in which the most admirable thing in man is seen in the fact that he can do whatever he wants from within himself, the most humble as well as the lowest - nullis angustiis coercitus ' "'. The achievements of humanity are not due to divine service, but rather to purposeful conquest and personal achievement. At one point in his main work, Ficino derives the difference between humans and animals from the fact that through their creative activity they can change nature for their own benefit or even replace it; it is as if we were non servi simus naturae sed aemuli' '*. A substantially new aspect of Renaissance humanistic-Platonistic spiritualism, which, however, prima vista

to pay homage to the ascetic ideal, which is noticeable in such statements, namely the belief in the ability of the human spirit to master the senses (this aspect goes well with the intellectualistic trait of mathematical natural science). From this point of view, according to Ficino, the exhaustive defense of the immortality of the human soul acquires a meaning other than the orthodox diristic one. With It has rightly been pointed out that Ficino's defense and Pomponazzi's rejection of immortality ultimately stem from the same respect for human dignity '-'. If the former wants to underline the imperishability of human moral value, the latter aims to emphasize the moral

°" An analysis of Manetti's writing is offered by Gentile, Bruno e il pensiero del Rinasc., 74 ff. Cf. Napoli, Gontemptus mundi e Dignitas hominis, 9 ff. °-- On the dignity of man, 106. "° Theol. Plat. XIV, 3 (= II, 223). °" Gentile, Bruno and the thought of Rin., 28, Anm. Cf. Kristeller, Ficino and Pompo nazzi, insb. 224.

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sthe mind of the person and thus himself to be pure, that is, to be free from all fear of punishment or hope of reward in the beyond '^.

The binding of the scientific model to a dynamisdi-optimi stis of anthropology could compensate for the loss of the direct benefit of man by divine providence and thus make a decisive contribution to the establishment of a new scale of values, which should invalidate the accusation of nihilism raised by the opponent. The normative function of this intellectualistically oriented wing of modern rationalism became all the more important as the rapid emergence and massive occurrence of (empiricist) skepticism seemed to confirm the promise of nihilism. Given this significance and before we move on to the discussion of early modern skepticism, we must start here Remember all the reasons mentioned so far that strengthened and increased the normative appeal of the natural science model.

b) Man as nature and skepticism One will either have to downplay the astonishingly vital re-emergence of a consistent skepticism after long centuries of unchallenged dominance of normative thinking (in its dire version) or can only explain it superficially if, for whatever reasons, one is not prepared to accept one's inner logic We can see threads that connect the mental structure of skepticism with essential or, by definition, given aspects of modern rationalism. This unity forms the foundations This is a crucial prerequisite for understanding the contradictions in the development of modern rationalism, which became particularly evident in the Age of Enlightenment and which is no less pressing today (think, for example, of the problem of the justification of values). As said, the polemic against the theological worldview, in order to be complete, had to simultaneously assert or strive for the enhancement of nature and the emancipation of humanity. The combination of these two ideal goals was flawless in polemic terms and was also functional or effective , but it turned out to be problematic or logically ambiguous as soon as it was no longer about the polemic against the common opponent, but about the relationships between the allies, i.e. the the two ideal goals came together. If the emancipated man, that is, turned away from heaven and turned towards nature, can control it through the knowledge of its laws, But the Nazir, who has gradually become more powerful in relation to God through his own appreciation, in turn dominates the human being: he will, nadidem

°^ Douglas, Philos. and Psy&ol. of Pomponazzi, 248 ff.

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Having emancipated himself from God, he is viewed primarily as a part however prominent - of nature, that is, as a biological being, which is subject to natural laws. Man is nature — and if he rules over nature through technology, he himself remains ruled through nature (above all through his sensorybiologically conditioned nature). Here you are the ways of the intellectual and skepticism associated with the mathematical model of nature, which asserts the powerlessness of the human intellect and the power of the human being: the sensibility. The science of mathematics and science had therefore unified nature in order to make it suitable for mankind as an object of control. In this sense, human beings and nature remain separate from one another, and even within the human being, the knowledge-based intellect works coolly and confidently, far above the animal-irrational nature of human beings. The opposite is the case for the anti-intellectualist-naturalist skepticism: for them, the human being is not opposed to nature, but rather merges with it to the point of unrecognizability of its specific features, he becomes a mere application of the laws of nature, a further one Manifestation of nature's necessity. Based on the general presuppositions of the new conception of nature, man could not fundamentally be excluded from the necessity of nature if the enhancement of nature itself was not to be jeopardized, which, as we have seen, is linked to the idea the necessity of nature as its inner logic was inseparably linked. (What the thesis that humanity is actually just a case of natural necessity implies in moral philosophy is obvious. One could generalize somewhat and say that the wisdom of modern moral philosophy consists of a series of experiments, the idea of To somehow circumvent or outwit natural necessity. The natural and moral philosophical aspects of modern rationalism therefore often ended up in open contradictions with one another.) From the logical ambiguity, it is now possible that emphasis is placed on different points of view, when natural necessity is discussed. For some, natural necessity means the guarantee that nature can be steered and therefore governed; It therefore gives reason for confidence and is also to be welcomed in a broad moral sense in that it allows the development of human abilities: seen in this way, it becomes the memory of Mother Nature. For the skeptics, on the contrary, the logic of nature does not reveal any positive side in the moral sense. They also fundamentally believe in natural necessity (when skeptics emphasize the role of accidents, this is more of an attack against the claim of the natural science intellect to be able to use the concept of necessity to get everything under control and thus to be able to control it ), but that is no longer a reason for confidence, but rather the beginning of resignation. For the blind natural necessity does not only serve the freedom of the will, without which there is no serious talk of morality

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can be, but also to rob the world of all objective meaning. From the appreciation of nature and the associated idea of natural necessity, two fundamentally different conclusions can be drawn with regard to the place of humanity in the world. In both cases, however, the primacy of anthropology remains unaffected, since, as we know, it went hand in hand with the appreciation of nature's worldview. Except that this primacy can now also take on fundamentally different meanings. The conviction that the human being is the measure of all things can be interpreted in the sense that the human being is the highest value, a constant point of reference and orientation - but also in the sense that there is no absolute truth and no truly objective value or that truths and values depend on the particular perspective of the human intellect, conditioned by innumerable 'contaminating' factors, and are therefore transient and replaceable. This ambiguity casts its dark shadow on the whole development of modern rationalism, and is particularly strongly—and painfully—felt during the Age of Enlightenment. If it was only allowed to eke out a quiet existence for a long time and for many important thinkers, that was due to the needs of the polemics against the traditional theological thought structure. From their point of view, the detachment of the human being from the chains of the latter seems to be identical with the human liberation. Even the subjection of man to natural necessity ultimately means, if that identity applies without further ado, his liberation, since it removes him from the jurisdiction of the divine will interpreted and represented by the Church. In the enthusiasm for emancipation, its possible consequences were often overlooked. This is the only way to explain the paradox that the status of man is reaching its peak at a time when man is being driven out of the center of the universe. However, the geocentric thesis was advocated by the opponent, and since freedom and combating the latter belonged together, the victory over his theses—quite apart from their content —was regarded eo ipso as a step towards freedom.

The dialectic of the transformation of originally emancipated positions into logical starting points of skepticism forms a main phenomenon in the history of modern rationalism (especially the age of enlightenment is in its time) and can be illustrated with central examples. Two of them I shall briefly discuss here, namely the rehabilitation of human sensuality and the evaluation of the function of skepticism itself. The thesis that man is nature, which shortly thereafter became the basis of skepticism, was first put forward with emancipatory intentions, ie to defend man's speeches with sensuality against Christian asceticism. Within the humanist movement, this trend can be seen in the growing interest in Epicurus. Above all, Filelfo connects

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express his admiration for the Greek philosopher with this struggle for the full rehabilitation of the sensual human being; Valla is the weakest in his radicalism on this question. Even spiritualists like Ficino, however, do not adopt Epicurus's orthodox diriste condemnation if they only want true pleasure to be realized in spiritual things". Vanini's later appeal to Epicurus acts as a confirmation of the 3ien anside, hedonism and atheism would somehow belong together. Apart from '3i dre aristote1is' ethics, which outlines the ideal of balanced persiinlidity on the basis of the tiepózvJç theory, was mainly interpreted in the Renaissance in an anti-ascetic sense"'. — These are, however, only the most striking philosophical accompaniments of the new sensibility to the needs of human sensuality. However, its origin lies much deeper than the rediscovery and interpretation of texts, because the insight into the naturalness of man forms only one side - if unfortunately the most important in practice - of the general ideological appreciation of nature - an appreciation that , in its polemical point against the theological scale of values, for its part has an unmistakably normative dimension. In fact, the happy willingness to treat humanity as nature comes from the conviction that nature is inherently something good, in fact the epitome of all norms ; Therefore, the turn to nature could also be perceived as the true freedom worthy of humanity. The skepticism is reported

Now not with the question of the revaluation of nature itself (it arises within the framework of this revaluation or rather the elimination of the diristlidien ontological hierarchy), but only with the question of the determination of this nature (cf. our comments above about the two views of of natural necessity). Depending on how you approach the normativist interpretation of the concept of nature, two fundamentally different meanings emerge the thesis that mensdi is nature. However, the thesis itself remains intact, namely as a formal common denominator that is intended to cover up the substantive ambiguity and thus the dialectic of the transformation of emancipation into skepticism, and has often covered it up. Once it had come to light, however, this ambiguity would have to inhibit the emancipatory urge, which is why even modern normativism very often saw itself compelled, abandoning the thesis that humans were nature, to the thesis that humans ruled over them (in moral-philosophical terms : about his own j nature to take his zufludit.

°°• Garin, Ricerdie sull'epicureismo del Quattrocento, in: La cultura phil. of the Rin., 82 f.; Saitta, The Vindication of Epicurus in Humanism, in: Filos. ital. and Humanity , 65 ff., 69 ff. °" Garin, op. cit., 84 ff.; Allen, The Rehabilitation of Epicurus, 9 f. ^^ Allen, loc. cit., 13 f. °'• Garin, The fortune of Aristotelian ethics in the fifteenth century, in: La cultura phil. of the Rin., 60 ff.

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In modern times, too, skepticism begins in polemical, emancipatory intentions. It should shake the conventional, authoritarian certainties in order to clear the way for new views. The acquisition of firm truth after the elimination of the prevailing 'dogmatics' is considered more or less sidier, indeed it seems to result automatically from this elimination, namely as the reversal of the doginati' positions caused by the skeptical negation . This early skepticism is the nadi nt&t the vestibule of resignation, but the harbinger of the struggle and thus of a new victorious certainty. The docta ignorantia of Cusanus, which was referred to as a political term ^ ', forms a pioneering early form of this type of skepticism, to which incurable agnosticism or even moralizing indifferentism is far removed. Nodi earlier, however, Petrarch had used polemic skepticism to substantiate his rejection of any authority epistemologically r if the ultimate truths from s‹:h1ießlidi are reserved for God, no human being, except Aristotle, may be worshiped as an authority ^ '. Ironically, au & Valla refers to the Ohnmadit mensdilidien Intelleku, using biblical passages, in order to indirectly shake the dirist1i‹:hKatholisthe doctrine of the freedom of the will ^'. An argument which early Christianity had offered against the arrogance of philosophy ^' is now turned against intellectually hodistically refined Christianity itself! In Valla's tactics we recognize the reinterpretation of ‹:hristlidier commonplaces in favor of the new world ans‹:hauli‹:den attitude. The motive of the intellect's impotence also plays a prominent role later and for a long time, namely when it comes down to the (anyway unknowable) God through the (principally recognizable) nature as the main subject of mensdili‹:the thinking effort superseding and thus making the dominant ontology tacitly but effectively irrelevant to the hierarchy, even if it is not overthrown openly.

"'

When we read, for example, in Leonardo •*•, Bruno *' or Bacon - to name a few typical examples - about the limitations of human cognitive ability or the unknowability of metaphysis di-divine things, we are dealing with the one mentioned po1emis‹:h meant to do reinterpretation. The thesis that knowledge must begin with doubt is within logical reach. It was repeated and expressed s‹:V before Descartes

^° Cassirer, Erkenntnisproblem I, 29. ^^' Ignorance of themselves and of many, 76, 74. °°'

On free will, 181 ^° Paulus, 1 Co. 1, 17—25. *°• Tageb., 36. °•° De la Causa II — Opere I, 176. °°^ Interpr. of Nat., I = Works III, 218.

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formulated - not least by Bacon ^' and Galileo - and turned sidi openly against the authority much cited by the opponent: incidentally, the doubt lasted only as long as this latter was nodi nidit theoretisdi settled. When the thesis that man is nature took a decidedly pessimistic turn and thus a different kind of skepticism arose, the ambiguity , even the danger of playing with radical doubt also became apparent. However, it was not given up, and it could not be given up at all, because the polemics and skepticism because of the continuing social strength of the kirdili&-theological opponents were always - and well into the Age of Enlightenment - tactical& indispensable&. Given all this, it would be superficial to attribute the emergence of skepticism to the general resurgence of Greek philosophy in the Renaissance period. Because first it has to be explained why the ancient skeptics were perceived as interesting in the first place. It is also very one- sided - and can be misleading if the only real cause of the emergence and spread of early modern skepticism, apart from the rediscovery of Sextus, is the intellectual crisis triggered by the Reformation •••. Undoubtedly, the Protestant claim that the conscience of the individual should decide on the true meaning of the drift led to an anarchy of interpretation and thus indirectly to skepticism, from which the Catholics understandably concluded the need for church authority. In this constellation, however, the essential aspect of modern skepticism can hardly be ignored. Because here the only requirement is the elimination of skepticism through the authority of an authority (Kir&e), which is also assumed to actually be in possession of the truth or at least not too far away from it. The existence and practical relevance of truth is not fundamentally questioned by any party in the confessional dispute - only the opponent's claim to appear in their name. Erasnius, who raises the specter of possible skepticism against Luther's absolutization of the individual conscience, also remains otherwise convinced of the general rigidity of the Catholic position. Real skepticism here only comes in the thinking of a third party.

°*' Advanc. of Learn. I = Works III, 293. °^ Brief an Castelli vom 3. 12. 1639 = Opere XVIII, 125. ^• So Ri&ter, Skepticism in Phil. II, 60; Although Ri&ter emphasizes the connection between skepticism and empiricism (II, 150), he seems to be hardly aware of the symptomatic significance of this fact. °•• So Popkin, History of Scepticism, xii, 1 ff. (ct. lz ff. on the stories of the rediscovery of Sextus). The best representation of the denominational dispute from the time of the crossing of Catholic and Protestant disputes with purely political claims is always, in my opinion and knowledge, Allen, A History of Pol. Tliought in the 16th Cent., passim. "'

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ten who is either a detached observer or a sinner and (nodi) nidit finder. We come much closer to the specific character of modern skepticism if we look at the age of the Reformation and the religious wars from the perspective of the emerging modern state. In order to be able to put an end to the chaos of the religious wars, the absolutely so1utistic state had to put aside the question of truth. Tolerance and peaceful coexistence for the preservation and increase of the state1i& organized power of the community in relation to that of other communities only becomes possible when the state tries to impose the only true religion on its subjects. His authority does not lie in the fact that he found and connected the truth, but on the contrary in that he ignored the truth, declared it a private matter. The Hobbessdie sentence »auctoritas non veritas facit legem' ^' is, as is well known, anticipated in the positions of the French & Politiques, which base theo retisdi in the elimination of the question of truth for the sake of the pacification of the state "'. This elimination results in the essential: the contact point with the skepticism — and it was no coincidence that skeptics who pointed out the relativity and transience of the respective morality and truth or the finiteness and sensible conditionality of the human intellect became warm supporters of the absolutist state became '”.

The subjecting of the question of truth to the needs of the state as a political entity is obviously closely connected with the burning question since the early modern period of the relationship between Madaavellianism as the theory of the political state and the skeptical attitude. Conservatives, in particular, tended to lump natural & Ma‹:biavelism, skepticism, immoralism, and atheism into one pot

°^

Lev. XXVI = OL III, 202.

°•° Lecler, Ges‹:h. freedom of religion, II, 109 ff., 127 ff.; S&nur, the French see lawyers in the sectarian civil war, passim.

Popkin does not devote a single word to this key question. However, S‹:hon Pintard had pointed out that skeptics or érudits libenins belonged to the 'avant-garde du mou vement absolutiste' (Le libertinage érudit, 558 ff.). Au& Abel has recently aptly emphasized the connection (Stoicism and early modern times, esp. 163, 167, 210 f. and passim). ••° See, for example, the “characteristic” explanation of the English situation in Bn&ley, Atheism in the English. Renaiss., 31 ff. Cases like that of Christ. Marlowe, who was not exactly pious and was also influenced by Ma'hiavelli (129 f.), had to justify his general accusations. °•° An example of this is provided by Charbonnel, La pensée italienne au XVIe siecle et le courant libertin, who addresses the question of the spread of Italian ideas and Ma‹:hiavellianism in France (esp. 11 ff., 617 ff. ). averroism, atheism,

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It has a core of truth in this respect, as the cold-blooded instrumentalization religion almost presupposes an indifference to its truth content and to the question of truth in general on the part of the ruler. (Audi believers often consciously or unconsciously combine the defense of their faith with the pursuit of concrete political goals, but fanaticism can be seen here rather than the skepticism that is being discussed here.) In some pages that have become notorious ^' Madiiavelli had the The importance of religion for disciplining society and for political purposes in general is purely functional. If those who asserted the close affinity of Ma&iavelism and atheism pointed primarily to the purely political uses of the religion,"' they were probably not so scandalized by MadiiaYelli's view of the unsuitability of acosmic Christianity for strengthening patriotic sentiment as but rather through his conviction, audi fals the religions and religious assumptions, the origin of which can be traced back to the deceit of a coolly arguing Madithaber, could actually fulfill the desired useful function. It was this reduction to political usefulness, which threatened the substance of religion itself, that Campanella could not accede to Madiiavelli and the Politiques "'. And the gap was unbridgeable. For we are dealing here with the contrast between normative thinking and that clear distinction between what is and what should be, which S&on Madiiavelli openly expresses "° and which will be constitutive for modern skepticism.

The relationships between Madiiavellism or modern statehood and Modern skepticism lies even deeper than this assessment of religion and, if we follow its thread closely, can lead to the logical core of sadism, ie to the implication-free thesis that man is nature. Just as the Machiavellian state ranks its own self-preservation higher than the question of truth, so too for the human being who is nature, self-preservation and not any final, metaphysically anchored truth has priority ; The truth here is in the service of self-preservation, and that is precisely why it is

Magle, materialism etc. are treated in a rather undifferentiated way in this materialistic book or are presented as a source of libertinism. Ouch & the more recent work by Spink on the French Die Free-Thought”, which are largely based on the Although the subject area relates to it, it is in no way characterized by conceptual clarity, despite all the ehilological care.

^° Discourses I, 11-14 (= Works, 122—132). ^•^ The English controversies are typical&, cf. Raab, The English Face of Madiia velli, 62 ff., 78 ff., 100 f.; cf. Bn&ley, Atheism in the engl. Ren., 89. '^° My&e, Idea of Reason of State, 123 ff. *^

Principe, XV (— Works, 50): Perdd he is so far from how one lives how one should live, since he who leaves that day and does what he should do for what he should do, learns sooner his ruin than his preservation."

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relative and reranderlidi, as the history of the absolute truth for the religions that complain about proves. It therefore arises from the logic of the social and intellectual constellation that Madiiavelli's theory of dams goes hand in hand with a naturalistic anthropology (the same structural tendency exists in Hobbes, by the way). If not the conscious, then the unconscious, but all the deeper motive of the acting human being. Here is a striving for power, which represents the necessary further development of the drive towards selfpreservation, since this competition with the self-preservation or self-preservation efforts has only been overcome other individuals can be absorbed: without expanding one's own strength, no long-term self-preservation is possible at all .

In striving for measure, it only shows the ultimate consequence of the effort of

self-preservation and at the same time the extreme subordination of the intellect , which is entrusted with normative tasks , to the commandments of drives that are themselves rooted in the nature of humanity. It is therefore not surprising that in the 16th century the thesis that man is nature did not finally come into force in the form of a special emphasis on the instinct of selfpreservation. The idea of self-preservation was actually not new, at least since Aristotle, but now it is becoming more pronounced in that the §yv an sidi becomes an absolute value that no longer needs to find its final expression in the et §yv; The teleological and normative moment therefore remains on the line .

The elimination of the teleological idea (at least in its traditional form) could only make the connection of the concept of self-preservation to the idea of the naturalness of humanity more narrow, which can be seen particularly clearly in Telesio. Self-preservation is central to him because , as has been pointedly noted, he made a chapter of physics out of psydiology and treated humanity more as a doctor and physiologist than as a philosopher. A few decades earlier, Vives had justified the need for the study of affects by referring to the instinct of self-preservation: affects arise from this instinct and, in turn, allow it to be destroyed or they serve it by informing the body about harmful and useful things and orienting them accordingly. With regard to future moral-philosophical debates, Vives 's rather casual remark is relevant: from the side of the instinct of self-preservation, good and useful things would coincide in the same way as S‹:h1e‹:htes and S‹:hädli‹:hes ••'. Vives' example is just that ,

^'

Mo&iarelli says this explicitly in relation to states, Discorsi I, 6 (= Opere, 109), but he thinks similarly when he promotes the political career of individuals. The same idea also plays a central role in Hobbes (Lex. XI = EW, III, 86).

See the wonderful comments by Ron Spaemann, Reflection and Spontaneity, 54. Only. Anm. 124. ^• Gorsano, The psychology of Telesio, 6.

Of Anima, Lib. III, Children (= Opera III, 421 f.).

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because instructive, because he generally remains a rather conservative, diristicallyminded humanist. Insight into the nature of the affects and the senses ity in general fills him with sadness, even with revulsion, and he therefore demands its draconian paralysis with the help of religion. The intellectual characteristic remains that he carefully studies the affects in their connection with the instinct of self-preservation. The sharp judgment about them is only the downside of the discovery of its enormous influence on human behavior. Not completely liberated, sensuality had to be curbed again. The problem was not only for believing, worried Christians, but also (and even more urgently). Thinkers who were at least more or less influenced by orthodox Christianity did not expose themselves to immoralism or nihilism or nihilism (as moral philosophy weighed the aspect of anthropology and psychology in the studies at the time), shows unmistakably the fact that the two

most discussed questions in the relevant literature of the t* century those of the immortality of the soul and freedom of will were "'). The popularity of the Stoic teachings, especially in the 6th and 7th centuries ^ ® is mine

°•° De Concordia IV, 4 (= Opera V, 342 ff.) in conjunction with Intr. ad Sapientiam VI II $ 209 (= Opera I, 17) and De Trad. discipline V, 3 (= Opera VI, 402). cf. the analysis of Norefia, Vives, 200 ff. In contrast to Pico della Mirandola, Vives always thinks of mens‹: £1i‹:£e S&wä‹:£e, and he does not believe in the deification of men (see Colish, The Mime of God, especially 9 f., 11 f.). °•' S‹:£üling, Bibliogr. the psy&ol. Literature, keyword register under: 'arbitrium freedom and immortality of the soul" (S. 292 u. 294 f.). °°^ On the revaluation of the affects in the context of the new conception of the unity and naturalness of man‹: see Dilthey, Ges. Sdir. II, 416 f., 422 ff., who emphasizes the function of the revival of stois‹:the teachings precisely in this context. Now, however, Dilthey overestimated the shocking influence insofar as he wanted to derive the whole natural system from it (e.g. 315 f., 441 f.). In this sense, Blurnenberg's objections (Selfpreservation and persistence, 3 f., 12) are justified, which in turn were relativized by Abel durdl with the reference that Neo-Stoicism had taken over the functions of the modern era' (Stoizism and early modern times, 23 f .). — The tactically very useful plasticity of the Stoic conception manifests itself in the fact that two — albeit only ideally typical & distinguishable — Basic currents have emerged, one of which promotes the separation of Christian and world morality and thus paves the way for libertinism, while the Others remain close to diristli&er morality by insisting on the subordination of the affects to the intellect stricto sensu. See the good analysis by Levi (Fren & Moralists, 67 ff., 85 ff., 330), who highlights the diverse versification of Christlidiem and Stoisdiem in several contexts and the connection of the new contemporary appreciation of the affects with the diristli and pessimistism Men's view points out (119 ff., 129 ff., 209 ff.). This connection, which we encountered earlier in Vives (see note 356), will soon play a vital role in mental health

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Era‹3iten primarily to be attributed to the fact that they offer a viable middle ground that is open to both sides and thus a compromise that is acceptable from a wide range of prices. In ancient Stoicism in general, the knowledge of the possession and effect of the affects and of sensuality in general was connected with the postulate of their mastery or rather impregnation by reason, and indeed on the basis of a monistically oriented anthropology and therefore in such a way that no world-enemy asceticism arose from this."'. Stoic' 3i theses were, in a.w., flexible enough to allow at least formal agreement with the diristic doctrine, while at the same time undermining the latter. The thesis of the fundamental naturalness of humanity was further confirmed by the advances in physiology and anatomy - just as the latter in turn were motivated by the world-wide interest in this naturalness. This alternating effect can explain the fact, which is mysterious to many, that before the 16th century the progress of anatomy was just as slow as it was fast. A huge number of anatomical works were published especially after 1520, and it is almost sym ptomatisd for the physiognomy and development of modern rationalism that the main works of Copernicus and Vesalius were published in the same year (1543). The truly exciting ideas of physiology and anatomy in the early modern period cannot be discussed in detail here work. What should be underlined is the emergence of a tendency that was particularly strengthened in the Age of Enlightenment: it is a question of the systematic determination of the close connection between physical and mental functions, which directly or indirectly affects the Intellectual belief in dependence and oppression, when nothing is done about the parasitic character of the intellect. This development becomes apparent in the emphasis on the anatomical similarities between humans and animals; Leonardo's quick explanations are well known and typical. The parallelism was, however, transferred to the mental functions. On the one hand, the new physiognomy tried to understand the characteristics of the human human character based on the

or enable an alliance of fideism and skepticism (see end of this section). The diversity of Stoic currents also includes the useful overlap of d'Angers, Pascal, 143 ff., who addresses the question of the revival of Stoicism in the 16th-17th centuries. Century has dedicated several essays (see p. 7 note 2 in the same work). °•• Dittridi, Gesdi. Ethics II, 19 f.; Pohlenz, Stoa, I, 119, draws attention to the difficulties in reconciling monistic anthropology with the supremacy of the logos. °•° So Boas, Renaissance of Natural Sciences, 143. °^'

Dazu Cole, History of Gompar. Anatomy; allgemeiner Callot, Renaissance of life sciences. ^^° Tageb., 78.

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On the other hand, human and animal intelligence have been compared: since the latter was not considered divine, the comparison itself implied that both were biologically rooted. Vor Against the background of this purely biological-functionalistic view, even Rorarius could assert that animals often serve reason better than humans. The moral and normative explosiveness of the question of the relationship between humans and animals is obvious; It was also the reason why this question was the focus of heated debates in the 17th and 18th centuries. The thesis of the nature of man was based on the proof of the double dependence of the mind, on the one hand on the biological and the associated affects, and on the other hand on the geographically and socially predetermined environment. The era of the discovery of the human body largely coincided with the era of the discovery of the earth and the peoples who inhabit it. For the first time in history, their diversity is becoming so acute and raises the question of the similarities and nature of the human race in general, as can be seen e.g. B. can be seen from some of Bruno's statements "'. The numerous contemporary travel reports "° intensify the amazement at the diversity of people lidien and provide rich material for the relevant debates. Because diversity of peoples means diversity of customs, laws, ways of thinking - in short: of values. Through the classification of all that had been handed down by the ancients and discovered by the contemporaries, one tries to put a stop to the initially aotic impression. The Budi by J. Boemus, built in 1520 , had a great influence in this direction. •^ Physiognomy became popular in the 16th century and was in itself sympto matis‹:h for the attitude discussed here. S. S&üling, Bibi. the psy&o1. Liter., S‹:hlag wort-Register, 298, and the diluent tables at the end of the work. °°' This is the title of his book written in 1544 and published in 1645: Quod Brute animals often use reason better than man. ••• De tem. VII, 18 (= OL I, 2, 282). Klempt described the change in health thinking in the 16th and 17th centuries succinctly and precisely. In the context of the dissolving of the theologisdi-es&atologisdien overall interpretation of the unirersa1historical context, he lowered the elucidation of the mundane aspects of the material 1i‹:her universality of the human society" — what, apart from the opening of the temporal perspective through& the destruction of the biblical world‹: chronology, a spiritual and cultural furrow and a spatial and geographical and ethnographical component (The secularization of the universal historical view, esp. 34 ff., 63 ff., 114 °°• Illustrative examples in Slotkin (ed.), Readings in early Anthropologjr, 44 f. and 468 (notes 69, 70). ^' Uber die Problematik der frühen Ethnologie Hodgen, Early Anthropology, 131 ff., 162 ff. Das Bu& von Boemus trägt den &arakteristis&en Titel: Manners, laws and rites of all nations from many famous writers.

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Not only the observation of the variability, of the never-ending game of emergence and decline of peoples and cultures was skeptical - and also not only the determination of the fundamental difference between one's own scale of values or way of thinking and that of other peoples, but just as much the Discovery of possible similarities to the latter: the feeling of the uniqueness and irreplaceability of one's own norms (above all one's own religion) starts to falter

back to the nature of man or his determination by sensible factors. As in antiquity, the interpretation of the folk character is first offered by the climate '•', which was also represented by Bodin in the 16th century *". the increasing willingness to lead spiritual things back to sensuality, culture no longer as the product of a certain intellectuality - namely soldier, which would result from the respective relationship of a people to God - but to be understood as a meaningfully conditioned and concretely located structure.The first elementary form a cultural —, theory or anthropology arises from the crossing of Einsidit

in the meaning of geographic-social history iditlidier sensuality with the new use of the instinct of self-preservation. Human beings as nature and nature as the milieu of natural human beings are put together. The theoretical and historical starting point of cultural anthropology thus becomes the human being struggling In the successive to exist in a certain environment. phases of this struggle, first sensual needs are satisfied, then spiritual ones are explored and satisfied, etc Cardano.) The history of the emergence of culture becomes the history of the origin of the spirit, which is thus shown in its dependency and relativity — both as a theoretical and as a practical-di-moral spirit. In other words: Values are not absolute, but rather products of culture, products of attitudes, products of utility. The decisive step towards skepticism has been taken. Mad ia velli should again be cited as an example, who in a hitherto little-known passage "" represents such a theory of cultural development, in which he put forward the thesis, anticipating Hobbes, that the concepts of good and evil are products of positing and as

°•• Cf. the remarks of Hodgen, 263 f., 295 ff. ^^' About the climate theories of antiquity and their revival in the 16th century

informiert Johnson, Of Differing Ages and Climes, insb. 468 f., 471 f., 4z6 f. ^'° De la Rep. V, 1 (= S. 663 ff.); Method V (= S. 79 ff.). De trad. student I, 1 (= Works VI, 243 ff.). °" Only. Anm. 134. °"

^*^ Discourses I, 2 (= Works 96 f.).

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Soldie functions of Herrsdiaft: they would arise together with her in a certain phase of cultural development.

The dramatization of the change in the perspective of moral philosophy in the early modern period is evident in the new meaning that the term philosophia moralis itself acquired and which was almost opposite to the traditional one. An early example of this symptomatic and terminological diversion can be found, not by chance, in a book that, as obedladilidi and confused as always, represented skepticism of the claims and was also widespread, namely in Agrippa von Nettesheim's De incertitudine. According to Agrippa, the pphilosophia de moribus must not be based on philosophoruui ratiunculis, but only on the observation of life - and above all it must not be given forever, but rather "pro temporum, locorum hominumque opinione mutabile"; for vice and virtue can transform each place and time into their opposite. Translated into modern language, this clearly implies that the descriptive treatment displaces the normativist approach - and this is because the one standard and the one norm are somewhere in the world The diversity of norms and standards has been lost. The moralist is now the mere observer or Analyst of manners and behavior—not necessarily the moral norm-setting philosopher. In this new sense, the word has been known, especially in France, for more than two centuries and has associated it with a number of famous names. The first classic of the genre, Montaigne, which, at least in its universality, is at the same time the greatest, offers us an excellent inventory of all the essential factors and theses which, na& umer account, have given birth to and measured modern skepticism (unless Incidentally, that Agrippa's statement just mentioned was known to Montaigne"'). Despite the great direct and indirect influence of Montaigne on the Age of Enlightenment, I shall here discuss his essential positions in the logical series next and as briefly as possible . For Montaigne, the primacy of anthropology is self-evident. He wants to deal with mankind alone, that is, "armé seulement de ses armes, et depourvu de la grace et cognition divine", to deal with it.

°'^ De incert. et vanit. scient. LIV (= Opera II, 118). A symptom of the spread of skepticism in the 16th and 17th centuries is the increasing popularity of paradoxes, ie the conscious reduction of oncological and epistemic questions to the level of logical games - which was, of course, also a means of dismantling theological metaphysics. See also the Budi ron Colie, Paradoxia Epidemica, passim, which primarily work out the polemisdisdiöpferis function of the paradox (33, 508 f.). "^ Villey, Sources, I, 61 f.; II, 173 ff. I, 12 (= I, 493).

°'°

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Declaration that he does not want to educate man, like the others, but to degenerate him. The move away from normativism also serves to emphasize the all-round rooting of man in the sensible world. This rooting is in two senses: namely, biological and social. As far as the former is concerned, it is determining because life in general is a movement of matter and body. The elimination of spiritualism or intellectualism is understandably accompanied by the thesis that humans are subject to the laws of nature just like other animals. The instinct of self-preservation forms that "1oy vrayment naturelle" which equalizes the behavior of humans and animals determined •'• (that Montaigne also had a keen sense for the modifications of the instinct of self-preservation under the conditions of a developed society is proven by his analyzes of the open and hidden striving for power or vanity ^'). The dominance of the instinct of self-preservation, however, has an open side to do with the close connection (estroite cousture) of body and soul. Montaigne notes the influence of the body's processes on the soul's processes and is far from speaking of the soul as a substance: man "I can't know anything about them," he says, and apart from that he is by no means convinced of their immortality. Although Montaigne admits that the soul directs behavior, for him that doesn't mean that it has a firm control over it Intelligible over sensitive. For the control of behavior by the soul is intended to explain its changeability, from which it follows that the soul itself is essentially unstable ^•. They dominate the affects (Montaigne tellingly calls them "passions corporelles" '^), which, although they can be approved by conscience and remorse, cannot be subdued "'. Because nostre appetite" irresolu et incer tain ' is "', transforms itself and the power of the soul in the above , sense into an unmistakable sign of nothing that the south would be like at all.

°"

°'^

III, 2 (— II, 222). III, 9 (= II, 431).

•'• II, 12 (= 1, 50 t f.). "'

°^'

II, 8 (= I, 423); cf. II, 12 (= I, 593) and III, 12 (= II, 506). Vor allem III, 9 (= II, 381 ff.).

°^-" I, 21 (= I, 108). '"’

°^

II, 12 (= I, 615 ff.).

II, 12 (= I, 605 ff.). II, 12 (= I, 576, 617 ff.).

°^ S. die Argumentationin I, 14 (= I, 56). ^'

I, 34 (= II, 150).

II, 12 (= I, 636). ^°

III, 2 ( — II, 226).

"•° I, 53 (- I, 343). * ®'

I, 53 (= I, 342).

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The second aspect of man's rootedness in the sensible world relates to geographical and social factors. Air, climate and soil, Montaigne believes, influence not only the physical condition of man, but also his mental condition. But he is particularly original and keen to observe when he discusses the dependence of the way peoples and individuals think on the society in which they live. This dependence in its most diverse forms is expressed in Mon taigne primarily in the form of an analysis of the Almad of the "coustume". “Coustume” is a very comprehensive term for him, not just

Brew and custom, but also the entire social structure in its diversity and the mentality associated with it. Only this broad meaning of the 'coustume' allows us to measure the extent of our dependence on it: 'nous les humons avec le laict de nostre naissance', and thus we create our first world view under its influence, which we are unconscious of, so that there is no question of breaking away from it can be "'. Ultimately, convention determines how we treat things, we hardly get to their essence •••.

The double rooting of humanity in the senseless world has a double consequence: perspectivity of all knowledge and relativity of all values. The former is given by the fact that all knowledge begins and ends with the senses, which actually only represents the solemn "preuve de notre ignorance" '°'. Since the senses have authority over the mind, the latter becomes just as formative as the other. It boils down to the fact that everything on earth can be learned from the intellect as well as from wadis. But with this the perspectivity of knowledge becomes an announcement of the relativity of values, in other words: the recognition of non-theoreticism, the rejection of intellectualism accompanies moral philosophy , sociologically founded relativism. Because the omnipotence of the "coustume" in the diluted sense implies precisely the powerlessness or the lack of a free intellect that grasps final truths and norms. The reference to the concrete situational condition has a deadly effect on intellectualism and normativism. Recognizing and evaluating are therefore perspectivist in the same sense and to the same extent. Montaigne, who can imagine a thousand contrasting ways of life, at the same time feels compelled to speak of each other differently, depending on the perspective from which he observes it. '. F °°°

II, 12 (- I, 646 f.). °•° I, 23 (= I, 121). °°' II, 17 (- II, 31). °•° II, 12 (= I, 661). °•° II, 12 (= I, 669). °°' III, 13 (beginning). °°^ II, 12 (= I, 634). °*• I, 37 (= I, 259). °° II, 1 (= I, 369).

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knowing what everyone, driven by their pursuit of wisdom, does unknowingly. Because everyone behaves as if he were Fla maistresse fortne de la nature” and uses his own qualities as a standard when he wants to judge others. The same applies to gaoze peoples: foreign customs are simply barbaric to them, their own alone reasonable '°. Hence the fact that what is praised here is condemned there"', or that the monstrosities of one time can be taken for granted in another". Full of enumerating contradictory customs of different peoples and thus showing their relativity '^ From these observations he concludes that the only universal thing about opinions is their diversity '^ and that they arise and die just like natural things audi " •. All this culminates in the view that there are no eternal, innate, natural ideas"'; if the concept of a fixed law stands in contradiction to the variability and variety of our actions"'. all n'y a rien de juste en soi”, Geredites and socia1 Useful lidies are identis& “'. ,

Laws do not arise from reason, but from madit or coustume" "' and are therefore not followed because they are made, but because they are laws." arise from pcoustume' "'. Even the most unreasonable things are trusted by our coustume and legitimated by reason "•.

These trains of thought are hardly compatible with the world of thought of the natural science model, which shows how great the tensions within modern rationalism have been since its earliest hour. Montaigne has for the overwhelming hope that •°' II, 32 (= II, 131 f.). II, 12 (= I, 593). ^° I, 31 (= I, 234); III, 13 (= II, 535). •°^ II, 12 (= I, 652). •°^ II, 12 (= I, 644 f.). Villey, Sources, I, 76 (Balbi), 94 (Castañeda), 137 (Lopez de Gomara), 138 (de Mendoza), 202 (Postel) etc. ••' S. especially I, 23. •°^ II, 37 (= II, 203). II, 12 (= I, 646). •'° II, 12 (= I, 652, 650 f.). "' III, 3 (= II, 238). "° III, 13 (- II, 523). ^'° II, 12 (- II, 656). ^'• III, 13 (= II, 524). •'^ I, 23 (= I, 121). •'• I, 23 (= I, 116); cf. I, 36 (- I, 2ss ff.); II, 12 (= I, 533ff., 652 ff.).

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Man could become lord over nature, but not much left' because he - offended knows too much about the dominion of nature (as body and affects) over human reason. He also ridicules mankind's complacency that eats gods and men's image "'. Nous sommes partout vent', he writes "', and in doing so he takes into account both the modern hubris and the anthropomorphism of traditional religion doubts about knowledge certainty both against the sdiolastisdie as well as against the mathematisdie method. His assertion that the impression of certainty is only a side indication of sdiwadi sense"' is supported by polemics against the unfruitfulness of syllogistic"' and at the same time against the claims of geometry. His general distrust of knowledge just as motivates his mockery of the physicians as his professed approval of the Copernican theory and its eventual correctness ^'. The mature form of natural scientific thinking is, however, unknown to him, he suspects that it is a matter of new overall explanations, ie new abstractions and a new intellectualism. Against this he asserted on the one hand the unfathomable depths of the human soul, the 'profondeurs opaques de ses replis internes' and on the other hand his predilection for the concrete or for the history. The demanding ontology repels him in all its forms . Je ne peints pas 1'estre. ,Je peints le passage' ^'. "'

This option also determines the fragmentary form of his work. Obviously, no binding should can be derived from such an overall consideration of human behavior. For Montaigne, however, the abandonment of truths and norms based on metaphysis-ontology does not mean a reason for complete resignation to everyday life - he even sees his lack of fear of life as the result of the fact that it is only through this abandonment that the limits of Madibareni become visible became. The basis of realistic behavior towards yourself and others is therefore reconciliation with the human Sdii‹:ksal, the next integration into the mensdili‹:je Sdiwädie. From skepticism comes Nadisi&t, from which

•'• S. z. B. II, 12 (= I, 594). •'• II, 12 (= I, 574). •'° III, 13 (= II, 566). *° II, 12 (= I, 604). II, 10 (= I, 455). ^° II, 12 (- I, 641 f.); II, 14 (= II, 8). II, 37 (= II, i75 f.). ^°^ II, 12 (= I, 640). ”’

II, 6 (- I, 414).

^• II, 10 (= I, 457 ff.). III, 2 (- II, 222).

"'

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understand forgiveness. Morality takes the place of rigid normativism

of compromise, an empiricism, oriented to the concrete situation, theoretically reserved and practically unpretentious, dismissively successful, and without side, always experimental morality. Since humanity is fickle and often evil, since small vices can be improved but large ones cannot be overcome, a temporary solution (there is no final solution anyway) is to extract positive effects from the suffering to play off the other with skill and thereby create functioning equilibriums "•. Montaigne's call to follow nature is intended above all to underline the necessity of the contact between body and emotions, understood in this way. However, Montaigne does not rely on following raw nature; he knows that inhumanity can also be a given "' and therefore requires the control of reason '°'. Due to their inclusion in the now extended natural complex

of human beings, however, the concept of nature also has something normative about it. Mon taigne's statements are therefore not infrequently burdened with a certain ambiguity, particularly when it comes to the meaning of the loi de nature. However, no skeptic can escape this ambiguity as soon as he succumbs to the temptation to give pedagogical recipes, always in this form. Montaigne's skepticism leads to an affirmation of the existing social norms in general and of religion in particular, which gives his thinking a conservative tinge. It must be underlined here, because it is not just a matter of temperament, but is connected with the presuppositions of his thinking and in this respect conveys a deep insight contradictory nature of modern rationalism as it shows that its emancipatory ambition was blunted by arguments that could no longer be taken from revelation but from its own profane approach: the roots of the nihilism of the 18th century were evident well into the early modern period. Skepticism must reject the idea of progress in science (that's what Montaigne does), because it cannot discover any forward-driving forces in it: human nature always remains attached to the same emotions and impulses. Otherwise, that means

•^ III, 12 (= II, 511). •'• This aspect is particularly emphasized by Frame (Montaigne' Discovery of Man, 105), which, however, generally exaggerates Montaigne's pedagogical optimism. The presentation by Friedridi, Montaigne, 189 ff., 204 ff. is much more convincing. III, 13 (= II, 526). ^' II, 11 ( = I, 476). •°• II, 8 (= I, 424). Brown, Religious and Polit. Conserv. in the Essais, insb. 69 ff. •°• II, 6 ( = II, 339 ff.).

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precisely the elimination of normativism, that there can be no absolute norm as a goal towards which the common sense movement could strive. The perspective of knowledge and the relativity of values demand otherwise, if social life is to be possible at all, the establishment of institutions that are intended to contain the unpredictable forces of human nature or to channel them into nonprofit (political) purposes. For Montaigne, religion is the institution par excellence in this sense; Not truth, but coustume forms its basis, which is why different religions can fulfill the same social function. For the sake of this function, religion must be there; The inconstancy of man is balanced by the stability of institutions."' However, this argument is reminiscent of Madiiavelli, whose principles Montaigne knew well ^'. In Montaigne, however, there is an additional one that has often been mentioned before him from different sides used " ® Redification of religion, which no longer wants to be socially based, but rather based on epistemological theory: if human knowledge is limited, it can neither impair nor replace religious belief "'. Since no doubt could arise that Montaigne believed at least in the first sentence of this argument in all seriousness, he would be credible overall if he used the argument in its entirety. The combination of social and epistemology in him caused the at least assumed sincerity the latter removed the cynical and provocative edge from the purely utilitarian character of the former, at least in the eyes of the benevolent reader. It is doubtful whether one can therefore call Montaigne a believer. It was remarked with Redet that his book was not a work of faith, even if it was written by a believer author "', and this implies that Montaigne could not be a blessed believer in the religious sense. A hint for the publisher He gives us a confession of his attitude when he says that the wise should follow the coustume and keep his innermost intentions for himself. This can lead to hypocrisy - or else such a deep conviction in the necessity of the coustume (also as Religion) that its observance goes without further ado and does not cause a split in conscience. To differentiate between the practical believing and the theoretical and skeptical pa •°^ II, 12 (- I, 487). ^°° II, 12 (= I, 647 ff.); I, 2 (= I, 127). Villey, Sources I,172; apt comparisons between Montaigne and Machia velli in Friedri&, Montaigne, 186 ff., 228 ff. • • So by Erasmus, Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola and Agrippa von Nettesheim, see. Popkin, History of Skepticism, 5, 19 f., 22 f. •°• II, 12 (= I, 482 f.). •'° Lanson, The Essays of Montaigne, 264.

••' I, 23 (= I, 125).

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then it would be pointless. In my opinion, Montaigne needs his position to be understood at least in this way by others and himself. Charron adopts Montaigne's motto of the wise man's adaptation to indifference and, for his part, offers both the social-functional and epistemological theory of the re-establishment of religion by at the same time trying to , create the impression of one's own piety. If he is not always completely convincing works, this is due to the

profane-anthropological orientation of his thinking, which, although generally much poorer than Montaigne's thinking, does have some particularly interesting nuances. After all, there was always a dispute about whether skeptics like Charron or La Mothe le Vayer supported religion honorably or rather wanted to end it unterminated. Audi Montaigne, who was initially widely perceived as a friend of religion and was praised by pious spirits, was later predominantly seen as

"°

Of Wisdom II, 8 (= II, 206). De la Sagesse III, 2 (= II, 300) and II, 5 (= II, 148). Otherwise he emphasizes diversite' and Ma&t

der 'coutume' (II, 8 = II, 194 ff.). Au& the diversity” of religions is “diose effrayable”; one religion fights the other, while they all refer to Gort at the same time; However, they are made with the help of purely human means and are dependent on the circumstances (II, 5 = II, 119, 125 If., 130 f.). Religion is socially nüœli&, and therefore the sovereign should take care of it (III, 2 = Il, 300).

Au& for Charron is the most important object of knowledge (I, 1 = I, 1 If.). In doing so, he resorts to stoic&-&ristli&e commonplaces such as dos yvi»8v uoúròv etc.& (as au& his work is a compilation of very heterogeneous ideas, in which demonology and Aristotelianism are equally represented), but factually he proceeds na& the new one , that is, non-metaphysis in this way of looking at things. Namely, he wants to examine the people en son privy ct en son å tous les jours” (I, 1 = 1, 10). Significantly, the investigation begins with the human body, which was created by God first: le corps est l'aisnt de l'ame, comme la matiere de sa forme' (I, 2 = I, 17). The Immortal&-

Belief in ethics arises from human vanity, but is socially useful (I, 8 = I, 73 f.); Charron does not (therefore) refute him, without expressly professing si‹:h to him. The priority of studying the body is evidently based on a pronounced anti-ascetic attitude (e.g. I, 23 = I, 167 If.: De l'amour &arnel¡ ct. III, 41 = III, 241 ff.). The human being is an animal among others; the 35th chap. of the first budies (- I, 203 ff.) bears the title: Comparaisons de l'homme zvec les autres ani maux. Although Charron says at one point that man is good by nature (II, 3 = II, 82), his entire train of thought is by no means in line with this thesis, which rather expresses a rejection of the ascetic consequences of the &riit1idien anthropologis&en pessimism. should bring. Because Charron goes much more detailed on those more natural and universal qualities' (I, 37 = I, 236) of the Mensdien ein, die er als vanity, weakness, inconstancy, misery, presumption defined (I, 38—42 = I, 237—317). '•° Popkin, History of Scepticism, 55 f., 60 If., 96 If.

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classified as libertines and treated accordingly”': times were becoming increasingly difficult for theology, which could not arbitrarily allow itself the luxury of ambivalent alliances. Indeed, the legitimation of belief by the mere reference to the limits of human knowledge was sidi sdiwadi and, moreover, ambiguous, especially since the skepticism allowed the argument sidi audi to be interpreted as meaning that, because of the impotence of human intellect, there is no ultimate truth as the basis of social life that conventions or illusions such as religion are indispensable. But the believers wanted to draw a direct conclusion from the impotence of reason to the truth of the revelation. To do this, however, they had to accept a double logical leap, which partly explains the difficulties of the alliance with skepticism. On the one hand, the transition from the statement of human ignorance to revelation is only necessary if one assumes that ultimate truths exist somewhere at all and are also indispensable (and indeed indispensable in mora1isd›normative, not just in a social-functional sense, which skeptics would give); on the other hand, this transition, even if one accepts its necessity, still says nothing about the content of that revelation intended to satisfy the human need: why should the diristlidie prefer to mohammedanidia or vice versa? Au & Pascal, whose work is the culmination of a long apologetic tradition developed in the confrontation with skepticism ^', like its predecessor, marks this double logistical jump. In our context, however, something else about his approach is important. Pascal's refusal to turn the weapons against Christianity into weapons for it "' is based on the real observation that in the late modern rationalism forces have emerged that run counter to the emancipatory and anti-theological efforts of this same rationalism. He wants to play mankind as nature against mankind as lords over nature or as a budding god and through the nadiweis mansdilidie Sdiwadie the first step back to god madien (thus he embarks, however, on the modern terrain of the primacy of anthropology — for the time being, he says). This is his own way, the game of renversement continuel which he closely observes

••° Dreano, The Religion of Montaigne, 277 ff. ••' From Angers, Pascal and his Precursors, passim.

••• Lncombe, L'Apologétique de Pascal, 311 f., summarizes the second aspect of this logical leap in the formulation that Pascal could not derive the truth of Christianity from the assumption of the supernatural at all; he simply ignores the problem, and because of that s‹:Further on& his apologetics. ••° Interview with Saci = Works IV, 55.

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du pour au contre' •" himself. On the one hand, he demands that the man s&en that he renounces his "amour propre, et cet instinct qui le porte a se faire Dies"', while on the other hand he reminds him of his naturalness reminds us: La nature de 1'homme est all nature, omne animal' "'. Hubris, the adversary of God and Christianity, can just as easily be refuted by skepticism's arguments. However, Pascal feels that this alliance is true uncomfortable. Although Montaigne has reason, the fact that he has too much money can be dangerous. Because Pascal uses skepticism but does not want to stop at it, he prefaces by emphasizing the presence of an indestructible, uplifting instinct in humanity in everything misery of his situation •^. What bothers him about Montaigne is his lascivious language and free-thinking, and he only wants to have taken over from him what he had in his life. Therefore he uses the essays directly and indirectly in extenso "' and places the Sdiwer point, following Montaigne, on the question of the unsteadiness of knowledge, which relates both to the predominance of senses and affects and also to the effects of coustume •••. The second basic point of agreement with skepticism is anti-intellectualism, in addition to the condemnation of hubris. Although Pascal wants to derive the primacy of faith from the primacy of the heart over the intellect '°•, we will However, we can see that in the 18th century, antiintellectualism, which was primarily meant to be anti-Cartesian, did not ultimately benefit skepticism and materialist tendencies, despite the pious intentions of many of its authors and supporters. Pascal, one of the most sensitive seismographers of the early modern era, feels that when the contradictions come to a head, only clear decisions can provide relief. On the one hand stand the principes naturels', on the other their skeptical deniers: voile la guerre ouverte entre les hommes, often il faut que diacun prenne parti' "'. This dramatic statement shows how strong the

•*• Pensees V, Fr. 328 (= Works XIII, 247). '^' Thoughts VII, Fr. 492 (= Works XIII, 394). ^° Thoughts II, Fr. 94 (= Works XIII, 21). ••• Another wonderful remark by Brunsdivicg, Génie de Pascal, 140. ••' Thoughts VI, Fr. 411 (= Works XIII, 311). '°°

Pensees II, Fr. 64—65 (— Works XII, 66—67).

'•• See the detailed text comparisons by Croquette, Pascal et Montaigne, esp. 107—109.

•°' Thoughts VII, Fr. 437 (= Works XIII, 355). '^ Pensees II, Fr. 83 (= Works XIII, 14). '°° Pensées II, Fr. 92; III, Fr. 234 (reference to Montaigne — ef. V, Fr. 325) (= Oeuvres XIII, 19 f., 155 ff., cf. 243 f.). '°° Thoughts IV, Fr. 248 (= Oeuvres XIII, 181 f.); cf. from Frag. Of the wt of per suader, Oeuvres 9, 272. '•' Thoughts VI, Fr. 345 (—Oeuvres XIII, 261).

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danger of skepticism and nihilism was felt. Undoubtedly, these currents were, from a purely quantitative perspective, very se wadi, especially since the Kirdie always had a firm grip on private and public everyday life "-. In addition, the accusation of atheism was made in a rather undifferentiated manner. Certainly there were not as many atheists as there were accused of atheism; It should also be borne in mind that not all those who contributed to the development of an anthropology and cultural theory that ultimately encouraged skepticism were themselves skeptics (we have already mentioned the example of Vives). On the other hand, one should take seriously the fact that more and more apologetics are serving the scriptures and refutations of atheism, which certainly points to a situation that has become unsavory. But also Pascal's strong need, for example, well: h of a new, freer and deeper religiosity, which thanks to its openness and plasticity would be less vulnerable than rigid dogma, arises not least from the feeling of fear of skepticism. The reform thus becomes a preventive defence. But that is already an admission that that the opponent has conquered important positions.

c) The natural redit of the 17th century and the three logical basic possibilities of modern rationalism The ambiguous consequences of the primacy of anthropology are noticeable in the seventeenth-century Nature paradigm, the main versions of which are most closely related to anthropological options. Since the anthropological problem played such an important role in breaking away from the mental framework of the old world, it was precisely for this reason that the transformation of the rationalization process of the new into a new world had to be carried out in the fight in its time . If the idea of God predominates in the ideological field, then the worldview struggles must be sparked by its interpretation, as was previously the case with the idea of God. The unbridgeable gap between Grotius and Hobbes, for example. B., which will also divide the entire modern rationalism, shows itself because of the new relevance of anthropology in the conception of the essence of humanity. And yet the traditional opponent was always strong and united, just as the Wuosdi was united in putting an end to religious and fratricidal wars forever. However, the respective content of this formal framework must be completely different if the sense of meaning is rehabilitated in different ways, from which the specific anthropological option arises

••• See the s&i1derung by Febvre, Le Problems de l'Incrojrance, 362 ff. Febvre, op. cit., 138 ff.; Bn&1ey, Atheism in the Engl. Renaissance, 49 f. •°• In England as early as 1530, Bn&ley, op. cit., 6l ff.

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their quasi-automatic reinforcement with the question of value. Au‹:h within the framework of Naturr&t namely& the purest form of normativism emerges in connection with idealistis‹:h-intellectualistis& positions and with reference to the structure mathematis‹:h absi‹:Werter truth, while the view that values are content1i& changing products of decisionistic setting, goes hand in hand with the idea of the animalistic naturalness of man. If being here in general, qua nature or Meos‹:b, is value-indifferent, the extreme wing of normativism strives to prove that values are in the structure of Seios or in the similarity of nature and Meos & . ursprüng1i& anchored and thus onto1ogis‹:h justified — So not changing or even non-binding products of settlements. As we know, in the structure of the mathematics and natural science model, the ultimate aim was to create a normative paradigm. It is incidental that a different conception of nature later gained the upper hand: the effort of extreme normativism to establish values ontologically and thus to eradicate skepticism once and for all remained in the determination of the world despite all the extreme fluctuations His self is always the same. A third position, which can be described as moderate normativism, is as much about skepticism as it is about the difficulty of the extreme normativism that arises with ontologically sensitive claims by creating a clear dividing line between ‹: to avoid the spirit and sensibility or the intelligible and sensitive. The sense of meaning is seen here as a fundamentally neutral value, but this concession to skepticism aims at the additional consolidation of values through the assumption of their complete independence from real factors. The intelligible is not a separate, tangible being and is therefore indestructible1i‹:h. It is obvious why this position has often drawn the ire of extreme normativism. After all, after its first formulation of principles by Pufendorf, it did not find a large following. Even its deepening by Kant could only find a ready hearing much later and in very different versions - and not least because it was the hopeful belief in values in an epoch of world war, collective disappointment and resignation. :held, but without, on the other hand, demanding the utmost in metaphysis':the faith from those who are tired of the world. Be that as it may, for this analysis it is essential that three styles of thinking were developed very early and clearly in the debates within modern natural discourse (Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendod are typical figures of each type), in in which the inner logical basic possibilities of modern rationalism were defeated. (The hermeneutic fruitfulness of this discussion is not diminished by the statement that in the 18th century, for reasons that will not be discussed, dualistic and mixed deacon formations were typical and in the majority - on the contrary, only these Defense enables insight into the logical character of the latter. The fact that this happened so early was not a coincidence.

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The basic intellectual dimensions of modern rationalism were given and could only be combined in certain ways. However, para digmatis&e combinations are limited in number from the outset, although the combinations in individual questions can vary indefinitely. The mathematis‹:je Naturwissens‹:haft offered the social and moral philosophers the subjects, who can be subsumed under the name qNaturre&t', a model on the basis of which they could articulate si& systematis&. Above all, it has provided a paradigmatic concept of nature, namely a solid one to which new evaluations can be linked in a coherent form. It seemed as if evaluations and values that were structured in a formal sense like the mathematical model of nature or that could be derived from a certain concept of nature more geometrico were as binding as a law of nature. In a time of religious and civil wars, in which the fixed social orientation points were lost, this - hard but even more reassuring -

The binding nature of natural law has a fascinating effect on the social theorist. The term lex is now transferred to the social phenomena in the new meaning which it has meanwhile acquired in the natural sciences—although the natural sciences themselves use it from the po1itis:the language :h had taken over and modified from antiquity "'. The curious S‹:hi‹ksa1 of this term is therefore 1ehrrei‹:h for the described paradigmatis‹:je relevance of the natural knowledge‹:haft1i&en model. But now audi had the S‹:ho1a stik, and especially the later one, emphasizes the absolute bindingness of certain norms even for God himself, and so one could come to the conclusion that the modern world, the natural res':st, at least seen purely formally, is not just stois': dem ( »natür1i‹:of the system' "•), but also s&o1astis‹:committed to the body of thought. In general intellectual history:hi‹:ht1i‹:the Hinsidit may however":h the pure s‹:ho1astisthe influence ni‹ :St be overrated. Because the development within the Sdiolastism did not take place in the end under the pressure of the still disorderly articulated new currents, and certain S':ho1astics only expressed it more clearly because they were over They had a conceptual instrument and, beyond that, a theologian: alibi. They came to the thesis of the absolute bindingness of certain basic truths and norms in their fight against the re1ativist consequences of nominalism and the volunta that is necessarily associated with it rism, when the respective concrete content of the essentially empty nouns could only be the product of a decisionist positing. Rejection of nominalism and natural law are part of Suarez's thinking, for example. B. systematis‹:h

^°

Casini, Natural Law, 417 ff. On the content of the expression Dilthey, Ges. S&r. II, 91.

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together "', that is, the latter should not be a hidden undermining of the church's position. The same zeal drives Gabriel Vasquez to that extreme position, the logical consequence of which is to moderate Suarez su':Ute '^. The motivation of the S ' :holastic suffers from the fathers of the modern age: the natural laws. In addition, the brothers are based on the orientation of the latter mathematisdi-naturwissensdiaftlidien model as well as the precedence of anthropology, which played no small role in sdiolastic thinking, but was nevertheless heavily dependent on the discussion about the nature and characteristics of God or is part of this discussion projected into it, while it now appears as a more or less independent factor. On the other hand, one cannot leave aside the fact that the extreme normativist wing of the newer nature redit has generally shown itself ready to do so ‹:h the sdiolastis to adopt the polemic against nominalism and voluntarism when it was a matter of standing up to value relativism and thus keeping the new free from nihilism verda‹:st. However, this appropriation was only formal in that the struggle now took place on a slightly different level, that is, on a secular level. In this differentiated perspective, in my opinion, the controversial one can be seen Assess the question of Grotius's relationship to holasticism without unnecessary onesidedness "'. It is certainly no coincidence that, among the theologians he cites among his sources, he names Francisco Victoria first, "' who was considered the pioneer of the Spanish ‹:den Späts‹:ho1astic emphasized that God could not change nature and thus also the good and the good; on the other hand, however, the s&o1astics were too discredited for si& Grotius to want to know that they were in grund sätz1i‹:of agreement (a sentence in the Prolegomena "' can be read as a reproach against contemporary s&o1astics, in contrast to the unbin1i‹:the praise for the older ones). The S‹:ho1astics had used their natural rights doctrine as a means of denominational struggle and thereby

'°' Cber Suarez' critique of nominalism see Neidl, The concept of reality of the FS, 6 ff.; Rommen (Staatslehre ron S., 66 ff.) points out the limits of ron Suarez's criticism of nominalism, which become logically and unavoidably the rejection of Vasquez's extreme position (see next note). ‘°’ About Vasquez see Welzel, Naturre&t and mater. Spoken., 96 ff. ••• Catholic scholars such as Rommen understandably tend to assume that Grotius is actually continuing sdiolasticism (Eternal Return of Natural Redits, 71). On the contrary , Welzel values the influence of Stoicism as higher than that of S&olasticism, although he does not want to overlook the latter (Naturr. and mat. Ger., 128), while Wolf, against the one-sided image of the modern , sees the traditional component and thus the 'real dialectic' of the old and the new in Grotius is considered to be madien versudit (Reditsdenker, 254 ff.). •'• De jure, Proleg. $37 (= St. XX). *" The last of § 52 (= p. XXXI).

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statement's general validity is seriously impaired. But Grotius wants to create a natural law that would be above any religious dispute: “Nam id ius ita omnibus hominibus commune est, ut Religionis discrimen non admittat' •”. This is his intention when he assigns the nature of natural law to be a mathematical law Confidence that God cannot change it and that it can exist without him." Nature and immutability in the sense of lawfulness are inseparably linked for him, as for the new science of natural science, which is why he calls his doctrine of redis "naturalis" and at the same time "perpetua". "'. The assumption of the immutability of the quantities that make up the natural order has a certain anthropological consequence. If one starts from the thesis that man is naturally good or is an image of God, then one can implicitly see original sin as an inadmissible change in a natural quantity eliminate, since neither God nor the devil can turn the natural order upside down. Only constants, not distortions of natural quantities that create inoperable things, make the knowledge of nature and of the society with a tradition of natural knowledge possible. Anthropology forms the most important constant of the new social theory. In Grotius it remains optimistisdi, that is, it eliminates the doctrine of original sin and assumes the natural rationality and sociability of humanity (appetitus societatis) '”. Anthropological optimism is, for its part, made possible or underpinned by the rehabilitation of meaningfulness in the sense of the mathematics of natural science: after the elimination of the doctrine of original sin, meaningfulness is not a mere activity of the devil, but the mastery of reason must never be doubted. . Just as on the level of natural science methodology the cognitive intellect of the human being who serves as master of nature retains the upper hand, the same is true on the level of anthropology; The human being is naturally good because he can act sensibly or keep his senses and impulses in check if he only wants to; But he may want to because he has the ability to do so.

Another basic feature of Grotius' natural redit shows a fundamental structural similarity to the rationalist epistemology of mathematical

*'^ De iure, II, T5, 8 (-

S. 418).

"°

De iure I, 1, l0 $ 5 (= p. 11)¡ Proleg. $ 11 (= p. VIII f.). However, Röd is right when he says that despite all his admiration for mathematics, Grotius was not able to build up his Reditslehre nidit geometricsdi (Geom. Geist und Naturr., 71). We are interested here in the structural relationship between normativism and the mathematical approach in general, quite independently of its implementation — which, moreover, was primarily a question of the form of representation, albeit with a high symbolic value. •'• De jure, Proleg. § 31 (= St. XVIII). •'* De jure, Proleg. $6 (= SV). De iure, 1, 2, 1-2; Read on. $$ 9, 13 (= S. 2s f., VII f., X).

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matically oriented natural knowledge diaft: its normative character. The GrO tius ni‹:St zu1eizt gains normativity or untroubled reasonableness of his natural right by not going into a systematic investigation of the relationships between naturalness and positive redit at all. In other words: for him, the testimonies of socio-medical sensuality can no more shake the reasonableness = validity of natural redits than instincts can shake the reason of man - or like the vulgar opinion, after which sicii ni‹:St the earth, but the sun moves in a circle , the ScbluB conclusions of the mathematical and procedural natural sciences. Grotius refers to the stories and does not only want to find examples in them, but rather to discover normative theses (.judicia'). This turn to stories, however, takes experience into account in the same way as it did in Galileo's thought experiments . Not the experience, but the intellect is decisive - and nevertheless the world of experience is the area of activity of the new intellect in contrast to the old Reflects the detachment of the new spirit from the old framework, which takes place precisely through the rehabilitation of sensuality.This interpretation is thereby proved that the first reproach which Grotius ridites against the theological naturalists is none other than the neglect of history , while at the same time he understands the mathematical method as an abstraction from matter and wants to ri&ten his natural law. For he shows himself by no means willing to let the normative, immutable character of his natural right be influenced by fluctuations in society. On the contrary: the norm should guide the interpretation of the facts. Psy&o1ogisch Aufs‹:h1uß reicii is a formulation "•, where Grotius questions reality from the point of view of the norm and imperceptibly changes levels: that war abolishes the Re‹:St is untrue because war is only about the The “verum” and

the 'debere' are simply considered synonymous. Because of Hobbes, the modern doctrine of natural law lost its doctrine very early on normativist virginity. His approach is based on a completely different rehabilitation of meaning and therefore a completely different anthropology, which also corresponds to a different attitude to the question of norms. If in Grotius the rehabilitation of the sensible world or this as the main object of human theoretical and practical effort did not endanger the primacy of reason as the bearer of the normative par excellence, in Hobbes the normative must, at least in Grotius's sense,

•" De iure, Proleg. $ 46 (- S. XXIX). ^'^ De jure, Proleg. $ 38 und $ 58 (= S. XX f., XXXIII). S. o. Anm. 473 •'° De jure, Proleg. $ 25, Anfang (= S. XV).

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omitted because for him mens‹:h1i‹:of behavior in general and social or state li‹:of life in particular are not based on reason, but on instincts and na tür1i‹:needs. If Grotius strictly distinguished sociability and utility from each other '•', Hobbes connects state power or obedience and welfare of the subjects most resolutely "'. Utility and the satisfaction of needs, not a socially-joying reason independent of them creates larger businesses, and that is precisely why such things are unthinkable without state power. At the same time, Hobbes turns it against Aristotelianism. s‹:ho1astis‹:je tradition and the more recent normativism, when he contests the natür1i‹:je sociability of man‹:den and the natural state (this means for him ni‹:st only the state before the erection of organized societies, but also the state that corresponds to human nature in general) is referred to as the war of all against all. The instinct of self-preservation, one "necessity of nature" represents ' 8', is for Hobbes - in direct contrast to the stoisd' inspired normativists - only secondary and indirectly related to sociability - as we shall see no‹:h; Primarily and essentially it relates to the striving for the expansion of one's own measure, since only expansion of the means can secure long-term self-assertion in a world of incessant struggle mandimal ambivalent, but unity1i‹:the striving na‹:h madit on the one hand and obstinacy on the other in all its manifestations, even the höd '^ verwa':Ssen: the normative therefore has no independent seat in the most human being':den. A brief analysis of Hobbes' concept of reason could give us an insight into some key points of his thinking:weapons which are also directly relevant to our investigation. First of all, how is it to be explained that Hobbes understood the 'laws of nature', ie those obligations whose fulfillment social life first made possible1i‹:St "', dictates' or precepts of reason' (sometimes even right' or natural reason') while on the other hand he denies the existence of a recta ratio 'nadidrü&1idi' anchored in rerum natura itself '^? ,

•^ De jure, Proleg. §$ 16, 22 (= S. 11, 13). *•' Lev. 22 (= EW, III, 208); XVII (= EW, III, 153). '^° De Cive I, § 2 (= OL, II, 158 ff.). •^ Of Cive I, $10 (= OL, II, 164 f.); Lev. XIII (= EW, III, 113). ••• Elem. of Law, I, 14, 6 (- S. 54). '^^ Lev. XI (— EW III, 85 f.)¡ XIII (= EW, III, 111 f.). '^ Audi knowledge is, besides revenge and glory, a form of madit, s. Lev. VIII (- EW, III, 61). ••' Lev. XIV (= EW, III, 117). ••• Lev. 14 (- EW, III, 116), 15 (= EW, 3, 147), 42 (= EW, 3, 513); De Cive I, $ 15 (= EW, II, 13), II, $ 1 (= EW, II, 16) etc. etc. Elem. of Law II, 10, 8 (= S. 150); From Cive I$1 (=EW, II, 16).

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This is only because Hobbes has two fundamentally different conceptions of reason in mind—more precisely, because he opposes the traditional conception of reason with a radically new one that his purely naturalistic anthropology demands. If he does not accept reason in the sense of the infallible faculty, then he is eo ipso questioning the very thing to which, according to the classical philosophical tradition, its infallibility should be attributed, namely its connection to and constant reference to eternal, ontologically based norms. On the other hand, human reason, according to Hobbes, is rooted in the instinct of self-preservation, namely in the fear of natural death, which keeps the thirst for madness in check, since anyone can kill anyone. This is how simple the basis of this reason is according to the criteria of normativism But it is all the more deeply rooted in the biological nature of man, according to Hobbes' opinion. Not as an abstract morality, but as a concrete existential fear, it drives people to put an end to the war of all against all and to obey the laws of nature as precepts of reason. Only through the detour of fear-reason does the instinct of selfpreservation become sociability, and it is precisely its derived character that makes the latter so fragile: not only is it often caused by open civil war (because the state of nature never ends between the states anyway "' ) is disturbed, but the war lasts considerably longer than the hostilities in the narrower sense as long as the abstention from war persists. Because reason is primarily a function of the instinct of self-preservation, it also exists in the state of nature (which is why its first 'general rule' contains both the fundamental law of nature and the sum of the right of nature" "'). It is therefore not always and not necessarily tied to the concepts of good and evil, which do not exist at all in the state of nature”; and if it allows itself to be bound to society after its establishment, it does so precisely for the same reason that did not allow binding in the state of nature, that is, out of consideration for the better strategy for securing self-preservation. That's why it's unreasonable to act in society as if you were in a state of nature "'. Dual rationality thus becomes the highest advantage of healthy reason "', and nothing much changes that except for their late attachment to good and evil , since these are not ultimately seen from the point of view of usefulness.

••° S. the fine analysis of Strauss, The Polit. Philos. of Hobbes, 17 ff. •°1 Lev. 30 (= EW, III, 342); XIII (= EW, III, 115). '•° Lev. XIII (= EW, III, 113). ••° Lev. XIV (= EW, III, 117). ••• Lev. XIII (= EW, III, 115). •"^ Lev. XV (EW, III, 133 f.). ••° Elem. of Law I, 15, 1 (= S. 15 f.).

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It is easy to see that this revolutionary reversal of the normativist concept of reason in the Greek and Greek tradition is connected to the modern thesis that man is nature, and that is why it was present to some extent long before Hobbes (in Ma'iaveli it is even tacitly assumed). . The consequences of the separation of the rational from ontologically founded normative are enormous for modern rationalism, so that one could say that it lives in the shadow of that separation. The direct dependence of reason on the existential circumstances of the sensuous, finite, entirely natural human being prohibits it from prescribing eternal norms and channels its activity into weighing up the respective possibilities of avoiding violent death and, moreover, satisfying the need for power. Since these possibilities depend on very changeable factors or on place and time, the fact that reason is at work does not allow us to draw a compelling conclusion about what it will command in each case . Reason works forever, because the instinct of selfpreservation never rests, but no substantive constancy of norms can be derived from this. In other words: the fact that there should be norms is a requirement of reason or the instinct of self-preservation, which forces the establishment of social standards; But what these norms are supposed to specifically prescribe remains open for the time being and is the product of a stipulation by a sovereign will. This fundamental distinction between that and what, which in itself is a specific side effect of the aforementioned detachment of reason from the normative in the traditional sense, exposes the point at which nominalism and voluntarism intersect again - this time not from a theological perspective, as in Ockham , but in a purely secular context. The connection between naturalistic anthropology, skepticism or nominalismvoluntarism and modern statehood or sovereignty, which we encountered de facto in Machiavelli, emerges in Hobbes in a theoretically elaborated form. Hobbes's precise grasp of this intellectual constellation can be seen in his statements about natural law, which in turn are based on the distinction between the law in general as a commandment of reason or the instinct of self-preservation and the positive law as the product of a sovereign statute , ie the distinction between that and what. Hobbes emphasizes that his theory of natural law does not refer to the laws that actually exist, but rather to their general character." 7 . The natural laws are initially indeterminate in terms of content, mere theoremata" which actually do not deserve the name lex' in the concise sense of the "vox imperantis" "'. Because of this lack of clarity, the question of interpretation is particularly acute for them,

"’

"not what they are, but what the laws are", De Cive, Pref. to the Readers - OL, II, 152.

^•’ Leviathan, XV (OL, III, 122).

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such that Herrs&er is whoever is able to interpret verbind1i‹:h '•°. And when Hobbes says that the natural laws are eternal and unchanging, he also adds that they are only about "animi dispositiones" (ie ultimately about the instinct of self-preservation, which forces the establishment of society and the law in general). the si& differ essentially from the 'actiones', which are evidently determined by the applicable redit, that sicii The latter are made so different according to the circumstances that what was right and reasonable at one time is dishonest and unreasonable at another. All injustice is indeed forbidden according to the law of nature, but because (quid) it is supposed to be considered dishonorable, it is not natural law that determines it, but civil law. There were even times when robbery and natural law could be reconciled. ‹:ii comments that historically founded value relativism, which bears the skepticism in connection with naturalistic anthropology, is reported. Similarly as with Montaigne, we read in Hobbes that there is no such thing as absolute good "•, the concepts of good and evil would always apply in relation to a specific person and not in sidi "'. Bindlily they are defined by the will of the sovereign "': u'n they are to be content, he recognizes that there will be laws and peace is his duty. The distinction between that and what characterizes it the genesis of Leviathan itself and thus also the nature of the resulting sovereignty The people agree only that a state is to be created, and they entrust the future sovereign with this, without now having any influence on it take, u'as for laws he is enacted to fulfill the Zwe& erertion of the state '•°.

As is well known, Hobbes did not inherit the beginning of tyranny in these sovereign powers, but rather the only chance of social peace. We are not interested in this aspect in relation to the doctrine of sovereignty, but rather in relation to the question of norms and the closely related reversal of the traditional concept of reason. The competence of the sovereign in terms of determining good and evil and a new concept of reason belong together. So that reason can do its best to avoid backlash If it can command the state of nature, it must act two-rationally or according to the needs of the concrete situation, i.e. be free from normativist constraints. It is free of values and norms in the sense that it contains all norms

'^ Lev. 26 (= OL, III, 202). De Cive, III $29 (=OL, II, 195 f.). • °' De Cire, 6 $ 16 (= OL, II, 229). °°' Elem. of Law, I, 19, 2 (- S. 78). •°° Elem. of Law, I, 7, 3 (= S. 22). ^' Lev. VI (= EW, III, 41). °°° De Cive, VI, $9 (= OL, II, 221 f.). ••• De Cire, II, $4; 6, $14; VII, $ 12 (= OL, II, 170 f., 227, 242).

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and values on the altar of peacekeeping. In contrast, the normativist reason shows the immanent will to correct or express beliefs that have been judged to be false, which can only trigger war. Hobbes was the first in modern times to recognize the enormous potential aggressiveness of the normative or moralistic world and to neutralize it as a powerful means of securing peace. For him, the fact that a supposedly true reason wants to prescribe the supposedly and only spoken laws is an error that hath cost many thousands of men their lives. The claim to the possession of the one true reason is just a corrupt Maditan claim. So Hobbes is not just drawing against theology, but also against the new, anti-absolutist and anciently inspired normativism, which can cause just as much unrest as that "'. That Hobbes' arguments both against the Aristotelian s&o1astis tradition and also against a main wing of modern rationalism could be used, is very characteristic for the abzeldinen reversal of the alliances against the verdadites of nihilism.

If one understands Hobbes' theory of natural law' or 'qobligation' in In this context - as one must do - the assumptionis false

erroneous, they can be recorded on the basis of the normativist nature re&t"'.

•°' The Questions Concerning Liberty etc. = EW, V,l76. ^° ® Lex. V (= EW, III, 3t). •°• Lev. XXIX (= EW, III, 314 f.). ^'° In an important book, strongly influenced by Hobbes, Kose11e& has shown that the Enlightenment-rise normativity in its fight against the absolutist state brought into being a permanent state of crisis, which can be seen with the epoch of the religious wars can be compared (criticism and crisis, especially 15t ff.). The short but precise interpretation of Hobbes (18 ff.) is undertaken from the perspective of the civil war problem. ^ "Warnder claimed this in the most detail (The Polit. Philos. of H., esp. Chap. VVII, p. 80 ff.). The best criticism of this thesis so far has been formulated by Polin, L' Obligation Morale et Politique, 139 ff., 142 and notes 18 and 61; cf. the comments by Watkins, Hobbes' System of Ideas, 85 ff., 154 ff. Following Warrender, Hood is even the result "Hobbes' morality was traditional and Christian" (The divine Policies of H., t3; for criticism Polin, L'Obligation, notes 4 and 28). Characteristics: References si&Hood makes little effort to explain how see that Hobbes' materialistic oncology and anthropology can be reconciled with his native Christian faith. He simply claims that Hobbes treated his mechanicism as an explication of a religious worldview ( 14), whereby he completely ignores the fact that Hobbes directly questioned the Christian conception of God by way of his theory of motion (see note 293). What is particularly astonishing is Hood's naivety when, for obvious reasons, he takes the fruits of Hobbes's knowledge of the Bible, which he ostentatiously displays as a joke, at their face value, without paying attention to the often downright casuistic meanings.

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This must be clear so that we are even able to find the normative component in Hobbes' thinking where it actually exists. For, paradoxically, it does in fact exist and, given Hobbes' muted basic attitude to the question of norms, it does not cause insignificant logical difficulties; In addition, it also has important consequences for the form in which Hobbes's political theory is presented. This normative component consists of the (by no means self-evident) thesis, which could just as easily be understood as a hope or wish that social peace should prevail. Hobbes does not want to remain a skeptical observer of human things (although he is one to a certain extent), but wants to create a science that could eliminate false opinions and prove its practical usefulness through its effect in favor of the consolidation of peace "'. As Verfedi ter the norm of social peace, Hobbes, like every other normativist, must appeal to the people's unity and woo them. This is where his logical difficulties begin, because Hobbes's reversal of the traditional concept of reason had the existence of a purely normatively oriented one Oneness in man has been made fragile. If human reason can be trained to see the truth of sound political maxims, then it must be asked why it should then be impossible to make social obligations one-sided and binding from the outset on a purely rational basis But Hobbes knows that the state, even considered a god on earth, can only be mortal, built on an instinct of preservation that oscillates between fear of death and a thirst for power. As an interpretation , this thesis would be sufficient if the distant observer could understand the emergence and decline of states. since he is on a self But whoever has social peace as a value in itself and ,

should

sets up, as Hobbes does (in contrast to Madiiavelli "'), for example, has to be done

nesvers‹: to respect biblical words. Theologians have a keener sense of Hobbes' religious beliefs, as Braun's book proves. If one leaves aside the author's violent polemics, Braun justifies his thesis that Hobbes was an atheist (The Mortal God, 37 ff.) far more thoroughly and psychologically convincingly than Hood did his own. Furthermore, in contrast to Hood, Braun also acknowledges the importance of Hobbes' materialistic oncology for his political and moralphilosophical thinking (70 ff.). It is only very questionable whether Hobbes envisioned the totalitarianism that Braun accuses him of (especially 160 ff.). See the Hobbes analysis by Ko selleck cited in the previous note.

^ "S. a typis‹:je formulation of his absidies in Elem. of Law, Ep. Ded., xvii f. ^'°

Lev. XVII (= EW III, 158).

As is well known, Machiavelli had inherited an essential basis for Roman freedom and power precisely in the constant conflict between the people and the aristocracy, Discorsi I, 4 and 6 (— Opera 101 f., 105 ff.).

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can derive permanent duties from the instinct of self-preservation, precisely in order to be able to demonstrate the feasibility and therefore seriousness of this should. In his effort to achieve this, Hobbes only very superficially considers the critical case in which the immediate interest of the instinct of self-preservation requires the violation of obligations if only there were no fear of sanctions (this possibility is, moreover, supported by the ambivalent Formulation of the definition of the first fundamental "rule of reason" itself suggests "that concerns both law and right of nature, although the latter is supposed to mean freedom and the latter is supposed to mean obligation). However, Hobbes wants to derive from the general usefulness of society for the individual the necessity of undervaluing the individual below social standards in all individual cases: this is indeed legitimate, but in turn it amounts to an appeal to something that is superior to the immediate needs of self-preservation beyond reason. Due to his anthropological presuppositions or his concept of reason, Hobbes cannot derive any permanent obligations or behavioral norms "'. Permanent preservation of peace would theoretically be possible if either people were rational in the sense of normativism or the instinct for self-preservation only existed in fear death, and therefore has nothing and never to do with striving to expand the existing madit. But why should the fear exist if there were no madit thirsty enemy?

Despite his own presuppositions, Hobbes wanted to deduce the should or the value of peace as if the instinct of self-preservation were only fear - and not also a striving for power , which sometimes becomes even stronger than fear. Precisely in order to unilaterally demonstrate the connection of this should, he used the geometric form of construction: this therefore, at least within his social theory, refers exclusively to the normative component of his thinking. Under the influence of the triumph of mathematical physics, Hobbes believes that his ought would be theoretically more convincing and practically relevant if it could be deduced within the framework of a geometrically structured construction. The acceptance of a higher belief However, the effectiveness of the geometrisdi structured and proven implies a belief in purely intellectual motivation and, since at the same time the geometris method has to deduce an ought, its use in Hobbes takes on the same intellectualisticnormativist coloring as in Grotius. This is precisely a confirmation of our general thesis that intellectualist normativists would rely on the mathematical evidence of natural law called - although this is only one aspect, and not the most important, of the business ^'^ '^

Lev. XIX (= EW, III, 117). The comments by Röd, Geom. Geist and Naturr. 28 f., 36 f., 51 f.; audi Ilting, introduction to

Tönnies, 67'° ff. especially 74 *. With Redit, Ilting concludes from this that the natural Redit interpretation of Hobbes is unacceptable (77*).

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Same thinking is Hobbes, who is in the tidersprudi with his basic principle: value relativism. In other words: unlike Grotius, Hobbes' use of the geometric method to normative questions coincides with anthropology and philosophy (nominalism and voluntarism). basics of his thinking hardly. As a geometer or with the help of the mathematically constructed theory of politics, Hobbes wants to direct nature or natural human beings but as an anthropologist he insists that human beings are nature, that they do not or only have sensuality, their drives and passions can temporarily conquer. Materialism and politicized claims come into conflict. Hobbes himself indirectly admits the ambiguity of his point of view when he says that men are not responsible for the dissolution of their own state as 'matters' but as 'makers of the same' . 8th . Nature is and remains matter, the maker overcomes it - not in the end, Hobbes wants to say, with the help of the geometrically constructed political theory. This extra-normative function of the geometric method in its connection with the idea of humanity as "maker" becomes clearer when we realize that the most important aspect of Hobbes' anthropology, which concerns humanity as nature or as "matter", sdion before his engagement with mathematical natural knowledge s‹:air was established, namely in the context of huiiianistisdien and historical studies sidi developed "'. This is a mentally deficient person

^"

Strauss, The Politics. Philos. of Hobbes, 168 f. Cf. but u. note 519. 8 Lev. XXIX (= EW, III, 308) ; Elsewhere it is said that we can construct politics a priori because we measure it (De homine X, 5 = OL II, 94). •‘

^'• Strauss showed this convincingly (The polit. Phil. of Hobbes, XV, 6 ff., 170). However, his attempt (8 ff.) to establish a connection between the me&anicistic materialism of the natural scientist Hobbes and the naturalistic (= pessimistic) anthropology is very problematic, while on the other hand the "Vitalistic" conception of man by Hobbes from humanistic education or come from tradition and should be more flexible and optimistic accordingly. On the contrary, we have shown that the use of the geometrical method, which also corresponds structurally to the mechanistic approach, is intended to serve a normative goal - quite independently of the fact that mechanistic determinism underpins pessimistic anthropology ontologically and thus ultimately also the norm Hobbes envisaged undermined (Strauss is right about that, see note 517) by factually eliminating reason. (That the adoption of natural scientific methodology in itself constitutes the political philosophy of Hobbes in the sense of Ron Röd also has good reasons to doubt that Strauss could be influenced, Geom. Geist. and Naturr., 20.) Strauss makes this mistake because he wants to identify the humanistic tendencies of Ron Hobbes rather one-sidedly with a content-oriented or normatiristically understood orientation to Aristotle (108), even though Hobbes only used Aristo-Te1is&e materials (see the Text comparison in Strauss, 35 ff.), which he wrote in

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Point, if we think about the importance of the stories for thinking of Ma‹fiia velli or Montaigne - in contrast to the irrelevance of mathematics and physics. Hobbes might as well have stayed within the framework of the story without having to change his basic conceptions of man and the state in the slightest, if he had not wished to establish and defend a norm. This caused his (later) introduction of the geometric method into political theory and, conversely, his disparagement of history *'. The content also shows the influence of the geometrical method used in normative absidency in the consistent establishment of the fiction of the state of nature and the contract theory that goes with it. Because of his anthropology and as an expert on the faces alone, Hobbes was able to make the assertion without having authority sidi the uiens‹fili&e nature nt&t

into a completely differently conceived framework. (Strauss makes the same mistake that he accuses Dilthejr of in relation to the use of stoic ideas by & Hobbes with Redet, 3 f.) That they & Hobbes in his "naturalistic" anthropology not least through the "humanistic" tradition itself was inspired by a more detailed comparison with Thucydides, which unfortunately cannot be found in Strauss (cf. to9 f.). (As far as I know, this essential gap in the research has not been eliminated; the treatise by S&latter, Hobbes and Thucydides remains philologically oriented - despite several references, especially 357.) Thorough examination of the relationships with Thukjrdides as well as those with the new moralistics (= knowledge of the mores, see note 374) would make a significant contribution to bringing to light the intellectual origins of Hobbes's anti-iropology and thus, among other things, the milgar Marxism, if Macpherson's interpretation presented under liberal precedents e.g. B. to refute directly. MacPherson's Versudi (Polit. Theory of Possess. Indirid., esp. 6t ff.), Deducing Hobbes' anthropology from the antagonistic conditions of early capitalist society, is ideologically motivated insofar as it is based on the assumption of an unchangeably evil human nature , which in turn would make a liberal-normativist social progress impossible. The historicization or relativization of Hobbes - like that of Mziarelli - essentially serves ideological purposes. There will be no answer to the politico-theoretical works of Ron Hobbes, who linked human nature and mastery in the broad sense of the term, like behavior and obedience. Since Macpherson does not mention the name of Ron Thucydides in his book, he can of course go to the path of the embarrassing question of why it was possible, many centuries before the early capitalist period, to formulate the anthropology expressis rebis that he sees as a product or .Reflects the age of Hobbes.

^^ The evidence in Strauss, The Polit. Phil. of Hobbes, 96 ff. ^•' Hobbes himself remarks that the state of nature does not always exist in the war of all against all, he calls on the reader to imagine a state in which there is no higher power to isolate people (Ler. XIII = EW, III, t44 f.).

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rein in, i.e. not create an organized society. However, he only offers the contract theory, which could not be accommodated in such a concept, because he wants to represent the exploitation of the rulers in such a way that their connection (not least in the normative sense) is also unique: should be carefully done like the necessity of a geometrically proven natural law. Precisely with reference to the normative aspect of contract theory, he places the Commonwealth by institution at the center of his statements, although he himself emphasizes that the sovereign in a Commonwealth by acquisition has exactly the same rights as the contractually established one. Lehrrei& is in turn the comparison& with Ma‹biave1li, who devotes his attention primarily to the mastery acquired through the force of arms and activity. "°. In contrast to the history-covering Madliavelli, Hobbes wants to promote a certain normative goal through his political theory. That is what the Love for the contract theory; it represents a special consequence of the general adoption of the geometric method, which creates a pervasive ambiguity in Hobbes' political thinking, viewed in its entirety. For our thesis of the structural The parallelism of the different levels of a comprehensive mental structure is interesting , the same ambiguity - this time due to the sensualistic starting point on the one hand and the simultaneous establishment of a comprehensive physical worldview on the one hand 1ogis&-mathematics‹:hen procedure on the other hand is conditional - characteristic of Hobbes's theory of knowledge. If Hobbes' normative zeal was strong enough to make the logical coherence of his political theory questionable, it was still not enough to overlook the dominant value relativist or nominalist and voluntaristic aspect of his thinking . For him the connection, which Leibniz particularly criticized, was extremely clear between decisionism in the determination of words and decisionism in the determination of values or truths. It was aptly noted that in the natural studies of Grotius and Hobbes, two different types of social knowledge are opposed to each other. The irreconcilable opposition is in ha1t1i& and formal or onto1ogis‹:h-anthropo1ogisdi and cognitive theory at the same time. If the tendency represented by Hobbes, if carried out consistently, had to lead to a descriptive-re1ativist theory of society, then on the other hand

^^

Lex. XX (= EW III, 185 f.). ^^ Prince VI (= Work 21 ff.). ^^ See the excellent analysis by Polin, Polit. ei Phil. &ez Hobbes, Chapter II, especially 4Z ff. Polin's work can probably be described as the best overall presentation of Hobbes' thought to date. ••• S. den Text of Marius Nizolius de vens Principiis etc.' aus dem jahre 1670, in: Phil. S&r. IV, 158. ^° Welzel, Naturre‹:St u. along with. German, 146.

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The prescriptive moment in Grotius was so strong that, preserved in its purity, it at least suggested a repression of healthy reality. In the long term, however, the latter would result in a relapse into the ahistorical normativism of the sdiolastic nadi sidi and thus endanger the primacy of anthropology itself, which would negate an indispensable achievement of modern rationalism. The task was to keep the rehabilitation of social sensibility, which is closely linked to the primacy of anthropology, intact and at the same time to combine it with an unambiguous justification of norms in order to thereby eliminate the notion of nihilism. There is reason to assume that Pufendorf has the theoretical dilemma into which modern rationalism in its natural version The diametrically opposed approaches of Hobbes and Grotius came to be largely understood in this way and his own work was treated as a way out of this. Sdion in his first publication the tone in this sense is strong; He cites Grotius and Hobbes as his most important sources, but at the same time he emphasizes his distance from both with regard to the requirements of truth. Pufendorf therefore sees that a conciliatory art of combination is not enough, but rather a new beginning reason clear, and not just legal, but philosophical and anthropological decisions are needed. It is representative of his ability to grasp the essential that he opens all of his major works with the announcement of these decisions, the most important of which concerns the freedom of the will.

On this question he approvingly quotes Grotius "' and polemicizes against Hob bes "'. In doing so, he does not attempt to trivialize or deny the influence of sensuality in its many forms, which he has mentioned in detail (climate, soil, biological condition and passions caused by it) on the will and behavior of individuals and peoples on the contrary; he believes, however, that man, even if he also has the inclination to evil in himself, can prevail against all this with the help of his reasonable disposition , because the body is the indispensable carrier of the spirit and as such it requires attentive care"'. Pufendorf is not a good idealist. Precisely because he understood very precisely the skeptical, relativistic consequences of the rehabilitation of sensuality, he believes that if freedom and morality are to have any chance at all, they should then have an independent, purely spiritual seat in the human being

m°' Elementorum, Praefatio, penultimate and last page (the pages of the preface are not numbered). "’ Jus nat. I, 4 $ III (= I, 55). ‘^ Jus nat. I, 4 $ II (= I, 54). ^°° De off. I, I, $ 12 (= S. 5 f.); $ i4 (= S. 6); Jus nat. I, 4, $ V—VII (= I, 5z ff.).

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have to add. The (free) will itself is therefore not a mere drive, but is intertwined with reason, indeed it follows it ^', because it implies a choice that can only be made through sensible insight ^'. With regard to the sovereignty of the intellect, Pufendorf also refers to the psychological or instinctual aspects in general to the physical and to the moral. With classic simplicity he gives the reason why he insists on such an attentive protection of free will: without it, talk of morality is meaningless - we must assume an "intellectum rectum", nisi omnem actionum mora litatem velimus evenere' ^'. But re&uknowledge in the narrower

,

sense cannot do without freedom of will, since without it there is no ability to reason ^' and also no obligation: only the voluntas libera is obligationis capax •••.

The differentiation of mankind from blind nature, which is understandably reflected in the frequent emphasis on the differences between man and animal, is known1i& underpinned by Pufendorf's famous distinction between entia moralis and entia physica. It is also clearly implied in his first work ^' and dominates the entire first budi of his main work. In itself it testifies to the impossibility of a direct reconciliation between Hobbes and Grotius; The solution offered lies not in the fusion of causal and normative or is and should, but rather in its fundamental separation. What is important here is that Pufendorf does not want to hypostatize the normative or want it to be laid down in the 'nature of things' . The entia moralis are not substances, but rather modes that are attributed to physical things by intelligent beings. This is precisely why the (moralis-free) action remains unitary, although there are two fundamentally different aspects to it, namely the indispensable

^' De off. I, V, $$ 2—3 (= S. 3t). *°

Jus nat. I, 3 $1 (= I, 39). Jus nat. I, 4 $ III (= I, 54) ; at this point, Pufendorf polemized against Hob Bes' concept of the impulsive will. *** Welzel, Pufendorf's philosophy on nature, 2t, 25. ^°

^'

Right nat. 1, 4 $ 1 II (= 1, 54): that this removed the morality of human actions

is completely removed at the same time. ^*

Jus nat. I, 3, $ III (= I, 40).

^' From off. I, I $10 (= S. 4). Element. II, Axiom. II, Obs. 2 $ 9 (= S. 271) ; Jus nat. I, 6 $ VIII (= I, 94). ^° Jus nat. I, 3 $1; II, t $$ IV—VII (= I, 38 f., 143 ff.); De Off. I, I $ 3—9 (= S. t ff.). •*• Element. I, Def. I $$ 1-3 (= S. t ff.): Unters&eidung zwis&en dem Materie lem und dem Formalem (»Fundamentalem') in einer actio moralis. *'

Right nat. 1, 1, $ II 1 (= 1, 5): things are superimposed on physical behavior by beings

intelligent (cf. 1, 1 $ VI = 1, 7).

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lidie physisdie and the spiritual that directs the physical process can be distinguished from each other ••'. This distinction is therefore logical in the strict sense. It must be this if it wants to fulfill its polemic functions. For Pufendorf believes that the pure intelligibility of morality cannot only deal with materialism, but also the theory of the perseitas of moral things. In his long dispute with the Protestant supporters of Spanish Späucholasticism, Pufendorf adopted the voluntaristic conception of God with regard to this goal, and it is significant for the ability of the intellectual constellation to act that he has to distance himself from Grotius in this regard . ••• , which the S&o1asticists are now relying on. At the same time, however, he does not want to allow voluntarism and nominal sinus to fully apply to the human level; against Hobbes he said that the bonum naturale does not simply depend on people's opinions ^'. Since it cannot be hypostatized as something else, it is binding not least because it represents a command or an envy of God." Thus divine voluntarism sets human limits. What began as a rejection of the scholastic perseitas ends as a reconciliation with it Lutheran doctrine of God, although Pufendorf of course cannot approve of the Lutheran doctrine of the will. It is basically an embarrassing attitude that reveals an inner logical tension in Pufendorf's approach '•', but at the same time must prove to be completely sensible if one considers the concrete, one from the other keeps an eye on Pufendorf's various polemical goals.

This logical tension is ultimately due to the fact that with everything The distinction between entia moralia and entia physica, which is directly or indirectly related to these special statements, however incontestable it may be from a purely technical point of view, does arise in its concrete application

••' Jus nat. I, 5, $ II (= I, 67 f.). ••• It is incomprehensible to me how Wolf (Große Re&tsdenker, 339) can claim that Pufendorf does not achieve the Kantian concept of ethical freedom because, for him, everything spiritual remains attached to the sense-body life. However, Au& Kant does not hypostatize morality, and just as little does he doubt that the moral action must have a physical aspect. Wolf wants to see another major difference between Pufendorf and Kant in the fact that for the former, an essential being is necessary in order to fulfill the ought. In this sense, for Kant too, a connection between being and ought is self-evident: only entia intelligentia can act morally and not animals, for example. The ability to do this must be inherent in the structure of reason itself. *" Juice wet. II, 3 $ IV (= I, 179 f.). S. in the next paragraphs. ••• Jus nat. I, 4 $ IV (= I, 56). ^°

Jus nat. II, $3 XXI (= I, 216).

^' Cf. Welzel, Naturrefitslehre Pufendorfs, 43, note 40; 52, note 6.

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must encounter difficulties. Namely, how can a concept of nature be made using a value-neutral, if not valuehostile, concept of nature? re‹:is justified? If the separation of nature and morality applied in all cases and across the board, it would have to be conceivable not only to simply eliminate the concept of natural right, but even to establish a right against nature. Divine commands and interventions appear as saviors in times of need if moral norms are not given ontologically or are inherent in nature itself. This was an unavoidable position in the struggle against scholasticism, but one which Hobbes could not apply to unless he were refuted from a very narrow standpoint of Christian piety. Pufendorf does not want that, however, and therefore he has to redefine the concept of non-interredite. In accordance with the basic distinction between entia moralia and entia physica, he places an intelligible concept of nature alongside the empirical one, which is supposed to be the epitome and source of the equally intelligible natural norms. At the same time, however, he endeavors to process the empirical concept of nature in such a way that it does not make it impossible from the outset to set up norms, although on the other hand it should remain separate from the intelligible. When Pufendorf starts to tear down the empirical concept of nature, he unintentionally and indirectly, but clearly admits that the intelligible cannot assert itself against every empiricism or every conception of nature and anthropology, but rather a support from the side of the empirically ascertainable nature of things". This is the main reason for the difficulty, as indicated, of the distinction between entia moralia and physica in relation to their concrete application: it for its part presupposes some prior investigations — not least because they themselves based on a decision.

Pufendorf's somewhat acrobatic strategy for securing the intelligible on the one hand and for appropriately processing empirical knowledge on the other can be followed in his anthropological statements. How firmly he stands on new temporal ground - despite polemic-motivated appeal to divine will and command - is shown by Pufendorf through his often repeated statement that only knowledge of the condition of human nature can pave the way for the development of natural law "•. The primacy of anthropology assuming that it is now necessary to secure the intelligible within human nature and thus to make it the foundation of natural intelligence. With regard to the capacities required for this, Pufendorf, as we know, points to the freedom of the will and the power of the intellect over the sensible; In terms of content, however, he proceeds in such a way that he compares the intelligible nature of man with the epitome of morality -

equates social behavior without elevating the content of a general human instinct to the norm, as Grotius did with the social and

"^

Jus nat., II, 3 $ XIV (= I, 200); De off., I, III, $ 1 (- S. 18).

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on the other bank, Hobbes had done with the instinct of self-preservation ”'. And yet he is by no means indifferent to the character of general human drives, but rather he makes those corrections (especially to Hobbes) that are intended to give intelligible human nature its chance. Some palinodia have become unavoidable. Pufendorf believes no less than Hobbes in the elementary power of the instinct of self-preservation, which dominates humans and animals alike even behind the seemingly most unselfish actions "'. What is significant, however, is that Pufendorf emphasizes, especially after such passages against Hobbes, that human socialization does not take place out of fear of death as a side effect of the instinct of self-preservation, but rather as a result a special feature of human character in general. A war of all against all is unthinkable among humans, since it constitutes the animal condition par excellence. Hobbes' justification of the origin and function of society or the state is therefore omitted. But apart from the imbecillitas, namely the biological helplessness of humans, which he himself impressively portrayed, Pufendorf does not want to accept as the decisive reason for socialization. All of this aims to keep the idea of sociality free from any involvement by the physical and sensual, to put it in direct connection with the intelligible-moral nature of human beings and thus to use it as a normative authority. Ultimately, it is the idea of human dignity that supports the idea of sociality and fills it with its actual content." But since the inclination of the Human beings are also considered to be a fact that can be determined and as such (not just as a moral quantity) is asserted against Hobbes, for example, so Pufendorf's causal natural law and ethical postulate, sociological fact and logical principle merge in Pufendorf's theory of sociability . Here si& shows how the processing of the empirical, the Pufendorf

^•• According to the formulation of Welzel, Naturreditslehre Puf.s, 42. About the connection between law (norm) and (intelligible) human nature in Pufendorf cf. Denzer's comments, Moralphil. and nature. in Puf., 83 ff.

"' Jusnat., II, 3, $XIV (= I, 200). ••' Elements, II, Ax. II, Obs. 3, $ 1 (= S. 273 f.).

^^ Elements, II, Ax. II, Obs. 3, $ 5 (S. 277 f.)• J•• nat. II, 3, $ XVI (= I, 205 ff.). *"

Jus nat., I, 1 $ VIII (= I, 10); II, $2 VIII (= I, 166 f.), directly against Hobbes.

•^' Elements, II, Ax. II, Obs. 3, $ 6 (= S. 279): the very life of beasts.

* Jusnat II, 1 $ VIII (= I, 148 f.); Elem. II, Ax. II, Obs. 3, $ 2 (= S. 274 f.); De off. I, III, $ 3—7 (= S. 19 ff.). ^^^ Welzel, Naturr. u. along with. Ger., 156. ^ 7 Wolf, Great Redits Thinkers, 344.

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for the purpose of settling the intelligible, ultimately results in the same entanglement of being and ought that Pufendod wanted to eliminate precisely through the fundamental distinction between entia physica and entia moralia. The principled and open dualism thus rarely becomes a dualism as a result of embarrassed dithering. You can see that in his treatment of concrete questions. So he says, for example: E.g., people's natural instinct to socialize was able to be satisfied even within small communities, but in itself it cannot explain the emergence of the state, which exists precisely to keep people's dangerous desires in check. However, Pufendorf carefully eliminates the obvious consequences of this thesis by calling the state a persona moralis, citing the distinction between entia moralia and entia physica. The sovereignty comes into being and is based on “consensus”, but it remains as the sovereignty ,

stand. With regard to the citizen, the dualism becomes apparent in the view that he should submit both because of his own free will and because of the power of the sovereign; with regard to the sovereign, again the double demand is made that he should have power and they combine with written reasons '°'. Au& our notes on Pufendorf must be accompanied by a reference to the struc tural correspondence must be made between its contents and his methodological and cognitive theory approach. The attempt to introduce a third way into nature discourse goes hand in hand with the simultaneous rejection of the doctrine of innate ideas and sensualism, while on the other hand the polemic against the s&olastis':he Sjrllogistics is coupled with a moderation of the intellectualism of mathematical natural science Although Pufendorf wants to proceed more geometrically, the deduction in detail should follow his methodological ideal from supreme principles, which can be confirmed by experience and observations. Even understandably, the experience does not simply coincide with life, which is what their use in the normative sense, i.e. their submission to the intellect of an entis moralis, is also possible. That is why the combination of "dup1icia principia", näm1i & rationalia et experimentalia ^', does not ultimately mean a connection of historical empirical sentences with ethical reason

Of off. II, V, §§ 2, 5-7 (- S. 115 ff.); cf. Right nat. VII, 1, $$ III-IV (= II, 112 ff.). “’

"’

Right nat. VII, 2, $ XIII (- II, 142). Right nat. III, 2, $ VIII (= I, 323).

••' De off. I, II, §$ 4—5 (- S. 13 f.). ^• Evidence in Welzel, Naturre&tslehre Puf., 17. Evidence from Denzer, Moralph. and nature. at Puf., 288 ff. "' Elements, II, Ax. I, § 1 (= S. 244).

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sentences "'. Pufendorf's purely historical occupation is an indication of the coexistence of reason and experience in his methodical ideal, understood in this way, even though he was unable to provide any definitive proof of the logical compatibility of the historical and natural reditlidiem approach.

Wolf, Grofie Reditsdenker, 321, cf. 324. Krieger, History and law in the seventeenth century, insb. 203 f., 205 f., 210.

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Cartesianism and Anticartesianism

1. The symptomatic significance of Cartesianism for determining the position in intellectual history of enlightenment The advance into the second half of the 17th century was necessary in order to be able to use concrete examples to develop all the logical possibilities originally laid down in modern rationalism. After this preparation, we now want to turn to the question of determining the intellectual position of the Enlightenment. Which of the previously weakened tendencies, in which form and to what extent has it gained the upper hand? Only after this clarification can we feel entitled to speak of their specificity - but only insofar as the almost confusing diversity of the age permits such a speech. Taken away and still undifferentiated, the answer is as follows. Since the last third of the 17th century, for example, an intellectual movement began according to which the rehabilitation of sensuality was no longer primarily pursued in the sense of mathematical nature scientific knowledge, but in the (epistemological) anti-intellectualistic and (moralphilosophical) anti-ascetic sense. Thus a (partial) reversal of the previous overall picture occurs, in which the cultivation of mathematics, or at least the evidence of mathematics, of striving thinking, in whatever form, was considered the most obvious sign of belonging to the new. - even if one, like Hobbes, was otherwise a professed sensualist, while the —, skeptic thesis that man is not much more than pure animal nature did not set the tone, even though it had already been presented in all its consistency. This reversal certainly does not mean that the Enlightenment simply abandons the belief that man is or should be master of nature. This could not happen without admitting fundamental things to theology, and this was out of the question at a time when the fight against theology was intensifying and becoming more and more open. Durdi Newton became the essential aspects of the

Röd, Geom. Geist u. Naturr., 8, has aptly emphasized the role that the appropriation of natural science-diaftlidier methodology, as external as it may have been, in the substantive emancipation of various intellectual areas (including state philosophy) from scholastics has played. 1

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Mathematics and natural knowledge model was saved into the Enlightenment, but at the same time, as Newton's reception shows, it was more or less reinterpreted. The reinterpretation was essentially to think together of humans as nature and humans as masters over nature, so that the unhindered development of all (not just intellectual) natural abilities of humans is the relationship that is most advantageous for them would result from external nature. As one can easily see, the concept of strict control over nature is largely transformed into the idea or dream of reconciliation or even fusion with it - an idea that was brought about by the revival of the Stoic tradition in the 16th and 17th centuries. Century came on the scene, but it was in the age of Enlightenment reported in an independent and programmatic form. Of particular importance is the change that the concept of nature underwent in the process: an external nature, which is no longer in itself a lifeless mass, is reconciled with the human being who, as nature, feels free and as master: hine, but partly s‹: protective deity and partly caring servant. This transformation of the concept of nature will still have to occupy us, whereby it will turn out that the attempt to bring together two ideas as different as man is nature and man rules over nature harmonize, which caused the greatest ambiguities, palinodes and contradictions in Enlightenment thinking, which constantly came to light in the conflict between the causal and the normative °. This 'Thinking of the Enlightenment' is, however, merely a trend-setting idealistic abstraction. In addition, only what we may call the main current of the Enlightenment movement (colorful and extensive) could be subsumed under the ideal type just described. In addition to her, yes often partly missed with her, there are tendencies that act as a direct continuation or further development of the two theses, which were already clearly articulated in the 16th and 17th centuries, that the Mensdi is nature and the Mensdi is ruler over nature. Indicative of general anti-intellectualism The physiognomy of the movement is, however, that the former, despite all the skepticism associated with it and not least because of its anti-intellectualist streak, is represented more strongly than the latter, which sees man's mastery over external and one's own nature intellectualistisdi sought to consolidate. The rehabilitation of sensuality is now progressing so inexorably, it is taking place in a solid worldbuilding evacuation, that it is suspicious of all intellectualism, even if it stands on modern ground, that is, shares the conviction that sensuality or the Nature constitutes the only possible and worthy object of truly rational thought. With that

° about the change in the concept of nature and the conflict between the causal and the normative see chap. IV para. 3 and chap. VI.

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you're no longer satisfied. The tone of anti-asceticism is becoming louder and louder, and with it the general attack against the bastions of that institution that is supposed to practice the suppression of human sensuality ex officio is intensifying; and since the role of sensuality is valued ever more highly in the anthropological considerations of the time, the suppression of sensual humanity on the part of the Kirdie is accordingly perceived as a mistreatment of human nature in general. If you look at the overall development, the paganist attitude to life is gaining ground; This was rightly seen as an important commonality between the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. In this constellation, Cartesianism takes on a symptomatic significance. In his death you can see the gentle turn in the historical development of modern nationalism. It cannot be denied - and we will also see it in several examples that the Enlightenment as a whole is indicative of the rejection of carte sianis' can —, basic positions. It would, however, be short-sighted to grasp the entire process with philological criteria and view the Enlightenment as to want to derive this from the opposition to Descartes. However, this almost general opposition expresses the specificity of the Enlightenment, and this entitles us to use the Enlightenment's relationship to Descartes as a guide and to interpret it in its symptomatic meaning. An explanation of the paradoxical phenomenon that Descartes, the philosophist-system opponent of sdiolastism, became the whipping boy and not the prophet of the Enlightenment, which nevertheless wanted to understand and present itself in its main currents as the final conquest of all sdiolastism , probably hedist to be open-minded. The loneliness that marked Descartes' life continued even after his death. He did not really act as a pioneer of a closed school (also the well-known thinkers who felt positive stimuli from him revealed important parts of his teaching), but rather as a stumbling block. As is often the case, someone became a classic or a positive or negative point of reference, whose work is interpreted in opposite directions and thus triggers violent arguments or to clarify philosophical fronts or to form

° The valuable side of Gag's overall - at least qualitatively - sweet achievement lies in the emphasis on this point, Rise of Modern Paganism, especially 257 ff., 269 ff. °• In an important article, Beyer has criticized the assumption, made primarily by literary historians such as Brunétiere and Lanson (see especially L'influence de la philos. cart., 517 ff.), that the Enlightenment arose from the anti-authoritarian and rationalistic Cartesian spirit , convincingly refutes the essence of Cartesianism rather inherited in intellectualism, which in the -J•>h• changed (influence of Newton etc.) by the empiricist current was clearly suppressed (Du Cartésian. A la philos. des lumiires, esp. 32 ff.).

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so1‹:hen ents‹:heidend could contribute, because in him a question that moved contemporary Sisdian minds was formulated in a radical way that was previously unheard of. Descartes put his finger on the nerve point of modern rationalism that threatened to become its burning wound: I mean the question of the scope and meaning of the rehabilitation of the sensuality in its relationship to the spirit. It could never have become a stumbling block if this question did not go to the heart of modern rationalism. Because of the sharpness of the Cartesian separation, one could no longer ignore the openly posed problem of the relationships between res eatensa and res cogitans without proposing ideologically sound solutions.

In other words: Descartes brought to completion and at the same time to the end the first great phase of the long struggle against the old world structure, which stood primarily in the era of the mathematics-based natural sciences. In the eighteenth century, however, the rehabilitation of sensuality, understood as anti-ascetic, did not prevail. This splits worldview rationalism into two camps, and the split is unbridgeable insofar as it affects all levels of philosophical endeavor. The ma thematisdi-nature-knowledge-like rehabilitation of sensuality led to a new primacy of the intellect—but this time of the modern or ratio

nalistisdien! — and this primacy could be interpreted not only in terms of epistemology, but also in terms of moral philosophy. For the same reason, conversely, in the 18th century, the programmatis' rejection of asceticism, and not only in its extreme Christian forms, was accompanied by the rejection of the mathematical methodology - and furthermore, since mathematical intellectualism was rejected, with the emphasis on the rooting of the spirit in biological, psychological or socio-healthy sensuality. All of this took place on a large scale during the second major phase of the struggle against what was considered holasticism, etc. This is not the place to enumerate the sociohistory:local reasons for this turn or radicalization. It is obvious, however, that Cartesian's treatment of sensuality was unsuitable for the two branches of the new current. Durdi the sharp separation between res extensa and res cogitans makes Descartes ideologize the sensuality: i useless. Above all, their ideological brewability was sought in the 18th century. The interest in moral philosophy in the broad sense came to the fore, and because the representatives of the antiascetic rehabilitation of the sensuality, which was understood, mostly wanted to appear at the same time as representatives of a new morality (and even had to in order not to have their position discredited by the suspicion of nihilism ), they needed a flexible sensuality, whose dilution with the spirit would imply the possibility of a morality without asceticism and underpin ontologisdianthropologisdi. Descartes mechanized and de-spiritualized the sensuality of the masses to such an extent that their moral philosophy took into account this condition of theirs.

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fenness could only serve as an excuse for materialism or immoralism. But the representatives of anti-ascetic morality did not want to go that far, while on the other hand they refused to place the moral aspect of the faculties exclusively in the intellect. The reaction against Descartes was not long in coming. This is not surprising when we consider that Descartes brought only the one basic tendency of modern Rationalism partly to its (extremely conceived) conclusion (through the idea of consistent mathematical physics) and partly to its end (through the philosophical underpinning or expansion of the idea mentioned ). But the other, which was particularly prominent in the Age of Enlightenment, existed before Descartes and immediately knew how to turn against him, and indeed, as some objections to the 'Meditationes' show, more mature for future discussions pioneering form. By giving the position he advocated a sharp and philosophically generalized expression, Descartes also forced the counter-current to think hard.

From now on, it very often had to emerge as a response to Descartes, so that the emergence of the Enlightenment in the sense described above and the emergence of anti-Cartesianism at least partially merged with one another. Not It so happens that Cartesianisnius was least able to gain a foothold in the birthplace of the Enlightenment, England - and it is no coincidence that the work of the pioneers of the English Enlightenment, from the Platonists to Lo&e and Newton, contains clear rejections of Descartes .

2. Basic lines of Cartesian thinking

Descartes is regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, at least insofar as it stands in the context of the problems of self-consciousness and method. This assessment is largely correct, but it must be put into perspective by pointing out that it is not the new philosophy, but the mathematical and natural sciences that mark the actual beginning of the modern age. Our assessment of the Descartes' role must therefore be different depending on whether we are writing a poem of philosophy or a general history of ideas, of which the history of philosophy would be a part. When Descartes gives philosophy a new direction or, to put it more cautiously, creates a new philosophy, he accomplishes, on the other hand, as indicated in the previous paragraph, nothing other than the abduction of the mental approach to mathematics and natural knowledge through philosophical means. However, this view does not need to be justified, especially since the question of the relationships between mathematical physics, method and metaphysics in Descartes' research

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is controversial. It cannot be unraveled without clear conceptual distinctions. Firstly, logic and genetic priority must be clearly differentiated from each other, while at the same time keeping in mind the limits of their respective areas of validity; and secondly, it is important to keep the levels of mathematics or mathematics, physics, method and metaphysics in Descartes apart carefully, because this is the only way to see what their connection is and how the logic and genetic priority relate to each other on each of the levels mentioned . Descartes himself suggests the distinction between logic and gene tisdier or empiricist priority in general when he declares his intention, according to the "ordre des raisons" in contrast to the "order

des matieres' to proceed'. From the logical standpoint of his completed intellectual structure, Descartes demands the primacy of metaphysics over both mathematics and physics, while at the same time linking the certainty of the method to certain basic metaphysical assumptions. As the structure of the "Principia" shows, the mature Descartes strives to deduce physical and mathematical principles from metaphysics, and it can be assumed that the treatment of mathematics and physics within a metaphysics framework also had to draw certain substantive consequences. that the physics framed by metaphysics probably looked somewhat different from that which Descartes practiced before 1629

had. In this case, the logistical priority actually retains the upper hand over the developmental health priority - but the limits of this superiority cannot be overlooked. For there is no reason to assume that Des Cartes would have fundamentally changed his previous physics under the logical pressure of his metaphysics. It is therefore wrong to assume that, based on the above-mentioned priority of metaphysics in the developed system, metaphysics for Descartes is not only logically ahead of perfected physics, but actually dirono logically, since the mathematical and scientific disciplines of Descartes that are known to us are in crystallization his metaphysics were written or created. About the years in which Descartes was a physicist

• Stephen, Hist. of English Thought I, 32. • Letter to Mersenne dated December 24, 1640 (= AT III, 266 f.) • • Princip. Phil. I, 5 u. 13 = AT VIII, 6, 9 f.; cf. Sec. Resp. = AT VII, l4l ; Quint. Resp. = AT VII 384. ° Princ., Preface = AT ixv, l4 • Cf. the passages in note 6. • So Hamelin, Le Systeme de D., 29. Liard (Descartes, 95) clearly saw the importance of the scientific priority of dealing with mathematical physics . Dennodi Liard's thesis that the basic principles of mathematical physics arise directly from the method (101 f.), as if this had arisen independently of any content-related interference (see below), is at least one-sided.

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without metaphysics," who called himself a physicus-niathematicus and who, according to his own statements, had no particular philosophical interests, "to simply look the other way is not only unfounded in purely biographical terms," but above all misleading because Descartes was precisely during this time and based on his Physico-mathematics developed a generalization procedure that enabled him to make the rapid transition from the mature formulation of the method to the conception of metaphysics at the given moment. In our opinion, Descartes was therefore able to develop a method based on his reflections on the character of mathematics general validity claims - just as a few years later, not least considerations about the suitability of the method significantly influenced the structure of his metaphysics, even if they did not directly produce metnphysics per se. The intensive preoccupation with mathematics also decisively promoted the emergence of the method how the confrontation with their problems significantly expanded the birth of metaphysics in the form we know from a purely logical point of view.

As far as the former is concerned, one should not imagine Descartes' famous dream or the emergence of his method as a sudden idea, but rather as a crystallization point in a long process. Mathematics's work fills the years 1612-1616 , which in the long term weighs more heavily than the subsequent (possible) interruption of this work. In the Report of the Discours, Descartes unequivocally admits that the naive thinking about logic, algebra and geometry as well as the concern to achieve their corresponding results Further developing its advantages and eliminating its shortcomings would have provided the impetus for the method. The shortcoming is the connection to limited objects (figures e.g. B.) denotes ", but the advantages are described in detail earlier in the regulations. Descartes feels impressed by the inherent ability of mathematics to proceed purely deductively", not to be influenced by the senses, to no fantasies or figures to be dependent ". Only mathematica vulgaris has to do with such things, but this is merely the shell of true mathematics, with mathesis universalis

..., 90. '• According to an expression by Ron Gouhier, Les premitres Penstes " Disc. III = AT VI, 30. '• Gilson has even shown that the narrative of the DiRours has to be corrected in essential points, since it presents Descartes' relations to the Srudium after 1616 much more emptily than, as we can conclude from other available evidence, in may have been in fact (Discours,Texts et Coinmentaire, 150 ff.). '° Baillet, Vie, I, 29 f., 38. '• Disc. II - AT VI, lx, lq f. '° Reg. II = AT X, 365. '° An Mersenne, July 1641 = AT III, 395; Disc. IV = AT VI, 39; With. I, V = AT VII, 20, 64.

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coincide "and should include all branches of external knowledge, abstracting them from their material aspect or their respective concrete content". The direct origin of mathesis universalis from the mathema tisdien ideal is shown in the definition of its task: it should make everything explicit that can be examined with regard to ordo and mensura".

The mathesis universalis is the method itself in its concrete application. The uiethodisdie ideal feeds on the dream of all-encompassing knowledge and is in the with regard to the requirements and the apparent structure of this latter designed. What is important for our question is that Descartes, at the same time he gained the concept of mathesis universalis or the method through the purification of mathematics from everything material or accidental, used this same method, which arose from mathematics, for laying the foundations of (applied) mathematics itself used'°. From the point of view of the clearly grasped or realized methodical ideal, the food for thought that led to it becomes its areas of application; thus logisdie and genetisdie change places in priority among themselves, with the genetisdi primary now considered more logis& deficient and, by being classified accordingly, losing its original meaning. This dialectic also characterizes Descartes' transition to his metaphysics. If we want to understand his method and reduce it to a short formula, we can say that Des cartes has the peculiarity of mathematical knowledge in its independence

from the sensual experience or from the sensual in general is projected into ontology through the sharp separation between res cogitans and res eztensa. The aim in the sense of Cartesian methodology of procedural mathematics is to overcome any commitment to visual forms, such as was common in ancient mathematics; Because of its universality and intellectuality, it can be applied to the ideas of the pure intellect and prepares the cogito as the starting point of methodical philosophy. The interweaving of pure mathematics or the method inspired by metaphysics and metaphysics is clearly shown in the model diagram of the mathematical theory of proportions in relation to the structure of metaphysics, but we are particularly interested here in the announcement of the metaphysic dualism of Descartes in the strictly intellectualist orientation of mathematicians inspired and structured methodology.

"

Reg. IV = AT X, 374. ' ® Reg. XIV = AT X, 452; Disc. II = AT VI, l9 (cf. Reg. I = AT, X, 361). '• Reg. IV = AT X, 378. • Reg. XIV = AT X, 442; Disc. II = AT VI, 21. •' Vuillemin, Mathlm. and Mltaph. diez D., 139 f., cf. 166. '• Vuillemin, op. cit., 119 ff.

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Of the three 'tnodi cognoscendi', says Descartes, only the intellect contributes to the attainment of firm truth; h: Intuition and deduction, successfully managed ". He must therefore keep himself away from the imagination, which relates to material things, "and the senses inöglidist, as long as he has nothing to do with physical things "; the help of the two lower cognitive faculties is always welcome ", but the pensées qui occupent l'imagination' are clearly distinguished from one another by those who occupy the entendement'". , and furthermore that since these ideas are themselves cogitationes, i.e. components or products of the functioning intellect •°, the cognition mentioned does not simply imply a self-relationship of the intellect, but is actually based on a solidien.

Precisely because the self-referentiality of the intellect or the consubstantiality of the knowing and the known determines the degree of perfection of knowledge, Descartes can assert that nothing can be known beforehand than the intellect itself, especially since all other knowledge depends on it". — At the end of this intellectual path, who began with the striving for a complete intellectualization of mathematics in order to obtain a generally applicable methodology, stands the succinct thesis: intelligo, ergo mentem habeo a corpore distinc tam• . This principle of dualistic metaphysics is clearly expressed in the regulations, which are, as is well known, dedicated to the problem of method, and this certainly has something to do with the origin of Cartesian metaphysics *. Descartes himself at least posits the Cogito principle

'°

Reg. VIII = AT X, 395 f., 398. •' Reg. III = AT X, 368. ^ Disc. IV = AT 6, 37; It measures. II = AT VII, 28; Fifth Resp. = AT VII, 387; to Mersenne July 1641 = AT III, 395. ^ Reg. XII = AT X, 416 f. °' Reg. XII = AT X, 411. ^ An Elisabeth 28. 6. 1643 = AT III, 692 f. ^• An [Gibieuf], 19. 1. 1642 = AT III, 474, 476. '° Medit. III = AT VII, 35; Sec. Resp. — AT VII, 160; an Mersenne Juli 1641 AT III, 392 f. °' Medit VI - AT VII, 73; an Mersenne July 1641 - AT III, 394. °"- Reg. VIII = AT X, 395. °° Reg. XII = AT X, 422. °• It is therefore very questionable, at least from a genetic point of view, to see the cogito principle only as a consequence of metaphysical dualism (e.g. Smith, Studies in Car tes. Philos. 14 ff.), and not as a consequence of epistemological and methodological dualism, which in turn paved the way for metaphysics at least in part (i.e. alongside mathematical and physical considerations).

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with the thesis of the intellect's external cognitive ability. We now want to show that in addition to the mathematical-methodological considerations of the regulae and at about the same time also mathematical-physical aspects pushed for the development of metaphysical dualism. First of all, however, we must again draw attention to the need for clear conceptual distinctions that are intended to facilitate the work of interpretation. It was remarked that, although the origin of Cartesian metaphysics from mathematician physics was genetically psydiological, Descartes would either have stayed with the latter and a second Galileo would have can design the or another metaphysics ^. Skepticism is warranted regarding the latter point. Descartes' view of mathematics and the associated methodological approach forced his metaphysics a limine into a certain direction: a monist materialism would be, for example. B. in his case unthinkable or only possible at the price of logical contradictions (as can sometimes be found in Hobbes) - to completely ignore the structural parallelism mentioned between the theory of mathematical proportions and metaphysics. But if Descartes was bound by certain preliminary decisions, on the other hand, when he went over to metaphysics, it must be recognized that the necessity of this transition cannot be proved. Here, however, one should differentiate and put things into perspective. Because from the (largely correct) The assertion that Descartes' real contribution to mental health does not consist in his medianicist physics, which was largely developed elsewhere, but rather in the establishment of a systematized metaphysics, does not allow one to easily torture the person who has contributed to it with his physics or mathematics and nothing to do with external causes ". From the uniqueness of Descartes' achievement does not follow eo ipso and not with certainty the hermeneutis, the incomprehensibility of its genesis. Not only the method conceived by physics and the method mathematically conceived suggested metaphysis the preliminary decisions offer us a logical guide, but also the concrete situation in which Descartes found himself when he systematised these preliminary decisions or evaluated them in the sense of an explicit metaphysics can be at least partially reconstructed. To this end, Descartes' relationship should be on sdiolasty can be considered from several aspects. Zunad is the aspect of the ideological contrast. The emergence of Cartesian metaphysics, which eloquently points to the interrupted composition

^ Medit. II = AT VII 29-34; Sec. resp. AT VII, 132; Fifth Resp. = AT VII 360; Princ. Phil. 1, 7-8 = AT VIII, 7; an Mersenne Juli 1641 = AT III, 394. °^ Gilson, Etudes, 175.

•' S. o., Anm. 22. °® Lenoble, Mersenne, especially Chap. X u. XI, 336 ff., 383 ff. °°

This is what Alquie claims, Descartes, 71.

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solution of the regulations immediately. follows, is in turn interrupted in order to apply the fundamental results available to problems of physics '°. Only now does Descartes feel capable of fighting the enemy from all sides. More likely, Descartes would not have needed any metaphysics if the sdiolastis opponents, whose physics Descartes knew well and rejected early on, had not had any metaphysics at his disposal, specifically as the underlying basis of his own physics. The Aristotelian-s&o1astis&e unity of physics and metaphysics therefore had to be replaced by a new one; Thus, S&oasticity became the negative standard of the Cartesian approach. The demand for total knowledge, on the other hand, was suggested by the nature of mathematical knowledge (as Descartes understood it). If mathematics proceeds safely because it proceeds deductively, then co ipso the most substantiated starting point of knowledge must be the most general — and at the same time the simplest. So the question automatically arises as to whether one has such a starting point if one stops at mathematics or mathematical physics and the method derived from them, excluding any theory that surpasses them, i.e. any metaphysics .

Descartes nevertheless comes to the conclusion that only the principles of metaphysics are the most general, only they would allow truly grounded intuition and deduction". from the comprehensive point of view of metaphysics they must all appear as deficient or logically inferior, which means that the logical priority is now over the genetic one. In my opinion, this is the reason why Descartes interrupted the writing of the Regulae before the first formulation of the now suspected metaphysics, never to take it up again. The change in his views that he himself admitted "was in all probability related to the question of the recognizability of ultimate principles in the metaphysical sense or to the uniform treatment of physics and metaphysics". As I said, there is no evidence that points to a fundamental change in content Previously, Descartes had believed with great confidence that he could get by as a mathematician physicist or as a medianist, and now feels relieved because mathematical physics allows him to make a clear rejection of the ideas lurking in pure mechanicalism and of him so feared atheism. Since he now considers the ultimate principles of metaphysis to be knowable (at least sufficiently knowable to be ^° An Mersenne 8. IO. 1629 = AT I, 25; cf. Gilson, Etudes, ls0 ff. •' Reg. II = AT X, 365. *' S.o., Anm. 6. ‘° Sext. Resp. = AT VII, 40 f. '^ This can be found in the letter to Vatier dated February 22, 1638, AT I, f61.

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to be able to refer to them), he wants to derive everything special from this new and definitive general". From the peak of generalization he has reached, he can accuse Galileo of lacking "vrais principes de la physique'". All of this is linked to a basic trait of Descartes' individual way of thinking, namely to be more interested in criteria than in facts " and to neglect the experimental detail with regard to the general grasping or interpretation of the facts *•.

We now come to the psydological aspect of Descartes' relation to the South East. One could, of course, sovereignly put metaphysics aside, unmask the generality of its principles as theological pseudos in toto and not fight the battle on its terrain, but simply change the whole level of discussion with a sd lag. Then Descartes could indeed have become a second Galileo—perhaps nothing less and certainly nothing more (in a purely philosophical sense). The relationship between ron Descartes and South East Asia is nevertheless much more complicated and much more personal than that of Galileo. As his biographer rid tig remarks, Descartes preserved the student's "docilité" towards his teacher throughout his life; It was always his highest personal ambition to replace the South East with a new, equally all- round system whose clarity and sanity could convince even his Jesuit teachers. His metaphysics arose at a certain stage in his development, in which, encouraged also by acquaintances, among whom was the papal nuncio Cardinal de Berulle, ••, he had begun to write down the results of his previous efforts; it not only serves to make his approach comprehensive and thus to substantiate those results logically, but also to counteract any atheism or

To dispel suspicions of materialism a limine. So Descartes could next to that Disarming all-roundness also demonstrate flawless religiosity. After crystallizing his metaphysics, he makes its decline dependent on the reception of his physics, and in the same style he emphasizes the necessity of the fight against atheism. The ad se of Cartesian metaphysics, namely the implicationrich separation between the res cogitans

'* Disc. VI = AT VI, 64 f.; Princ. Pref. = AT IXg, 5, 10. '° To Mersenne June 22, 1637 = AT I, 392; cf. to Mersenne August 14, 1634 and October 11. 1638 = AT I, 305 and II, 380. •' Nadi a good formulation ron Gilson, Etudes sur le Role, 137, which is adopted ron Spedit, Innovation and Consequential Load, 98. ' ® Milhaud, Descartes scholar, 194 f. •° Baillet, Vie, I, 302 ff.; II, 225 f., 489 f. and passives; cf. die beredte Epistle an the JeSuites, which are added to the meditations, AT, VII, 1-6. ^ Letter to Villebressieu from the summer of 1631 - AT I, 213. ^' An Mersenne 15. 4. 1630 AT I, 144 f.

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and res extensa was like drinking to demonstrate the existence of God and the immortality of the soul all at once. Descartes was even able to outdo the s‹fio1astis&e competition on this question, since the empiricism of the school — could not in his eyes - and in contrast to his innate ideas S ' definitively prove God and the soul." However, Descartes was only able to outdo the syphilasticism in matters of religion because, precisely at the time of the development of his metaphysics, he was in favor of their spiritual opponents, namely the Platonizing Oratorians ( temporarily ) approached ^, which must be viewed as an important external stimulus for the connection of physicomathematical theses with metaphysics. The Augustinian origin of the Cogito did not remain hidden from those who enjoyed the time, and in it the religious or . anti-materialist and anti-ibertinist background of Cartesian metaphysics; it is no coincidence that Descartes sometimes says “Moses immaterial” and "Metaphysics' semantis& glei&". The Oratorians show Descartes that Christianity or God and morality on the one hand and S‹:holasticism on the other do not have to be identified. :the idea has an added advantage in the effort to influence the Jesuits. In essence, it demands a conversion of the Jesuits to the theses of their 'firistic opponents. If the demand was utopian', it at least served to surpass Descartes' personal piety to set any doubt.

What is particularly important is that this resolute elimination of the idea of atheism proved to be the best justification of mathematical physics , not only in a moral sense, but also in a strictly scientific sense. For the metaphysis‹:je dualism of res cogitans and res extensa directly refutes the s‹:holastis‹:je doctrine of substantial forms, which, according to Descartes, was based on the inadmissible missing of soul and body ”. Biber the associated rejection of teleology and on the cartesianisdie

^• Schon in den Private thoughts vom J nuar 1619 sdlreibt er: "there are in us the seeds of knowledge" AT, X, 217; Reg. 4 u. VIII = AT, X, 373, 376 (seeds), 397; Disc. 6 - AT 6, 64 (seeds); It measures. 3 u. V = AT VII, 38 u. 64; Prim. Resp. = AT VII 105, 117¡ Princ. Phil. I, 49 = AT VIII, 23 ; an Mersenne 16. 6. 1641 AT III, 383; an Elisabeth 21. 5. 1643 = AT III, 666 f. ^ Disc. IV AT VI, 37. In statements against atheism, God and Seele nebeneinander ervett, so z B. in Medit., Epist. u. President = AT VII, 1, 9. ^• Gilson, Liberte dlez Descartes, 5th chap. of the 1st part and 4th - 6th. Cape. of the 2nd Cf. Thorns, Descartes et la Morale, I, 66 ff., 212 ff. Blan&et, The Historical Background ..., insb. 47 ff., 139 ff., 270 ff. The Cogito was z. T. to the Church dlristli‹:her Apologetics at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century, 120 ff. ^ So z. B. Princ., Pref. = AT IXV, 10. ‘° An (Abby de Launay], 22. 7. 1641? = AT III, 420.

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Movement theory is discussed elsewhere ^. After all, the complete despiritualization of matter, which was now required in metaphysics, in turn promoted the early Cartesian inclination towards mathematical natural knowledge and was therefore extremely welcome. The identification of matter and extension was obvious to him for purely physical reasons, as Galileo's distinction between primary and secondary qualities shows. Descartes makes it his own "and through the abstraction of color, smell, etc. he takes the decisive step towards transforming matter into a uniform area that is completely accessible to mathematics or geometry." In view of this connection between the primacy of the mathematical procedure in physics and the identity of extension and matter, it is not surprising that the concept of pure extension was used in Descartes' attempt to formulate the generally applicable mathematical methodology, that is, which abstracts from all secondary qualities game is coming". Mathematis&-physikalis‹3ie and mathematisdi-methodisthe train of thought had thus provided important preparatory work for Cartesian metaphysics - in a pioneering sense. For if the material and the immaterial are separated from each other programmatisdi on the basis of metaphysics considerations, then it is no longer metaphysics, but only mathematisdi-physika lisdi and mathematisdimethodologisdi to explain why the former is completely identified with extension These certain implications, which must be pointed out here because they are the focus of later discussions. The flip side of the reduction of matter to expansion is the assumption that all expansion is matter, whereby the vacuum becomes impossible "; The infinite divisibility of bodies also follows from this *, which makes atomism unacceptable ". In my opinion, the accumulation and parallel effect of the developed logical and psychological motives motivated Descartes to establish his dualistic metaphysics. Undoubtedly it meant great suffering for Des Cartes. Now he was confident in his medianicis physics

5"

Container. IV, Absdin. 2 a.

° Medit II = AT VII, 29 ff.; Sec. Resp. = AT VII, 132. " In Prince Phil. IV, 188 AT VII I, 315 the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is connected with the possibility of mathematical physics in general. °'

Reg. XIV = AT X, 442 ff. ^• Princ. Phil. II, 4 AT VIII, 42. •• Princ. Phil. II, 11 = AT VIII, 46. •• Princ. Phil. II, 23 - AT VIII, 52. ^^ Prince. Phil. II, 20 = AT VIII, 51 f. Descartes avoids the physical aspects of this abolition of atomism in a roundabout way, explains Lasswitz, Gesdi. i.e. Atom., II, 116.

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sensibly and even present it as the best conceivable scientific basis for principles that were indispensable for religion and morality both in his eyes and in the eyes of almost all contemporaries - not least those with regard to whom he wrote. This good conscience explains why the same Descartes who, following the news of Galileo's condemnation, could not dare to complete and publish his essay on 'Le Monde', does not shy away from fighting not only every anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism If God had left the world in a diaotisdi state, but at the same time laid down the laws of nature, material things would have reached their known state over time without external intervention *• The metaphysically proven one and saved God is in turn instrumentalized, he assumes certain functions within the medianistic picture - and also within the Cartesian epistemology: he is supposed to guarantee the infallibility of the first and clearest intuitions".

The so-called ontological proof of God in the concrete Cartesian context, that is, apart from its historical precedents, does not ultimately represent an increase in mathematical intellectualism into ontology; As it were, as an introduction to the subsequent presentation of that proof, Descartes discusses, as it were, the nature of mathematical knowledge in general: about that interweaving of intellect and cogitatio or of the knower and the known, which allows the former to have a function that creates effectiveness and is not within mathematics. We have already spoken about how the methodological train of thought prepares the style of thinking for the ontological proof of God . The classification of Gorte into the overall framework of mature carte sianism thought and the determination of his tasks are in no way impaired by the view that the truths do not exist per se, but are determined by God ". Confession to the voluntarist spirit was a compulsory exercise for every opponent of Thomistist sdiolastism, and, as Pufendorf's example has shown us, it was even then used in polemics

An Mersenne, Ende November 1633 = AT, I, 270 ff. ¡cf. Baillet, Life, I, 241 ff. •' Princ. Phil. III, 3 = AT VIII, 81; an Elisabeth 15. 9. 1645 - AT IV, 292. Disc. V - AT 6, 45; Princ. Phil. III, 47 = AT VIII, 102 f. '° Medit. I II - AT VI I, 36 f. On the instrumentalization of God, see the comments by Heimsoeth, Descartes' Method, 59, 78, 114, 116 ff. and Cassirer, Des cartes, 38; Röd, Descartes, 67 (cf. 119, 123) very correctly states that the Cartesianis die Referring back to God describes the epistemological situation that as a result the limitation to the subject is a final criterion of truth nt&t given could become. So God fills that void through which skepticism could creep in. '• It measures. V = AT VII, 64 ff.

' t An Mersenne 15. 4. u. 6. 5. 1630 = AT I, 145, 149 f.; an [Arnauld] 27. 9. 1648 = AT V, 223 f.; Sez. Resp. = AT VII, 43s f.

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stored in perspective if the person concerned was themselves involved in logistical difficulties. A defense of divine voluntarism was also suggested by the needs of the fight against the theory of sdiolastism and teleology associated with the theory of the substantial forms. In solasticism, the distinction between the divine intellect and will served to underpin the teleological argument: God must will what the truths present in his intellect dictate; these truths must therefore be contained in the products of his will as causae finales. By diluting divine intellect and will, Descartes deprives teleology of its divine basis; God only creates the world as a causa efficiens, he is also the creator of truths, etc. Descartes at least leaves the structure of his

System durdi hardly influences divine voluntarism, especially since it states that God does not change the truths given to him or that the truths are necessary as soldie dodi, even if God did not create them under the pressure of any necessity. Our analysis so far implies that it would be nair to detach the Cartesian method from its substantive context and to treat it as an autonomous discovery with selfevident universal claims. Like any method, it is and remains tied to specific content or specific content (pre)Bound by decisions, although in its natural effort to present itself as universally binding, it has to assert its independence from its respective object or even from place and time; Descartes actually wanted to treat the individual, appropriate results of knowledge as automatic consequences of the correct application of the method. But here again it is a question of the reversal of genetics and logic that we have already encountered at neuralgic points in Cartesian thinking. Sdion the option for a method at all requires a lot of problems. Descartes decides in response to a basic conviction of modern rationalism - for the priority of the certitudo modi procedendi over the certitudo obiecti; He says very clearly that anyone who studies the truth must not deal with any object about which mathematical certainty cannot be achieved. The possible certainty therefore determines the dignity of the object of knowledge. A second preliminary decision is added, which this time determines who this worthy object of knowledge is. As we know, Galileo's belief in the immanent logic of nature was a prerequisite for mathematical science in general. Descartes doesn't think otherwise, if he sees the advantage of mathematical physics in their own nature, things '° Gilson, Liberty ten Descartes, 2. u. 3. Kap. des 1. Teils• °^ An Mersenne 15. 4. u. 27. 5. 1630 AT, I, 145, 152 f.; an [Mesland) 2. 5. 1644 = AT IV, 118 f. '^ Reg. IV = AT X, 372 f. '• Reg. II = AT X, 366.

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in the need to portray their behavior; only the knowledge of this necessity makes - beyond the mere description - knowledge altogether perfect 7 '. The possibility of a scientifically and fruitfully deductive procedure also rests on the belief in the existence of conse necessary quences'. The call to methodical thinking is basically a saying, ie an invitation to accept certain world-viewing positions that are ultra methodum et rationem. Through the seeming impartiality of the method, the ruling wants to objectify you and thus make you invulnerable. The "feeling of power of rational thinking" which Descartes so vehemently promoted, increases to the extent that there is a form of a personal method. Equally decisive is the polemical background for the Cartesian doubt that by the time of Descartes it had become commonplace to have radical doubts about the 7 ' At the beginning of the polemic against sdiolastism in the 17th century, even pious metaphysicians started from doubt - as a tribute to the spirit of the times, so to speak - even though they actually didn't like it at all and immediately after its announcement they expressed themselves against any skepticism "This time-related constellation occurs equally in Descartes, who on the one hand says that Aristotle (it is clear who is meant by this) made the claim to omniscience and that this should be countered by Socratic doubt," while at the same time he emphasizes that doubt implies doubt no stopping at skepticism ". If doubt is not allowed to exceed certain limits, then it is actually a fiction, a dramatic, conventional gesture on the philosophical stage. Because the world-based decisions have already been made and are not subject to any doubt; the stability Mathematical methodology, for example, is never fundamentally questioned, rather the opposite is true: the doubt should be dispelled by its application

'• An Mersenne 11. 3. 1640 = AT III, 39. " Redi. de la Ver. = AT X, 496 f., 503. '^ Na& an expression of Dilthey, Weltansdi. and analysis d. Mensdien, Ges. Sdir. II, 349. '

8 see above, chap. II note 337 and 338.

^ How common this kind of skepticism was in the 17th century Wiley has in her Budi The Subtle Knot (especially 21, 65 ff., 74 ff., 96, 125 f., 213 ff.) shown. Now she wants it author of this type of skepticism, which she calls "creative", generalize or Identify it with a "sceptic pattern" (59) that has been stable since antiquity. In this way, it lumps heterogeneous ideas into one pot and at the same time overlooks deeper ones Reasons and final consequences of modern skepticism. This is characteristic of this naivety the assertion that skepticism declined or disappeared in the 18th century (230 f.). ^' Princ. Pref. = AT 15, 5 f. ^' Disc. III = AT 6, 28 f.

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be eradicated. The functionality of doubt must show itself precisely where its intensity reaches a climax. Doubt is not a constant companion of thinking, it does not stand in the way of its sjrstematis‹:the construction ni‹:st, but represents an early phase of the effort to think, which should and can be finally overcome ^: this is how sadie in turn appears, of course of the logical series of the closed system, because geiietisdi-psychologisdi doubt is more of a luxury that si‹:h thinking iii its self-portrayal

nadi aufien can only do this if the new certainties that follow the doubt are established.

Radical doubt should therefore not in itself bank any certainty, but rather the certainties of the opponent; it contains seiiierseiu s‹:Von an indirect commitment to the new certaintiesii and is their harbinger. That's why he doesn't feel like resignation, but rather is militant and existentially charged - the existential intensity of the new world-aiisdiaulid basic attitude comes to its full development in him. The intellect of the subject who doubts in this sense encompasses his entire inner life, which is brought into violent movement by the collapse of previously fixed convictions: "Ego sum res cogi tans, id est dubitaiis, affirmans, negans, pauca intelligent, multa ignorans [in the French version has the eloquent addition at this point: qui aime, qui hait'], volens, nolens, imaginans etiam et seiitiens.' ^ And like the doubt, the new certainty is also existentially shaped, immediately given, so that the object of knowledge arises in the knower and serves to objectively confirm the basic attitude. Intuition grants a 'conceptum' that is beyond all doubt, the 'a sola rationis luce nascitur' ^. The intuitive ratio discovers the simplest elements or the principles from which the deduction must then start '•. The intuition and Descartes now contrasts the simple or clear grasped by it with the s-diolastic syllogistic , "whereby the heat of the polemic drives him somewhat prematurely to assert that his deduction also has hardly anything to do with the syllogistic ®': and yet

•• Röd, Descartes, 54, aptly remarks that for Descartes doubt is not an end in itself, but a means of isolating certainty; to doubt means to & certainty, to seek security. In his work, Röd very subtly connects the search for security with certain traits of Descartes' personal character.

^ Medit. III = AT VII, 34 (ct. AT IXi. 27). ^

Reg. III = AT X, 368; cf. a letter to the [Marquis of Newcastle?], March or April 1648 = AT V,

from the

137 f. Although the later Descartes replaces the term intuition with "inspection", his substantive position remains unchanged, s. Kemp Smith, New Studies in the Phil. of Desc., 228. ^° "

^

Reg. III, VI, XII = AT X, 369 f., 382 f., 427 f. z.B. Princ. Phil. I, 10 = AT VIII, 8. Reg. VII, X = AT X, 389, 405 f.

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Since he does not want to rely on the senses, he can continue to derive only aaiome and definitions from the established natures, which make the object of intuition 8 '. Here we are interested in precisely that essential elevation or world-answering-intuitive certainty which leads to the neglect of purely logical points of view in favor of polemical consequence - and which is reflected in Des cartes' fusion of will and intellect in the cognition process theore tisdi ". It would be completely wrong if to conclude from all this that Descartes is not a rationalist. At least in our view of rationalism, Descartes' recourse to intuition is not an argument against his rationalism, for it is intended precisely to confirm his basic rationalist attitude in its living immediacy denied by Descartes , simply overlooks the worldview and content aspect of the respective rationalism and wants to use the one nationalism as a (formal) standard *. As we have seen, Descartes was able to push his cosmological medianism so far because he was able to connect it argumentatively with Vedaite's attempt to eliminate atheism. Ancestral points of knowledge have a particularly strong impact on the development of his anthropology and moral philosophy. Just as the world could have reached its present state without God's direct intervention, the body can also function purely mechanically without needing the help of the soul. The result of this is supposed to be the complete autonomy of the mind, so that the intellect can even operate without a brain "and the feeling of personal identity is generally independent of the body." The moral statement was the sharp separation of res cogitans and res extensa

^°

Kemp Smith, Studies, 39.

•• Medit. IV = AT VII 56, 57. Mahnke, The Structure of Philosophical Knowledge, 82 ff. °'

So for the empiricist (and rationalist by extension) Kemp Smith the intuitionism of Descartes, a Platonic mysticism, and not a sane rationalism” (Studies, 43). fYhn1ich Laporte: he sets up the "true" concept of rationalism a limine (Le Rationalisme de D., XIX) and from this he then concludes, Descartes was not a rationalist. Laporte made a double mistake: he overlooked them existential dimension of modern rationalism, and therefore he evaluates the use of intuition as a detachment from rationalism in general (21 ff.). them as confirmation of the contents of the card. to look at rationalism; second, he takes the polemical agnosticism of ron Descartes, which was claimed by several representatives of modern rationalism, in its nominal value. Gueroult (Descartes, 294 ff.) defends the rationalism of ron Descartes, but operates with the not particularly fruitful distinction between ratio and GefüM', where he indirectly adopts the standards of Laporte. °• It measures. VI = AT VII, 87 f.; Corps hum., I, Pref = AT XI, 225. •° Quint. Resp. = AT VII, 358. ^• Medit. VI - AT VII, 78; Sec. Resp. = AT VII, 133.

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ridden against the contemporary libertines, from which Descartes promised an increase in the attractiveness of his philosophy in the eyes of the sdiolastics and the diristid, officially leading camp in general. The fundamental distinction between humans and animals, connected with metaphysical dualism, also had a similar moral secondary goal; the Libertines, following Montaigne, emphasized what they had in common, and as a result Cartesianist Me&anicism and 'Britishian Spiritualism were able to unite': Descartes accordingly establishes a direct connection between that distinction and the doctrine of immortality'. As expected, the clear theoretical separation of soul and body is now transformed into the theoretical requirement of the absolute submission of the latter to the former, whereby freedom of will must be postulated*. Even the southern souls would, with due effort, attain absolute mastery of the passions". The intellectualism of the trait is noticeable when Descartes says that morality is based on "des jugements fermes et determinées toudiant la connaisance du bien et du mal' , and the strength of the soul is not sufficient to subdue the passions if the knowledge of moral truth is lacking". This view springs from his Psjr‹:nology. In a chapter directed against Aristotle, he rejects the division of the soul into lower and upper realms and asserts its unity, attributing to the workings of the body everything in it that resists reason mediated, the passions are mainly attributed to the influence of sensible objects and their only one

Seen utility in awakening the soul's desire for things which are generally beneficial to . So Descartes could only man. " t represent the unity of the soul because at the same time he deepened the split between the body and it. Given this fundamental position, his references to their diverse connection were largely ignored in the 18th century.

The conclusion would be premature; Descartes hardly differs from Christianity in his moral philosophy. In the fight against the virtue of nihilism or because of personal conviction, he comes close to diristide positions, but that does not mean that he has left modern soil. His

°• Cf. Thorns, Desc. et la Morale, I, 110 ff. •• Disc. V = AT VI, 59. •' Medit. IV = AT VII, 57 f.; Pass. XLI = AT XI, 359. •^ Pass. L, XLVIII, XLV = AT XI, 362 f., 366 f., 368 ff.; an Elisabeth 4. 8. u. 1. 9. 1645 = AT IV, 265, 284. •• Pass. XLVIII u. XLIX = AT XI, 367. '°° Pass. XLVII = AT XI, 364 f. '°' Pass. LI u. LII = AT, 371 f. '°° Medit. VI = AT VII, 81; Pass. 30-32 = AT XI, 351 f.

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metaphysical turn had not questioned the priority of the certitudo modi procedendi, and his defense of Christianity (especially since his relationship to the Oratorians gradually cooled) by no means took the form of the pious-petty apology of individual dogmas, but rather took the form of a philosophical one Underpinning general principles (God, immortal soul), on which perhaps a generally acceptable natural religion, desired (d ristlidie) at the time of the religious wars, could have been based "'. It is similar in the area of morality: the fight against libertinism does not immediately lead back to dire morality. Descartes does not treat biological and psychological sensuality remotely as spheres of action of the devil, and he even says of the passions that they are ton tes bonnes de leur nature' "' . Against the Stoics, who renounce the joys of the world, whom he finds cruels' '°, he emphasizes the need for reconciliation between Stoic domination and Epicurean urges nadi G1ü&' one could gain the impression that the belief in immortality primarily serves to keep earthly life free from the fear of death in order to make it more enjoyable"'. Descartes wants to fight disease and old age through the perfection of medicine". The mastery over nature he envisages should not ultimately benefit sensible people. No subtle textual diolasticity of modern interpreters can deceive us about this purely modern trait in Descartes. Dennodi did not modify this important side of Descartes' thinking any more than the references to the connection between soul and body

To prove his many enlightened opponents in the century: the fundamental dualism was simply unacceptable, and that was all that mattered.

'°° Thorns, Desc. et la Morale, I, 238, 243 f., 247. '•' Pass. 211 = AT 11, 485 '°° An Elisabeth 18. 5. 1645 = AT IV, 201 f. '^ An Elisabeth 18. 8. 1645 AT IV, 275 ff. '•' An Mersenne 9. 1. 1639 = AT II, 480. '•® Cf. the remarks of G. Rodis-Lewis, Morale de Descartes, 45. '°° Disc. VI = AT VI, 62 f.

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3. Ambiguous character and ambiguous reception of Cartesianism. The Cambridge Platonists In the early debate on Cartesianism some important themes emerged which, as we shall see, remain central later on. The debate as a whole inevitably revolved around the question of nature and status of res cogitans and res extensa on different levels (anthropology, cosmology etc.), where the soul's destiny and the destiny of the norms have been consciously and very closely linked on the part of all participants. Today's reader, as long as he is used to the ideological embarrassment or colorlessness of professional philosophy publications hidden behind complicated or cautious formulations, is struck by the openness and directness with which the debaters in the 17th century showed their colors in fundamental principles by expressing their views to emphatically connect epistemological or metaphysical assumptions with the question of norms, and indeed, the former are often admittedly processed and presented with the latter in mind. However, the lack of a professional philosophical life organized on the basis of complicated and largely internalized conventions or the often unacademic, free character of the debate was not the only reason why the position on Cartesianism was so openly based on the respective attitude to the question of norms. The atheism or Verdadit for nihilism began to stir for the first time during Descartes' lifetime, both because of the contemporary systematic repression of the old world view by the new natural science"' and also because of the development of specific modern skepticism in the wake of Machiavelli and Montaigne In the immediate environment of Descartes, the aforementioned Verdadit settled most a particularly vivid example of so-called libertinism. Its intellectual sources, beyond Montaigne's skepticism, were various versions of Italian natural philosophy, which fed the pantheist approaches of Thêophile de Viau and Cyrano de Bergerac. The impression of the Italian origin of the Libertine Dbel was widespread and was reinforced by the long stay of well-known Libertines in Italy.

"° S. u. Kap. IV, Abs‹:bn. 2 u. 3 b. "' S. u. Kap. IV, Absdin. 1 u. 3 a. "° Spink, -ren& Free-Thought, 44 ff., 48 ff., 54 ff. "^ Pintard, Libertinage érudit, 209 ff., 363 ff. The Italian influences on the emergence of French libertinism have been described by Busson, who also sees the new diristlide apologetics as a reaction against these currents (Sources et Developpement du Rationalisme, esp. 94 ff., 242 ff., 566 ff.).

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Also the rehabilitation of Epicurus, begun during the Renaissance, made progresses, which were for the most part also progresses of Iibertini's attitude represented, hindered libertinism, however, in its effect and spread. It was certainly a dramatization intended for polemics when Mersenne argued that at that time there were no fewer than 50,000 declared or secret libertines in Paris " ', Dodi Nicolas (somewhat later) stated that this was great heresy no longer Lutheranism, but atheism"', shows the extent of the problem and the concern. The same is indicated by the intensity of the reactions: Vaninis burned in Toulouse in 1619, Viau was persecuted shortly afterwards, the new doctrines were banned by the Paris Parliament in 1625 — to name only the most spectacular cases "'. At the same time, the ideological fight against libertinism and skepticism is intensified, to which Mer Senne's voluminous writing bears witness "'. However, in the meantime the overall situation had changed considerably, and theology itself found itself in the midst of a crisis. We noticed that Descartes' metaphysis dualism was directed against libertinism in its normative dimension. There is also no doubt about his personal aversion to this current. Nevertheless, not everyone wanted to see strict dualism as the most effective weapon against libertinism - which is what Descartes did and the others did too was waiting. The ambiguity of Cartesianism was that the very thing that was supposed to absolve mind could result in the autonomization of matter and thus the undermining of the position of mind itself; for metaphysis, dualism, removes the mind from any attachment to the

'" Spink, Fren& Free-Thought, 133 ff. "• Espinas, Descartes et la Morale, I, 11 ff. It is justified by Sadie that Espinas begins his analysis of Cartesian moral philosophy with the depiction of the libertine danger. For Mersenne's reaction against atheists and libertines, see Lenoble, Mersenne, 168 ff.

"° Zit. von Bouillier, Hist. de la Phil. Cart., II, 203 Anm. 3. "' Details in Mintard, Libertinage érudit, 22 ff. "8 It is about the two volumes of L”impiété des dtistes, athtes et libertins de cc temps, Paris 1624. To understand Cartesianism in general and to confirm our thesis of the conceptual and intellectual-secular contrast between sweet skepticism and mathematise he natural science is here The fact was pointed out that in Mersenne's second major attack on the skeptics, the existence and structure of mathematical truth were emphasized (La Verité des sciences, especially the first 5 chapters of the 2nd Bn&es, p. 225 ff.). "° Gouhier, The Crisis of Theology ..., '^ Pintard, Libertinage trudit, 203 ff.

19 ff.

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Regardless of matter, the price for this had to be recognized as its ability to solve tasks in a purely median manner without the involvement of the mind. However, since the pure medianis, which was defined as the absence of the mind, its scope could be extended as desired, depending on whether one considered this or that function of the effect or aid of the mind or of the automaticity of the mind. ‹:hanism together‹:wanted to drive. These concerns allowed the old, flexible and adaptable missingness of spirit and matter, which was ultimately the basis of the theoretically inspired doctrine of substantial forms, to appear as a means of controlling matter rather than a radical separation of the two from each other with unforeseeable — and irreversible — consequences. The early debate about the Cartesian view of animals as Mas‹:One was determined by these points of view; Because it was based on fundamental principles, it took so long and was so tough to carry out . "'. On the theological side there was a belief that with a medianicism: the explanation of animal life would no longer stand in the way of a similarity for human life, and that is why people tended to give animals souls but to recognize their hedist or intellectual part. For their part, the Cartesians pointed out the libertines' preference for emphasizing the similarities between men and animals and insisted that only the treatment of the animal as a masculine could solve the unpleasant paradox of the immortality of humans Clean out animal soul"'.

The Cartesian position was introductory to theologians both in individual questions and in general, but it continued Descartes' great plan to win over the Jesuits for this. Although Jesuits included certain points of Cartesian physics in their texts, Descartes was generally methodical spirit despite all the contents of the opponent':Have praised the fact that the opposition in metaphysics was irreconcilable1i':h and was generally perceived as a soldier au':h', when in a later phase the modification of Cartesianism was carried out': h Malebranddie mandien Jesuits was able to convert "•. The

"'

In general, see the account by ron Bouillier, Hist. de lu phil. cart., I, 144 ff. (on p. 151 note you

will find a list of the most important publications on the subject up to the middle of the 18th century). '^ Brief rom 13. 9. 1637 = AT I, 402 ff. "° Vgl. die Darstellung ron Busson, Religion of the classics, 16sff. "^ Cf. the nice remarks of ron Adam in his Descartes biography, AT, XII, 238. '•° Sortais, Carttsianism and the Jesuits. 1 ff., 5 ff., 11, 51. .., '•° The most prominent case is ron Andrt, who, however, si& ron the S&olastik s&lieBlidi röllig detached and therefore ni&t ali bridge between Jesuits and Descartes can be considered. About him see Bouillier, Hist. de la phil. can., II, 372 ff. and Sor tais, Carttsianisme ‹:hez les Jtsuites, 21 ff.

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The official and detailed condemnation of Cartesianism in 1706 lists thirty points that were unacceptable to the Societas, including the principle of doubt, divine voluntarism, and the identity of matter

and extension, the treatment of animals as animals, the distinction between primary and secondary qualities and also (which must be particularly noted in view of the development in the century) the Thesis that God alone can move bodies and that creatures cannot move in relation to other creatures, it is evident that the Jesuits were more likely to sympathize with Gassendi. The empiricist theory of knowledge that Gassendi developed in his refutation of the Meditationes '^ and the associated rejection of Recognizability of the most obvious things could with him, like sdion with Thomas '°', serve as the basis of fideism. Precisely because Gassendi allows the idea of God, like any other idea, to arise from the combination or processing of empirical facts, he requires the assumption of a consistent purposefulness in nature to prove the existence of God. The teleo1ogisd He even expressed thoughts against Epicurus, his mentor, and tried to reconcile them with the autonomous laws of nature through the theory that God intervened in the inner teleology at its first moment, before he leave them to the rule of natural law "'.

Descartes was unable to compensate for his failure with the Jesuits by making decisive gains with their opponents. It is certainly an exaggeration to say that the Oratorians strongly supported him, when one thinks of their frequent bans on his teaching. The Jansenists also attributed the possible consequences of Cartesian Medianism, even though they did They, just like the Oratorians, had to feel some kind of alliance with Descartes because of their common opposition to the Jesuits and because of their common assumptions about Augustinian origins. Especially in Holland, where they were

'•' S. den Text der Verurteilung bei Sortais, Cartesianisme '^ ..., 37—40. Bouillier, Hist. of the phil. cart., I, 558 f., 562 f. '^ You learn Metaph., Opera III, 301 a (= AT VII, 267). '•° S. above chap. II, para &n. 2 a. Not coincidentally, in his polemic against Descartes, Huet combines motifs from Gassendi and Thomas, see Bouillier, Hist. de la phil. cart., I, 584 f. '•' You learn. Metaph., Opera III, 335 b (= AT VII, 294). *•• St. ZB Syntagin Philos. II = Physics, Sect. III, Membr. Post., Lib. II, Ch. 3, = Opera II, 235 a. '^ Syntagm. Philos. II = Physics, Sect. 1, Lib. Chapter 7 7 - Works I, 494 a. '* So claims Bouillier, Hist. de la Phil. cart., I, 412 f. '•• Listed by Spink, -ren&-ree-Thought, 194 f. '°° For the attitude of the )ansenists in general see G. Lewis, Augustinisme et cartesianisme ..., 131 ff.

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Cartesianism was able to spread most succinctly and freely, "', a radical differentiation process took place that one could hardly talk to Descartes as a clearly interpretable and therefore firm ally. As can be seen, the main dividing line within the camp of Dutch Cartesianism runs between them , who are primarily interested in metaphysics, i.e. value dualism, and those who concentrate on physics and show empiricist-medianicist tendencies; among the latter, Regius is best known, from from which Descartes had to distance himself. How flexible Cartesianism was can be seen in the efforts of Reformed theologians - who turned against Lutheranism and Catholicism in parallel with the well-understood ones.

—,

To reconcile Descartes with the well-understood 'Aristotle and to use Cartesian rationalism as a means of religious emancipation "'. — With reference to the history of Cartesianism in the century, we must close this brief overview by reminding that prominent minds wanted to see in him, despite all the ambiguity, an excellent defense of diristee basic positions under the given circumstances. This applies to Arnault "', but Bossueu's case is particularly interesting "': if he is a "semicartésien' "', it is because he, as his admonitions to Anti-Cartesians from the S‹:h1age Huets show "', knew how to see the real danger in the endangerment of the spirit. The cartesianistic dualism, however uniform and consistent in its pole misdiantisdiolastisdien absid it audi be modite (and precisely because of this), produced at the same time two completely opposite systems, a medianizistisdies and an intellectualistisdies. Dadurdi he provided the weapons for his own combat. One could only oppose dualism as a monist in this or that sense and degree, and monism in turn was arrived at by playing one side of Cartesianism off against the other or by suppressing it in the name of the other—while, however, showing the true identity had to lose sight of the sdiolasticism or the absence of Des cartes. The Cartesianist Me‹:hanicism-materialism on the one hand and the Cartesianist intellectualism on the other hand had to put themselves at the service of the corresponding basic currents of modern rationalism, which were opposed to each other with world-wide dialectical wisdom, while at the same time turning against Cartesianism as a whole; that

'°'

For this in general Thijssen-Sdioute, Le cartesianisme aux pairs-bas, 183 ff.

'° 8 Bouillier, Hist. of phil. cart., I, 260, 240 ff. '°• Bohatec, The Cartesian S&olastic, insb. 19 ff., 72, 102 ff., 127 ff. "• Bouillier, Hist. of the phil. cart., II, 1s6 ff. 1 ' 1 Bouillier, Hist. of phil. cart., II, 222 ff. "°

To quote Busson, Religion des classiques, 373, cf. 386 ff. '•° S. the letter in Huet from 18. 5. 1689, cit. by Charbonnel, Pensée italienne, 63s f.

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But the fact that they were able to come together within Cartesianism, even if only provisionally, shows clearly what originally belonged to the contradictory nature of modern rationalism. Hence the typical relevance of Cartesianism and the endless controversy about him. Well could ,

si& the option for monism, which the fight against Cartesian dualism co ipso nadi sidi drew, just as well in a purely materialistic way in a purely intellectualistic or spiritualistic position. Given the negative but structurally striking relationship between materialism and spiritualism with regard to their common nionist approach, it should not be surprising that spiritualist positions unintentionally and in various detours benefited materialist monism and vice versa: all one had to do was change the precedents. In addition, the following occurred in the attempt to finally overcome the opposition between spirit and matter in the nionist sense. Spiritualist positions took up material moments or the forms of sensuality in a spiritualized form in order to neutralize sensibility and thus to make one immune to the attacks of the sidi on tangible reality and empiricist science without making it immune in doing so, an "anti-knowledge sdiaft1i&en" attitude was to be vedallen (extreme case of this tendency: the late Hegel), while the materialists spiritualized their matter to a certain extent, with reference to the immanence of movement, etc., in order to be able to extract the spirit itself from their sdioß sdi1ießli&. The spiritualization of matter and the sensualization of the spirit were lost in the dominant conciliatory tendency of the first century, which was able to derive and reinterpret ideas and motives from both traditions. A lot will have to be said later about the character of Enlightenment materialism. We begin with the monistic approach of the Platonists of Cambridge, which in a roundabout way benefited Newton's later strongly empiricist tendencies, since he had initially combated Cartesian dualism with spiritualist means. The Platonists develop their argumentation strategy on epistemological, anthropological and cosmological levels at the same time, which therefore show a structural parallelism. In both cases, the spirit is defended against the possible consequences of mechanicism, but in the process its concept is expanded so that, as the spirit becomes the overarching one, the nionist tendency gains the upper hand. In epistemology and anthropology, the primacy of the spirit (intellect) achieves such existential intensity that it merges with the will and encompasses the entire human being, while in cosmology the undisputed sovereignty of God is bought at the price of his entanglement with the world (space). becomes.

The Cambridge pillar of Plato comes to maturity under the influence of mathematics and natural science, if its roots lie in English Hunianism, which has long opposed S&o1astics in the the name of the true religion and durdi his demand nadi per-

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sönlidiem Bible understanding on the basis of direct experiences such attitudes as the devotio moderna' of Erasmus for independent articulation "'. Also the influence of Herbert of Cherbury must not be overlooked, who wanted to end the confusion of the time dur‹fi a pax universa " ', which in turn was to be based on an eternal and universal truth, the existence of which he asserted against qinsanos et sc¢pticos' madite “'. Herbert sudit nadi the connective rational content or the common denominator of all religions, which he does not "twa understand as a Durdi sdinitt of empirically existing diversity, but wants to derive it ex mente nostra"': the true consensus univcrsalis is based on communes no titias or veritates indubias "'. It is symptomatic& that Grotius had read and commented on Herbert's script sdion in the manuscript "'. It was only the concept of the mathematically comprehensible and formulatable natural law that first defined the meaning of the binding and unchangeable all the better as they find themselves under the impression of the continental religious wars and the English civil war on the su&e na& of a solid theoretical support . of their relationship to reason, so that faith and reason are identical "'. But not only religion, but also morality can be demonstrated with mathematical certainty "'.

Particular emphasis is placed on this, because not least the strong practical and moral orientation is intended to grant religion immediately illuminating reasonableness and independence from dogmatic disputes: in this way the Platonists, although their intention is purely to do so, contribute modern epistemology to the reformulation of religious belief use "', perhaps without knowledge or desire, to accelerate the secularization process at "•. The intensity of the moral disposition suggests the '•' treatment of nature not just as being, but also as value (or as value-

'•• Cassirer, Die dish. Renaissance in England, 8 ff. ’^

De Verit., 1-7, 43.

1te De Verit., 8. 1t7 De Verit., 40. 1t8 De Verit., 38 f. tte Herbert, Autobiography, t75. t60 Wbi&cote, Aphorisms Nr. 721 (= Cragg, 430 f.);Nr. 756 (= Crzgg, 43t). ts1 Wiii&cote, Aphorisms Nr. 878 u. 880 (= Crzgg, 432). t82 More, En&. Egh. I, 4 $ 2 (= Operz Phil., I, 18);Dial. Div. I (= Opera Phil., I, 6¥¥); cf. Whidicote, Aphorisms Nr. 298. t6S Wi1ley, Seventeenth Century Ba&ground, 125.

Liditenstein, More, 201 ff. S. o. Chap. II, Abs&n. 2 b.

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adherent being or as ontisdi existing value) emerge in the deutlidist. The ratio is not just the logisdi-mathematics, the capture of the structure of the things, but their own essence. Since rationality and morality are supposed to coincide by definition, the world itself is morally structured; The moral judgment is at the same time an ontological one, and the moral behavior is the only natural one: The rule of right is the reason of things; the judgment of right is the reason of our minds perceiving the reason of things' "'. The connection of ethics to oncology, which appears here programmatisdi, will be groundbreaking for leading movements of the Enlightenment and in itself marks the reconnection of modern rationalism , if also from the perspective of one's own basic ideological assumptions, of thought structures that were the basis of the "sdiolastism" and "theology" that were being fought against. This binding has an important consequence in relation to the definition of ratio —a consequence which will also be future-oriented and which is no less programmatically heralded in the Cambridge Platonists. Are Reason and the essence of the world or of man are identical, so reason can no longer be a mere instrument for finding the truth, but coincides with the truth. Reason and certain assumptions are inseparable from each other, so rationalism has become obsolete with a certain content. And further: since there is no distance between reason and its object (the truth), reason is the ultimate immediacy - or: its deepest character is necessarily eidetisdi or existential; It hardly differs from what Herbert of Cherbury called "instinctus na turalis" or "sensus internus". world perceptible •.) The motif of eidetic reason is emphasized by all representatives of the Sdiule with Nadidru‹:k, and always in connection with the rejection of the dead Budista staff, the colorless syllogistic, dry system thinking, etc.: the emotional philosophy of The 18th century will adopt these keywords or phrases unchanged "'. Nothing pure 1

'^^ Whidicote, Aphorism Nr. 33 (= Cragg, 423)¡ cf. Nr. 26 (= Cragg, 422). 1" De verit., 38, 75 1^^On law, Prol. $ 39 (= 21 f.). '^° Castigated in his famous sermon Before the Honorable House of Commons' Cudworth the bookish Christiane, the dry speculations and the mere dead skeleton of opinions' (Cragg, 374, 380). Cudworth identifies the sensible Einsidites with den genuine instincts of nature, rightly interpreted" (A Treatise of Freewill = Cragg, 297). Audi nadi J. Smith, reason grasps fundamental truths, by a naked intuition“ (The Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion, Kap. I = Cragg, 95), und N. Culverwel expresses a similar sentiment, calling the intuitive clarity of reason “muddy.” and troubled waters in whiÖi the S&oolmen ... are alvrays fishing” gegenüberstellt. (An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature, Kap. I = Cragg, 59.)

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heart, but the sophistical intellect runs counter to reason. For what is reasonable is not known from without, but experienced inwardly, and it is almost impossible to recognize the reasonable without being reasonable. Precisely because of this immediacy there is no real difference between cognition and morality. Only the good can recognize the good. Like it More formulates: .I discovered ... that in every matter the best is ... from men not to the extent that they are intelligent, but to the extent that they are good.'; on the first day "’

'facultas' should be called animae oculum' J Smith emphasizes the same thing, this time following Plotinus: only the sun-like eye can see the sun - and only the god-like soul can recognize God '•'. It deals are variations on the same theme: morality and knowledge are ultimate identisdi and rooted in being.

The existential or eidetis character of reason in its roots Development in valuable, rational being serves to burst the barriers of a narrowly understood intellectualism. The intellect expands and becomes reason in the diluted sense by merging with the existentially pulsating will that supports morality and at the same time strives for it. The soul is understood as a unit and the usual opposition between the two basic faculties within the discipline of psychology is overcome '•' Offensiditlidi, the later moral sense philosophy is prepared here. On the other hand, however, it cannot be overlooked that in the thinking of the Platonists, insofar as it deserves to be opposed to Hobbes' sensualist psychology, the repression of intellectualism, which was used as a counter-weapon, cannot and must not be completely eliminated."' Therefore, the Platonists must give up the level of this question (like Audi on the cosmological level, see below) under purchasing ••° En‹:h. Eth. I, 3 § 4 (= Opera PhiL I, 15). '°' A Discourse Goncerning the True Way or Method of Attaining Divine Know ledge, Sect. I (= Cragg, 77 f.). '^° Passmore, Gudworth, 55 f., 65 ff., has observed this very well. His mistake is that he sees this overcoming as a personal achievement of Cudworth, although it is actually a commonplace among the Platonists, especially since it had to emerge from their approach to thought (see our analysis of More's argument in this regard in this paragraph). From the passage from Whitcote, which Passmore, 53, quotes, there is in no way a fundamental difference to Cudworth; it is just spoken about a different aspect of the same thing. '^ Willey, who in an excellent analysis (English Moralists, 172 ff.) discussed both the opponents of Hobbes as a catalyst of the moral philosophical thinking of the Platonicists and the significance of their work for moral sense philosophy (186), Nevertheless, she didn't notice the negative connection between these two sides. The Platonists must not go too far on the path of moral sense if they do not want to come close to a sensualism with optimistic precedents. It was no coincidence that the intellectualists of the 18th century grew up in Hutdieson e.g. B. a masked Hobbes (see chap. VI, para. 3 b).

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By taking logical risks, we pursue two goals at the same time - namely, gaining as much of the soul as possible for the moral purposes of the intellect, which is already unwavering, and not letting the purity of these purposes be clouded by the effects of unpredictable or physical passion. More's argument is indicative of this. In his detailed polemics against Hobbes, he endeavors to broaden and strengthen the anthropological basis of morality by giving freedom not just to the will, but to the whole soul as a unity and, thanks to innate ideas, the direction of one's own self-movement autonomously determine the substance to speak to; the fate of freedom thus no longer depends on a single faculty or accident of the substance-soul, while the mutual complementarity of intellect and will within the framework of the soul makes it independent of external influences, which it otherwise (as in Hobbes) as would require motives for action '^. However, all this does not prevent More from defending free will in the conventional sense according to the needs of the moment '•', here we are only interested in that thought mechanism that allows the expansion of the intellect to reason without endangering the ,

intellectual purity of moral postulates permitted. In fact, the said expansion does not harm the purity of the mind because that which expands or supplements the intellect participates just as much in the divine in the soul. The soul then experiences its unity to the fullest extent when it exhausts all the possibilities of its consubstantiality with the Divine. Under these circumstances, exceeding the limits of mere intellect cannot mean a concession to the brutal Epicureans, and so within The new framework saved or further consolidated through the expansion that was originally intended to be defended through a stricter intellectualism: the mind or the soul in general as a cradle of values. The godlike or pure soul unites with God and is also at one with itself, that is, it fully realizes the fusion of intellect and will. Then that boniforma fa cultas' blossoms, which contains within itself the morally pure will '°•, is intellectual and divine in one, coincides with the recta ratio' and experiences its own intima vita ac sensibilitas' in the intellec tualis amor ' 7 '. The terminus

'•• Immort. Anim. Il, 3 $$ 7, 10 (= Opera Phil. Il, 337, 338). '^ En&. Eth. III, 1—2 ( = Opera Phil. I, 67 ff.). '°° Magn. Myst. Piet. Ezpl., Il, 12 $ 2 (= Opera Theol., 89); Antid. Ath. I, 11 $12 (= Opera Phil. Il, 51). '°' This is what J. Smith says right at the point where he describes the summit of the itinerarium mentis (A Discourse Concerning the True Wzy etc. Sect. II = Cragg, 90). '•* Endi. Eth. I, 2 $ 5 (= Opera Phil. I, 12). '°° En&. Eth. I, 5 $$ 1 u. 7 (= Opera Phil. I, 24, 25). "° Endi. Eth. Il, 9 $ 15 (= Opera Phil. I, 61). About the whole thought complex in More see the sdiiiine analysis by Liditenstein, More, esp. 41 ff., 64 ff.

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'intellectualis amor' indicates that here there is neither a one-sided overcoming nor a surrender of intellectualism. Rather, it is a question of a complete unfolding of all possibilities of the existentially or normatively charged intellect. Neoplatonis‹:he and theosophis‹:he borrowings made this particularly clear, but it would be wrong to only attribute the conceptual expression described above to its effect: because the existential-eidetic — and normative — component is no less relevant to modern times Intellect off, precisely when he is at the Sdiwelle is on the concept of reason or rationalism. The adherence to basic intellectualist positions can be seen in the epistemology of the Platonists, which in turn is intended to underpin moral philosophical views (which, incidentally, makes the function of intellectualism generally clear). It is obvious that, given the assumption of the rational structure of being, the Platonists' epistemology and ontology must go hand in hand. From the ontological character of reason arises the thesis that the logical-mathematical ideas, in which the pure rational structure of being is reflected, are innate or independent of external experience. '. This character of reason also guarantees the absolute necessity of its ideas, the first and foremost of which is the idea of God. 'Ar‹:hetypa1 and Paradigmatic to the same”, as Cudworth says “'. He treats the ontological proof of God as a deduction of the existence of God from the Nature of Knowledge and Understanding'; of the in the same context

‹:hen is, in turn, only a paraphrase for the ontological understanding of the character of reason ”'. More, who treats the ontological proof of God in the most explanatory way "', even goes so far as to claim that a rejection of it would come from the thesis of the contingency of being in general and thus also from the uselessness of men's cognition sdi1e: hthin same‹:h"'. This strong statement can only be understood if we keep in mind the overall context in which the ontological proof of God is audited. Now if reason is rooted in the ov, and if therefore the idea of God as des ov par excellence emerges from its very structure, then God and reason must be identis‹:h. As a pendant to the intellectualist epistemology, it points to the connection between God and the commandments of reason — or: the ontologisdie proof of God, in terms of its internal logic, appears in the perspective of its early modern functions as a consequence or as a supplement to the assumption, logisdi-mathematis : he and moral laws are eternal and unchangeable, "'

"'

"°

More, Antid. Ath. I, 6 $$ 3—5 (= Opera Phil. II, 35). True Intel. Sirstem, 733. True Intel. System, 731.

"^ Antid. Atb. I, 8 (= Opera PhiL II, 37 f.). "• Antid. Ath., Sdiol. in Chapter VIII Sect. 3 (= Opera Phil. II, 41 above).

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ie not dependent on the will of God; God cannot will anything other than what is rational was indeed but an Hypocritical Theist, or Personated and Disguised Atheist' ".

1

For the Platonists, the elimination of arbitrariness on the side of God co ipso meant the elimination of fatalism on the side of humanity. In other words: God's commitment to the commandments of reason is proof of the need for human freedom 1 ' 8 . Also with regard to the great polemic goal of the Platonists, namely Hobbes' philosophy and political theory, the renewal of the ontological proof of God in the weakened overall context is symptomatic. For this is necessarily connected with an intellectualistic epistemology, as Cudworth knows very well, and is therefore called upon in the struggle against Hobbes's sensualism. The danger of atheism and immoralism has now become so great that one has to accept a relapse into the otherwise derided 'diolasticism'. Cudworth fights the Hobbesian epistemology not least with reference to its consequences for morality: "Were Sense the only Evidence of things, there could be no Absolute Truth and Falshood" . and gate opened; between the empiricism or nominalism and the decisionism of Hobbes, Cudworth sees a connection, quite to Redit.He polemicizes against the leviathan, who can sovereignly determine morals and values, in the same sense and spirit as against the calvinistic or Cartesian God (which, by the way, also had a spiritual basis, apart from the influence that the voluntaristic God of Ockham exercised on the formation of the mortal God of Hobbes.) Intellectualistic epistemology thus goes hand in hand with intellectualistic morality a priori knowledge corresponds to the innate moral disposition, and both are ontologically rooted: the exact opposite is the case with the nominalist Hobbes on all levels. This multidimensional controversy comes to a head in the clearest way - and at the same time in the most fundamental way - in the anthropological question. »These Atheistic Politicians ... first of all slander Humane Nature, and make a Villain of it',

"• S. z. B. Cudworths 1731 posthum ersdiienene Sdirift, A Treatise Concerning Eter nal und Immutable Morality, I, 2 (= Cragg, 272). "'

True Intel. Syst., 646 1 °^ On the polemis& meant combination of the concepts of freedom and necessity cf. our remarks

above chap. II paragraph 2 B. "°

True Intellect. Syst., 637. Au& More emphasizes that the senses cannot convey eternal truths, e.g.

a passage in Antid directly criticized against the pAthei'. ath. I, 8 § 12 (= Opera Phil. II, 39).

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Cudworth states "', accepting, like all Platonists,' 'the natural goodness and sociability of man. The opponent's supposed malice strengthens him eo ipso in the belief that his own position can and should be the only right one. In doing so, he also remains unaware of the logical contradictions that arise from the double assertion that the will is free and that it must choose the good because of its original nature.'

From the analysis of the existential concept of reason or the intellectualistic basic position of the Platonists and their consequences (ideae innatae etc.) it should become clear what fascinated them about Descartes. Not a few representatives of the school therefore saw in Descartes the most important ally in the current struggle against Hobbessian materialism 1^, all the more so since the dualism of spirit and matter was an essential part of their own Platonism or Neoplatonism. The reception of Descartes "' soon came up against each other or the attitude of the Platonists differentiated themselves, if audi to different degrees 1 ", since the difficulties and dangers that the irreconcilable sharpness of the Cartesian dualism contained within it became apparent. The concern of the Platonists was opposed to that of many enlighteners of the 18th century: they feared a degradation of matter, which the anti-asceticism did to the rehabilitation of sensuality under the pressure of nihilism

would, they in turn could not approve of an independence of matter, as was implied in Cartesian medianicism, which would stand in the way of its influence by the spirit. The opposite intentions, however, brought forth a strengthening of monism, albeit with different antecedents. Precisely about dualism in the sense of

'^°

True Intel. Syst., 891 1""' S. the programmatic statements of Whi‹:hcote, Aphorisms, Nos. 42 and 678 (= Cragg 423, 430). '•' Cf. the good remarks of Mintz, The Hunting of the Leviathan, 132 f. '^ S. Cudworth's Positive One‹:estimate of Cartesianism, True Intell. Syst., 174 f.; Not coincidentally, More praises Descartes' treatise on moral philosophy particularly warmly, Immort. Anim., Epist. ded (= Opera Phil., II, 276). '^ About this in general Lampre‹:ht, The Role of Descartes ..., 181 ff., and Ni colson, The Early Stage of Cartesianism ..., 356 ff. Also Laird, L'inf1uence de Descartes, insb. 234 ff. " It seems as if J. Smith, who particularly appreciated the moral-philosophical advantages of Cartesian dualism due to his own interests , followed Descartes more faithfully than Cudworth and More, who were also concerned with questions of cosmology Smith's Cartesian Mechanicism seems to promote the elevation of the soul to the source of one's own divinity, while More's rejection of this seems to be accompanied by a distancing from mystical experience. See the interesting study J. Saveson, Differing Reactions to Descartes, esp. 561, 564 f., 566. ...,

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To defend sovereign independence of mind, Cudworth z. B. Eliminate the body disease de facto. The price of this undertaking, however, is that the concept of spirit loses its specific contours in its boundless expansion and can thus fulfill its actual metaphysis-di-normative function ni‹:St more re‹:St. The dualism of the active and the passive takes the place of the dualism of mind and body, which in turn means that the mind is no longer allowed to be defined in such a way or can be defined on the basis of the mere contrast to the body'*•. The attempt to eliminate the possible consequences of Cartesianism:medianicism was linked to the aforementioned rejection of divine voluntarism on the part of the Platonists. With Descartes, as we know, the primacy of the divine served the will of the eradication of teleology from the natural world. Cudworth doesn't know the connection in Descartes, but by virtue of the internal logic of things he argues as if he had known it exactly. Out of fear of the meaninglessness of the world and the nihilistic verda‹:St as well as the conviction that the »Me‹:hani& or Atomick Theisu' would ultimately play the game of the atheists, he fights the Cartesianis‹:medianicism not in the end. that, in this emergency, forgetting the fight against sdiolastism, he takes up the te1eo1ogis‹:the idea with a rich‹:the S‹:batz aristote1is‹:the quotations. The "P1astic Nature" (ie creative nature).acts öveza zov, for the sake of something, and in order to Ends' '^; it is the "immediate agent and executor" of the divine law, whose activity makes God's intervention in all events and affairs of this world superfluous. The Plastic Nature can act teleogically or represent God precisely because it acts on the basis of unchanging laws, and therefore it does not have to ask God in every individual case in order to act according to his wishes. God is concerned with the completion of ongoing business two's emphasis on its completely rational and nonvoluntarist character. With this thesis, the Platonists of Cambridge paved the way for Enlightenment deism. However, Cudworth's religious concerns also made him sensitive to the transformation of deism and mechanicism. The activity of God is not exhausted by plastic nature; This only takes over that, qwhi‹:h consisu in the regular and orderly motion of matter', but beyond that there is 'a higher providence' which corrects the errors of the mechanism and man':hma1

'•° Na& Passmore, Cudworth, 23 (cf. 28, 65). Although Passmore tends to sum up the main difference between Descartes and Cudworth at this point he did this in general to understand the meaning of Cudworth's anti-Cartesian polemics in the background (see BS 8). Daxu the critical remarks by Sailor, Cudworth and Descartes, 13s ff. '•' True Intek Syst., 683 f. '•• True Intell. Syst., 147; in the context of the polemic against Me&anicism also rejected the theory of the animal machine (863, 167).

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even bypasses ' 8 '. The good Cudworth wants i>tides at the same time: God must keep him away so that reason and the law are not abolished, and he must interfere if necessary for the sake of the higher duality of the world and the rational suppression of me&anism. And he also wants to be awarded a third: that si& God, in spite of all Niditeinmis&ung, is above everything and in everything; This should even make the operations of nature possible, which must therefore ultimately be something other than mere mechanism: “But as God is inward to every thing, so Nature acts immediately upon the Matter, as an Inward and Lining Soul or Law in it‘ "'; an dieser Stelle wird verständ lidierweise Plotin zitiert "'.

What interests us here is not the logistical leaps through which Cudworth gains his position, but rather the fact that this rejection of medianism bxw. Atheism or immoralism ultimately leads to an approach of God to the world or of spirit to matter. The introduction of teleological thought or the defense of the meaning of things and the world plays an outstanding role. Au& Henry More, whose attacks against medianicism Cudworth gratefully mentions, held on to the teleological idea for the same reasons and combined it with his conception of the Spiritus Naturae, which springs from Cudworth's "Plastic Nature" and takes over the functions of the substantial forms bxw. Bes&irm "'. On this basis he develops a physical theology that anticipates all the motifs of the almost unmissable literature of the 18th century on this subject "'. The natural philosophy legacy of the Renaissance remains alive in More, as in all of Cambridge's Platonists, and is articulated in the emphasis on the vital against the mere Medianisdie (More uses these terms, and xwar when he speaks of the Spiritus Naturae). Often on

True Intel. Syst., 150 True Intel. Syst., 156. '°' About the plotinis‹:£en precedents of Plastic Nature" see Cassirer, Die Plat. Renaissance, 95 ff. '°' True Intel. Syst., 148 '•• St. on the Definition of the Spirit of Nature in En&ir. Metaph., Chap. 28, Sdiol. (= Ope ra Phil. I, 329) ; ct. Immortal Anim III, 12 $ 1 (- Opera Phil., II, 430). Give an idea Spiritus Natural lets si& indeed s&on in More's early work as an appeal to different, The vitalistic views that were common at the time (pspermaticall power), but as can be seen, they only emerged gradually - namely after the letter we&sel or partial Bru‹:h with Dcscnrtes (1648). Plus Greene, More and Boyle on the Spirit of Nature, esp. 453 f., 4s9 f. Greene (461) says very aptly, this spirit Natural sei eigentli& a cat&-all for the inexplicable'. '°• Philosoph. on Principles $ 17 (= Opera Phil. I, 348). '°• S. of the whole 2nd Bu& of Antidotus adr. Atheism (= Opera Phil. II, 43 ff.); au‹:£ the piquancy is not missing, e.g. B. if in the 4th chapter. It is said that the sea water was created by God with regard to the needs of shipping.

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the detour of Plotinian emanatism "' promoted the image of a powerful unit of time, which certainly stands in the spirit's time. Although matter can be neither finis' nordi 'principium' of itself ”' and receives its movement from the spirit "' , it also springs from the divine source of all life "'. In order to oppose the dualism or mani&aism, which was then also in its own Plotinian heritage, More as a sophism rejects the Cartesianist claim of the substantial independence of matter "'. In the monististic perspective he wants to explain how the spirit influences matter at all - thus eliminating medianicism or

Atheism is coming. And since within Cartesian dualism the spirit cannot find access to matter, More believes that it can solve the problem if it only brings everything that exists independently or dependently to a common denominator. He wins this relatively easily, that is, through the polemic and the processing of the opponent's position. He opposes the Cartesian equation: matter = expansion with the equation: spirit = expansion. Since he admits the expansion of matter as well as the existence of spirit, the equation arises: existence = expansion, which is partly a mere reversal and partly as an extension of an epigrammatical statement from Hobbess that only (extended) bodies can be real components of the universe. More himself declares his agreement with the thesis Quidquid est alicubi est etiam extennim', and at the same time regards this agreement as the best starting point for refuting the opposing position'°.

The difference between spirit and matter no longer consists in the attribute of extension, but rather arises from certain properties of the latter, such as divisibility and impermanence. Durdi believes that More has achieved a double result. On the one hand, it agrees with him the independence of matter seems to be abolished, since its extra-substantial attribute, namely extension, has been withdrawn from it, that is, it has been granted to the spirit in the same way; matter can therefore no longer play the role of the spirit's adversary through its de-spiritualization or spiritualization it becomes dangerous. On the other hand, More sees in the expansiveness of the spirit

'°^ With Re&t Hutin, More, 80 remarks that the &ristli&e creation thought stricto sensu is missing in More. '°' Ench. Metaph. 9 $ tt (= Opera Phil. I, 176). *°^ En&. Metaph. t0 $ 16 (= Opera Phil. 1, t82). '^

Immort. Anim. II, t1 $ t0 (= Opera Phil. II, 363).

Ench. Metaph. 9 $ 10 (= Opera Phil. I, t75 f.). '°' En&. Metaph., Chap. 6 u. 7 (= Opera Phil. 1, 158 ff.). ^° Lex. XXXIV (= EW, III, 380). ^°° En&. Metaph. Cap. 27, last sentence of the 2nd and first sentence of the 3rd paragraph. '•• Go Metaph. 27 $ 5 (= Opera Phil. 1, 3t8 f.).

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the best hypothesis to explain its connection with matter and he is now not afraid of such a delusion, since the mind is the overarching after the de-substantialization of matter. What is interesting for our question is the structural parallelism of the anthropological and kosinological levels in More's thinking. Since God Qin suo modo extenditur' and If he is “omnipraesens”, he succeeds in inducing movement into matter; and only because the soul pervades the universe corpus, the movement of this latter can be explained "•. In this way, spirit and matter have converged to such an extent that it feels able to view the basic Cartesian separation as a violation of the rule of law Thinking to prove: the mere diversity of some attributes can neither justify "Separabi1itatem" nor "rea1em Distinctionem", one should not "Diversa cuin Oppositis confun dere' '°'. The extensive homogeneity becomes stylistically a prerequisite for influence held "'. More proceeds with a clear conscience: since for him the spirit is by definition more open-ended than matter, and since the expansion now belongs to him, the equally expanded matter is taken into the spirit or absorbed by it. But More never thinks about the fact that he was only able to achieve this victory of the spiritual principle at a high price ; He does not ask the question to what extent the character of the spirit remains intact if one ascribes to it the attribute that, in the opponent's position, was attributed exclusively to matter. Since the mind does not have an adiille heel, it cannot be influenced, More apparently thinks. He does not understand that the spiritualization of the material must, under certain circumstances, lead to the spiritualization of the spiritual. And in fact he could not have known what the dominant current would be in the intellectual life of the nadist century. Just as in Descartes the sharp separation between res cogitans and res extensa resulted in the identification of matter and extension, so more's mediation between spirit and matter, no matter how spiritualistic it may have been meant, had to result in a detachment of the concept of matter from that of extension; Matter, however, continues to be extended, not only it is, and therefore its necessary connection to the concept of extension is lost. More's critique was aimed at this apparently paradoxical and yet completely logical result . Now, since matter and extension fall apart, since spirit is also extended, and since spirit is by definition the overarching moment, matter can only exist within an eternal and infinite space existing independently of it, which

*°• See the 1st and 2nd letters to Desczrtes, Operz Phil. II, 234 and 248; both levels

are treated simultaneously in En&. Metaph. (see previous note). '°°

‘°'

En&. Metaph. 27 $ 4 (- Opera Phil. I, 318). The same point of view became a little later at the epistemological level

asserted: knowledge would be impossible if there were between subject and object

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Angesidiu this of his attributes offensively coincides with God '•'. For Descartes, the identification of matter and extension led to the rejection of the vacuum; In More's case, their disintegration had to result in a renewal of the atomistic theory (More without hesitation invokes Democritus and Epicurus as well as the rough conception of Proclus), although this time the former vacuum is nothing other than God as space. In a later phase of his thinking, More sought to avoid the danger of equating God and the world or Spinozism by depicting space as infinite and the world as finite. The world is therefore an island in the sea of space - or even the body of the body of God? "' Because of the severity of the Cartesian Dualisuius, the situation had become so delicate that even the slightest attempt to overcome it had to raise fundamental questions. This is particularly evident in the case of the so prescient and conservative measure, which must draw the conclusion from the assumption that the separation between res cogitans and res extensa possibly only applies in the field of natural explanation, that God creates in si‹3i all the perfections of spirits and matter "'. It is also known that men of male brand, such as Fégé, were attracted to Spinozism.

The Platonists of Cambridge emphasized the existential component of the concept of reason and thus contributed to the development of moral sense philosophy and to the strengthening of the anti-intellectualist movement. Just as in cosmology, they also achieved effects in epistemology and moral philosophy that are hardly visible with their own intentions. This was not ultimately due to their anti-Cartesian zeal, which, however, was shared by less pious minds. However, other anti-Cartesian deocracies also fell victim to the heterogony of the two . With them it was si& ni‹3it

or res cogitans and res extensa have no substantial similarity. The central role this question in the disputes between Ron S. Fon&er and Mz1ebran&e and the Orihodox Cariesians as well as the attack of the opponents of the Cartesian theory of cognition on sdio1astis' ideas are very nicely described by Wouon, The Downfall of Cartesianisin, insb. 35 f., 60. En&. Metaph. 8 $§ 8-9 (= Operz Philos. I, 16F f.). ^° En&. Metaph. 8 $ 3 und S&olium dazu (= Opera Phil. I, 166, 169 f.). ^• It is precisely the objective proximity of his position to Spinozism that forces More to one especially sharp polemics against him. S. Colic, Light and Enlightenment, 73 II., esp. 83—85.

"' Raphson later resorted to such arguments to demonstrate his deification of To protect space from Spinozism. Raphson also threw Spinoza before, only the Cartesian equation of space and matter, not that of space

and to accept God (on this see Koyré, Of the closed world ..., chap. VIII).

•^ Redier&e de lu vérité, Lin. Part III II, Chap. IX, $ IV (= OC, I, 4F2 f.). ^° Boullier, Hist. of the phil. cart., II, 348 ff.

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more about an unwanted or long-term undermining of intellectualism, as in the case of the Platonists, but uni their programmatic rejection, which was originally linked to religious objectives, but largely ended in various detours in empiricism or sensualism and thus also benefited anti-religious attitudes. We are talking here about that turn to the immediacy of feeling, which we wanted to understand as a way out of the dilemma: (cerebral) medianicism&-atheistism, the science of knowledge or (equally cerebral) sdiolasticity. In this way, Pascal weighed heart and feeling against the intellect in order to be able to combat the latent Cartesian atheism or hubris of the intellect "'. The feeling is the enuding, existentially overarching instance: pTout riotre raisorinement se réduit ä céder au sentiment ' "'. It fulfills not only moral and metaphysical tasks, but also cognitive tasks, because it, not the intellect, len&th the first principles, from which the intellect then derives its propositions "'. Pascal does nothing else than ascribe the essence of Cartesian intuition no longer to the intellect, but to feeling. Dennodi thus becomes inner sensuality or experience in their existential dynamics. The later religious currents point in the same direction , such as Pietism etc. They support the philosophy of feeling just as much as empiricism does. Empiricism therefore works with these pious currents, despite all the skepticism attached to it against intellectualism. The differences between the two are clearly visible, but this similarity in effect is all the more striking.

•'* Peostes, Sect. II Nr. 77—79 (= Oeuvres XII, 98 f.). *• PensZes, Sect. IV Nr. 274 (— Oeuvres XIII, 199). °'°

PeosZes, Seci. IV Nr. 282 (= Works XIII, 203 f.).

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IV. The ontological valorization of matter and the simultaneous elimination of intellectualism and mechanisticism

1. General comments The previous change in the philosophical and intellectual underpinnings of the Medianicist natural sciences through Descartes as well as the early questioning of Cartesian dualism through monist positions has brought us to the south wave of the Age of Enlightenment and thus to the core point of ours Analysis conducted. In what follows, it is important to present the process of the radical rehabilitation of meaning, which - from a philosophical point of view - is based on the ontological upgrading of matter and is noticeable at all levels of thought effort at the same time in different, structurally connected forms. In the language of our systematic central question, which we want to keep constantly in mind, the general situation can be described as follows: during the Age of Enlightenment, the spirit suffered, all in all, a defeat in its struggle with sensuality or the matter have to suffer. It is seen more and more in its connection to it, even rootedness in it, while on the other hand the independence of matter is constantly progressing: matter is seen more and more as an autonomous carrier of movement, so that it is a first mover ( in the sense of the medical sciences and even more so of the Aristotelian natural sciences) is at least de facto gradually becoming superfluous. Because of the assumed relationships between divine and human spirit in traditional metaphysics, it was inevitable that the degradation of spirit at all was not only in cosmology and theology, but at the same time in anthropology and social theory He made his move, and so - in view of the community of value and spirit that was still largely taken for granted by friends and foes - the question of norms became increasingly sensitive. These striking connections allow us to see the common thread in the conceptual reconstruction of the Age of Enlightenment in the extensive and contradictory process of the ontological upgrading or independence of matter. To clarify this point, it may suffice for the moment to refer to a particularly striking statement by a materialist. All proofs of God, sd rubs d'Holbad

,

are based on that

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General remarks

21 l

Falsdian Prinzip "that matter does not exist by itself and is by its nature unable to move"; die Theologie gewinnt die Gottes vorstellung mittels einer Personifizierung des “principle of inherent mobility i la matière' '. From this the essential idea becomes clear: ontology, the upgrading or The independence of matter must mean the death of God and of the spirit in general. As is well known, the consistent opponents of materialism completely shared this assessment of the situation, although they tended to draw completely different conclusions from it. Extreme positions can sum up the quintessence of complicated developments and, if they do, they are excellent as hermeneutic guides. Because an interpretation that is close to reality must not forget that the level of interpretation does not coincide with that of reality. Applied to the Age of Enlightenment, that means specifically, the orientation of the analysis towards those mentally deficient phenomena that particularly strongly demonstrate the tendency towards ontological upgrading of matter does not in any way imply their numerical superiority. On the other hand, it is a fatal methodological and sa‹:hli‹fi error to assume that statistical meagerness means that mental health is ineffective. Ideas are no less effective in a negative than a positive way, no less effective when they are rejected in detail than when they are adopted outright. If the materialism of the Enlightenment remained a marginal alternative, it embodied in its purest form the final consequences of the ontological upgrading of matter. This is not only expressed very clearly in the polemics of the then defenders of the theological worldview, but can also be seen in the attitude of the non-materialisticminded Enlightenment thinkers: precisely because the final consequences of the rehabilitation of sensuality, despite all their numerical insignificance their representatives have become seditable, and out of fear of nihilism verda'fit or out of tactical polemics they resort to ambivalent dualistic constructions. Now it is not a question of the programmatic Cartesian dualism, but only of a dualism of the

' Syst. from Nat., II, 174. ' Syst. from Nat., II, 142. ° Therein lies an essential shortcoming of Cassirer's work, who wants to see La Mettrie and d'Holba& only as isolated inventions ' living typis':every meaning" (Phil. d. Auf kl., 73). That does He wants to provide a uniform understanding of the Enlightenment, although he is unable to explain phenomena such as the emergence of a programmatic nihilism in the 18th century. He also has to explain the conflict between the causal and the normative or the fluctuation between pessimises mus and optimism (see Chapter VI) — i.e. central manifestations of the Enlightenment — simply because he does not want to accept the function of materialist tendencies ( cf. and note 5).

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Sdiwankeos: I don't want to completely give up on the revaluation of matter in the fight against theology, but I can't take this revaluation too far with a rejection of the dilemma of norm and spirit. The The fundamental difference between this dualism and Cartesianism should remain present when the “dualism of the Enlightenment” is discussed in the following chapters. The Enlightenment dualism of wavering, which is often just an inhibited or cowardly monism, forms the position into which many typical Enlightenment thinkers are pushed by the emerging materialism - and that is proof enough of the effect of the latter, if this is the case The effect is very often only indirect, ie as an influence on the oidit materialist enlightenment thinkers through the accusations and complaints of the conservatives . It is at least a testament to this constellation that in France, where the rehabilitation of sensuality took the most radical forms for specific reasons, the heyday of the Enlightenment occurred between the creation of the works of La Mettrie and Holbadi's System de la Nature It is precisely in this same period that not only the moderate or dualistic movement of the encyclopedists developed as a whole , but also the diristical apologetics of the century reached its climax in quantity and intensity.

In this differentiated perspective, we do not need to replace Newton's century, as it was called by contemporaries and historians, with a 'century of materialism' in order to be credited with the fact of the ontological appreciation of matter, but we do In light of this fact, we have to determine more precisely what Newton's effect actually consisted of or what was perceived as Newtonianism in each case. It is not about the interpretation, but about Newton's t/m interpretations, the variety of which co ipso suggests the need for substantial differentiation when the talk is of 'Newton's century'. If, from the point of view of a certain understanding of natural science, one wants to present a corresponding methodical ideal as a form of thought of the Enlightenment, one must either deny a lot of things from their age or deal with them on the Procrustean bed. Recent research has, for good reason, set aside the monochromatic picture of the Tissensdiaftler's Newton.

• Monod, De Pascal Ä Chateaubriand ..., chap. VIII and X ° The greatest and incurable drawback of Cassirer's analysis lies in this procedure. Cassirer defines the methodical ideal supposedly represented by Newton in such a way (Phil. d. Enkl. 8 f.) that one could just as easily attribute its authorship to Galileo. The specifics of Newton's effect and thus the specifics of the Enlightenment therefore remain unexplained. Furthermore, Cassirer is not even able to use Newton's ideal, which is supposed to dominate the thinking of the Enlightenment, as an interpretative guide in all the areas of thought he examines (see Wagner's good comments, Newton, 40 f.).

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laid and asks stntt its nt&t finally na& the general worldnnsdiau lidie preconditions and causes of effect of his work '. However, the right path is not always the easiest, and so those who want to take it in this question are confronted with a variety of demands. Since the linear effect of a Newton reduced to simple rules is no longer an option , the analysis must move on several levels at the same time: on the level of what Newton said or implied, of what could be suggested by his words without his personalities To comply with absidencies and what was more or less freely attributed to him or presented as a logically legitimate further development of his methodological and content-related theses. In this way it should be easier to understand why Newton could appear in the consciousness of most (fully or half) educated people as the e&th representative of the anti-Cartesian direction of the age and, moreover, even unintentionally preceded the ontological appreciation of matter.

2. Newton's anti-Cartesian approach

in its ideological impact a) Sources and implications of the decoupling of matter and extension and the transition from medicine to dynamics. The magic of attraction More's criticism of Descartes, as we know, amounted to the actual confusion of God and space - precisely in the effort to unravel matter and extension. This was in the fight against the assumed atheist consequences of Medianism, and we can proceed from the fact that Newton completely shared More's views in this regard; sdion in the notes from his student days näm1i& the influence of More appears particularly strong in those passages in which the functionality of medianism is disputed without any intellectual involvement'. Summarizing the main points of Moresdia's critique of Descartes, one can broadly outline Newton's intellectual starting point . But we want each other

° This turn of phrase emphasizes Redit P. Casini in his literary report: Le New tonianism' at the time of the enlightenment, insb. 141 f., 151. Test Case, Force, 337. 8

Koyre, Newt, does this succinctly. Studies, 89 f.

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In addition, we must visualize the overall constellation of the mind, in order to be able to better understand the later criticism of the Cartesians of what they branded as Newton's relapse into the suspect mysticism of pre-medianistic natural philosophy remind us of More's borrowings from the latter. It is indeed hödist true‹:hein1idi that si‹:h More's conception of space developed under the influence of the hermetisdic-cabbalistic tradition, in which the entanglement of God and space was already present and of thinkers like Patrizzi had been taken up again'. From our point of view, it is irrelevant whether and to what extent Newton himself was familiar with these currents; They flow into his world of thoughts via More anyway. Although, as we will see in this section, Newton made a purely mathematical and physical brew of the concept of absolute space, but that says nothing about it The origin of this term, which in Newton's work from the beginning was closely connected with theology and world considerations on taudit. Let us keep in mind the s‹:heinable paradox that the approximation of Mind and matter is the premise for the disintegration of matter and space (actually it is just a direct polemic, the reversal of the two sides of Cartesian dualism), so understand better the way that led Newton to More. Newton needs absolute space, but as long as space and matter are identical he cannot win it without equating God and matter and thus arriving at Spinozism. He doesn't want that , and that's why he starts to separate space and matter by the detour of bringing spirit and matter together. This thought constellation occurs in an early draft of Newton's deutli‹:h in first‹:opinion '°. As Newton s‹:hon explains in the opening paragraphs, determining the motion of a body with respect to space, and not merely with respect to the position of other bodies, is only possible if one assumes space and body to be separate (» spatium a cor pore distinctum dari') ". The Cartesianistic determination of the motion of a body in relation to that of other bodies gives the impression that the motion itself is a product of our imagination" (the connection between The new conception of space and this definition of motion will be explained in more detail a few pages later "). because of this attitude

° Fierz, about the origin ..., esp. 77ff., 82, 85ff. '°

On the Gravitation and Equilibrium of Fluids, in Newtons Unpublished Scientific

Papers, 89 ff.

"loc. eit., 91 f. '• lock. go., 93. " loc. cit., 104.

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The question of movement arises, and then a fundamental definition of space is lost. Newton doesn't necessarily want to call it a substance because he doesn't want to endanger God's substantial independence so directly. Rather, it is the case that space emanates from God, the only true substance; Incidentally, in Newton's opinion, the concept of substance includes "certain actions", "quales sunt cogitationes in mente et motus in corpore". At the same time he can't accept the thesis that space is mere accident — get multo minus dicitur nihil'; It is thus necessary to state that space is 'ad naturam substantiae magis accedit'. Neither spirit nor matter can exist outside of space, only that spirit as God is everywhere, while bodies fill definite parts of space. . In this way, Newton arrives at the same equation, in spite of the mentioned theo1ogis&en reservation: Spirit = extension as More, whereby space and matter are to be fundamentally separated from one another. For Newton says that precisely because of his presence in space, God has the possibility ability to keep certain parts of it free from matter". Decisive here is the parallel between God and man, also used in the main works, which Newton draws with regard to the bond between the spiritual and the material. As man can move his own body at will, so God can move bodies in space and keep part of it empty". would be created in the image of God. Newton asserts the constraint of spirit and body just like More, first of all in a spiritualistic way : just as God as spirit contains all bodies in himself, so it is conceivable that and man, as nadi the image of God gesd ape spirit that holds its own body within itself: mens creata (cum sit imago Dei) est naturae longe nobilioris quam corpus ut forsan eminenter in se contineat'". After all, the substantial bondage of mind and body is still adhered to: mon pos sumus scientes affirmare quod mens et corpus substantialiter differunt. Vel si differunt, non possumus aliquod unionis fundamentum deprehendere'". If, according to Newton, this necessary connection between mind and body did not exist, atheism would be at the door; for God could not expand it ,

"loc. cit., 99. '^ place. cit., 103. '° place. cit., 106. " Principia, Scholium Generale (= II, 762); Optics III Query 31 (= Opera IV, 262 f.). In the latter place, however, the parallel serves to support the thesis that the world is the body of Gotie . ' ® Of Gravitatione, fire. cit., 105. '° loc. cit., 108. ^ place cit., 110.

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The ontological development of matter

sdiaffe if he nt&t originally had them in si&. Assuming that extension is originally contained in the spirit, it is clear that spirit and extension can equally belong to the substance created by God; then both corpora cogitare' and audi res cogitantes ex tendi' should be possible. It is no coincidence that this direct projection of the divine into the human being and vice versa leads to some pantheistically colored formulations: . God is no less subsisting of creatures than they themselves are subsisting of accidents, etc.' "

Im

S&o1iuui Generale wird es heißen: He is omnipresent not by virtue alone, but also by substance. ^

More, as we saw, had used or processed Hobbes's formulas when he attributed expansion to the mind. Au& Newton adopts the thesis that what is not in any space cannot be at all, from which he draws attention to the connection between space and primal existence. Au& Newton's definitions of place, body, rest and movement are reminiscent of Hobbes the separation of matter and extension implies ^. The concept of force, specifically as 'rnotus et quietis causale principium', comes into being precisely in the context of the separation of matter and extension, and its mental health effect will already consist in this to strengthen the ongoing merging of spirit and matter. This becomes more understandable when we think of the structure of the Cartesian opposition, in which the equation of matter and res eateosa with the equation of force and quantity of movement and thus with the thesis of the indifference of matter to movement or of the purely she&anisdie cause of the movement ". Denno& forces the smooth decoupling of matter and res exteosa, which hits the heart of Cartesian mechanics, at the same time to assume a vacuum or atomism ".

For the overall position, that is, for the character of Newton's synthesis, his fundamental affirmation of the contemporary corpuscular

•' place. cit., 109. ^ place cit., 11o. ^

Principles II, 762

"

De Gravitatione, loc. eit., 103. In honor of More or the Neoplatonic hermetical tradition, Newton considers matter to be a lower form of being. Although Space and matter are semantically correlative, the former remains the factual prerequisite of the latter. S. McGuire, Body and Void 227 f., 233.

...,

loc. cit., 91. Cf. Hobbes De Coreore, VIII $$ 1 u. 11; 6 $ 6 (= OL 1, 91, 98, loc. city 114; cf. Prince, Def. VIIIs&oliuin (= I, 53 oben). Descartes presents the connection in detail, Le Sonde VI-VII (= AT XI, 35 ff.).

°'

^ Princ., Lib. 3, Reg. III (= II 554); Oetics III, Qu. 28, 3 (= Works IV, 237, 251, 260).

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philosophy is authoritative. What separated him from her was precisely his recourse to pre-Medieval ideas. However, this recourse is made by deepening into physical questions, namely by transferring the approach to the decoupling of matter and expansion into a dynamic conception. The conviction that matter is something different or something more than extension first of all shapes the fundamental definition of mass through volume and volume tery on mere extension answer an extremely difficult question (why can two geometrically equivalent bodies behave differently under the same conditions) and also explain the different reactions of the bodies to the law of inertia, whereby the principle of the innate resistance of matter is formulated ". Descartes had to deny the latter, since the purely geometric nature of matter makes it a mere receiver of movement ; a body comes to rest not because of the resistance it encounters, but because it has transferred its own movement to another. Durdi Newton's definition of mass, however, the body acquires, in addition to its geometric properties, au&vis inertiae in a new sense; Force and mass become correlative terms." The foundation of dynamics required the assumption of an activity of matter itself in the paradoxical form of an activity in passivity: the resistentia is in another respect: impetus, writes Newton ^. It had to be eliminated in In every case at least the indifference of matter towards movement, understood in Cartesian terms. A small preliminary reference to materialist-oriented thinkers should make the long-term impact of this third aspect clear. In order to demonstrate the ontological inherence of movement in matter, Toland does not ultimately use the argument that matter is resilient "It is proof that it never rests." Diderot adopts the same idea or carries it out closely; resilience, he writes, is a force, an action proper and intimate '".

Newton had his notion of resilience and Di‹:Ute der Matter counted among the cornerstones of his philosophy of nature ". Because his definition of mass, in addition to the observation that the weight of a body changes according to its distance from the center of the earth, theoretically enables the

'°

Princ., Def. I (= I, 39).

•° Princ., Defin. III (= I, 40 f.). •' The World VII (= AT XI, 42). °• Burtt, Metaph. Foundations, 239.

^ Princ., Def. III (= I, 41).

°• Days in general, The Ba&ground of Newton's Principia, 315 ff. • Lntters, V $ 19 (- S.198). •' Principle. Philos. on Mat. ctle Mony. = OC II, 69. •' Princ., Lib. III beginning (= II, 549).

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The ontological appreciation of matter

Formulation of the law of gravitation. As a result, he succeeds in consolidating the dynamic view on a broad basis; in addition to the passive forces of the vis iner tiae, the 'active principles', above all gravity, now come into play. The longdistance forces are the new principle that Newton introduces into the world of vacuum and corpuscles in order to transfer kinetic atomism to dynamism. The vacuum is defended against Des Cartes only in order to be filled anew - this time with powers. Not only Descartes was affected by this, but mechanism as a whole. In corpuscular philosophy, the moving particle serves as the ultimate explanatory principle, but in Newton, whose physical reality also consists of moving corpuscles, this function is assigned to the attractive force that determines the movement of the corpuscles. Newton remains a mechanistic, and yet he contributes to the undermining of mechanicalism by withdrawing the attraction, i.e. its highest physical principle, from the medianicist explanation. Connected to this, however, was the direct threat to medianicism through the implicit renewal of the hermetical doctrine of the sympathy and antipathy of the natural philosophy of the Renaissance Body; on the other hand, to convincingly contrast the attraction was not a difficult undertaking. Now the greatest pride of Medianicist natural philosophy threatened to collapse, namely the uniform interpretation of body movement and natural phenomena in general on the basis of the assumption of a uniform material and only differentiated in size and shape . However, this conception of matter could not satisfactorily explain the specific tendency of a certain body to attract or repel a certain other. The possibility of dissolving the uniform medianicist nature through a series of matters with their own laws was therefore obvious with a consistent application of the principle of attraction. But Newton saves - and this is a main feature of his synthesis that will prove important for the 18th century - the basic principle of medianicism precisely at the moment of the greatest deviation from it. He simply deals with the attraction that comes from the pre-medianicist world of thought with the mathematical and quantitative instruments of medianicism or: he applies the mathematical methodology of medianicism to a dynamic that is in itself an overcoming of conventional medicine ›anik represented. Durdi the universality of the law of gravity stops the attraction, a causa occulta (ie special

°^ about the supplementation of inertia through the active forces see the formulation in Optics III, Qu. 31 (= Opera IV, 260 f.). About the terminological determination of the Sdlwerkraft Princ., Lib. III, Prop. V Sdolium (- II, 571).

°• Lasswitz, Gesdl. d. Atom., II 555, 571. •° Test Case, Force, 377 f.

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Explanatory principle for special cases) to be “. Newton contrasts the occult qualities with the general laws of nature. This universality of the effect of the power as a prerequisite for its mathematical treatment or quantification also presupposes the existence of a unified and universal medium, an allencompassing development space of all long-distance forces. It is precisely at this point that the later Newton builds on his explanations of the draft De Gravitatione, which were part of More's conception of space. The refutation of the Cartesian equation between matter and extension led More, as well as Newton, to reintroduce the vacuum sidi, which he apostrophized as "sub stantiam immaterialem'. Newton now chooses an immaterial substance or an immaterial ether as the unified universal medium that enables the mathematical and quantitative treatment of attraction and thus the continuation of the medianicist approach despite all recourse on the hermetic tradition ". Furthermore, its absolute space co ipso meant a mathematical space, that is, a space in which purely mathematically detectable movements are possible, which can be used as models for the analysis of the empirically detectable movements of the relative space ". Only in absolute space or in relation to absolute existence

movement, the full meaning of the concept of force also becomes visible, as Newton says ". The absolute space thus supports both the mathematical and the dynamic tradition. The concept of force, absolute motion and absolute space can be derived from each other in Newton's perspective". Newton is known to have wavered between the conception of a material and that of an immaterial Other. Admittedly, his adherence to the concept of ether, especially the material one (in the formulation of the theses of the draft De Gravitatione), is understandable in view of the fact that for his contemporaries, Cartesians as well as Aristotelians, the scandal was an actio in distans after all. The conception of the material ether is explained in the letter to Oldenburg dated 21st t2. 1675 " and especially in the letter to Boyle dated 28. 2. t678 '° explained. In the third letter to Bentley the question is left open•' Lasswitz, Gesdi. d. Atom., 11,578 f.; Test Case, Force, 466. '°

Optics III Qu. 31 (= Opera IV, 260 f.). ..., 227 Note 74, suspects one with good reason McGuire, Body and Void particular influence of the Divini Dialogi Mores on this draft of Newton. '*

•• Endir Metaph. I, 8 ( Op. Phil. I, 166 ff.). •• Zum Gesamtkomplex pp. die Analyze von Testfall, Force, 386 ff.

*^ Rabinowitz, Absolute Space ...,280 f. •' Principal, Defin. VIII S&o1ium (— I, 50 f.). "For the logical difficulties of this deduction, see Burtt, Metaph. Foundations , 251, 254 ff. '°

Opera IV, 379 f.

^° Opera IV, 385 ff.

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sen ", although here you clearly see a diversion of the author's position. It is obvious why you reported this in a letter to the conversation that was sparked by the question of the religious consequences of Newton's physics. Also not coincidental The rejection of the material ether is emphasized in the polemic against Cartesian physics - a polemic that becomes all the more fundamental the more Newton focuses on its theological implications. Newton explains in Optics that heavens are "void of all sensitive matter" ^. In the effort to bring the vacuum and the etheric medium into harmony, he manipulates them freely into not insignificant difficulties, and in doing so, as has been aptly remarked, he gives the latter "a most improbable structure." However, the motivation and direction of his thinking are clear. Characteristics are especially Newton's religiously stinking friends, such as: B. Clarke °• and Bentley “struggle to eliminate the (material) ether, while au& R. Gotes, in his foreword to the second edition of the Principia, drew attention to the danger of atheism to those who are so "dediti rnateriae" that they do not want to accept a vacuum played a large role, "this was no less the case with the related question based on its inherence in matter. Here, too, Newton's na&drü&lidist statement about it in his correspondence with Bentley; he assures his correspondent that he had something to say when he wrote his He always had faith-promoting principles in mind during his work, and he flatly describes the inherence thesis as an “absurdity”. Der Kraftbegriff, heißt es tatsädilidi in den Principia, sei prnaternaticus“; by not opening up the causes and physical seats of violence.

If this assertion was mostly not accepted at its face value during the century, then of course it was Newton's incompetence ^' Opera IV, 438.

•• So Rosenberger, Newton, 344 f. ^ III Qu. 28 (= Works IV, 234).

•• McGuire, Body and Void ..., 213, 23t. ^ Koyré, Newt. Studies, 161. ^ In his Latin translation of the passage: »What is there in places almost empty of matter and whence is it that the sun and planets gravitate towards one another, without dense matter between them?' (Optics III Qu. 28 = Opern IV, 23Z) Clarke omitted the words almost' and dense'. ^' Bentley insists on the assumption of total vacuum in his Confutation of Atheism, in: Newton's Papers and Leiters, 325. ^

I, 32 f.

•• Cf. Snow, Matter and Gravity, 13s ff. •° 1. Brief (= Opera IV, 429). •' 3rd letter of February 25, 1692 (= Opera IV, 438).

* Def. VIII (= I, 45).

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s‹:guld to make his distinction between tnathetnatis‹:hem and physali s‹:mern understanding of the Kcaft unequivocally". In anticipation of the first paragraphs, we must nevertheless note that the main reason for this attitude lay in the widespread willingness to meet Cartesianism at its core or at the epistetopological and ontological levels at the same time. The appreciation of matter, as it arose from the questioning of Cartesian dualism, so to speak autonatis, was only too readily combined with the devaluation of Cartesian mathematicism, and both motives in turn coalesce in the open rejection or factual evasion of the thesis, S‹: power can only be understood mathematically‹:ii. Therefore, in general, the spread of the inherence thesis went hand in hand with the gradual assertion of the physical and experimental approach against what was perceived as the abstract mathematical deductionism of Descartes; Newton therefore unintentionally contributed to the former, at least insofar as he was declared the protagonist of the latter. In other words: since the identity of matter and extension belong together, the geometry of the former and the primacy of the "s‹:ii1e‹:iiten" conception of mathematics from the sidit of most Enlightenment Newtonians, so s‹:iii for them (g1ei‹:iivie1, whether for re‹:iit or not) a purely mathematical treatment of the force without tangible physical implications ni‹:iit only incomprehensible, but downright a violation of what has just been achieved Falling apart from being matter and extension, which is supposed to mean that matter is something more than extension and its analysis therefore ni‹:iit more at the

'mere mathematics may remain. After all, the view of attraction gained ground not more as a mathematical fiction, but as a physical reality, precisely when Newton's principles of (mathematical) astronomy were applied to physics To establish this multiple spontaneous connection between experimental physics and the preparation of matter through inherent properties, Newton himself gave his rule through his rule that those which belong to all bodies should be classified as general properties of bodies. on which one could carry out experiments (he significantly underpinned this methodological prescription with the ontological belief about the inner logic or smoothness of the behavior of nature). However, Newton excluded from this those characteristics that could be strengthened or diminished, and thus also the attraction; only the vis inertiae would be insita •• The first step towards the inherence thesis was already taken (at least from the point of view of those who would also like to take the second), especially since, as we saw, from the materialist side the resilience of matter as a sign of its everlasting existence

•° Koyré, Newt. Studies, 153. ^ The Tatsa&e states Rosenberger, Newton, 259 f. ^ Princ., Book III, Reg. III (= II, 552, 554 f.).

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power was interpreted. Science, a direct student of Newton like Pemberton, is inspired by laws of motion' in the sense of universal affections and pro perties of matter drawn from experience' ^. Pemberton refrains from considering everything that belongs to matter in general to be a property of matter, and refers to Newton's position on this question - which nodi (and this is evidence of the trend of the time) could be his The assumption that future empirical research could bring new properties of matter to light can be interpreted as meaning that it was only the lack of experimental basis for the time being that forced Newton to exercise restraint. Ultimately, it depends on the world-based decision as to whether the existing experimental material is sufficient to support the assumption of an innate attraction or not, especially since no one wanted to claim that experimental findings would absolutely confirm the same.

The fact is that even Newton's immediate followers - with the exception of Colin Maclaurin - viewed attraction as a real physical property of matter. The same view was held in the circles of Dutch physicists durdi, who in turn significantly influenced the early reinterpretation and spread of Newtonianism on the continent. The possibility of such future-rich reinterpretations of Newton can be seen in the work of an equally important and rather orthodox-conservative ( at least with regard to the question dealt with here) Newtonians like Maupertuis are very well versed. Maupertuis is of course aware of Newton's refusal to view attraction as loi primitiVe or to name its cause, and completely agrees with him on this. Because of his empiricism and experimentalism At the same time, however, he can claim that it is legitimate to accept attraction not as a qualitas occulta, but as a real property of matter, if it does not contradict the others and its effect can be determined. Even then, their nature would remain secret - but that also applies, for example. B. for the Cartesian impulse as well as for the way in which this proprietés résident dans un sujet' '°. Angesi‹: Because of this, we would have to give preference to attraction if it were to prove to be more suitable for explaining the phenomena, which Freilidi Maupertuis is convinced of.

Phenomenalism fulfills a double function here: it warns against a hypostatization of the attraction, but on the other hand it eliminates it

°• A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy, London 1728, Introduction u. Chap. I; zit. bet Strong,Newtonian Explications ...,65 f., 67. •' Koyre,Newt. Studies, 16. •• Brunet, Dutch physicists ..., passim. •° Essay on cosmology, II' Part. (= Works I, 48 f.). '°

Discourse on the figure of the stars $ II (= Works I, 94 ff.).

" loc. cit., 103. ^ Letters, XII: on Attraction (= Works II, 286).

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Competitors, who are themselves useless as hypotheses, are no more radical, and thus he helps the former to achieve such a thorough victory that nothing more stands in the way of their initially rejected hypostasis. At least that's how things developed in the 18th century. Maupertuis is still at its beginnings. He relativizes his supposition that the force of attraction could in fact be propriété générale of a body, not only through its phenomenalism, but, more drastisdier, through the thesis that movement in general is not a propriété essentiale de la rnatiére', since this could just as well be at rest "; So if the force of attraction should really be a general property of bodies, then only half equally, that is, in the relative state of motion". Despite this restriction, the new tendency can be clearly felt in Maupertuis: in his case, too, it is based on the conviction that Cartesianism is scientifically unusable. Matter and movement alone cannot explain everything; one was only freed from the insuffisance de cette simplicité'" by the force of attraction that made possible the explanation of a multitude of phenomena. The decisive phrase reads: "P1us on a eu de phéno ménes a expliquer, plus il a fallu &arger la matiére de propriétés'". Maupertuis summarizes in these words the quintessence of a development whose radicality he does not want to acknowledge or nt&t want to carry out. The ontological appreciation of matter, ie its gradual swearing by properties and thus its own autonomous life takes place parallel to the Process of the universalization of the antitheological world view: if all phenomena are interpreted without any recourse to the concept of spirit, then only matter remains, namely as the only substance or as the content-rich epitome of all possible properties or modes Maupertuis riditig states, both a swearing of the matter as well as an extension of the area of their interpretative competence .

Maupertuis has unfortunately boasted that he was the first “dared” to speak of attraction in France. With this he wants to openly claim at least part of the credit attributed to Voltaire. After all, Voltaire's statements significantly influenced the public opinion of educated people. It is all the more important for us that Voltaire in his much-read Lettres philosophiques the attraction for

,diose réelle' and quality inherent in the material' holds".

^ Essay on cosm., II' Part. (= Works I, 32). " Discourse on the figure ... $ II (— Works I, 96). *^ System of Nature I (= Works, II, 139 f.). '• System of Nature XXV (= Works II, 154). '* Lettres, XII (= Oeuvres II, 284 f.). By this he means the first edition of his Dis cours sur la figure des astres from the year 1732. '^ Letter XV (= OC XXII, 140, 139).

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wisely he reads straight from her mathematical grasp of her reality, That is, he does not keep mathematical and physical findings apart in order to relativize the latter through the former, but on the contrary thinks both together in order to reinforce the latter through the former. In addition, he separates the question of the recognizability of the cause of the attraction from the question of its inherence in matter: this is certain without prior determination of the latter °. A few years later, Voltaire again emphasized the constant presence of attraction in all parts of matter, as a condition for the functioning of the laws of nature, "but this time he was reserved about its inherence and referred directly to Newton The reason for this love of accents is revealed to us by Voltaire's letter from the twilight years. Discussed in his private argument with the Jesuit Father Tournemine, he attaches particular importance to the purely mathematical character of the attraction ^ and also gives something unclearly different, too, the inherence of attraction would not co ipso mean that it is an essential property of matter ^. With the same caution he expressed this three years later in a letter to Abby Prévosi 8 '. In the much later article Matiére des Dictionnaire Philosophique he defines matter without further differentiation as "étendue, solid' and beyond that résistante, gravitante, mobile'". There is, however, something more to this general formulation than what Newton would readily admit. The intellectually fit significance of Voltaire's impact lies precisely in the fact that he was understood in this general sense by the educated laypeople for whom he wrote and by whom he was used as a source. 8

Newton's distinction between mathematical and physical understanding of attraction also fell victim to the increasing generalization of this term. It is evident that Newton himself had given a hint about this, in express terms.

’°

Die Formulierung lautet: Attraction... is a real thing, since we believe it

shows the effects, and calculates their proportions” (OC XXI, 140). ^

The formulation is: Attraction is certain and indisputable unknown principle, inherent quality in matter, of which those more skilled than me [are spriciit angebli & Newton] will find, if they can, the cause' (OC XXI I, 139). At& Here, as with Pemberton, the cause of the attraction appears to be not yet known, but recognizable in principle.

®' Elements of Philos. of Newton, Three. Part., Chap. VII (= OC XXII, 535 f.). Elements. .., Three. Part., Chap. XIV (= OC XXI I, 581 f.). ^ OC XXXIII,518 (the letter was written in 1735). ^ OC XXX III, 522 (this letter also dates from 1735).

^ Letter from July 1738 = OC XXXIV, 525 f. •• OC XX, 50. •* S. z. B. Argens, Philos. du bon sens, Refl. III § XXII (= II, 68).

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Li&er connection with reflections on the nature of nature in general. Attraction may not exist only as gravity, magnetism and electricity, says the Optics; there may be more attractive powers than these. For Nature is very consonant and conformable to herself' ^. New chemistry was able to base itself directly on Newton in the generalization of the principle of attraction. Newton's definition of mass, taking into account the theory, implied the assumption of vacuum also inside the bodies, since their difference in weight for the same volume was attributed to the existence of empty spaces between the corpuscles*. The force of attraction should therefore take over the task of connecting and holding together both in the astronomical macrocosm and also in the dimensional microcosm. It is important for us that the diemisthe theory of Newton's inspiration was felt from the beginning as the opposite position to medianicism . Many chemists, who theoretically avoided conflicts of principles as much as possible , spoke of their compatibility with him , but no one spoke of their compatibility with him has, however, tried (with the exception of Lesage) to assign them to Nadi. As a rule, the assumption is made that, in addition to the medianicism and origins of the phenomena that need to be explained, there are inexplicable, God-given properties of matter, such as attraction. The function of this "God-given" will be discussed later that the much-discussed inexplicability of attraction itself has in no way hindered its elevation to the status of a passepartout of scientifically based interpretation: with this help one hoped to be able to escape the everincreasing complexity of medianicist explanations. The shortcomings of the theory of attraction noted by Maupertuis were of little importance to disturb, who could not explain the variety of concrete inventions clearly or give the reason why a substance attracts this and not that other °'. With the same epistemological and methodical lack of hesitation, the effect of attraction is transferred to the benadiable area of biology. For Buffon, attraction offers the key to understanding not only the physical facts, but also (this time in connection with heat) the biological phenomena. We should not be surprised if Hartley, for example, uses the "medullary substance" related

** III Qu. 31 (= Works, IV, 242). ^ place go. (= Opera IV, 252). •° loc. et., 243; cf. the small treatise De Natura Acidorum (= Opera IV,

39s ff.). •' Metzger, Newton-Stahl-Boerhaave, 38 f. •' S. and Chap. VI, Section 2. '° Syst. de In Nature III (= OeuvresII, 141). Metzger, Newton-Stahl-ßoerhaave, 40, 46, 48 f., 65. '• Nature, Second Sight (= Works Phil. 41 A).

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•• wants to explain the relevant phenomena with the help of attraction and with direct reference to optics. The widespread abuse of the analogous procedure, freely applied, in this area even provoked the reaction of a Newtonian like Voltaire; some, he says, ont poussé 1'abus de la découverte de Newton sur 1'attraction jusqu'Ä dire que les enfants se forment par 1'attraction dans le ventre de leurs méres' ^. Typical for the consideration of psychology and the principle of Newton's principle is Hume's statement about the association of ideas: Here is a kind of attraction, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural etc.' " Audi, a lawyer and sociologist like Beccaria, speaks of the "infinite and oppostissime attrazioni del piacere e del dolore", whereby he assigns to these latter a function no less than that of the motori degli esseri sensibili'. This short summary is based on typis. 3 examples confirm Maupertuis's words "Le mot d'attraction a effaroudié les esprits" '°°, from which sdilassen1i& became a "monstre métaphysique" that some loved and others hated "'. In any case, as '°' has aptly noted, the inspirational power of this term was just as great as its vulgarizing power. Popularity and popularization are eloquent indications that the magic of attraction satisfied deeper ideological needs. Even if we want to assume that compelling scientific reasons led Newton to the attraction theorem, there were certainly no reasons for the subsequent large-scale application of this to biology, psychology and social phenomena. The decisive factor was the fight against Cartesian dualism and for the unification of the world view on the new basis of the combination of spirit and sensuality. This new idea of the whole, which attraction should also serve to consolidate, will be discussed in the supra-needist Absdinity (3 a).

b) The meaning of the fight against the hypotheses The divergence of space and matter had an important methodological consequence which, like the rapprochement of mind and matter, benefited the radical rehabilitation of sensuality in the long run. In Descartes, the equation of space and matter was related to the geometry of physics.

^ Observations on Mon ...,20, cf. 27, 364. •' Precis of the century of Louis XV, Chap. XLI II (= OC XV, 433). ° ® Treatise I, i, ir (= S. 12 f.). Of crimes and punishments, $$41 u. 23 (= S. 91, 61). '•° Discourse on the figure .. . $ II (= Oeuvres, I, 91). '•' Essay on cosm., II' Part. (= Works, I, 46). '°° Metzger, Newton-Stahl-Bœrhaave, 66.

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together: if matter is primarily space, it must be dealt with by knowledge of space. The anticartesian position therefore had to be taken in the form of an appreciation or independence of physics compared to mathematics. Physics or matter is freed from the compulsion of geometry at any price. And since deduction retained the upper hand within the mathematical process in the Cartesian sense, induction or empiricism is now gaining ground. Although this development began with Newton (if one considers the Age of Enlightenment for oneself) and has taken place largely with reference to him, it can hardly be identified with him. Because the title of the main work made it clear that Newton in no way became a mere empiricist out of fear of the Cartesianistic mathematicism. On the contrary, one can see his merit in the harmonization of the mathematical and empirical rites of the natural sciences of the 17th century within his large-scale synthesis '°'. Seen from the point of view of a more specific problem: Newton made the first attempt to treat the contemporary theories of corpuscular motion mathematician, which were devised by non-mathematicians such as Gassendi and Boyle within the framework of an empiricist corpuscular physics ridden against Cartesian mathematicalism and despite the previous mathematicalization of the movement by Galileo, it had not yet been formulated mathematically '*'. One may therefore, simplifying the course of history somewhat, say that Newton has, in a methodical sense, the natural sciences of the Cartesian paren

Thesis is traced back to the path laid down by Galileo "or his method is actually just a further development of Galileo's on a broader basis ." , what he considered to be an abstract Cartesian deduction . A programmatic formulation can be found in the letters to Oldenburg from 1672 , in which the Teruiinus hypothesis was created as the opposite of the experimental procedure, i.e. in the sense of experimentally unfounded speculation '•'. Because it is emphasized in this context that knowledge such as optics is based on physics and mathematical demonstrations.'^ In the Principia this principle is expressed in

'^

Koyre, Newt. Studies, 12; Butterfield, Origins, 158. '°* Boas-

Hall, Newtons ,Mechanical Principles', 167 f. '°^ Crombie, Augustine to Galileo, II, 325. Brunschricg put it succinctly: “Newton precedes, one could say, the entire Galilee” (Exptr. humaine ct causa lity physique, 220). '°° Rosenberger, Newton, 392.

'" Opera IV, 320, 321, 335. "' loc. cit., 342.

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resumed the form that one should compare the results of mathematical analysis, which emerge from certain assumptions through the work of reason, with the natural findings themselves '••. Newton obviously does not believe in the possibility of eliminating a world system mathematically and a priori. He insists on the unity of mathematical and experimental procedures and is only the first son of the 17th century to wish for a final epistemological consolidation of physics through its gradual translation into the language of mathematics. The general appreciation of the empiricist point of view is shown symbolically in the use of the term "hypothesis", which appears in the second edition of the Principia in a more pejorative sense and where it was previously used to denote a legitimate scientific procedure served by the expression Regulae Philosophandi or pPhaenomena. This did not mean a practical change in the scientific methodology of Newton, who could never rely on the hypothesis as an instrument of research. Now Newton used, in addition to the scientifically legitimate, ie experimentally verifiable hypotheses, the necessity of which was emphasized even by strict empiricists like Condillac "', audi soldier, who did not allow them to be proven mathematically or from the phenomena ". The main speculative hypotheses were obviously absolute space, absolute time and absolute movement, which, as we know, proved to be indispensable for the maintenance or further development of the mathematical approach in natural science, despite all references to the hermetical tradition. It is certainly no coincidence that it is precisely in the context of the fundamental explication of these concepts that Newton makes the statement, which can hardly be justified on the basis of strictly empiricist premises, that in natural philosophy one should abstract from the senses. Reception in the Age of Enlightenment is nevertheless striking that Newton's similar statements were rather rare and were then taken into account only in a systematic way, to avoid any consistent methodical use of them. Instead, as a rule, the experimental physicist Newton is at least considered by the mathematician implicitly under conditions, the latter of which is stylistically ignored. Development generally proceeds in such a way that from the Principia on the one hand and the optics on the other

'^ Lib. I, Sect. XI, Prop. LXIX Sdioliuni (= I, 298). "° Boas-Hall, Newions ,Me&anica1 Principles', 178. "' Lib. III, beginning (= II, 550 ff.). "' The various types of hypotheses whose si& Newton for knowledgeable fxvec e serves, summarizes Hanson, hypotheses fando, 30 f. *'• Treatise on Systems, Chap. XII (= Works, I, 196 a). "^ Cohen, Franklin and Newton, 128 ff. "• Princ., Defin. VIII S&o1. (= I, 49).

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two different scientific trends arise. However, there was a real reason for this insofar as the Principia presented a mathematical physics of pure masses with abstraction from the real bodies, while optics dealt with the real modifications of the masses in the real bodies; Newion himself indirectly admitted the difference, emphasizing the use of the analytical method in his optics "'. In the age of Newton, at any rate, most natural philosophers feel more connected to optics than to the Principia "'. Some of They, w'• J Priestley and Colin Maclaurin are quite aware of the two-dimensionality of Newton's work" 8 ,

and encountered the same opinion

us indirectly in Diderot's openly admitted discomfort with what he said was the abstract and obscure character of the Principia. In general, however, one refrains from splitting Newton in order to preserve the better, ie empiricist, half in its purity. You don't want to destroy a symbol that could potentially be used as a weapon. Added to this was the rediscovery of Bacon on the Continent and the largely spontaneous merging of Baconianism and Newtonianism with the emergence and triumph of the empiricist point of view. Here, too, there was a real reason for this development, inasmuch as in Newton's work Bacon's legacy did not remain unaffected, through the influence of Boyle, who considered Bacon to be "one of the first and greatest experimental philosophers of our age" , and indirectly also by the general attitude of the Royal Society, which from the beginning was strongly Baconianis& ^' This indirect and idiosyncratic relationship of Newton to Bacon is by no means sufficient in itself to explain the fact that the warm Praise for the intellectual achievements of the latter became commonplace in Newton's age of all times. The French Newtonians also saw Newton as the pioneer and completer of the natural science approach introduced by Bacon. Vol taire says of Bacon that he is 'le pore de la philosophie experimentale' "', while d'Alembert is tempted to regard Bacon as ie plus grand, le plus universel, et le plus éloquent des philosophes' "'. Audi the episode

"°

III, Qu. 31 (= Works, IV, 263 f.).

"• Cohen, Franklin andNewton, 118, 120 ff., i43, iz9. "

® Op. cit., 189 ff. "°

De l'Interpr. de la Nature, XL (= OC, II, 38 f.).

* The Christian Vinuoso, First Part, I (= Works V, 514). "'

Purver, Royal Society, esp. 63 ff. On Newton's ambivalent relationship to Bacon (moderation of empiricism through a strong mathematical orientation) see Blake,

Newton's Theory of Scient. Method, 481 ff. '^ *^ '"

Mornet, Natural Sciences, 86. Letters to Philos. XII (= OC XXII, 118).

Discourse Prtlim., Works I, 264.

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The mological views of the earlier Diderot have for some time been ascribed to the influence of Bacon. It is interesting with regard to developments, which we then want to describe, that sidi Di derot differs from him, despite general agreement with Bacon in terms of methodology, insofar as he emphasizes the appreciation of empiricism or sensuality as an organ of knowledge with radical ontology revaluation of the sensuality or the matter wants to connect "'. In the Lidite of these statements about the general course of things in

In the 18th century it should now be explained why neither Newton has a clear conscience, if he does not once 2urü&sÖire&t before metaphysical speculations , while at the same time he campaigns against untestable hypotheses, nodi the Newtonians were excited about it, but also on their part, like us we will see more details '^, constitutive use of empirically untested and untestable hypotheses. The apparent paradox is resolved if we recall the polemical meaning of the struggle against the hypotheses. For Newton and above all for his one-sided followers, the mistreatment of phenomena is largely identical with the commitment to very specific substantive positions. The manner in which Newton, in a famous passage, mentions Methodisdies and Inhaltlidies in one breath is truly eloquent: 'Quidquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur, hypothesis vocanda est; et hypotheses seu oietaphysicae, seu physicae, sen qualitatum occultaruui, seu medianicae in Philo sophia experimentali locum non habent' '*•. Here is alluded to those who allegedly mistreat the phenomena through hypotheses: they are the Medianicists and the Occultists, the Cartesians and the Scholastics. A concrete polemical goal is what Newton has in mind when he writes these lines, and the same made the fight against the hypotheses so difficult for the Enlighteners. Since the thinking of Cariesians and Sdolastics is based on speculative hypotheses and is said to have an in no way enviable monopoly on their use, the opposing position must - at least from the point of view of their representatives - have the status of a defense of empiricism, quasi autooiatisdi. . In any case, among the Newtonians of the first generation, the aversion to the (sd lediten') hypotheses developed out of contrast to Cartesianisuius, which was more psychological than purely

"° Venturi, Youth of Diderot, 313 ff. "° Cf. Die&mann, The Influence of Fr. Bacon '^ ..., in: Studies, 56 f. S. u. Kap. V, Absdin. l u. 2. "^ Princ., Lib. III S&ol. Gener. (= II, 764). "° About the polemical component in Newton's rejection of the hypotheses cf. Blodi, The Philos. de Newion, 469, 476. '°• We noticed the effect of the same automatic thinking in Galileo, see above Chap. II, Abs&n. 2 b.

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Logisdi would have to be explained, especially when one considers that they did not actually add anything fundamentally new to the views of the founders of modern science with regard to the use of legitimate hypotheses or the rejection of hypotheses that could not save the phenomena. The first Dutch Newtonians understood Newton's “Hypotheses non fango” in the sense of a primarily antiCartesian empiricism. The connection between the struggle against the hypotheses and the struggle against the contentious positions of Christianism becomes ever clearer in the course of the Enlightenment or the ontological appreciation of the matter. Fighting against the hypotheses now means not only taking sides for the empirical-inductive approach in natural science, but downright fundamentally rejecting the Cartesianistic inetaphysical dualism and intellectualism, with Newton becoming a pioneer or ally in a roundabout way for positions oriented towards inaerialistics. Seen from this perspective, the comparison between Descartes and Newton, which became a commonplace in the 18th century, forms a ritual act with symbolic meaning, in that the rejection of the hypotheses becomes the antecedent to the radical rehabilitation of sensuality, quite independently of the fact that very few dare to make the step beyond this antechamber. A Neo-Cartesian like Fontenelle could still, in the obligatory comparison of Newton and Des cartes, distinguish between the former's preference for induction and the reduce the latter for the deduction and at the same time point out their important common point: ptous deux ont fonds leur physique sur une géo métrie' "'. But for Voltaire it is the case that depending on the party line for Descartes or Newton p1'essence des dioses a totalement 'Jiangé' '^. From his assumption that Descartes designed a false physics because he was vedallen your 'esprit de systeme'" see , but it follows that content1i&e Ri&activity and Eznpirisznus must belong together. Now Voltaire returns to the errors that Cartesian deductionism is said to have caused, audi theses that elude empirical examination or are directly connected to the metaphysical dualism (nature of the soul, innate ideas) "°.

If, however, the option for the empirical procedure co ipso implies the rejection of theses which can neither be confirmed nor disproved empirically, then it must consciously or unconsciously go hand in hand with certain content-related preliminary decisions. So we shouldn't be surprised if the strongest '°' Rosenberger, Newton, 395 f., 406. *^'

Ruestow, Physics at 17th and l8th Century Leiden, 121 ff.

'^ Eloge de Newton, in Krauss' Textauswabl, 244. '°'

Letters to the children. XIV (= OC XXII, 128). "’

place. cit., S. 131. '•• Ibid.

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Objections to the Cartesian hypotheses and the deductive procedure—always coupled with Newton's praise—come from precisely that quarter which Descartes rejects for general, world-class reasons. It is probably symptomatic that not only Gondillac, but also Diderot, made use of the stereotypical confrontation between Newton and Descartes.

This complex of motives and ideas should become more understandable if... we momentarily forget the self-understanding of the parties and the nominal value of their declarations in order to be able to understand the polemical, ie the non-empirical character of the appeal to empiricism. Regardless of whether empiricism (whatever that may mean) is in fact the beginning and source of all knowledge, empiricism does not form the "natural" epistemological attitude, but rather a specific world and also the position which, under certain circumstances, turns against a certain metaphysics, whereby this process is often represented as a fight against 'every' metaphysics. Epistemological and niethodologisd e positions presuppose sd on weltansd aulid e options, so that the elimination of the "hypotheses" on the epistemo1ogis&en level with the fight against the .sd led te' metaphysics logistically and structurally had to go hand in hand. Descartes, however, in the role of the polemical target, suffered greatly from the work of the new anti-metaphysicians by insisting on the unity of physics and metaphysics in his efforts to find a competitive counterpart to s&o1astics. In the polemic against Descartes it appears only logically and logically to transform the fight against hypotheses into a fight against speculative-hypothetical metaphysics; Condil lacs Traité des Systémes, in which almost all the essential arguments of today "Positivists" are anticipating metaphysics, shows the thoroughness with which the work was undertaken. Since Newton had now become a symbolic figure in the fight against the hypotheses, he had to become the prophet of the exploitation of metaphysics. The empiricist Newton emerged from the Enlightenment spirit at the same time as an anti-metaphysicist, that is, as an opponent of abstract hair-splitting and a champion of living things in the sense of the new scale of values. The agnostic Newton is seen as an antimetaphysicist in the same favorable light, limiting himself to the explanation of phenomena and avoiding metaphysician explanations of their essence. Newtoo's declared rejection of explicative hypotheses, ie those that seek to answer the question about the essence of things, in favor of the operational use of hypotheses "' is often seen as a rejection of the traditional

*°* Treatise on Systems, XII (= Works I, 198 a, 199 b, 200). ' Bijoux Indiscrets IX (= OC, IV, 162 f.). '•° This distinction between the two types of hypotheses can be found in Pala, The Newt controversy. on mortgages, 40 f.

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Metaphysics reinterpreted in general. At the same time, Newton's agnosticism was intended to put the final blow to Cartesianism, insofar as it held out the prospect of answering the ultimate questions about the nature of things. The Cartesianis':je claim& is considered hubris; However, the departure from total knowledge does not result in an incurable epistemological pessimism, especially since, on the other hand, the belief in the constant advancement of knowledge is reaching ever wider circles. Because the agnostic sinus po1emis‹:h is meant, it does not develop into an all-encompassing skepticism or nihilism: the skepticism only applies to the we1tans‹:hau1i‹:the opponent's assumptions, not one's own, and it should prepare the ground for the creation of a new worldview. It was aptly remarked about Maupertuis "', his refusal to name first causes in the metaphysical sense '^ in no way meant abandoning the strict idea of causality "'. You don't know your way around the opponent's terrain and you hardly ever step on it; and those certainties (such as causality) that one needs to proceed on one's own terrain are assumed a limine. What remains decisive is the conviction that one can only remain true to the phenomena if one interprets them from the perspective of one's own basic attitude. Even ideas that are fundamentally sound would lose their validity if they were not used within the "correct" global framework. To stay with the example of causality: d'Alembert writes about Leibnin's principle of arranging reason that it is trés vrai en lui-meme, but it is unlikely to be of any use to beings to whom the first primordial sadia of all things are inaccessible. :h be '”. Its use in metaphysicis is therefore meaningless; One should concentrate on the nature of phenomena and leave speculation about beings that lie beyond the phenomena. The Enlightenment thinkers, who were based on Newton's methodological ideal, nevertheless relied on the knowledge of the first Ursa‹:hen not as a defeat of reason, but simply as a victory of empiricism. One's own reason cannot be conquered at all in its polemis‹:den perspective, because it is inseparably connected with the irrefutable testimonies of empiricism, indeed with the world of empiricism in general; the actual loser is therefore only theological speculation. The polemical sense of this agnosticism is obvious: it aims at exposing the entire problem area of opposing metaphysics and thus at the implementation of the new world-view: hau1id basic assumptions as excluded

'•° We also encounter the adoption of agnosticism and belief in the progression of knowledge among educated laypeople or Newtonians like Bolinbroke, see. Flet&er, Bolinbroke . .., 44 f. '^

Brunet, Maupertuis, II, 346 f.

"’

Disc. on the figure of the stars $ II = Works I, 93. "' '“

Essai de cosmol., Foreword = Works I, xv. Dlscours prÄlim., Oeuvres I, 279.

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lidien's orientation framework for progressive thinking in general. The old, but still always competitive questions are not directly referred to as false (therefore one spares oneself the accusation of atheism etc.), but simply as meaningless or useless, which amounts to their still more effective neutralization. Typisdi is again an end say d'Alemberts. Philosophy (we will talk about the sense of the word here in a moment), he writes, »s'abstient meme de traiter des questions dont l'ob jet peut étre plus réel , mais dont la solution n'cst pas plus utile au progrés de nos connaissances' "'. D'Alembert says audi expressis rerbis which 'objets' are meant here: ate those who would have provided the material for the sdiolastisdiem dispute. However, this makes it clear to us that if d'Alembert recognizes the possible reality of such objects in the passage cited, he on the other hand does not want to draw any binding practical consequences from it. Rather, this is a matter of lip service, not just to avoid unnecessary inconvenience, but also to calm one's own conscience in a time when God is (completely) dead neither in heaven nor in the souls of the people. "•. A logisdien And d'Alembert satisfies a psydiological need when he demands a strict distinction between the truth of faith and the truth of reason, although he wants to dedicate himself to the latter and not feel disturbed by the former. Agnosticism and phenomenalism, also represented by Condillac typisdi "', fulfill all these complicated tasks with one step and allow thinking to continue without further distractions. The intellectual structure that has been ridited according to these general principles and from the side of the changed basic attitude is now called , as d'Alembert has just shown us, 'Philosophie' or 'philosophie experimentale' (Voltairc's use of this term has been cited in this abduio). In the option for this terminology, the formation of the old metnphysics or the orientation of serious thinking in general to the world of empiricism - i.e. the basic assumption of modern rationalism - is implied or assumed. Because Newion, following the British virtuosi or Boyle "', uses the term 'Philosophia' or 'Philosophia Naturalis' (s&on in the title of the main work) in the sense of 'Physics' and beyond that the term 'philosophia' 'experimenta1 Philosophy' is even preferred in passages that are opposed to the

'•* Elements... IV (— Oeuvres II, 31). '•• S. u. Kap. VI, Abs&ri. 2. "'Elents... III (= Oeuvres II, 26). '" Art of thinking, First Part., Chap. XI (= Works I, 750 f.). "°

'^

549).

Z. B. The Christian Virtuose Part I (= Works V, 513 f.). E.g. in the foreword of the Principia and at the beginning of the third book (= I, 15; II

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The Newtonians are happy to assume that Newton would also approve of their worldview, the principles implicit in the above-mentioned specific usage of the concept of philosophy. Since this usage of the word was widespread in the 18th century, he provided an additional detour reinterpretation of Newton.

3. From nature machine to nature deity

a) Newton's synthesis, reformed theology and the emergence of the new idea of the whole The previous weakening of Newton's long-term mental health effect could give the impression that Newton became the worshiped symbol of the time because his work - regardless of whether it was intentional or not - from the outset was empiricist and agnostic, i.e. ultimately anti-theological currents performed. Dennodi actually did exactly the opposite: later anti-theological currents referred to Newton for this reason and even accepted some reinterpretation, because he had already become a symbolic figure, so that it was now for all parties advisable to use him for one's own goals. If the appeal to him alone could not convince dissidents, it should at least have made a position partly more socially acceptable, partly against polemics of all kinds and not least against the condemnation of atheism. For Newton's first apotheosis, which aud to his demand -

Acceptance almost obligatoris& mad te, edolgt just within the world-answerd en framework of an enlightened theology or an enlightenment, which sid wanted to base on a more flexible and modernized theology. However, this was able to arise and thrive in this form primarily in England during the glorious revolution, but it later gained European importance (whereby Dutch s&e etc. provided precedents), since it provided the coveted mediation between the embarrassed - at least for large parts of the si& dated Theologians who reject "obscurantism" and the lay people who reject atheism opposites should be sidelined. However, the strength of the psychological need for reconciliation is due to the extreme, almost inertial geopolitical nature of the clear and emerging worldview alternatives. But the compromise required concessions and '^‘

Z. B. Optics III, Qu. 31 (= WorkslV, 263).

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Concessions that are initially beneficial for both sides will, in the long term, be beneficial for the side against which time is already working. That this side was theology was shown by the fact that its enlightened wing adopted and tried the new secular tradition, what it saw as 'The essence of what Christianity felt was not to be rescued by its reformulation, but rather to strengthen propagandism. It often happens in intellectual as well as in political disputes that one uses the opponent's speech in order to forestall him with arguments, without noticing how much the habits of thought tied to the speech change - what the defense traditionally does, with a certain from dru&sform originally clothed content sdihlt1i& only more precarious mad en can. In some cases, the heterogony of the two shows itself in all its relentlessness, especially since its initial success lulls those who see it as

'more open' or 'modern' understand and want to present. Conversely: whoever sets his language through is co ipso in the process of making his thought content at least the indispensable reference point of a thinking geared towards social effectiveness in general and thus dictating the conditions of the conversation. In this section we want to follow very briefly the development in which enlightened theology, in its struggle against Cartesian and medianicism, brought thought structures into being that ultimately favored the ontological appreciation of matter on the detours of deifying nature have. The processing or transformation of motives of the enlightened theology, however, represents only one aspect of the overall process - but that which offers the key to explaining Newton's astonishing career.

The spiritual crisis that the brotherhood of the Aristotelian world view had to trigger took on, in England too, with all its specific features, the typical forms under which we encounter it on the continent. The logistical structure of the problem was the same everywhere, the same traditional scale of values was in danger everywhere, and therefore a uniformity of reactions to the new situation was only natural. In comparison to the ontological stability and reliability of God, the rehabilitated nature of the Reidi represents incessant change and unstoppable transience - a transience that, at least for the individual human being, is invariably changeable without any supernatural intervention, even if nature as a whole, despite the destruction of individuals (replaceable) components continue their course undamaged. The classification des Mandien in this nature had to be felt and lamented as subjection to the bitter law of transience, as the Renaissance literature testifies reidilidi "'. This feeling was all the more oppressive as Be..., especially 206 f., 215 ff. All of them "- Cameron Allen, The degeneration of man mainly use material from the English Renaissance, which, however, has the value of being typical.

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Movement or change and transience do not stop at the gates of heaven. As we know, the unification of the world picture through the new science of science consisted in the fact that it eliminated Aristotelian theory, cosmology and metaphysics and the separation of the celestial region from the sublunar one. What was once above all change, that is, all finality, now has to share the general fate, which unsettled those who, already aware of the situation, wanted to derive consolation and hope (if not a legitimation of claims to power) from it. The motto that Spenser prefaced his Two Cantos of Mutabi litie sums up the problem and concern of an entire age: “Proud Change (not pleas'd, in mortal things, / beneath the Moone, to raigne) / Pretends, as well of Gods, as Men, / to be the Souveraine' '^. In the In the 17th century the controversy about the questions raised by the mathematics and natural sciences that had developed in the meantime had to be broadened and deepened. Not only had the movement gradually closed the once immobile , but the infinitely bright universe had taken the place of the closed cosmos. If this infinity posed a challenge for mandia and aroused a prometheous sense of idiocy and the world, it only instilled in many others that dread of the unknown and senseless, which in Pascal's famous sentence about the honoring and ending »silence éternel de ces espaces infinis' "' has become so German. It was clear to the conservatives that the infinity of the new universe had to result in the dissolution of the hierarchies of the cosmos and thus the endangerment of the idea of hierarchies in general, i.e. also in the social sense. Donne saw the connection and said: 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; / All just supply, and all relation: / Prince, Subject, Father, Son, are things forgot

.

'' "'. The circle that symbolized the harmony of the cosmos has finally been broken '^, and the study

of ways out begins. Obviously, the ostentatious development of the new science of nature or the confrontation of the unfriendliness of the unmistakable universe with the Security and self-sufficiency that only faith in God can give "'. mandy

'^ S. o. Kap. II, Abs‹:hn. 2 b. '•• Poetical Works, 394. Uber das Motiv der »Mutability‘ als »the seedbed of scepticism” insb. bei Spensers. Wi1ey, Creative Sceptics, 21ff. '^ Generally Harris, All coherence gone, passim; cf. au‹:h Bredvold, The In intellectual Milieu of J-ryden, 4z ff. '^ Penstes Nr. 206 (= OC XIII, 127). '•* The Anatomy of the World, vv 212 ff., in:The Pocms, 211. '^ On the symbol of the circle and its S‹:hi&sal see Nicolson, The Breaking of the Circle, t7 ff.; about Donne 87 ff. '^ Nicolson illustrates this attitude using the example of Diditer G. Herbert (The Break ing of the Circle, 177 ff.).

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confess in their embarrassment to the cosmological middle solution of T. Brahe, while others admit their conviction in the scientific validity of the Copernican thesis, for example. B. having revealed their faith with resentment; even among the Jesuits, insecurity and uneasiness were occasionally noticeable 1 ". The new natural science had created scientific and social facts , and no one could easily ignore it - least of all those who, in their endeavor to completely ignoring them, one had one's own attitude dictated by them in a negative way.Since this attitude was sterile ideo logisdi in the face of the accomplished facts, the thought had to arise that the world-viewing consequences of the new to bring the world view under control by including it in a religious concept that has to be reformed.

That was the cosmological aspect of the same crisis, the anthropological aspect of which we have already described 1 ". The intensity and physiognomy of the crisis form the very background of Newton's apotheosis. The question is not, however, whether Newton ended the crisis with logical means by Compatibility of (at least one version) theology with (at least one version) the science of science 'nadiwise' The need to end the crisis was so strong that many were willing to look to anyone as a savior provided he met certain conditions Newton's personal Piety and high scientific qualifications were excellent recommendations, but there were also certain aspects of his physics, which we'll talk about in a moment. The poem, which E. Halley already prefaced the first edition of the Principia, expresses the full fervor of expectation for the conqueror of the crisis. Newton, however, does not have an agreement between new natural science and (reformed) theology targeted first. The previous attempts at this had even crystallized into a rhetoric that had become stereotypical, to which interested parties could take their influence and whose influence Newton could not withdraw nen '•°. For the British Virgos, whose approaches in this direction Newton actually continued and completed, the principle of agreement was self-evident '•'. The Virruosi also realized that the reconciliation of theology and natural knowledge made a reform of the former unavoidable; They were not skeptics, but because they wanted reconciliation

'•• Busson, Religion of the Classics, 104 ff. '°'

'^

S. o. Chap. II, Abs&n. 3. I, 12 ff., insb. vv. 25 ff.

'^ Manual, The Religion of Newton, ' Westfall, Science and Religion in 17th Century England, 26 ff., 192 ff.; about the for the later role of representatives of the Boyles tendency in the spread of Newtonianism as an ideology of unification, see Metzger, Attraction universale et religion na tucche ... assin

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under the influence of the religious wars, they tended to this or that form of natural religion to one degree or another. The most important reason why the Virtuosi still did not succeed in the longed-for reconciliation or overcoming the crisis was probably their medianicism in which they did not want to see any opposition to providence, but which, logically, caused them difficulties. Boyle, who tested the effect of providence on the basis of "Cartesian principles" in a subtle way, quietly left the autonomy of mechanism to none God's ad hoc interventions disturb and underline the real problem behind the naive emphasis on Cartesian dualism: since matter is dead, it must receive movement from God , and since spirit and body are radically different from each other, God can take care of it the former aussdi1ieß1i& and take special care of "'. But when it comes to the functioning of the lifeless median, Boyle is taciturn; Other statements from him at least allow the conclusion that he is more inclined towards the concept of general providence, whereby God, caring not for the well-being not of the individual but of the whole, has laid down general, inviolable laws from the beginning "' - a concept that was consistent with the essence of medianicism.

Now it was just this concept that the Cambridge Platonists did not

less than the orthodox theologians were suspicious of Descartes. Newton, on the other hand, at least questioned the absolute validity of medianism by assuming forces and, moreover, their niditmedianisdie or göti1i‹3ie origin asserted ma&te "'. The durdiloding of medianism through the forces also shaped its dur&loding through the origin of these forces — dur & God. It is no coincidence that the first authors of the Newton legend opposed Newton's physics both against Cartesianism and also against Hobbesian medianism. But they also - which is no more important From the beginning, Newton's natural philosophy was classified into a comprehensive ideology or the former was interpreted according to the needs of the latter. Through the creation of a broad Protestant consensus, the latitudinarians once again, indirectly and discreetly, confirmed the intellectual leadership role of the church that had emerged as a result of the glorious revolution, while continuing to fight against the freethinkers, who were becoming increasingly smaller in 1690, in this sense to intensify this claim to leadership "'. The consensus had to be based on the reconciliation of general physics, natural and geo-

'* Test cases, Science and Religion ..., t07. "’ The Christian Virtuoso, First Part = Works V, 520 f. '^ A Free inquiry into the received Notion of Nature = Works V, 199. ' S. z. B. the first and fourth letters to Bentley (= Opera IV, 430, 441). ”' J cob, The Newionians and the English Revolution, t7, 19, 24 ff. "‘ op. et., 143 ff., 20t ff.

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Despite the initial reaction of conservative theologians, the Latitudinarians, who also had personal relationships with Newton, continued their line. They did not base their propaganda tactics only on Versudi, physics in its most general aspect into a pious study of the works of God and thus harmless

madien, but also on a parallelism of nature and Gese1ls‹:haft, where at the G1idigew‹:st of the former should provide the model for the latter. Even the dreams of final harmony, which, however, soon faded, found a place within the approach of the Latitudinarians "'. It is well known that Gebraudi was a vulgarizer of Newton like Desaguliers from Newton's natural model to the glorification of the English constitution "' .

Two aspects of this development need to be highlighted here. Firstly: that liberalization of theology, which was unavoidable in order to bring it closer to the science of natural science and thus to avoid the anti-theological consequences of the same, would in fact make it possible to overcome the crisis of the 17th century, and to do so in a completely developed way religious context. Last but not least, your religion is based on reformed theology,

The external and internal resistance of believers helped to spread the natural knowledge: it had a solid (initially useful for both sides) status in the eyes of the public, so that it very soon became independent of the above-mentioned Sdiutz, although many of its representatives were of its own forces continued to serve. And since Reformed theology had initially put an end to the crisis not against, but with the science of natural knowledge, the previous association of the terms "crisis" and "natural knowledge juice" almost automatically lost its relevance, which was true of the latter as well as the latter who are aiming for their autonomy could only be beneficial. In this way, overcoming the crisis through Reformed theology paves the way for a non-theological overcoming of the same crisis and thus also for an overcoming of Reformed theology itself. Second, a multidimensional crisis could only be resolved ideo logisdi by deploying a multidimensional synthesis. The prompt transfer, whether epistemologically legitimate or not, of "Newton's model" to social and religious questions was an expression of the polemic need for universality. Sdion from the spirit of reformed theology was therefore a new idea of the whole, which had to encompass all levels of being, from cosmology to politics and religion. What is important here is that this unification of being is not simply meant epistemolo

"• Metzger, Attraction universale '^ Jacob, ..., The Newtonians "' For details see Wagner, Newton, 22 ff.

7.

..., 39 ff., 33 f., 37, 60, 129 ff.

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had to. Incidentally, a certain monistic tendency was obvious for polemical reasons, since the main opponents of Cartesianism were medianicism or dualism was treated; It was similar with the Platonists of Cambridge. Under no circumstances, however, should this tendency lead to outright monism. The demand for the harmonious coexistence of spirit and sensuality or God and world or reason and drive etc. was always raised, whereby it was viewed as the substantive correlate of the attempted large-scale synthesis of (Reformed) theology and (anti-Mediterraneanist) natural science. It's on It is clear that this comprehensive idea of the whole - just as the new authority of nature can be known - could be detached from its original connection with (or submission to) the theology of the reformers and could even be turned against it. Not just because Newtonianism contributed to overcoming the crisis in the general sense, but especially because its contribution consisted in the establishment of a new idea of the whole, within which there was also room for the rehabilitation of meaningfulness, it was viewed by broad circles as a religion. (as Voltaire put it "'). The extent and the form in which Newton's apotheosis took is well known."'. Mensdia, such as Bolinbroke, were largely involved in the spread of Newton's religion, who were laypeople in the natural sciences, who advocated reformed theology (even of a deistisian or natural religious character), who simply reduced Cartesianism to speculative hypotheses and therefore epistemology tended towards Lo&e '^. The extent to which Newton's vulgarization progressed is shown by works such as Algarotti's "'. In this way it was possible to integrate the natural sciences on a broad basis into the educational interests of the time and to arouse enthusiasm for them in all educated circles "'. However, vulgarization and dissemination are indications that these “fermen-

"^ Letter to Maupertuis from 8. 11. 1732 (= OC, XXXIII, 302). 1 '• See the useful summary of Wagner, Newton 106 ff., which also takes account of Newton's portrayal in the visual arts. More specifically to Vogt, Bou read Newion monument, passizn. "' Flet&er, Bolinbroke and the diffusion of Newtonianism " • Il ..., 31 f., 42, 37. Newtonianismo per le Dame, ovvero Dialoghi sopra la luce ei colori, Naples 1737. The Bu& was even translated twice into English, although there was no shortage of local vulgarization literature. '^ Richter, Literature and Natural Science, 26 ff., 176 ff. About the translation of popular knowledge works and the popularization work of newspapers in Germany, S&atzberg, Scientific Themes in the popular literature 21 ff., 87 ff. ..., Mornet, Sciences de la Sie, 8z ff., 173 ff ., provides a summary of the general interest in experimental physics and natural history in general in the 18th century ; cf. Hofbauer, Chemistry's enlightened audience, esp. 1073, 1081, 1085 f.

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tation vive', which na& d'Alembert triggered natural science in the minds "', not scientific in the narrower sense, but had we1tans' hau1i':he reasons. The most enlightening in its tactical flexibility was natürli& the ideal of the new harmony as reflected in the new idea of the whole. Within the newly won Harmonic, however, a development soon followed which, as a result of a continuous appreciation and independence of nature, was bound to shake the initial tradition of Newtonian nature scientifically and reformed theory. An indication of this development is e.g. B. that the new combination of literature and natural science almost completely displaces the older, very frequent 1teraris&e treatment of theo1ogis‹:her topics"'. Many want to accomplish what ‹:h Voltaire tried to do, namely "gater à la fois la poésie et la physique' '^, using motives from Newton's optics' or similar '^ However, it doesn't stop there, but the use of individual motives

or the glorification of individual aspects of nature increases sidi a11mäh1i& into a hymn to nature as such or as a personified being "'. This reflects a process that actually began at the end of the 17th century and with the beginnings The spread of Newton's "religion" has already become a reality. It is about the newly emerging feeling for nature. From the point of view of the massicistic or geometrical ideal, which was largely decisive in the 17th century, nature appears to be sublime or sublime, not but as beautiful. The identification of nature with the all-encompassing harmony through Newton's model now gives it beauty, so that ultimately li':h (in Shaftesbury and especially in Addison) itself the irregularity, that marked the natural forms and made them unpleasant in the eyes of the classicists, considered to be bad or even an extraneous cause of beauty. In addition, attributes that were originally only attributed to God were transferred by More to cosmic space (see above).

e.g. B. infinity, ie size in the quantitative as well as in the qualitative sense), can now be attributed directly to the visible nature '^. Physicotheology facilitated - albeit unintentionally - the birth of

'^ Elements..., I (= Oeuvres 11, 10 f.). '"' Ri&ter, Liter. u. Naturwiss., 47. "’

Epistle LIY, An Royal Prince of Prussia (1738), = OC, X, 307.

'^ Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse, 20ff., 55ff.; Sdiatzberg, Scientific Themes 311 f., 92..., f., 188 f.; Omasreiter, Natural Science Diaft and Literary Criticism, 40 ff .

'•• Murdodi, Newton and the Friend& Muse, 327 f. '^ Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory, 222, 224, 279 f., 317.

•• On. cit., 293, 224.

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Nature deity greatly. It was already a fairly old first opinion in intellectual science, but its great age clearly coincided with the rise of the new natural knowledge, namely with the theological attempt: h, to get the effect of this upswing under control.

’^7 ,

It was largely pursued by moderate theologians who sought to modernize their discipline intellectually and expressively or to make it adaptable and capable of survival, namely on the basis of the knowledge that the concept of God itself then or primarily then thrives , if nature is the general orientation framework for thinking. Works like J- RäyS Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691) or W. Derham's Physico Theology or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from his Works in Creation (1713) made physical theology partly fashionable and stimulated an almost unmissable physical theological literature "'. It covered the entire range of those manuals of physics in which the observation of nature was supposed to provide evidence of God , to those edifying texts in which the pious experience lies in admiring the works of God in the Nature culminated. Herder spoke in ' J•h•e 1774 of the half hundred physical theologies', and he did not exaggerate. Two points are important for us. Firstly: physical theology is optimistis':h, that is, it sets itself':h against the pessimism of the Baroque period, and thus it forms an essential part of the current that led to the first overcoming of the crisis of the 17th century contributed to the reconciliation of theology and natural science. However, the secularization of their motives that soon occurred shows that the initiators of this development could not have determined anything other than its direction. This can also be seen from the second point that we emphasize want, namely the anti-Cartesian or anti-Dua1ist objective effect of physical theology. Even the enlightened theological circles - like the Platonists of Cambridge - reacted panisdi to the elimination of the causae finales, because they were trained in sdio1astis terms and more or less suffered the death blow against God in the expression of teleology. They therefore set out to discover the finger of God in every corner of nature. Medicalism became yours through the suture 1

Gods encountered in the visible and tangible. An organicism or biologism, which also directed itself against the mathematics method, was inherent in physicotheology, which therefore intentionally or unintentionally mingled with empiricism or sensualism in the fight against intellectualism.

'^7 Philipp, Physicotheology in the age of Enlightenment, 1249 ff., 1259. '^ Philipp, The Becoming of the Enlightenment ..., 21 ff.; S&atzberg, Scientific Themes 64 ff., 26 ff. '^ oldest document ...,1. Part, I = SW VI, 202 note a. ' Philipp, The Becoming of the Enlightenment ..., 74 ff., 95 ff., 100th '•' op. eit., 142.

...,

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common wisdom, until the animation of nature resulted in its autonomization, because no one wanted to see anymore that the immanent teleology or soul of things was just God's trick. In other words, the divine origin of the force and movement inherent in matter was no longer so subtly emphasized, since people had become accustomed to treating everything as living or two-dimensional anyway. In short, one could say that physical theology had a certain point The role of the useful idiot was played for materialism. (But, as we will see, it could not have done this if the latter had been a mere continuation of the older medianicism, which physical theology fought.) Kant therefore pointed out, for good reasons, how close one is to Spinozism or pantheism who wanted to train as physicists and be theologians' "'.

Newton's personal influence on the spread of physical theology and, above all, on the emergence of the new idea of Gannen cannot be understood in a straightforward way, any more than in terms of the promotion of the empiricist-antimeta physicist attitude. This time he gave Audi hints, but without anticipating or definitively determining their mental health path. Before him, the view of natural science as the study of the works of God had become the fixed ideological form under which natural science gained a foothold in social circles that did not want to give up their religious beliefs under any circumstances."' Audi Boyle's statements "' confirm the inclination the virtuosi to physical theology "' - to be completely ignored by the Platonists of Cambridge "°. Growing up in this tradition, Newton, who was also a friend of Derham's, may have disapproved of the exaggeration of physical theology, but he did prey to it as a whole. Not only in the structure of the solar system, but also in the nature of living beings He - against the Medianicist view of nature and in agreement with the physical theologians - established the direct two-moderate effect of God. For him, however, this was a necessary consequence of God's sovereignty, but this went hand in hand with his omnipresence, so it became a further one Rapprochement between God and the world is purchased. For the extremely paradoxical structural connection of the fight against hypotheses (i.e. the upgrading of the empiricist standpoint) with this deepening of the divine presence in the world, Newton's argument against medianicism is based on a strong one physico-theology the place cited is: the Medianicists, says

"' Critique of judgment $ 85 (= AA, V 439 f.). '^ Manuel, Newtons Religion, 33 ff. '°^ The Christian Virtuoso, First Part (= Works V, 518 f.). * Westfall, Science and Religion ..., 49 ff. '•° Dber Mores Phjrsikotheologie so Kap. III, Absdin. 3 (Ann. 195).

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he, are forced to stick with their medianicist fictions precisely because they exclude metaphysics from the causes; But if you leave the fictions aside and proceed empirisdiinductively, you have to come across a first cause that is not me. Rejection of the hypotheses therefore means at the same time rejection of the sharp separation between media and metaphysics, unification of the world through the inclusion (of the effect) of God in it. This is where Newton's new idea of the whole thing becomes noticeable. It was also supported by statements that demonstrated Newton's interest in an overall assessment of nature. What is meant is not just his oft-repeated and very edited thesis that nature is simple and self-conforming, but also his stated ambition to prove the value of his physical principles through a reconstruction of the world system as a whole '°t .

The new idea of the whole was, as I said, not based on a consistent monism, but rather on the vague and flexible idea of a pulsating fullness, a content-rich harmony or a dynamic equilibrium. Pope's comments on this deserve special attention because his popularization of the new idea of the whole had a consciousness-raising effect among eighteenth-century audiences thanks to the enormous popularity of his Essay on Man. In it z. B. to read: »All are but parts of one stupendous whole / Whose body is Nature, and God the soul' '^. The rapprochement of God and the world, as it emerged in Newton's polemic against Medianism, is clearly reported here, although it is entirely irrelevant whether Pope himself meant the talk of God as the world soul in a budisteblidi way or whether it was meant by the readers strictly understood

became. Assuming the rejection of materialism, Pope's formulations express the upgrading or enlivening of matter within the framework of the new whole. This is how he speaks of the sea of matter', in which the forms, like bubbles', constantly arise and verse&win the "', or sees 'matter with various life endu'd' ^• or 'all matter qui&, and bursting into birth' '°'. That But everything can only work out without a fuss because of this '•' Manuel, Newtons Religion, 39 ff. '^ Erster Brief an Bentley (= Opera IV, 430 ff.); Optics III, Qu. 28 u. 31 (= Opera IV, 237 f., 261 f.). '^ Optics III, Qu. 28 (= Works IV, 237). Optics III, Qu. 31 (= Works IV, 242). ^•' Princ. III (= II, 549).

• Ctber the several French translations of the essay, each of which several Editions experienced, see Audra, Les traductions fran9. de Pope, zii. Epistle I, vv. 267 f.; cf. III, vv 22 f. °^ Epistle III, vv 17—21. Epistle III, v. 13. Epistle I, v. 234.

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be spoken about because the new idea of the whole, because of its primary importance for the efforts of reformed theology to deal with the crisis of the 17th century, serves as the basis of a theodicy that for its part neutralizes the revaluation of matter or does not let it end in materialism. Under the influence of the prevailing world views of Newton, the traditional theological view that the Fall of Man broke nature in general and that of man in particular from their original path was replaced by the conviction that nature reflects sidi ni‹:st the disorder resulting from the Fall, but on the contrary the order of the divine law "'. In this sense Newton, as Kant wrote in his private notes, pGod vindicated' "'. The concept of order, on which the theodicy of Reformed theology was based, in turn offered the appropriate framework for classifying all the components of the Newtondian synthesis, whereby it remained flexible enough to permit tactical secondary interpretations, even palinodes.

These advantages of syncretism contributed to Pope's essay 's popularity. Here we do not want to further investigate the way in which he not only brings God and the world closer, as we have just seen, but at the same time absolutely subordinates the latter to the commandments of the former "', and then this ambivalent overall view to transfer the relationships between the spirit and sensibility to other levels (e.g. moral philosophy "'). Particularly interesting with regard to the structure and function of the new idea of the whole and its significance for the Enlightenment concept of nature that emerged in parallel are Pope's statements about the position of humanity within the chain of beings. The latter concept is well known 18th century interpreted differently, as there is an optimistic and a pessimistic aspect (calming perfection of the world on the one hand and fatalistisdi seeming immutability of their laws on the other hand) and could therefore serve various purposes ”'. Here, too, Pope proposes a compromise that he considers workable at least. Zunä‹:Is he emphasizes that men belong to the general order and on this basis he denies that man is the second generation; for the idea of the chain of beings implies that every being contributes equally to the chain's completeness and therefore to its perfection I also have a share. But Pope doesn't draw an atheist's conclusion from this: -•' Ma&lem, The Anatomy of the World, 45 ff., 9 ff., 37. °•• AA XX, 58 f. Epistle I, vv. 156 ff. °'° S. the discussion of the relationship between reason and suffering‹: imprisonment or Self-love in Epistle II vv. 53 ff. and chap. VI, para. 3c. "" Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 186 ff. -'° Epistle I, v. 171 f. °'° Epistle I, vv. 131 ff.

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quences, but only comes to the pious morality that man should not want to know everything or that the talent for knowledge must exist and never forget man's imperfection."' The ambiguity of the synthesis brought about under the aegis of reformed theology becomes visible when one Consider whether later materialists placed value on the rejection of anthropocentrism or resisted anti-theologism and anti-metaphysis in the ways that agnosticism was taught: the Montaigne-Pascal couple showed us that this constellation existed at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 19th century

17th century was present. Dennodi remains Pope nt&t like Pascal in the pessimistically colored modesty - which shows the enormous difference between the older apologetics and the motives of Reformed theology. Because in the chain of beings, the human being takes a position that is only below that of the purely spiritual beings. Placed between god and animal "', man has a claim to dominion over inanimate and living nature "•. If one keeps an eye on the overall construction, the double aversion to both avoiding hubris and also preserving mankind's modern claims to dominion over nature becomes clear - which, on the whole, corresponds to the mediation efforts of reformed theology and Newton's religion ' accordingly. This combination should have important consequences for the general character of the Enlightenment concept of nature - if one contrasts it with that of the Renaissance or the Medianicism for the sake of the ideal-typical comparison. We said that the Enlightenment, at least in its dualistic, wavering main current, is attempting to undermine the two theses that man is nature and man is master of nature. The nature mother of the Renaissance and the

Natural buildings of the 17th century are immersed in the “bonne nature” of the 17th century Enlightenment. The position of man is evident from the fact that he feels neither as a child in the depths of nature nor as a dead creature can be viewed. The 18th century recalls at least part of the nature of the 16th wisely into life anew, but without abandoning the master's diaftsprudi that only became fully conscious through medianicism. In general terms, this combination corresponds to the spiritually healthy physiognomy of Newton's synthesis, insofar as this hermetism and medianicism have brought the tradition down to a common denominator.

•'• Epistle II vv. 19 ff. About the same motifs in Pope's Dunciad' see Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse, 133 ff. °'• Epistle II, v. 8. •'° Epistle I, vv. 231 f. °" S. o., Kap. III, Abs&n. 1. "• See Lenoble's nice essay, L'tvolution de l'idte de nature' esp. 124 f., 126...., Lenoble aptly emphasizes the mutual dependence of the scientific, artistic and philosophical image of nature (111).

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b) The new idea of the whole, Cartesianism, diolastism and the partial reversal of alliances The rapprochement - if not vengeance - of spirit and sensuality within the new idea of the whole and the factual precedence of the ontological point of view despite the rejection of metaphysics and despite po1emis ‹:hem Agnostinisoius required the existence of a stable formal framework within which si& this constellation of thought could be offered as a concept as concisely as possible and as a weapon as presently as possible. This framework is created by the concept of nature. This is all the more understandable since the harmonious natural model s‹:hon was played off against the chaos of religious wars in the 17th century. But now the concept of nature is changing in the sense of the (radical) rehabilitation of sensuality or the new idea of the whole. Nature is no longer the epitome of the mathematically grasped order, but the epitome of the different dimensions of (uniform) being. Nature as mere order was one step lower. It carried its own reason for existence not in si‹:h, but was dependent on the intellect in two respects: onto1ogis‹:h (as the S‹:höpfung of God, to which au‹:h fell the role of the prioium movens ) and epistemological theory& (as dur‹:h the mathematis‹:je method can be recorded). This double dependence of nature on the intellect is now rendered obsolete by the radical rehabilitation of sensuality or the rejection of the one-sided mathematis‹:den methodology. Gannen's mathematis‹:h-deductive construction corresponded to the epistemological theory‹:he intellectualism and at the same time the me‹:hanization or ideo1ogis‹:je sterility of matter. On the contrary, the epistemological entanglement of intellect and empiricism is now transferred to the ontological level and interpreted as an entanglement of spirit and sensuality. The Ganne is now (at least the tendency na‹:h) not just a construct of knowledge, but also and above all content, real confluence of all dimensions of being. In comparison to this, the mathematis‹:h-medianis‹:he whole seemed partial and therefore fictitious, since it was closed in si‹:h and of spirit (be it the divine or the knowing s&aftli‹:hen) only of outside. But now si‹:h the spirit (au&) is in the world, both kosmo1ogis& (from this Si‹:St it is next to sädili‹:h whether one speaks of the omnipresenn of God or the immanenn of movement in matter) as au‹:h epistemological theory‹:h: the knowing s‹:baftli‹:he spirit has its sphere of activity exclusively in experience‹:h, it is connected with it just as God is with matter. This does not necessarily mean that the spirit is completely absorbed in the sense of meaning. In the prevailing enlightened current he keeps his independence (always with ru&si‹:St on the moralistic consequences), but only under the condition that he, as divine spirit, does not respect nature At will and confused and as knowledgeable‹:haftli‹:the spirit clings to empiricism. God provides, either once

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or constantly, for order in the world, and the inevitable abstraction in turn serves to bring order to knowledge. The ontological tendency of the 1st century, which was tentatively expressed in the thesis that nature can only be understood rationally because rationality was originally established in it as a law, is now expressed through the approach of spirit and Meaningfulness or God and the world is radicalized and at the same time de-intellectualized. At the end of this development there is the thesis: if the movement or force is original to the properties of matter, then nature contains its own ground in it. It could not arise from the Middle Eastern view of the natural order, because the clockwork always needs movement, that is, a clockmaker, even if it is on the verge of autonomization. Only through the radical upgrading of sensibility does nature finally cease to be primarily a (formed) order and practically becomes - largely despite the contradictions and protestations to the contrary - a deity, one of its main attributes Of course, harmony belongs there. This important point of view is overlooked if the mechanization of the world view is considered a sufficient condition for the repression of God or materialism. However, from a logical point of view, medianization could only imply deism, but not the denial of the personal God or the deification of nature. Descartes clearly saw this, and therefore he could have a clear conscience about the religious implications of his mechanicalism. He was otherwise energetically opposed

every personification of nature that leads to its independence or deification could have led. Thus he speaks ironically of the 'sapientis sima ista natura, quae non nisi ex humanae cogitationis desipientia habet ori ginem' "', while he explains in Le Monde' that by nature he doesn't mean quelque Déesse, ou quelque autre sorte de puissance imaginaire' ^°. (Audi Galilei treated nature as osservantissima esecutrice degli ordini di Dio' ^'.) This ontologis‹:je classification of nature arose directly from the dualistic principle of Cartesian metaphysics that the former had no inherent power of its own or that it had to behave indifferently towards the movement; only God is able to bestow and maintain movement ^'.

The course of overall development in the century can be clearly understood if we examine it from the perspective of the changing relationships between Sdiolastism and Cartesianism. Descartes, as we know, achieved

°'°

AT XI, 524.

°^ AT XI, 37. ^' Letter to Castelli from December 21, 1613 = Opera V, 282.

It is no coincidence that this point is omitted in Descartes' reply to Mores Objections no& clarified in principle. See letter from August 1649 = AT V, 404.

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for the sharp separation of res cogitans and res extensa in the fight against sdiolastic. Unlike

the

most scouts, he had an accurate one

Knowledge of the content and the mental structure of the same, and precisely because of this he saw its essence not in abstract syllogistic, but on the contrary in their pronounced enipiry-friendliness, epistemology & came into being in the rejection of innate ideas and ontology in the teleological connection of matter and form. To the extent that you & the sdiolastis based the theory on the assumption of an inner principle of movement of the natural body or a teleology, Descartes had to advocate a purely mediani cistisdies picture of nature in order to be able to defy it. Since the teleo logis& steered immanent movement represented a kind of soul of the body, so matter had to be completely de-spiritualized. teleology and empiricism left only through the medianism of one and intellectualism of others fight hand. What appeared in the eighteenth century as a Cartesian disconnected dualism was in fact the culmination of the Cartesian polemics: the consequence. For this reason, a rejection of Cartesianism had to result in a factual, if audi unconscious and never stated, return to Sdiolastic basic positions. The empiricism, the main current of enlightenment, turns from the platonisdi-mathematics is a separation between spirit and matter and madit sidi imperceptibly‹:h, despite all protestations, the Aristote1is‹:h-sdio1asti sthe pair of concepts qForm-Matter'. Dadurdi come matter and Movement closer to each other, in the pronounced monistic views they even serve undivided from each other. So it's not entirely a coincidence if La Mettrie underpins the immanence of 'force motrice' in matter dur& den nadi drü&li‹:the reference to the doctrine of substantial forms and in the same context takes Descarters under suspicion, while On the other hand, he has the discernment of the Sdio1astiques Chrétiens des derniers siécles' praises . This use of Aristotle's&-sdio1astis&er term 1i‹:hkeit in an open or deduced anti-theological intention had the church sdion troubled during the Renaissance ”'. Charron was by no means that first, who derives identity from the Aristotelian unity of form and matter of body and soul concluded ^'. But not just the inner movement of the body, but also the propulsive unity of form and matter

^° Traité de 1'Ame, Chap. V (= Oeuvres I, 63, 65, 66). In L'Homme Mattine (Oeuvres I, 344), La Mettrie rejects the doctrine of substantial forms, but without fundamentally changing the structure of his position. He The metaphysis simply leaves aside the terminology of the trait by putting the polemics against hypotheses in general, especially metaphysis, in the foreground puts. °•• S. o., Kap. II, Absdtn. 2 b.

"• 'The soul therefore is whole in the whole body', On Wisdom I, 8 (= I, 70 f.).

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Qualitates occultae could serve to show that matter is something more than extension; si‹3i Le Clerc refers to them z. B. when, in his controversy with Bayle, he examines arguments against Cartesian medianism. Au‹fi Voltaire refers his fictitious orthodox theological interlocutor, who considers the enrichment of matter with its own characteristics to be a move towards atheism, to the teachings of the Church Fathers. With all of these statements, it should not be overlooked that her interpretation of S&olastis' teachings is very free, especially since she takes into account the differences between the individual representatives of S':holasticism just as little as the details and difficulties of Aristotelian's view itself. Rather, one takes the ones that are of interest in each case sdio lastis to take note of the teachings across the board and reduces them to an acceptable, undifferentiated minimum in order to be able to rely on them and thus not ultimately to create an alibi, although certain theoretical possibilities exist, such as the approximation of the formae substantiales to the formae separatae of be excluded from the outset. Likewise, at least outside physico-theological circles, hardly a word is said about the causae finales. And yet, despite the elimination of the divine in the narrower sense, that is, causae finales that act from outside, one had to stylistically accept an inner teleology in matter in order to explain its formation or change according to certain regularities, that is, in order to be able to give it independence. It would even be worth asking to what extent the new principle of movement, in which force is considered the primordial cause of movement, is seen as an (unconscious) reconnection to the sdiolastis and impetus theory, especially since medianicist (cartesian) physics was completely ignorant of the inherent vires inotrices ^'.

The resurgence of sdio1astis' topoi among the opponents of Cartesianism

has understandably given the Neo-Cartesians reason to celebrate a late, if sterile, triumph. Above all, the attraction appears as a disguised qualitas occulta, and anti-Cartesianism as a return to sdiolastism and at the same time as a precursor to atheism (the Cartesians had had to make exactly the same accusations earlier; the fact that the accusations contradict each other is only disturbing when one looks at logic and There is no need for polemics and consequences). As a defender of Cartesianism, which is interested in the reduction of attraction, Fontenelle warns against ascribing to it 'quelque réalité'; On the other hand, however, he counters Newton's claim that attraction is not a qualitas occulta, since it is not its primordial sades that come into question, but only its tangible effects, with the double question: "Mais cc que les scolastiques appe-

^• Roger, Lessciences de la rie '°* ..., 425 f. Dictionn. Philos. Art. Matter' = OC XX, 50. ^^ Maier, forerunner of Galileo..., 65 f.; Between philosophy and mechanics, 380 ff.

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latent qualities occultes, n'étaient-ce pas des causes? Ils voyaient bien also les effets. D'ailleurs ces causes occultes que Newton n'a pas trouvées, croyait-il que d'autres les trouvassent?' '^ Au& ni&tcartesianis, however, the opponents of materialism could no longer easily show solidarity with sdiolastism given the new situation; On the contrary, they made from the actual or supposed relationship with sdiolastism the teachings a main argument against theories that were suspected of materialism. For Bonnet, for example, For example, the epigenesis of Maupertuis and Buffon was only a dangerous renewal of the qualitates occultae "'. However, these accusations made no more impression on the Enlightenment Anticartesians, just as their factual approach to certain topoi of sdiolastics generated gratitude towards them. Rather, an unconscious mindset was at work here "Hanism, which served to protect the enemy's world, cannot be tempered by purely logical considerations. On the Enlightenment side, a solid image of the enemy was created by sdiolastism, which may cause few logistical difficulties in determining it the relationship w “S‹:holasticism” in addition to belief in authorities, above all, that syllogistic which hardly takes any account of experience, but rather arbitrarily mixes physics and metaphysics with each other or derives them from them. From this side Descartes had to emerge as a kind of scholastic. The abstract mathematical process was largely equated with the standard syllogistic and moreover, the unity of physics and metaphysics negatively adopted by Descartes from sdiolastics was rejected (the ges‹:hah, however, only in with reference to the opponent, because the Enlightenment thinkers were mostly prepared to combine physics, as they understood it, with a secularized metaphysics according to their Gesduna& durdiaus). However, the side of s&oasticism that Descartes directly opposed is trivialized. For d'Alembert z. B. the Einpiristis': the epistemology of Sdiolastism is a mere consequence of its antiquity or belief in Aristotle without any essential philosophical meaning °'. In this extremely questionable detour, it is possible to simultaneously criticize Descartes and sdiolastics, without having to acknowledge the constitutive significance of the struggle against the latter for Descartes' work. The polemis&e consequence was proved once to the logic

e° Eloge de Newton, in: Fontenelle and the Enlightenment, 242, 246. Against Buffon, Bonnet remarks that epigenesis is seen as inexplicable: the product of a force secrete (Consid. sur les corps organ. Ch. VII $ 121 = I, 96 f.). Characteristically, Bonnet also draws a parallel between the epigenesis thesis and other doctrines such as that of the world soul or nature plastique (op. cit. Ch VIII $ 123 = I, 99 f.). Of course, for him the attraction cannot be immanent to matter (op. cit. Ch. VI $ 82 = I, 63). This complex of thought can only be seen in connection with the analyzes of Absdin. 4 b of this chapter fully understand. ^' Preliminary speech. = Works I, 185 f.

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sdien as stronger. What was particularly striking, however, was the sacrifice of Logisdien on the altar of Polemisdien, as a prominent enlightener

in their militant zeal against the Jews, they did not shy away from playing together with the J•nsenists, although their deism was closest to God's s&ola stisdien connection to the commandments of reason ^'. It is intellectually very interesting that pious representatives of Medianist natural philosophy had early warned against the possibility of using s&o1asti sdi topoi for anti-theological purposes. Above all, she was troubled by the plasticity of aristotelis: the concept of nature, the one

personification or deification of nature could result. Anyway Boyle, who in a diaracteris&e passage simultaneously combats the independence of the substantial forms with the thesis of their emergence from the power of matter' and ascribes both to s&olasticism, expresses the deification of nature with the ambiguity of the concept of nature in connection . In a treatise written by himself in 1666 and published about twenty years later, Boyle polemicizes against the atheists: these ,

ascribe so much to nature that they think it needless to have recourse to a deity for the giving an account of the phenomena of the universe' '^. At the same time, Boyle wants to draw the attention of the "physical naturists" to the dangers of such a procedure. While atheists or aristotelians ascribe everything to nature, one can unfortunately recognize that, whatever their words sometimes be, the agency of God is little taken notice of in their thoughts' "'. One no longer knows whether nature, of who is so extensively said to be a material or even an immaterial being or a deity"'. Boyle primarily takes Aristotle and his school under his scrutiny. Aristotle is said to be the originator of the erroneous opinion of the eter nity of the world' and he was able to assert it because he assumed a false definition of nature, which presents nature as a principle of movement ^'. Boyle enumerates all the main meanings of the concept of nature and remarks that, because of this ambiguity, the expressions containing this concept are either not intelligible, or not proper, or not true. ,

He puts forward alternative expressions, understandably insisting above all that natura naturans replaces God once and for all

^' S. u. Chap. VI, Abs&n. 5. •^ Origin of Forms and Qualities = Works III, 38. °•' A Free Enquiry into the received Notion of Nature = Works V, 158. ^' place. cit., 191.

^• place cit., 162. '°' place. cit., 190.

°a loc.cit., 163. ^• place cit., 171. ••• place cit., 167 f.

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will "'. He summarizes the various Aristotelian statements about nature and concludes from this that Aristotle treats nature as .a rDOSt wise being, that does nothing in vain etc. etc.' ^' On the other hand, he argues that nature cannot be a principle of movement and compares the frame of the world to a great, ... pregnant automaton, that ... is sudi an engine, as comprises or consists of several lesser engines' "*•. Nature has no independence; it receives motion and laws of motion from God. Even less can one speak of a wisdom in nature etc., as its often defective functioning shows. Boyle mentions several examples of such defectiveness , and we must hold it against him if he regards the inconsistencies in what happens in nature as incompatible with the concept of wise nature, without wanting to draw similar conclusions about the power and wisdom of God.

Under these circumstances it was no wonder that the most consistent refutations of Spinozism towards the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century came from Cartesian pens. The Cartesian conception of the powerlessness of nature is becoming more and more convincing in diristlidi-philosophical circles, which view the synthetic venture of reformed theology as trustworthy, if not negative. In this way, Malebrandie and Berkeley "jointly exploit the sdiolastisdi-aristotelis": a concept of nature by opposing any appreciation of the causae secundae - whereby typisdi for the arbitrary combinability of the thought motives with regard not only to the general, but also to the respective particular opponent is that Male blames the errors of scholasticism on its empiricist . epistemology, while Berkeley, on the contrary, attributes them to its abandonment" 8 Boyle's conception of nature is also noticed by French conservatives; with the intention of using medianistic natural philosophy against the new idea of the whole or of nature as effectively as possible,

••' place. cit., 169.

** 1occit„174. ** 1occit„244,170. ^•• loc. cit., 179, cf. the preliminary definition of nature on p. 177. •^ In addition, Balz, Cartesian Refutations of Spinoza, esp. 462 f., 473 f., 481. Balz emphasizes the functional change of Cartesianism as well as the moral-philosophical significance of the separation between res cogitans and res extensa. More details on Spinoza's Cartesian philosophies in Spink, Fren & Free-Thought, 257 ff. (cf. 148). The interesting controversy between the Mechanicist Sturm and the AfiStOtgliker SdielÎiammer anlä0li‹:h son Boyle's treatise has Baku‹:£illuminated, Der Dispute over the concept of Narur, 171 ff. "• Rec er‹:tte of Truth, Eclairciss. XV (= OC III, 203 ff., 2o7, 223 f.). '•' Notebook A ( = Works I, 65, 91).

'•" loc. cit., 94.

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even the Diristlidian apologists to the point of no longer using the orthodox view of miracles, which is hardly compatible with Me&aoicism, at the forefront of their arguments"'. Alongside the Cartesianism of the Academy members, the apo1ogetis&e Cartesianism of the cardinals now arises"', which audi in Italy dur & Cardinal Gerdil z. What is most striking, however, is the sensibility of many Jesuits who, having supported Lo&e and Condillac's empiricism against Cartesianism, aside from the ever more clearly denying moralphilosophical consequences of the overthrow of the innate ideas of a late remorse and help the Cartesians to victory in the Sorbonne "'. The publication of the first volumes of the Encyclopédie and the open antiCartesianism of the encyclopedists may have been the negative causes of the new attitude of prominent Jesuits. What they find attractive in Descartes, P. Para tells us frankly, who, although he continues to deny the equation of matter and extension or the purely physical nature of animals, sdiola stisdi further corrects the positions at least insofar as he emphasizes the Senses are only the 'occasione11e ursadie' of our cognitions, and God is the only causa efficiens of all movement.

The alliance with conservative theologians extended the life of Cartesianism , so that d'Alembert had to say with regret that in France Cartesianism had been accepted too late and maintained for too long.

Denno& were limited from the beginning of the late reconciliation with the sdiolastics, or more precisely with the sdiolastics. It wasn't just about the huge differences in content, but not less about the world-view attitude itself. Both in France and in England, the existential intensity of Cartesian rationalism was important, namely the call for radical doubt and independent thinking, with attention been heard and gratefully placed in the service of the antisdiolastic struggle. What Bossuet S‹hre&en had instilled in them was of course welcome to the Enlighteners. Voltaire certainly represented the prevailing opinion when, on the one hand, he described Cartesian physics and metaphysics as 'roman ingeni eux', while, on the other hand, he acknowledged the philosophes de merit of having destroyed old chimeras and having taught his contemporaries to think independently. We read similar things in the almost lyrical eulogy

°'° Ehrard, L'Idêe de Nature, 56 ff., 83 ff. '•• Nadi dem treffenden Ausdru & Verniéres, Spinoza and French thought..., 257.

'*' Bouillier, Hist. de la phil. cartes., II, 534 ff. About Gerdil's cartesian refutation of Spinozism see Bals, Cartesian Refutations, 465 ff. °•' op. cit. I, 576 ff.; II,546 ff.,623 ff. °^ Sortais, Cartesianism & the Jesuits ..., 92, 90 f. '^ "°

Preliminary Speech = Works I, 281¡ cf. Elements ..., I(=Works II, 8). Letters to Philos. XIV (= OC XXII, 131).

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d'Alemberts "', and it is well known that the young Lo&e Descartes felt in the same sense as a liberator "'. In general, Enlighteners, like their opponents, isolate one aspect of Cartesianism and drop the rest. The inglorious demise of Cartesianism (accelerated by the early failure of the attempt to reconcile it to some extent with Newtonian physics '*•) was not directly due to the fact that various parties destroyed it at will in order to use the interesting part for their own ends to utilize. Rather, this was a symptom of the original inability of Christianism to implement it in the possible intended form. First of all, it has to be taken into account that he was not even able to monopolize the entire field of medieval natural philosophy for himself, although he influenced it as Gannes. This can be seen, for example, with the Cheinians of the 17th century, who adopted Cartesianism in order to use it to criticize the substantial forms, the qualitates occultae and the A1‹:bernie "' or the me&anicistic approach in general Most of the time they do it freely, for example by mixing cartesianis&e and gassendis&e topoi with each other "'. The rejection of the atomic sine "', which results from the equation of matter and extension, was not taken literally, especially since, paradoxically, it seems to confirm the Al&euiists: if the essence of a body lies in its mere extension, then it corresponds to almost every other body convert at will •••. Also, the doctors and physiologists are not committed to Cartesianism. Many iatroemicists allowed themselves to be influenced in detail, but not converted, and even iatromechanicalism is not out of place ‹:hliefi1i& connected with Descartes, especially since he represented a continuation of older currents. "•°. Given this overall situation, Leibniz was able to say in 1692 that the actual Cartesians formed a short-sighted "sect", which is why almost all discoveries were made by non-Cartesians be '^ A certain polemical exaggeration

^° Preliminary Speech. (—Works, I, 271 f.). ^' Aaron, Lo&e, 13. °^

..., 272 ff. Brunet, The Inuoduction of Newton's Theories °^° How closely the criticism of scholasticism was connected with the rejection of alchemy etc. in the eyes of Descartes himself, who had nevertheless heard the warnings of the )e suites against the Al&emists as a student, is illustrated by Gouhier, Les pre miéres pensées de Descartes, 11o ff. ..., 423 ff. The influence of Gassendi '•° Metzger, Les doctrines &imiques en France

emphasizes Zuch Beyer, Du Cartes. Alz philos. of Lum., insb. 28 ff. •°' S. o., Kzp. III, Sect. 2. °•• Metzger, Chemical doctrines ..., 244 ff. •^ S. den 2. Teil der Abhandlung von Berthier, Le mecznisme czrtésien et lz physiologie ..., insb. 22, 3o f., 33 ff. '°' Letter to Nicaise dated June 5, 1692 (= Phil. S&r. II, 534).

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There is no mistaking this, but Leibniz's remark can be confirmed at least negatively by the fact that scientifically fruitful undertakings by Cartesians were possible in connection with an experimental mind that largely did not arise from Cartesian sources. So this spirit fails to have an effect even among the most intellectually oriented representatives of Dutch Cartesianism, just as it always does not have an effect in the still young learned societies under the pressure of the zeitgeist, Cartesians in the narrower sense like Régis and Rohault must distance themselves from the one-sided mathematicaldeductive procedure "'. And Fontenelle's example shows that the development since the end of the 17th century in particular had come to a standstill with Cartesian orthodontics, even in a refined form, was impossible according to: he didn't just praise the experimental procedure and has no understanding for the exaggerations of Cartesian mathematicism, but he can no longer — as his polemics against the followers of Malebrandé testify — accept Cartesianism as a philosophical whole '^. This shattering of the Cartesian idea of the whole was the most important consequence of the triumph of experimentalism or empiricism; now general medianism is neglected in favor of the study of the particular mechanism of concrete phenomena"'. This throws apart the original idea, the persuasiveness of which, after the intention of Descartes himself, should lie in the explanation of the general This shattering of the Cartesian whole smoothed the way for the new idea of the whole outlined above.

4. The multiple roots and anti-Cartesian character of the materialism of the Enlightenment a) Voluntary and involuntary pioneers of materialism Materialism in the Age of Enlightenment is based on several approaches, which, although they often differ greatly from one another, all nevertheless reject the dualist principle of Cartesian metaphysics. In her over'•• Ruestow, Physics at 17th and l8tii century Leiden, 99 ff. Brown, Scientific Organizations ..., passim. '•' Mony, The Development of Cartesian Physics, 126, 165, cf. 89, 76. ^^ Marsak, Cartesianism in Fontenelle and Fren‹:h Science, 55 ff., 52. '•• Roger, Sciences de la vie ..., 223.

°°°

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The overwhelming majority do not want to promote materialism, but their antiCartesian attitude results in monistic structures of thought that can be placed directly or indirectly in the service of the most consistent of all monisms of the 18th century, namely materialism. As the most consistent monism, materialism is therefore the natural heir to the monistic currents of the age. To want to conclude from this that materialism forms the completion of the Enlightenment would be false, just like the legitimacy of its presence in the 18th century or its logically consequential origin .from the tendency to radically rehabilitate sensuality. There can be no talk of completion because there was no soldier at all, but only a variety of competing positions, with an enlightened main current striving to neutralize the anticar tesianis & monistis tendency by incorporating it into the dualism of vacillation that we are familiar with is; as far as the intellectual-historical legitimacy of Enlightenment materialism is concerned, the fact is hödut symbolisdi that the terms 'materialist' and 'materialism' were coined precisely at the end of the Age of Enlightenment.' Logisdi-structural, materialism means the elimination of God and The theological worldview through the thesis of the self-movement or autonomy of matter.The classical materialism of the Enlightenment (meaning here, despite all the differences from one another, La Mettrie, Diderot and Holbadi) does not appear as a concrete intellectual-historical appearance as mere assertoric-speculative This principle was put forward in the heat of the anti-theological struggle, but rather as a considered position on questions that the development of the natural sciences had raised, among other things, and at the same time as an appropriation of existing, often nonmaterialistic ideas. There can be no doubt about it that the radical anti-theological attitude not only steers the treatment of scientific questions from the background, but at the same time determines the criteria for the utilization of foreign or even hostile ideas. This dependence of the content of thought on the basic attitude, which is by no means limited to materialists, affects the structural level, while in a purely intellectual-historical respect it is important to note that the materials that the basic attitude used in order to be able to rationalize itself belong to the world of thoughts of the Enlightenment in general. The possibility of the (partial) interweaving of the basic materia listis/atheist attitude and Enlightenment ideas in the broader sense is based on the fact that both the basic attitude and the anti-theo-

•'° Seit der Zeit Boyles (s. z. B. Excellency and Grounds of the Medi. Hypothesis = Works IV, 75) the adjective appears first and is used more and more frequently; Leibniz even considers Materialistes and Idealistes to be the two great philosophical theories following Epicurus and Plato (Reponse aux Reflexions de Bayle (1702) = Phil. S&r. IV, 560).

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logisdi-emancipatorisdien message of large parts of the Enlightenment rooted or sidl could rely on this, although its radicalism was by no means typical. In both respects, materialism forms a legitimate, even one could say, organizational part of the Age of Enlightenment. A reminder of the many features of Meslier's work should clarify the essential difference between the assertoric establishment of the materialistic principle of the self-movement of matter in anti-theological absidency from the spiritually rooted classical materialism of the 18th century. Meslier's argument moves consciously and exclusively on the logical-speculative level, and at least in terms of style it belongs to the 17th century, with whose spiritual representatives (Descartes and Malebrandle) the provincial priest, who was obviously not (precisely) informed about recent developments, dealt ^'. It may remain undecided why Meslier, who is otherwise so tenacious in principle, says somewhat hesitantly or rudely of the movement that it is not de 1'essence des corps, maisseulement une pro prieté de leur nature' ^'. After all, self-movement is already a proven fact for him, if its acceptance does not raise any logical difficulties, which in turn is to be proved by the analysis of the 1ogis&s&wds of the opposite position "'. Because ( par conséquence', Meslier's expression&) is materialism Logisd:i is impeccable or uncontradictory, it must also be accepted.^ Under these circumstances, the construction of the materialistic basic model takes place a priori or through the processing of traditional ontological categories: there is substance and form, substance is matter, whose Forms of existence are the individual beings , and from the definition of substance it follows '7S that matter is inanimate and ursadie of itself ^• Meslier gives his aprioristic procedure a non-theoretical basis when he recognizes the doctrine of the one, eternal substance for oneness of raison naturelle' considers '" or one of those "rdées nécessaires', que nous ne s9aurions effa$er de notre esprit, qui soient veritablenient une preuve convain9ante de 1'existence de ces dioses que nous concevons part telles idées' "'. The truth of things is grasped dur& idées claires et nettes' ^'.

"'Meslier's education is in fact not only unsystematic, but also primarily of sdiolastisdi-theological origin, see Ehrard, Vrai Meslier, 296 f. •" Memoir $ 71 (= II, 242). °'• Memoir $ 71 (= II, 241 ff.). "• Memoir $$ 65, 66 (= II, 179, 181). 7• Sdion Haar, Meslier, 30 ff., emphasized this aspect; cf. Deprun, Meslier et l'heritage sdiolastique, 35 ff. ° 7^ Memoir $ 71 (=, II, 245 Anm.). "' Memory $ 79 (= II, 402 f.). °' ® Memoir $ 79 (= II, 410). °'• Memoir $ 80 (= II, 419). •

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Meslier's Cartesianism ••• even goes as far as recourse to the ontological argument, whereby the identity of being and matter is to be proved in a straightforward manner, that the predicate of perfection, which was ascribed to God in the ontological proof of God, is withdrawn from being, so that this can no longer be equated with God ^'. Now Meslier's epistemological alignment with Descartes must intensify the ontological-content opposition to him. If the materia listis die Monisuius is fixed a priori, then it is incompatible with the Cartesian dualism a priori, which is also fixed a priori. The contrast to Cartesianism here is not a fit method (as it was with the classical materialists), but only structurally determined and relates primarily to the question of the separation between res cogitans and res extensa. The unity of the substance is permitted by S‹fion for purely logical reasons (i.e. independent of empirically ascertainable circumstances, which, incidentally, Meslier only addresses in passing) no distinction, let alone comparison, between soul and matter ^'. Thinking does not represent the essence, but only a modification of this soul '•', which in turn depends on the state of the body *•; Thinking, knowing, judging are all modifications mde 1'etre qui vit et qui pense' ^'. If the Cartesians had proceeded consistently, they would have had to recognize self-movement in their otherwise automatically functioning mechanism in order to eliminate the dualism - which Meslier says was untenable a priori: Controlling the mechanism from outside or from God would degrade people to puppets ^'. In this logically somewhat surprising turn of events, the strong moral impulse that inspires Meslier's a priori materialism appears. In materialism, Meslier finds above all the ontological underpinning of his argumentative fight against theology and religion, which, incidentally, dominates his work (including in quantitative terms). Materialism means here primarily atheism, i.e. the demand for the ending of all Abel, which religion, this deceit of the priests in alliance with the powerful, inflicts on human society. The representatives of classical materialism naturally follow Meslier in this line of reasoning, and from a structural point of view they had to leave si‹fi to his anti-Cartesian monism, but that was of primary logical necessity and not the result of direct influence. Because, as I said, mature materialism forms something Depun, Meslier and the Cartesian heritage, insb. 4so ff.

°"' Memory $ 81 (= II, 429 f.). Memory $91 (= III, 65). '^ Memory $91 (= III, 55 f.). • Memory $91 (= III, 75). '^ Memory $ 91 (= III, 88). '^ Memoir $$ 84, 85 (= II, 471 ff.). Memory $71 (= II, 254 f.). Memoir $$ 2, 5, 41 (= I, 10 f., 49 ff.; II, 15 f.). '8

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more than the mere announcement of his ontological principle in antitheo 1ogis' intention, and therefore he owes hardly anything except to Meslier one could even claim that materialism would have remained a rather obscure marginal phenomenon in the Age of Enlightenment if it had existed just as little as Meslier serves modern, primarily natural science diaft1i‹:hen ideas. Not only did Meslier's opus, despite the reputation that preceded it, become more widely known too late to inspire a materialliftÿS movement; au‹:h it was mainly used in re1igionskritis‹:her intention. Voltaire, who otherwise disapproves of Meslier's atheism", restricted himself to the publication of 'Extraits' "°, from which one could even infer that Meslier was a follower of natural religion, while in Holbadi's writing "Le hon sens du Cur J M •• lier', which is critical of religion, the materialistic principle of the self-movement of matter in the role of an additional, if also important, argument being

^t

to eliminate the socially disastrous religion. With regard to the difference between Meslier's speculative style of argument and the intellectual physiognomy of classical materialism, one can better understand his attitude towards Spinoza's work. Also, the approval of Spinozist monism or the doctrine of the One Substance was for the materialists a logical necessity and not a literary influence of constitutive significance. One should therefore refrain from viewing classical materialism as a fundamental takeover or to understand the extension of Spinozist positions ^'. The existing parallelism is structurally determined, quite independently of the fact that the materialists liked to register and evaluate Spinoza's clear formulation of the monistic principle and its individual implications. A more far-reaching direct influence cannot be ascertained, however. So can e.g. B. the rejection of the causae finales by the materialists ^' cannot be traced back to Spinoza's explanation '•' in this regard, since it was gen commonplace at the latest since Bacon ^'. ••• Letters... on Rabelais and on other authors ..., VII (= Works XXVI, 512). ^•• Works XXVI, 293 ff. Die Extract sind t762 ersdiienen. °°' Haar, Meslier, 38 ff., and especially Morehouse, Voltaire and Meslier, passim. • °' Chap. 39-41 = 58 ff. •^ This has Vernière, Spinoza ct la penste française, 555 Arim. t, rightly emphasized against Naville. Wariofsky also makes the mistake of not properly distinguishing between structural and mental health in his description of the similarities between Diderot and Spinoza, see Diderot and the Development of Mater. Monism, 282 ff. '•• La Mettrie, Syst. the Epicure XVIII (= Oeuvres I, 236); Diderot, Eltm. d. Phys. = OC, IX, 27t f.¡ Holbach, Syst. de la Nat., II, 2t3 ff. "° Ethica I, Append. — Opera II, 77 ff. '•^ Diderot specifically refers to Bacon in this context, Mélanges - OC, IX, 438.

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Audi La Mettrie's praise of Spinoza's view of the strict necessity of natural history ^ 7 must be classified as agreement rather than influence. The same La Mettrie, moreover, speaks frankly in the same text what separates him from Spinoza; for him Spinoza is above all a speculative systematist, 'son Athéisme ressemble assez bien au labyrinthe de Dédale'. As is well known, Condillac had shortly before violently attacked Spinozism or the same style of argument that we also encountered in Meslier "', and in this he finds La Mettrie's warmest approval "'. The article qspinosisme' in the encyclopedia, presumably written by Diderot, shows unmistakably how clearly this distance from Spinoza was felt. Although the author speaks of Spinozism as a unified position, by which he obviously means the consistent monist approach in its various versions, he also distinguishes between the old and the new, which, unlike the latter, is based on the assumption of a "matière sensitive". This Stidi word reveals the special relationship of classical materialism, above all, to the results of the new biology, in open contrast to the speculations of a philosophia more geometrico demonstrata. The materiali stisdi oriented neo-Spinozists do not want speculative thinkers, but rather scholars in the narrowest sense To be in touch with the latest developments in nature. This ambivalent relationship of mature materialism to Spinoza, namely the simultaneous attempt to connect with nature in a scientific way, beyond all 'speculations', is exemplified by Toland, whose Letters therefore seem much more modern than Meslier's Mémoire, although they have about two are decades older. First of all, it should be noted that in Toland's materia list, the principle of matter as the only, self-moving substance appears as an ontologically formulated escalation of the anti-theological struggle, indeed as a reversal of what, in Toland's eyes, is the essence of theological and spiritualism. He describes the genesis of superstition or the belief in the immortality of the soul (always against the background of the cunning interaction of priests and lords "') as a process in which the soul is granted self-movement and thus complete independence from the material world been "'; The same theory was then transferred to the relationships between God and the world *'. Toland now reverses this theory by no longer referring to the self-movement of the soul, but of the masculinity.

^ 7 Abridged des Syst., VII = Works I, 216. •^ Treatise on Syst., X — Works I, 169 ff. ••• Abbreviation of Syst. VII = Works I, 215. °°° Vernière, Spinoza et la pensée fran9aise, 529. Ibid. the passage just cited is quoted from the article “Spinosisme”. °°' Letter III = S. 104. °°• Letter II = S. 54. °°°

Letter IV = S. 142.

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tery in order to eliminate the soul and belief in its immortality, i.e. superstition and the rulership based on it, with a strike. The whole universe is always in motion '•. Activity does not just belong to the definition, but to the essence of matter '°', and this is how the differentiation or division of the same can be explained "'. It is precisely at this point that the criticism of Spinoza is announced, who, by explaining the Cartesian dualism through wants to overcome Cartesian concepts, which gives substance to extension and thinking at the same time, but does not impart self-movement . It is not a question of local motion, but of the moving force or activity itself ; Spinoza, however, speaks of 'local motion' without stating their origin, in which he frankly expressed the traditional conception of the moving God, but did not say a word about the inherence of the moving force in matter •.

Toland's critique is based on the unexplained, if also clearly implied and relevant for our context, assumption that the immaturity of Spinoza's theory of motion results from its alienation from empirical scientific scientific methods. This is the only way to understand why Toland praises two things about Newton: the adherence to Beoba‹:Stungen and Tauadien"', the downside of which is the rejection of abstract mathematical or "hypothetical" methods *', and at the same time decisive approaches to the inherence thesis. For Toland, Newton's theory of absolute motion, which is supposed to be just as imperceptible as absolute space and absolute time, means proof of the mere visual nature of the (perceivable) rest of bodies and therefore of the reality of eternal motion "'. From the gravitational force one can draw conclusions about the inherence of the movement. The extent to which Toland Newton legitimately interprets (especially with regard to the absolute movement) may remain open here. Intellectual knowledge: What is interesting is his effort to detach the monist-materialist principle from the world of ideas of speculative metaphysics and its connection with modern nature. Despite all criticism, Spinoza's monism will have a groundbreaking effect on him in structural terms, as the "Pantheisticon", first published in 1720 , shows ; But here we are dealing with a Spinoza who worked with Newton and Leibniz.

^^

Lerter V = S. 188.

°°^ place cit., 165. ^*^ place cit., 169. °°' Letter IV = S. 138 f. °•" !oc. cit., 140 f.

°°° lock. it., 143. "°

Lerter V — P. 177.

°"

!oc. cit., 179. °'° place. cit., 201 f.

°'°

!oc. cit.,205 f.

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To have been dared to be united "'. This attitude of Toland failed to have a direct effect on the representatives of classical materialism. The "' translated by Holbad Letters, Diderot owes arguments regarding the self-movement of matter or the transition from inorganid to organisd "' as well as probably a good part of the criticisms in the article "Spinosa' of Spinoza's encyclopedia (by the way, a two ‹:conformity text, which is intended to methodology and

"7

,

refute Spinoza from theist sid t) as a rejection of the a priori -speculative

concept -

Because of the different character of

"8

.

classical materialism from Spinozism or from forerunners like Meslier, one must see it as the product of a combination of the principle of the self-movement of one — material — substance put forward in antitheo1ogis‹her Absid t with the newer ones Defining results in the field of natural and especially biological sciences. The intellectual-historical legitimacy — and explosiveness — of the materialist current lies in this connection. Before examining them further, let us trace materialism's kinship with the Age of Enlightenment in the way it put into its own service approaches that were anything but materialist. As can be seen from our definition of classical materialism, the use of such ideas was not constitutive for it. What remains, however, is that anti-Cartesianism, which is characterized by the Enlightenment as a whole, offered a framework within which such combinations or mésalliances became possible. As a consistent monism, materialism had to be the antipode of consistent Cartesian dualism. In order to avoid materialism, si‹:h offered the Anti-Cartesians either a standstill in the dualism of swaying or the swaying

ÿows to various forms of spiritualism or panpsydism. The latter was of course much more decisive for the natural philosophy of the Renaissance, but even then, as we know, its dangerous consequences had been shown. The analogous constellation in the 1st century is due to the fact that Panpsyhism must stand in direct contrast to Cartesian medianicism, since the latter promotes complete de-spiritualization

°'• After a nice remark by Vernière, Spinoza et la pensée frantaise, 358. Jacob, The Newtonians, esp. 231 ff., 247 f., has described Bruno's influence in detail. •'• The translation appeared in London in 1768; see Naville, Holbach, 428, and cf. Syst. de la Nat., I, 83 note. °'° Cro&er, Toland et le matér. de Diderot, insb. 291, 293; cf. o. Note 35 and 36. °' 7

Verniére, Spinoza and French thought, 600. °'^ OC, XVII, 193 f. °'• See above, chap. II, Section 2 b.

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of matter postulated. However, materialism combats the Cartesia nis conception of matter, which is so closely related to the dualism of res cogitans and res extensa. Due to their monist orientation, materialism and panpsydisism question the separation of the res extensa from the spirit. In the sense of this structural commonality, the self-movement of matter, which is meant to be materialistically, exists as a re-ensouling of matter - in other words: from materialistically speaking (namely under the Yora«sseiz«rig that matter is the only substance), panpsydiism only means the confirmation of the principle of self-movement of (organic as well as inorganic) matter. Given these connections, it is not surprising that si & Holbadi z. B. in no way allows Stahl's panpsychism to be disturbed if he exploits his ideas. Because in him he sees above all the opponent of a Cartesian medianicism "', which de-spiritualizes or passively modifies matter. In Stahl's thinking with its pan-psydiist background (he comes from the natural philosophy of the Renaissance, which emerged during the general rebellion against Cartesianism, their most decisive enemy, celebrated a final resurgence), in fact some very interesting ideas for materialists arose. What is meant is not just the theory of the superiority of the organism over the median, so that the latter was not abolished, but was greatly dynamized "' ( Incidentally, in this detour, a new, anti-Cartesian concept was made available to the emerging materialism by Medianism (see next paragraph), but also the affinity theory, which, however, could not explain all known phenomena, but was gladly accepted because of its suitability for combating Cartesianism used to be, mostly with reference to Newton and his theory of attraction '^. Holbadi adopts the affinity theory, in which the dilution of matter and force appears to be so advanced that up to the self-movement thesis only one theory is missing, but he does not examine its pan-psychist presuppositions. In the case of Diderot, however, the insights of the new chemistry or the affinity theory "" in connection with panpsychistic theses are particularly valid At the same time, the most important thing was to offer a way out of the assumption that sensitivity is inherent in matter.Ascribing an elementary soul to inorganic matter in this way, however, implied a tremendous transformation of the concept of soul compared to that of the theological tradition, e.g namely

^ Naville, Holbadi, 193; on Holba's translations of Stahl's writings, 426. °"

°•'

Metzger, Newton-Stahl-Boerhaave, 116.

on. eit., 139 ff., insb. 145, 148. °^ Syst. de la Nat., I, 112. ^' Translator de la Nat. 36 = OC II, 31 f.

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a state was considered possible in which soul and matter could hardly be distinguished from one another. Diderot puts forward his panpsydiasis hypothesis ( he writes that stones could sense) precisely when attempting to explain the transition from anorganic to an organism, using the example of the transformation of a piece of marble into an edible substance Mind and matter, which Diderot focuses on, is further supported by the panpsydiistis thesis that everything in the universe participates in everything. Unfortunately, it is not entirely superfluous here to recall the practice that Toland used in the most consistent formulation of his Monisius, based on pan-psydiist theses. Now, as I said, the appropriated elements of panpsydisism were not constitutive of classical materialism, but rather were welcome tools, the use of which nevertheless shows how rich the arsenal was that materialist monism could use. After all, La Mettrie's rejection of Steel Pan-psydiism shows that resorting to similar positions was not an absolute necessity for the materialists. Panpsydiism could be used freely as long as it did not entail an implicit resurrection of theological metaphysics of the spirit and it is precisely this latter that La Mettrie Stahl accuses "'. As in the natural philosophy of the Renaissance, so had panpsydiism in the 18th century a Janussedite. In fact, it offered an opportunity for access to him for thinkers who were fundamentally modern or scientifically minded, but who, for moral reasons, did not want to give their own monist approaches a fna terialist twist , but rather one should develop as many gradations of the soul as were necessary for the strengthening of the human intellect as a guarantee of human freedom while at the same time inspiring the inorganic. An example of this attitude is Maupertuis, whose panpsy ":histi s": The teachings and their function within his biology will not be discussed in the next paragraph. It should only be pointed out in advance that Diderot considered the identification of God and the world or of soul and body as the final consequence of Maupertuis' panpsydisinus "' - whereas Maupertuis does However, ^' resisted, since his panpsydiasis sinus was able to get rid of this painful problem and not try to avoid a private, secret materialism.

•* Conversation between d'Alembert and Diderot = OC II, 139. ^° place cit., 107 f. °"

Reve de d'Alembert = OC II, 139.

°'^ In the Pantheisticon' finden sidi Formulierungen wie: there is nothing on earth that is not organ' (21), oder: Increment stones receive decrement as relics of great value' (20). •^ Treatise on the Soul XI I $ II — Works I, 129; Ma&inc man = Works I, 341. ^°

Translator de laNat., L = OC II, 48.

^' Reply to the objections of M. Diderot = Works II, 185 ff.

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de&en should. This has not, however, prevented a general effect of his pan-psychistic doctrine in favor of materialism. Leibniz had clearly recognized the danger of panpsydiism in general and of Stahl's teachings in particular "' for the personal God. The fact that important aspects of his own physics and ontology could be used in the materialistic sense - however, separated from the context - constitutes a further another example of the effect of the heterogony of purposes in mental health, by virtue of which this is the case Flow in a certain time that is able to reinterpret or convert someone else's ideas in accordance with its own goals, so that this subsequently serves purposes that can even stand in opposition to those of its originators. What is specific to this process is that thinkers who... first seem to be forgotten in terms of their overall attitude, which they felt to be outdated, but then they become topical again - but this time not because of their conscious overall attitude, but because certain aspects of their thinking can be used as building materials in thought structures of (very) different architectonics . The prerequisite for the new actuality is In other words, the destruction of the original whole of thought and the at least relative isolation of what is useful in the new sense, which must also be accompanied by a smaller or larger indifference to the conscious overall attitude of the thinker in question (that this indifference is very often seen as the discovery of the 'true' In terms of a work etc., it hardly changes anything about Sadie). — Audi in Leibnizeri's case contrasts the general one The indifference of the century to its overall attitude - one thinks of the fate of the preestablished harmony, for example. B. — to the frequent use or reinterpretation of isolated ideas of his. In France he did not find much support after 1720, since Ivan saw him primarily as a speculative metaphysician - an opinion that Gondillac, for example, expressed. B. represented in detail ^'. He is generally remembered as an exponent of optimistic theodicy on the occasion of the discussions that Pope's Essay on Man triggered, whereby many Catholics clearly saw Leiboiz's optimism as symptomatic of that aspect of his thinking that they considered material

Dzzu in general Ehrard, Idea de Nzture, 224 ff. '^ Considerations on the Principles of Life, Phil. Sdir. VI, 539 f., 549. ^' Observations concerning some assertions of medical theory Stahlü, Operz, II, 2, 131 ff. ^^

To understand the context discussed here, it is often useful to refer to modern attempts to interpret Leibniz on the basis of dialectical materialism in the Marxist-Leninist sense, see e.g. Holz, Leibniz, especially 23 ff., 59 ff.

^•^ Treaty of Systems, VIII = Works I, 151 ff.

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Regardless of whether optimism and materialism were compatible in any sense, as the pessimistic theorists of original sin claimed, at least one aspect of Leibniz's thought was in fact operative in France in conjunction with the emerging materialism, and the explanation It is obvious why it was about the anti-Cartesian approach, behind which one sees an (indirect) appreciation of matter. Because Leibniz questioned the identity of matter and extension - through his concept of force . Since he If the basic error of the mechanicalist was in the equation of force and quantity of movement, he had to design a dynamic or define the vis as mv' and allow the mv to apply only to the statics. The concept of force should -

Ma W. - the Cartesianis eliminate the indifference of matter to movement - and still more than that, as we shall see shortly. The differences between Leibniz's force theory and Newton's did not prevent the joint effect of the two. For the attention of the recipients was not directed to the differences and their now largely faded theologisdi-metaphysis& background, but to the common rejection of Cartesian dualism and the Cartesian indifference of matter to movement - a commonality that is in pure intellectually 3ii‹:ht1id perspective can be explained by‹:h the mutual, if audi differently motivated and expressed effort to unite Medianist positions with moments of natural philosophy of the Renaissance "'. The objective closeness of Leibniz to Newton in relation The neuralgic point of the anti-Cartesian attitude is clearly shown if one compares his views on what is to be evaluated as the positive side of Newtonianism with the corresponding views of a largely Cartesianist-oriented researcher like Huygens ^'.

A paradox that was very interesting to us was that Leibniz, precisely in his attempt to refute what he considered to be the theologically dangerous implications of Newtonian physics, arrived at theses that, at least at first glance, were "uiaterialistisdian." . As we know, Newton's position implied an ontological superiority of space over matter, which was also expressed in the fact that the forces were not attributed to the matter itself, but were created through the medium of space. "’

Barber, Leibniz in France, 97 ff., 111 ff., 147 ff. Consider Barber's Budi. does not examine that side of Leibniz's influence that we want to discuss here, cf. the critical remarks by Roger, Sciences de la Vie, 461 note 10 and 479 note 110. ^®

Westfall, Force, 284 ff., 315 ff. Dazu s. Bruns&vicg, Exptr. hum and causal physique, 242 ff., 252. ^*° Westfall, Force, 323, 450, 398. On the influence of the natural philosophy of Re birth auf Leibniz s. Friedmann, Leibniz and Spinoza, 263 ff. °•' Rosenberger, Newton, 247. ^°

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should fold; the long-distance character of forces and the assumption of Vacuums went hand in hand with each other due to the ontological inferiority of matter. But it was based on the ontological superiority of space its theologically stupid entanglement with God: in order to be able to combat it, Leibniz had to replace the vacuum with the plenum and thus give strength to the matter itself. Leibniz objects to the vacuum that matter forms the necessary sphere of activity for the wisdom and power of God. wodur‹:h he si‹:h express&li‹:h against Newton's thesis of the ontologis‹:den inferiority of matter. And when Clarke replied that God could dodi au':h have an effect on immaterial things ^', Leiboiz countered him, 'que every created substance is accompanied by Matter' ^'; nur Gott stehe Bau above de toute la matiere' "'. The simultaneous rejection of vacuum theory and cartesianis': but dualism meant that the now omnipresent Matter had to be something more than mere expansion. The concept of force occurs with the open ambition to be a bridge between spirit and sensuality, Metaphysics and physics to s&lagen '". Wel‹:je consequences that could have interprets Maupertuis' remark, Leibniz's law of conservation Force would drive God out of the world no less than the Cartesian idea of the preservation of movement '••. To complete our picture of the mental health effect Leibniz's in the sense of emerging materialism, let no‹:h to his aristo telis‹:hs‹:holastis‹:h inspired statement against Boyle in the dispute over the Status of nature recalls '' which under the circumstances the tendency to at least indirectly promote the revaluation of the latter at the expense of God, which Boyle advocated. But the materialists also refer directly to Leibniz, although it is not just about marginalia. So call yourself La Mettrie relied on him to support his thesis of immanent force motrice, yes even force sensitive of matter "'; in the concept of the soul, if this

•^ McGuire, Body and Void, 232. °^ Second cs S&ru to Clarke, Phil. S‹:hr. VII, 356. Second Rejoinder, loc. cit., 360. ^° Third note to Clarke, loc. cit., 365. °•° Considerations on the Principles of Life, Phil. S‹:hr. VI, 546. ^' Animate. on the part of the gen. Prince Cards. § 64 = Phi1. S‹:hr. IV, 391: .For apart from tension ... there is the force of matter itself or the power of action which made the transition from metaphysics to nature, from the material to the immaterial.' ^^ Essay by Kosmol., He Part. = Works I, 43 f. °•° S. the small S‹:hrift De directed against the German Cartesian Chr. Sturm nature itself, whether of innate power, etc., Phil. S‹:hr. IV, 505. Cf. Chap. 8 Anm. 203. •• Traité de l'Ame, VI = Oeuvres I, 66, 68; cf. Abrégó des Syst., III = I, 201, where the principle of movement is called “nature” s‹:hledithin, which refers to the very first use of Aristotelian motives in the materialistic sense indicates.

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made sense at all, he could only recognize Leibniz's force motrice ^'. Although La Mettrie treats the monads as a fantastic invention, on which he agrees with Maupertuis, he could, for example, B. Diderot, apparently with a reluctance to the discussed aspects of Leibniz's physics, asserted their proper identity with Hobbes' thinking matter ^'. This is understandable because of the connection between his monadology and the developments in the field of biology, which Leibniz also indirectly stated, which made a decisive contribution to the replacement of the rigid atom by the dynamically organized molecule. The same connection becomes apparent , when one considers that a pioneer of the new biology like Needham resorts entirely to Leibniz's arguments to combat the Cartesian conception of matter ^'.

b) Classical materialism, the new biology and the rejection of mefianism

It was certainly no coincidence that advances in biology had a decisive influence on the physiognomy of classical materialism. For the main problem or difficulty of materialism in the 18th century, as in earlier and later times, lay in the explanation of the transition from inorganics to organisms, from which one could expect an interpretation (more precisely: path interpretation) of the spiritual phenomena. From a materialistic point of view, it had to be shown that the transition outside the world was accomplished through the activity of the autonomously moving matter and that as a result the spiritual only eliminated one aspect or one level of the material - which obviously led to its abolition, at least in its own sense conventional form. In the field of biology (precisely because it lies between the two areas of the spiritual and the material and could therefore potentially contain or unify both), the ontological appreciation of matter is much more dramatic and dramatic than in physics and biology Chemistry, and that makes the special Sjrm-

^'

Ma&irre Man = Works I, 343. Abbreviated Syst. III — Works I, 200.

°^

Letter VIII = Works II, 262 ff.

See Art. Leibnitzianisme' of the Encyclopedia = OC XV, 457; the highlighting of the entele‹:hi concept (apparently in homage to Leibniz, see e.g. the small text

from May 1702 in Phil. Sdir. IV, 393 ff.) once again illustrates the materialistic nature Recourse to the anticartesianis‹: the aspect of the S&olastic.

System new from nat. etc. — Phil. S&r. IV, 480. °^ Casini, Goncethium of ,Organic molecule', insb. 363. ^' Roger, Life Sciences, 502 f.

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pathies of the materialists for the new discipline to be understood. If we look more closely, the two supports of the new biology - namely the theory of epigenesis and the approaches to evolutionism - are nothing other than direct conclusions from the assumption of a matter that originates an immeasurable wealth of end-life possibilities in itself: h sdilies or at least creates the same in constant self-movement. However, solid matter cannot be reduced to its nearest extent. Although the founders of the new biology by no means had to be materialists and were not, they had to turn a limine against Cartesian dualism and medianicism, since both were most closely related to the theory of matter and extension .

Since the sharpness of dualism, i.e. the ontological purity of the spirit in the Cartesian system, formed the other side of the perfection or wholeness of mechanismism, so that it could be used as an argument for God's existence and work, so The reference to obvious imperfections of the human being or nature served to feed dualism and the conception of God it supported. The paradox occurs that nature is presented as (partially) irrational in order to be able to achieve complete self-sufficiency and autonomy from God; This was unavoidable from a polemical point of view as long as the infallibility of the natural mechanism was viewed as proof of providence or the wisdom of God (note that this was Cartesian theology with regard to its dualistic basis and regardless of the Cartesian rejection The causae finales are often and silently lumped together with the Church's conception of God; this corresponds to the increasing preference of some theologians for the clean Cartesianis separation of God and the world on the other side . In the perspective of the fight against Cartesianism with its (alleged) theological consequences, one can explain the persistence with which representatives of the new biology assert the coincidence and unpredictability in natural events. In this way, Maupertuis sees by chance the force that allows the possibilities offered by nature to unfold. "The willingness is characteristic with which the materialists adopt these theses. "Un rien dérange "l'optique de la nature", writes La Mettrie ^', in order to counteract, in the same context of teleology or the assumption of God's dual action in the world, the view that chance can do more than wisdom °•' , from which he concluded that even intelligent beings could emerge from blind causes. Au& for Diderot, the break-up of the natural order because of the appearance of un-

°•" Diss. sur l'origin des noirs, Ch. III = cited in Ehrard, Idte de Nature, 230. ^° Syst. d. Epicure XXII = Oeuvres I, 237. •• op. cit., XVIII = I, 236. °•' Op. cit., 28 = 1, 239.

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hire e.g. B. a clear evidence against the assertion that nature is wisely guided by God ^'. The polemical background of these statements becomes visible when we think of the determination with which Diderot considered the complete anardy in nature to be an 'impossibility' - under the condition, however, that the order were exclusively the effect of the 'qualités primitives de la matiére" °• . Au‹3i Holbadi, who also cites the disorder in nature as an argument against God "', thinks on the other hand that monsters really don't exist if you don't take the habits of our imagination, but the fact of natural necessity as measure . The natural love of anti- or non-theologian nature researchers for monsters and monsters also had another reason. It contained a tip against the preexistence thesis, which in turn implied the passivity of matter, since in preestablished regularity it is unable to produce anything other than what God had placed in it from the day of creation; This does not only apply to the species, but also to the individual individuals belonging to them *•. Within this conception, the omnipotence of God and the mass order of natural events were to be linked together: this was a version of the alliance between theology and Cartesianism, which, as I said, caused the frequent equating of the two on the materialist side caused. However, deviations from the normal type of the respective species can hardly be explained satisfactorily, and therefore for Maupertuis the monsters form a decisive argument against the pre-existence thesis "' and for the assumption of an independent development of life based on its own laws '•• . In the sense of the theory of epigenesis, whereby each individual arises ex novo through the gradual development of its parts, Maupertuis contrasts the "systémes de développements" (meaning the development of pre-existing germs, eggs or so-called animaux spermatiques) with the "productions nouvelles" '. But you can create something new

°°'

Letters on the Blind = OC, I, 310.

Translator de la Nan 36 = OC 2,32 °•• Syst. of the Nat., I, 135. °°^ on. eat., I, 126 f. "’

On the controversy surrounding the preexistence thesis in general, see Ehrard, Idea de Nature, 211 ff.; about the differences between preexistence and preformation as well for the theoretical relevance and preliminary results of the question, see Roger, Sciences de la vie, 325 ff. ; about the origins and versions of the preformation theory see Guyénot, Sciences de la Vie, 256 ff., 296 ff., the audi the necessary information about the importance of the discovery of the microscope and the work of Malpighi, Hooker etc., 105 ff., 189 ff.

^•' Venus phys. XIV; Syst. d. Nan. XI, XXXV—XXXVII (=Oeurres II, 71 ff., 144 f., 159 ff.). '^ Syst• d. Nan. XXVII, XLIX (= Oeuvres II, 154 f., 169). °•• Venus phys. XII, XVI (=Oeuvres II, 64 f., 80 ff.).

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just a moving and content-free matter. Maupertuis, who wants to avoid a direct attack against God, be it from belief or for tactical reasons, therefore puts forward the reconciling hypothesis that God endowed matter with a wealth of properties at the hour of its creation in order to make it possible to leave it to its own development possibilities inherent in it "°. How closely the development of ideas in biology was connected to the change in the conception of matter in physics is shown in Mauper Tuis' effort to trace epigenesis to attraction ". Although he later distances himself from this, "' it remains evident that the variety of possible paths to the ontological upgrading of matter is that his mature panpsydiist position does not make any concessions to dualism. Quite the opposite. The assumed impossibility of the emergence of the Life from median primordial states "' amounts to an entanglement of life and matter at the lowest level. Something of the original assumption of an effect of attractive or repulsive forces remains, however, when Maupertuis describes the "principe d'intelligence" that he assumes in matter as "desir" on the one hand and "aversion" on the other, to which he but also the "mémoire" is associated with it; in other places it speaks of instinct or of the sensation la plus obscure et la plus sourde therefore no longer a productive part of the essentially unitary matter. The commitment to this continuity eo ipso undermines Maupertuis's forward but unmediated thesis that the formation of the first organized individuals was "miracu1euse" °, although in this case he fluidly blurs the boundaries between miracle and coincidence "'.

Finally, it should be noted that Maupertuis also expects an explanation of the higher mental functions from panpsychism in addition to bridging the gap between spirit and matter (the uniform treatment of both problems also indicates the materialistic approach, insofar as the intellect is to arise in the course of the refinement of matter ). The minimal perception ability of those "é1éments" whose composition results in the organic matter forms the first basis of a perception unique, beaucoup plus forte,

Syst. d. Nat. XXVII (= Oeuvres II, 154 f.).

Venus phys. XVI I (=Oeuvres II, 88 f.).

#74

Syst. d.Nat. IV, XIV (=Oeuvres II, 141, 146 ff.). Op. cit., 28, 64 (= II, 155 f., 182). op. cit., XIV, cf. LV (= II, 147, cf. 174). op. cit., LX (= II, 179).

Reply to Diderot = Works II, 213. Syst. d.Nat. XLIX (=Oeuvres II, 169). op. cit., XXXI (= II, 158). on. cit., XLV (= II, 164 f.).

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beaucoup plus parfaite'; in doing so, the independence of the individual elements within the new organic whole must disappear. Diderot will fall back on this idea at a central point, as we shall see shortly. Maupertuis refers to Buffon's refutation in his later works the pre-existence thesis, although he points out his own preparatory work in the same way ^'. It is not questions of authorship that are of interest here, but rather the internal or 1ogis& conditional agreement between the positions represented by both natural researchers . Precisely where Buffon expresses his damning verdict on the doctrine of preexistence, the concept of qmatiére productive comes to the fore. And since he had declared shortly before that the causae finales were irrelevant for the science of natural science, it must be concluded that the origin and development of the types of organisms can be traced back to the creative activity of matter. Only a certain, at least implicit, assumption, which in turn does not work without the general appreciation of matter (i.e. not just the organisms), makes the approximation of organisms and inorganisms envisaged by Buffon plausible or understandable. It is precisely on the basis of this approach that Buffon unambiguously rejects the belief in the metaphysical origin of the soul: ,

.the living and the animated, in the link of being a metaphysical degree of beings, is a physical property of the matter' ^' J•de Materie kann also organisdi werden, da es tote Materie im absoluten Sinne nidit gebe ••' und the Organisdie sogar

the most common and least valuable product of natural economy is •': the more natural the organism becomes, the less life has to be treated as a divine gift. Buffon now dares such claims, although he by no means shares Maupertuis' panpsychism - which again indicates how secondary the panpsychism beliefs were in itself and how important, conversely, the thought structures that are under the panpsychism shell and thus to some extent protected designed with the promise of materialism in order to become independent shortly thereafter. The details of the respective interpretations of the transition from inorganic to organisms are also mentally and structurally irrelevant: precisely the element

up. cit., LI—LIV (— II, 170 ff.). *

Lettre XIV (— Oeuvres II, 302 ff.). About the relationship between the two

s. Brunet, Maupenuis, 326 ff. ^• Hist. of anim., Summary. = Works 287 A—289 B. Op. cit., V Oeuvres 284 B. op. cit., I Oeuvres 238 AB. op. cit., II — Oeuvres 245 B: Vivid. the raw is only my', dh das eheuials

ibid. ^'

Roger, Life Sciences, 556 f.

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The researchers' links between them and their lack of an experimental basis and their speculative character allow the conclusion that behind the persistence with which they were nevertheless presented was ultimately the will to design a coherent new world view. This vacillation, which Maupertuis showed in the abandonment of the attraction hypothesis in favor of panpsychism, appears in Buffon as a revision of his original assumption that the molécules organiques - namely the bond between organic and inorganic substances - are derived from the interaction of heat and heat of the power of attraction "'; in later years he wants to see in it more of a mean process "'.

The existence of similar or identical thought structures among the classical materialists — which, however, goes back not to any influence, but primarily to the inner logic of their style of thought — is all the more remarkable since Maupertuis and Buffon themselves are concerned with the Because of the logical consequence, they were not willing to draw the final conclusions from their reported theses materialistically "'. It was then explained that and why the question of the transition from inorganic to organisms had to be the focus of materialist considerations. The through the The actuality of such considerations due to the development of biology was also factually recognized by the opponents of materialism, namely by the increasing attention they nolentes volentes paid to those natural phenomena which offer the link between matter and spirit. Hence the fierceness of the controversy that Trembley's Polyp ni‹:St last in relation to the problem of the soul "'. While, for example, the Jesuits and Voltaire, who fought with them against materialism, sidi refused to call the polyp an animal at all,"' La Mettrie evaluated its ability to si‹fi through selfsplitting to reproduce, as the first and progressive step towards the status of the ensouled Weseos, although he declared the soul to be a sub-being in the traditional sense; at the same time he turned to La Met

The connection of the effect of heat with that force (namely the force of attraction), which in Buffon's words acts as the cause of all phenomena in the area of the inorganic , underlines the confusion between inorganic and organic, see La Nature, Seconde Vue = Oeuvres 41 B °^°

Epoques de la Nat., 5• Ep. = Oeuvres 175 A (,par la dialeur sur les matiéres ductiles‘). '°° What is impressive is the way in which Maupertuis, along with his statements about the laws of heredity, rushes to defend free will etc. on the basis of purely biological criteria, Syst. i.e. Nat., LVI—LVII (=Oeuvres, II, 174 ff.). About Buffon's similar palinodia see Roger, Sciences de la Vie, 530 ff. ^•' Vartanian, Trembley's Polyp, 264. °^ Dict. Philos., Art. ,Polypen‘ = OC XX, 240 f.¡ cf. Vartanian, Trembley's Polyp, 284 f.

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Trie with reference to the polyp against the system of naturalists on generation, by which he meant the theory of preexistence '•°. All of this was, according to nature, completed or substantiated by a theory of the transition from inorganic to organic, whereby the latter emerged from the interaction of the soil with germs that matured in the air with the help of heat. "' Again, we are not interested here the content of the construction, but rather its riditance and absiding. Furthermore, the other representatives of classical materialism presented the critical transition from inorgania to organisms differently. Audi with Diderot (who registered Trembley's discovery with as much attention and joy as La Mettrie "') Meanwhile, the transformation of the "matiére inerte ä 1'etat sensitive" comes to the fore in the same context as the rejection of the preexistence theory ", although this time it is understood as the product of a "fermentation", by virtue of which it is, for example, a pulverized Stü& marble can be transformed into earth and then, through the detour of its assimilation through plants, into something edible and thus into organisms. Holbadi derives organic life from a “fermentation” that is supposed to take place under the influence of heat. The approaches to modern evolutionary thought, which are found in the biology of

18th century, without having come to full development, form, like the theory of epigenesis, a logical consequence of the natural science diaftlidia or ontological appreciation of matter. In a certain sense, one could even see epigenesis as a partial aspect of an evolutionary view, albeit one that is unclearly articulated, or the latter as transference the former extend from the level of the individual species to the whole scale of species. Epigenesis theory and evolutionary approaches do not, therefore, appear hand in hand and by the same thinkers. Like epi genesis, evolution is unthinkable without the productivity of matter. Evolution only becomes a meaningful term as the unfolding and shaping of something that is germinal or potentia. The source of the possibilities of development is matter, while the stages of development represent the successive, gradual realizations of these possibilities - and vice versa: the idea of evolution can be seen as the derivation of the existing diversity of nature from the original possibilities of the self-moving Matter to be defined. Evolution becomes possible because it is preceded by a potentially all-encompassing and yet uniform substance.

°^

Madinah man — Works I, 303, 333. '•• Syst. d'Epicure VII—X = Oeuvres I, 231 ff. *^^

Translator de la Nat. XVI = OU II, l8; Elem. of Phys. = OU IX, 255.

°•° Interview between d'Alembert and Diderot = OC II, 110.

loc. cit., t0s ff. 8

Syst. de la Nan., I, 95.

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lies. Only the monistis, the background of the idea of evolution, made me understand why it was primarily envisaged by materialists. Audi Buffon owes it to the rapprochement between inorganism and organisdiem that he envisioned if he had an inkling of something about evolution. Under the influence of these premonitions, however, he had to imagine creation in a somewhat unorthodox way and, similar to Maupertuis, claim that God did not actually bring into being forever fixed realities, but rather open possibilities, that is, "un certain nombre determiné." d'espéces', but rune infinité des combinaisons harmoniques et contraires et une perpétuité de destructions et de renouvellemenu' '^. Nature is in constant motion '°', through various combinations, successes and failures, through the exhaustion of all possibilities, viable species come into being "'. That Buffon nevertheless defended the immutability of species more or less clearly in his later years '^, only reveals how deep, at least objectively, the gap between biological and Christian beliefs had now become.

It is symptomatic that La Mettrie uses the expression & infinité des com binaisons' '°• to denote that momentum of its own developed by matter, from which advanced organisms result, after the imperfection of the first living beings has been overcome At a certain level of this evolution, which, however, has nothing to do with a teleology in the sdiolastic/theological sense "', the human appears; des animaux a 1'homme la transition n'est pas violent' "'. The mensdilidie spirit also arises and perfects si‹:h in the course of the same process ”', under the pressure of needs and emergencies "• (as can be seen , evolutionism in biology and genetics in epistemology go hand in hand). — Diderot indirectly confirms our above remark about the logical connection between epigenesis and evolution when he writes that whole species can arise and die out just as naturally as the individuals of each one; only belief, not observation of nature, supports the assumption of the immutability of species since creation'. In fact, the long line of animals from 'déve1op-

° ®• Hist. natur., 1. Disc, In the way etc. — Works 9 A. '°° Anim. common to both continents. Works 382 B. ^•* Hist. nat., 1. Disc., In the manner etc. = Works 9 B.

Oeuvres 125 B. •^ periods of the Nat. •• System. of Epic., XVI (= Works I, 235). ••• on. cit., XIII (= I, 233). '•° on. cit., XVI II (= I, 236). "°

‘°'

Man ma‹:hine (= I, 304).

Syst. d'Epic. XXVII (= I, 238 f.). "Homme Plante, III (= II, 19). ••• Interpr. de la Nat. 58 = OC II, 57.

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pements differents d'un seul' come about “'. The ni1 sub sole novum' is only prejudice or deception of our finite imagination "', the idee de succession' should be included in the real concept of nature without further ado."' Also our second remark regarding the logical relationship between evolutionism and monism is directly confirmed by Diderot, in that he refers to the fluid boundaries between organism and inorganic chemistry or spirit and matter in precisely those passages.

lich points where the changeability of species is asserted "•. For his part, Hol badi attaches particular importance to the connection of the thesis of the emergence of new species "' with the assumption that 1'homme is a production faite dans le temps' "•.

The consideration of the time aspect, which Holbach directly addresses here, constitutes a unique novelty of the new evolutionary concept. It allows us to interpret the ancient-dirist idea of the chain of beings, which was still very effective in the 18th century, in such a way that it is the basis of the

Fixism can turn into the starting point of evolutionism: here is another important case of the use of the anti-materialist view in the materialist sense, which proves the topicality and explosiveness of the materialist approach in the age of enlightenment. Buffon "', La Mettrie •'• and Diderot "' also speak of the chain of beings, but the new consideration of the time aspect now turns it into the program of a mobile nature to be realized, whereas in the traditional view it is only that Inventory of a statistical nature formed "'. Not time, but space was the central category in this latter, whereby the expression of time cannot be surprising if perfection and immutability are brought together in the Platonic-diristlidian ontological hierarchy. The metaphysical implication is obvious.

For Bonnet, the principle natura non facit saltus' does not ultimately mean

**° Elem. de Physiol. = OC IX, 264. "' Translator de la Nat. 57 = OC II, 55 •'° on eat LVIII = OC II, 57. "° on cited LVIII = OC II, 58 f.; Reve de d'Alembert - OC II, 138 f. •'^ System. de la Nat. I, 154. "^ op. egg. I, 150. "° Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being, Kap. I und II. "' Hist. Nat., 1. Disc., De la Manitre etc. = Works 10 A. •'° Homme Plante III (= Oeuvres II, lZ) ; about La Mettrie's relationship with Bonnet s. Vartanian, Trembley's Polyp, 265 f., 272 f., 279 f. ‘*^ Elem. de Phys. = OC IX, 253. •" In an expression of Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being, 244. Aspects of the conflict between the chain of beings and emerging evolutionism in England are discussed in Whitney, Primitivism and the Idea of Progress, 142ff., 158ff. •" Anderson, Bonnet's Taxonomy, 49, 51.

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compensation for the accident, the unforeseen or unforeseen change taking place; the order stands in alliance with God, it is the essential proof of his perfection ^'. On the contrary, in the new evolutionist perspective, the lack of gaps in nature is linked to the idea of the unconstrained transition from matter to spirit or one species to the other, the assumption made possible by the consideration of the aspect of time of the ‹:chrono1ogis‹:he priority of matter whose claim to onto1ogis‹:he superiority should underpin. What is more perfect (spirit) in near idealistic terms is described here as a product of the imperfect (matter), while the assumed chain-like continuity between the two only implicitly makes or mediates this production should. With Bonnet, however, the chain served to fix the status of the individual beings in such a way that no doubts could have arisen as a whole with regard to the ontological hierarchy. Not only are the pure spirits at the highest level and not only is God Himself outside the chain ^', but it also becomes between the inorganic and the organic: hem or feeling the and no&feeling pretty cleanly under ters‹:hieden "' for obvious reasons. Just how unfavorable the times had become for such an attitude is shown by Robinet's reservations, who otherwise grundsätz1i‹:h with the old conception of the chain of beings remains and also represents the pre-existence thesis, of all things against those separations from which Bonnet hoped to secure the spirit or God "'. The general difference between materialism and Cartesianism as a whole is, however, that between monism and dualism or between the closest interconnection and the sharpest separation of res cogitans and res extensa. It is now necessary to define more precisely the more specific difference between materialism and Cartesian mechanism. It is clear that the general difference contains the more specific one because Cartesian dualism postulates a machine-like behavior of matter that is completely separate from the spirit, i.e. dead matter, just like materialistic monism does remain monism at all, i.e. to be able to derive everything from a single principle, to expand or achieve the concept of matter, which is the Cartesian rigidity of matter as a condition or cause of its masc inen-like behavior and thus the (at least extreme) mechanicism eo ipso in question. It was therefore a logical necessity that the revaluation of matter through the new biology meant a rejection of mechanistic explanations

”°

Marx, Bonnet against the Enlightenment, 143.

^^' Expressly & in Diderot, Reve de d'Alembert = OC II, 139. •°• Contemplation de la Nature, Sec. Part., Ch IX I, 28 f. •° op. cit., Quatr. Part., Ch. II = I, 74 f. '-° Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being, 269 f., 275 f.; Mars, Hat against the Enlightenment, 3s 4ff. ; Roger, Life Sciences, 652.

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nadi sidi has drawn. And given the above-noted close connection between the appreciation of matter and epigenesis or evolutionism, it may not come as a surprise that mechanicism, in which the passivity of matter and the eternal determination of the laws of motion by God went hand in hand, became the refuge of fixism and therefore the The aim of the representatives of the new biology became "'. Buffon's direct polemics against the Cartesian medianizis '^ gain their real meaning against this background, even if the weakened logic and intellectual-physical constellation was not go

or not entirely conscious of the great nature being promoted. We may at least assume that

Diderot's eye for the broad lines was much sharper and that his rejection of medianicism in biology was consciously connected with his appreciation of matter, which occasionally even reached to its spiritualization via panpsychicism.

As far as La Mettrie is concerned, it would be superficial to try to interpret his provocative use of the word "Masdiine" as a confession of Cartesian mechanics."' Angesidiu of the connections explained would be

^' About this alliance between fixism and me&anicism, the one aspect the partial adoption of Cartesianism by some theologians in the 19th century, see Roger, Sciences de la Vie, 211 f., 216 f.

-

'•® Hist. general. des anim., III-IV = Oeurres 249 A-250 A, 252 A. Interestingly, Buffon expands the concept of mechanism here by introducing the "forces péné trantes", the model cases of which are the "attraction universale" and the affinités chimiques". .

•'° Elem. d. Phys. = OC IX, 262 f. •°• Vartanian, especially in his work Diderot and Descartes, attempted to understand the materialism of the Enlightenment as a further development of Cartesian mechanicism. In his important review of this book (especially 65 f.), Die&mann introduced the most important arguments against it, pointing to Vartanian's inadmissible simplification of Cartesianism and the influence of other thinkers (from Lo&e to Spinoza and Leibniz). pointed out the material shortages and the incompatibility of Cartesianism and transformism. In his later work on La Mettrie's Homme-Ma‹:One, Vartanian took this criticism into account when he emphasized the essential expansion of the Cartesian measure by La Mettrie (19), he nevertheless stuck to his initial thesis He attributed La Mettrie's alleged development from a metaphysician of substantial forms (in the Traité) to a mechanical biologist of the Homme-Ma':hine not least to Descartes' influence (4s ff.). However, one can dispute La Mettrie's assumed position with good reasons, as did Von Rosenfield, From Beast-Mahine to Man-Martine, 142 ff. (on the other hand, Vartanian, Tretley's Polyp, 277 note . 60; cf. our analysis below), and furthermore, Descartes' influence is not eo ipso proven, even if one wants to accept it. — Naville (Holbad, 237) summarized the difference between old Me&anicism and the new or materia1istis&en as one between »mécaniciens géoirdtres' and mecaniciens natu ralistes" terminologis".

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Roots and character of JViterialism

This is impossible due to the solemn rejection of Cartesian dualism, especially at the beginning of Homme Madiine "'. Already in the Traité, La Mettrie turns against the equation of matter and extension and spridit of the formes mécaniques passive dépendants de 1'étendue' "': Cartesianismedianicism is therefore based on the assumption about the passivity of matter-expansion, which is therefore active in the Mettrie substance, i.e. has force motor and even sensitive sensitivity, and therefore does In L'Homme not have to be moved by God. Madiine the self-movement of matter is also emphasized against the Cartesians ^'. La Mettrie's speech about "Masd tue" can only be understood against this background. After accusing Descartes of denying his masculine the ability to feel, he takes his own masculinity in a very broad sense: "etre madiine, sentir, penser, savoir distinguer le bien du mal' are for him one and the same thing." With the help of the image of the machine, La Mettrie primarily wants to suggest the idea of a closed, autonomously functioning whole, and Descartes is praised - nothing else and nothing more - as an attempt to explore the extreme possibilities of the autonomous functioning of a material To exhaust or show the whole, whereby La Mettrie - perhaps Cartesianizing the theological appropriation and ironizing theses adds that the Nadiwis soldier of extreme possibilities makes the independent res cogitans (i.e. dualism) superfluous or he leaves it as a deceptive maneuver by Descartes against the church first & one “'. Otherwise Descartes will be within the scope of the for the ,

18th century Ub1i&en judged: a genius , to be sure, but who made great mistakes precisely because of the misapprehension of empiricism"'. Because La Mettrie understands the autonomously functioning by the masculine in general, this finds its perfection not in the elimination, but in the genetic& ge The central thesis of the Homme-Madiine therefore says nothing more than that mental states are always "corré1atifs" to body perlidia "', which, by the way, is formulated in the Traité rie1 plastisd

•°' Oeuvres I, 286.

*** Treatise II—III (= Works I, 55 f., 58). '^

'^ ^^

*^

up. cit., IV (= I, 60).

on. cit., V (= I, 63). Op. cit., III, VI (= I, 60, 67 f.). on. cit., V (= I, 65).

"* Oeuvres I, 343.

Treaty VII (= I, 72). •°° Tomorrow's midday = I, 348. “'

on. eit., 347. ••' Treaty XII $ IV; Abstract of Syst. I; Man Ma&ine (= I, 132 ff., t9t, 290). "• I, 298.

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had been '*. Only this interpretation of the Madine picture explains why La Mettrie can fully praise Boerhaave, this hard Spar le seul mécanisme” explains all the functions of the rational soul '*•, or why on the one hand he applauds Descartes because he treats animals as Masdiinen criticizes while on the other hand he accuses him of having denied the same seeli s functions. Masdiine's speech remains consciously understood, , and even the liberty that La Mettrie took in this regard was not new; even a staunch enemy of materialism like Leibniz had apo strophized organic beings as masdiines or automates naturels'”'. The humoristically colored treatise 'Les animaux plus que Madiines' shows clearly what La Mettrie is about when he uses the word Ma s‹fnne' provocatively: namely& about the formation of the soul as a metaphysis& rooted or immortal entity. His thinking appears from a vitalist side when he gets bogged down in the innate, vibrant aliveness of matter as the basis of his biology (and ontology), while his 'medianicism' chiefly announces itself when he wants to dispel any suspicion of that aliveness were ultimately the Haudi of God: then he must trace them back to scientifically tangible factors, whereby the inclination towards (at least externally) convincing clarity of me‹fianicist‹fi interpretations naturally grows. This polemical consideration caused La Mettrie's — and also Diderot's — to vacillate between vitalism and

Medianicism understandable ^'. As I said, Cartesian mechanisticism was based on the assumption of one rigid matter, whose identity with extension made it appear to be entirely homogeneous. The upgrading of matter or the derivation of the infinite diversity of the world from it had to suggest, on the contrary, the view that matter is uniform in the ontological sense of the one substance, but heterogeneous in its concrete existence. This heterogeneity itself had to be attributed to the activity of the immanent movement; Unlike Cartesian movement, which neither changes nor creates, but preserves what is already homogeneous, the new conception of movement had to have a qualitative aspect. This is what La Mettrie means when he says nothing about matter

•'° Treatise I = I, 54: The soul and the body were made together in the same instant, and as if with a single brushstroke'. •'^ Abstract of Syst. VI = I, 213. ••• Homme Machine = I, 347. *° Monadology $64 = Phi1. Schr. VI, 618. ^^ 7 About this hesitation in La Mettrie see the explanations Callou, Philos. de la Vie, 217 ff., 233. Callot thinks that the vitalistic elements only appear in Holba& completely eliminated in favor of a purely physical conception, 332, 337. About the multiple interweaving of vitalism and mechanisticism in the 18th century, see this good comments from Diedunann, Th. Bordeu, 71 f.

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only addresses self-movement, but also the ability to direct the riding of one's own movement - an idea that he connects with the (qualitative) transition from the purely material to the intelligent. In Diderot's case, this specific, that is to say qualitatively grasped, self-movement "builds a bridge between the uniformity of matter-substance and the heterogeneous diversity of matter-formation, so that he feels entitled to use the expression 'matiére universale hétérogéne'" and beyond that to derive the 'diversité des phénoménes' from the heterogeneity aspect'”. Holbadi's thought process is similar. The special nature of each body results from its internal movements, which are specific to it. The matter therefore does not form a homogeneous body "', rather it consists of heterogeneous molecules, whose qcirculation continueslle' shapes nature "' These molecules, however, are directly reminiscent of Leibniz's monads '^ - and thus of the overcoming of atomism in the 7th century, none last

Boerhaave advanced his theory of the specific properties of each particle of matter ^'. In fact, the detachment from the homogeneity of matter, precisely in the context of its ontological upgrading, means the conflict not only with the Cartesian but also with the older atomistic medianism, which the attraction theory of the world had already encountered '^. The dead end into which the old atomism got into due to the new conception of matter, or rather its opposition to the new materialism, is shown clearly in Diderot's Reve de d'Alembert'. The possibility of the continuity of matter given the isolation of the atoms is questioned and a solution to the problem is found by first dynamizing the atoms themselves or replacing them with molecules and then from their composition tion something like a 'grappe d'abeilles' results, within which the individual Animals merge and thus pave the way for a qualitatively new unity ”' **^ Treatise VIII — Works I, 74. ^°

The qualitative aspect of Diderot's movement emphasizes on Re&t Wartofsky, Diderot and the

Devel. of mater. Monism, 302. Elem. de Phys., OC IX, 265. ^^'

Translator de la Nat. 58 = OC II, 56

'^ Syst. of the Nat., I, 78. ••• on. eit., I, 82. ^*

^^•

on. eit., I, 94. on. eat., I, 99 f.

••• Cf. the note in op. eit., I, 94.

•*' Metzger, Newton-Stahl-Boerhaave, 198. Metzger rightly emphasizes Boerhaave's agreement with Stahl on this important point and the common ones Recourse to natural philosophy or theological mysticism of the Renaissance as well die VersAränkung ähnli‹:der Motive mit der Newtons‹:hen Inspiration Boerhaaves. ^"

That has been a long time, Gesdi. des Materialismus, II, 182 f.

••• OC II, 124, 127.

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(that was actually an idea of Maupertuis' "°, which Diderot discussed for the first time with reference to him "'). Precisely the possibility of unification is to be supported by the assumption that every atom or molecule is a microcosm that cannot be identical with any other and not even with itself from one moment to the next"'. The differentiated one sketched here The image of unity is therefore closely related to the thesis of the immanence and permanence of movement. On the contrary, the old atomism aimed to destroy the world and at the same time make it inert. With regard to their rejection, the difference between the old dualistic medianism and the new nonistic materialism is noticeable.

In the middle of the 18th century, the feeling increased, especially in France, that the paths of new knowledge and religion were becoming more and more divergent, despite the attempts at discovery of Newton's or physico-theological inspiration. The new biology came into its own development by arousing a generally skeptical mood and thus causing a turning away from theological certainties, especially since its results did not ultimately touch on the world's central question of the place of humanity in the universe "', who tried to harmonize his knowledge with the biblical data, had to openly admit that the 'first truth' that resulted from the serious study of nature was spent-etre huniiliante pour 1'homme", since this now belongs to the series of Classifying animals has "'. At the same time, however, Buffon asserted that there is a "divine spark" in mankind which makes him qYassal de Cie1, roi de la Terre'madie"', and thus overall he advocated that double conception of mankind as nature and as ruler over nature , which for a major part of the Enlightenment is diarakteri stis& La Mettrie took delight in trampling on la fierté et l'orgueil' des Mendien "', deriding the Memdien's self-declaration as God on earth"' and putting him in the to be classified in the same category with the rest of the li&en animals "'. For his part, Holbadi has nothing but pity for the illusions siditlidi of the status of man."' The point of these theses ^°° System. of the Nat. LIV (— Works II, 172). ^' Translator de la Nat. L = OC II, 47. Reve de d'Alembert = OC II, 132 f., 139. Mornet, Natural Sciences, 768 ff. Roger, Sciences de la sie, 768 ff. •• S. e.g. B. the letter to the Theological Faculty dated March 12, 1751 = Oeuvres 108 A-109 A; cf. Epoques de la Nan. = Oeuvres 126 A—129 B. ••° Hist. Natur., 1. Disc., In the manner etc. = Works 10 A. ^' Hist. Nat., Premiere Vue = Oeuvres, 33 A. ••° Animals more than madiines = Ouvres, II, 26. ••• Plant Man = Works II, 18. •'• Syst. d'Epic. XXXII Oeuvres I, 241. •" Syst. de la Nat., I, 155 ff.

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however, it opposes the talk of man being made in the image of God, whereby the paradox arises that the champion of the dignity or the privileged position of man is precisely that theology which do‹:h in from the perspective of modern rationalism, first of all as enemies of humanity and enemies had to be put down in a low light. An alliance is thus emerging between that wing of modern rationalism that does not want to see man as a causally determined natural being, but primarily as the master of nature, and a reformed theology that does Knowledge-diaftli the hubris cannot be approved, nevertheless& si& strives to reconcile mankind's lordly diaftsan spprudis over nature with the assumption of his divine origin. The work in this ritual, however, became increasingly difficult - due to the increasing insight into the dependencies of the spiritual on the human sense.

The spectacular rise of medicine associated with the expansion of the public health system also had a long-term effect in the spirit of this idea '

of human

— a knowledge, nämli‹:h, the object of which is the He century "' research

sensuality, i.e. the treatment of human beings first and foremost in its sensual dimension. It was certainly not by chance, that as early as the 19th century people were spraying like 'bon physicien mauvais dirétien' or

"‘ — or that .sur three médicins un athée' spri‹:hwörtlidi materialistically oriented doctors like Maubec and Gaultier prepared the dissolution of Cartesianism nadi forces " 5 . It is therefore hardly surprising when

La Mettrie declares that philosophers without medical training are no good a lot "', or Diderot claims that without anatomy and physiology you can do good metaphysics and 2tloral "'. It is well known what influence these disciplines have on the thinking of the physician La Mettrie "' and the editor of the encyclopedia with his closest contact to medical

•'• A useful overview of advances in medicine in connection with clinical practice is given by Wolf, History of Science, etc., II, 478 ff.; cf. Sdryok, Development of Modern Medicine, passim; Fisher, Gesdl. of the German health system, II, passim; Greenbaum, Health-care and hospital-building, esp. 901 ff., 907 ff. •^ In addition, the pages from Gay, Science of Freedom, 12 ff., and Gusdorf, Dieu Nature-Homme, t2 t ff. King deals with various aspects of medicine in the 18th century in his collection of essays, Medical World of the 18th cent. On the social advancement of doctors and their contribution to the spread of the practical-utilitarian spirit Delaunay, Vie médicale, 421 ff., 472 ff. ^'^ Busson, Religion of the Classics, 144 ff.; see Mintard, Libertinage, 80 f. " 5 Spink, Frendl Free-Thought, 219 ff. •'• Man Madline = Works, I, 289. ^ "Refutation of Helvetius XII = OC II, 322. •'^ On the importance of medical experience for La Mettrie, see Callot, Phi the. de la Vie, 199 ff.

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Circles "'. Significantly, this interest in medicine did not in any way limit the materialists. The doctor Lo&e is also a pioneer in this respect and at the same time a representative of the Enlightenment, Man deville was also a doctor who combined his medicine with his ••' knew how to combine philosophy, Voltaire heard Boerhaave in Leiden and boasted that he had read more medical books than Don Qui&ote chivalry novels "', A. Smith attended the anatomy lectures of Hunter, who was a friend of Hume, Hartley was a practicing physician, etc. etc. But in his relation to the question of the entanglement of mind and matter, an interest in medicine implied two things; It was namely a symptom of both the actual or completed (ontological) revaluation of matter z1s and that (meaning epistemological and epistemological) turning away from intellectualism or towards empiricism, which for the main current of the Auf clarification is just as characteristic and its some important aspects or Let's investigate further in the next chapter.

^'° In general Roger, Sciences de la vie, 599 ft. ; about the intellectual contribution of Doctor's bordeu to Le Reve de d'Alembcrt' s, influenced by Stahl, Boerhaave etc. Die&mann, Th. Bordeu, esp. 103 ft. Details of the collaboration of physicians you will contribute to the encyclopedia and its role in its intellectual formation Laignel-Lavastine, Medicins collaborators, 352 ff., und Astruc, Medical sciences, 359 ff. ••° Dewhurst, Locke, Physician and Philosopher, passim. ^' Rousseau, Mandeville and Europe, insb. 15 f., 17. ^ Waldinger, Voltaire and Medicine, insb. 1790 t.

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V. The anti-intellectualist main current of the Enlightenment and its concept of rationalism

1. Preliminary remark

Without a doubt, Lo&e is the epistemologist who exerted the greatest direct and indirect influence in the Age of Enlightenment. Dennodi, the talk of the age of Lo'kes - just like the expression often used in parallel with it, the age of Newton - can only be accepted on the basis of the necessary differentiations. She is right when she thinks, in my very general sense, that Lo&e symbolizes the extensive turning away from Cartesian intellectualism in the 1st century or that it forms — from Leibniz and Berkeley to Condillac—the usual positive or negative Point of reference for new epistemological approaches. But it is misleading if it is intended to give the impression that Locke's position represents the ideal type of Enlightenment epistemology. In fact, it only represents a (loose) main current, which is criticized both by radical empiricists or sensualists and by intellectualists became. The former is often given as Lodte's radicalization or simplification and aims to blur the strong trace of an independent or even related activity of the intellect that is noticeable in Locke's reflection theory, ie the distance between sensation and reflection to let zero sdirump'. For this purpose, the association theory is primarily offered, which plays a very subordinate role in Locke, especially since the relevant chapter was only included in the fourth edition of the main work °. With Hume, however, reflection and ideas have a substantially different value, and correspondingly interest in the association processes in consciousness grows, with definitely also a pure one

'

Essay, II 1 $ 4 (= I, 123 f.); in IV, $21 4 Lo&e says the spirit can be on si& relate to oneself (“contemplates ... itself”). Cassirer, Phil. d. Enlightenment, 132. ^ Essay, II, 33; see the editor's note on this passage and cf. Aaron, Locke, 141.

^ Treatise I, 1, 2 = S. 7 ff. ^ op. cit., I, 1, 4; II, 1, 4 and 9 = pp. 10 ff., 283 ff., 305 f. On the great hopes that Hume placed in the association theory and his difficulties in overcoming the problem see Kemp Smith , Philosophy of Hume, 72, 183ff., 245ff.

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physiological interpretation of the same is offered'. Hartley made the core point of his psychology and epistemology from association by coming to the conclusion that not only the production of association presupposes the ability to form ideas, but also the other way around. It is well known that Condillac Locke was "simplified" in this way. Because he wants to reduce everything that relates to entendement to a single principle, he must focus solely on sensation as the source of knowledge and, in an explicit distinction from Locke, deny reflection this function. »The sensation enveloppe tous les facultés de l'ame' ". But it can only do this thanks to the mediating work of the Association and the Zeid en, to which Condillac audi devotes his attention in detail ". All our knowledge constitutes a unified chain, which is however subdivided ”; the reflection occurs at a specific point of development and presupposes the use of Zeid en ". Interestingly, the whole process of cognition is rooted in the human li‹:hen biostructure, since Cendillac swears that the force (attention) that sets and keeps the associative operations of the soul in motion is related to plaisir et douleur' or pbesoins' ". Thus an epistemology was formed which a materialist could fully approve of. La Mettrie, it is true, pays great praise to Locke (and that is diarakteristis& for the variety of his effects) — Not least for his criticism of innerism, but he thinks in detail - like Condillac, in that he treats the higher soul functions as successive developments of the "sentir". However, he speaks eloquently about the inner relationship between materialistic epistemology and the theory of association

°

Treatise I, 2, 5 = S. 60.

' Observations on Man, I, 70. • S. den Untertitel der ersten Auflage (1746) Essay on human knowledge maines. °

Reasoned extract from the Treatise on Sensations = Works I, 325 A. Dadurdi nimmt

Condillac die Thèse des Essai zurü&, Material unserer Enkenntnis seien sensations and opérations de l'ime (I, 1, Ch. I = Oeuvres 6 B). cf. Diderot's implicit criticism an der ersten (idealistisdien') Position Condillacs, Letter on the Blind, OC, I,

304 f. '° Traite des Sens., I, Ch. VII — Works 239 B. "

Essai, I, 2, Ch. II I—IV Oeuvres 17 B, 19 A. About originality and contemporary connectedness of Condillac's theory of associations see Knight, Geometric Spirit, 32 f.

" ibid. (17 B). '°

op. cit., I, 2, Ch. V Oeuvres 22 A—23 B.

'•

op. cit., I, 2, Ch. III; Treatise on the Senses. I, Ch. I u. VII = Works 17 B, 225 A,

239 B. '• Abridged Syst. $V; Madinah man = Works I, 210, 313.

'° Treatise on the Soul XIII $ V = Oeuvres I, 151. Audi für La Mattrie entsteht die Reflection from the combination of sensation and attention (ibid., 149 f.).

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Preliminary remark

289

the fact that the essential preparatory work for the latter had already been done by Hobbes, who, like Condillac, had assumed a connection between the associative process and "desire" or biostructure.

The appropriation of the theory of associations by materialists such as La Mettrie, who believed in oncology and not primarily epistemological theory (such as Gondillac himself), and above all the original coupling of the rejection of Cartesian inneism with the rejection of Cartesian dualism indicate that the (radical) empiricist‹:je approach in epistemology had certain substantive prerequisites. Despite the self-understanding of many of its older and more recent representatives, epistemology was never a purely formal-methodical discipline that takes shape before any contact with the content of knowledge in order to then point out the best access to it with a priori certainty, but it is always appeared, at least objectively and structurally, as an organizational component of a certain basic ideological attitude, ie it implies certain contentrelated preliminary decisions. The (radical) epistemological theory of empiricism in the Age of Enlightenment is basically an accompanying view of the general ontological appreciation of matter in the struggle against Cartesian or theological dualism. The new conception of matter not only had epistemological, but also moral-philosophical consequences - and precisely because of this multidimensionality or this all-round claim, the intellectualistic reaction against it could not be avoided, which in turn had to take on several forms, including an epistemological one. Intellectualistic doctrines of the origin and nature of knowledge regularly appear in close association with the defense of a scale of values that appears threatened by materialism or by (supposedly) far-reaching concessions to it; That's why we want to focus on them as part of the presentation of the moral philosophy debate

Century reference ". These considerations should, however, already at this point give the reason why (epistemological) intellectualism in the Age of Enlightenment should not be dismissed as a fringe idea in comparison to Loke's authority, but just like materialism - must be seen in its logistical and mental health necessity.

With these reservations, we can now confidently say the mainstream The epistemology of the 18th century was oriented towards empiricism, although not in an extreme way, but rather in the sense of the dualism of fluctuation, as prefigured by Lo&e's somewhat ambiguous explanation of the origin of knowledge from sensation and reflection. Angesidits of the inner relationship of the

"

Lev. III = EW III, 11 ff. (on the effect of desire, 13). ' ® Ch. VI, Section 3.

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The anti-intellectualist mainstream of AuMerung

Epistemological empiricism for the general rehabilitation of sensuality must now be asked about its oncological and anthropological or moral philosophical correlates. The connection between the (epistemological) rejection of the "hypotheses" and the development of a new (ontological) idea of the whole was explained in the previous chapter. In this, the same topic should be continued on a different level. After a brief recollection of some complementary aspects of the struggle against epistemological intellectualism (degradation of mathematics, etc.), we want to discuss how the new determination of the faculties relevant to knowledge gives rise to a concept of knowledge that at least tends to encompass the whole mens ‹3i1i‹existence in its multiplicity, but also in its sensory rootedness, so that it may be called an existential concept of knowledge‹. Senses and mind, drive or

Willing and reflection should be in it as well as in human existence to be orphaned yourself; But knowledge and existence should also become orphaned itself, so that the statements of the former do not have to form any kind of entia rationis, but rather a direct, living outflow of the latter. The rationality of statements in theoretical and above all in practicalmoralistic terms arises according to these presuppositions from the deeper rationality of human beings, which si‹3i for its part, ni‹3it ultimately because of the insight into the sensuous-existential conditionality of cognition, can in no way be reduced to the intellect. From the perspective of the empiricist turn, reason and intellect are anything but identis‹3i, while on the other hand the fundamental relationship between rationality and human nature binds the former to certain contentrelated statements about the latter . After the rehabilitation of sensuality, however, human beings are treated as nature, so the determination of the content of their essence must be based on the concept of nature as the ultimate and highest (ontologising) authority. Knowledge and man are rooted in nature and are rational insofar as and as long as they are rooted in nature. The orphanage of the sensual and spiritual in cognition and human beings is also based in nature, especially since nature is enupri‹3it of the new idea of the whole, colored to one degree or another, monistis‹3i or has emerged directly from it. In this complex of ideas, cognitive, theoretical, anthropological, moralnormative and ontological aspects flow into one another. From a formal point of view, this confusion was by no means new.

This time, however, it stood at the time of the rehabilitation of sensuality or the upgrading of matter and this constituted the decisive substantive opposition to the positions against which it had to be opposed.

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2. Continuing the fight against the pH hypotheses” a) The degradation of mathematics The logically determined connection between the (epistemologis‹fier) disparagement of mathematics and the (ontologis‹fier) revaluation of matter understandably emerges at the ans‹fiauli‹fists in thinkers who deal with biological questions. For the 'pmatiére productive' (Buffon), which supported the edifice of the new biology, resisted the equation with the extension on which si‹fi was supposed to base the thorough mathematization of all scientific disciplines. If matter, especially organic matter, is something more and something other than extension, it can hardly be grasped with purely mathematical means. In view of the plethora of empirically ascertainable qualities of the sensual, mathematical quantities must appear unreal, abstract or fictitious. It is precisely this reproach that Buffon raises against mathematics — a science mde pure speculation, de simple curiosité et d'entiere inutilité'". Its truths are said to be tautolo gis'fi, that is, they are seen as conclusive conclusions from definitions or . arise as repetitions of the same; the truth of each individual mathematical proposition is based on that of the previous one, so that si‹fi s‹filißlidi would only result des identités d'idees' without any reality content '• Objects, namely dénués des qualités physiques", but not to the more complicated biological phenomena ", where one can do little with the Cartesian conception of matter. The same connection between the epistemological rejection of mathematical intellectualism and the ontological assumption of a content-free 'Fien Matter appears on 'fi in Diderot, who also puts those mo lécules' at the center of his considerations on the Elbe, which originally and from within are a 'force active' and require no impetus from outside in order to be able to move. The philosophical thesis that matter is an si‹fi dead, ressemble peut-etre ä celle de géométres, qui admettent des points sans aucune dimension, des lignes, sans largeur ni profondeur etc.'. Mathematics therefore kills all living concreteness in the object of knowledge; by regarding matter as inert or 'indifferent'

'• Hist. Natur., 1. Disc., Of the Manner etc. = Works 24 B. •° •'

Op. cii., 23 B—24 A. op. eit., 25 B-26 A; ef. the condemnation of abstractions in general, Hist. des Animaux, Ch. II = Oeuvres

257 B-258 A; Buffon places his empiricist epistemology in Hist. nat. de l'homme, Des sens - Oeuvres 309 B ff.

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Stufe, abstracted from all the qualities that are essential to him. Geometry and metaphysics should therefore be pursued by others; Diderot wants to keep the concreteness of the “treatment of the physicist and chemist” to one side ^. In his early texts he draws an ironic parallel between them "Transcendence of mathematics, although it is actually a thought game, and of speculative metaphysics, the emptiness of which the mathematicians themselves originally wanted to overcome." If the data can be measured, then its own direct usefulness does not follow from this: because its respective result can be achieved through several combinations that are completely different from each other.

Due to the hypothesis that mathematics could perhaps not have been the adequate way of knowing a pure spirit or God^, Diderot no longer referred to the object but to the subject of knowledge as evidence of its inadequacy for human life: logically prove , because the ontological revaluation of matter represented by himself had its epistemological counterpart. If cognition is rooted in the senses, mathematical magnitudes, at least insofar as they claim intellectual purity and origin, must also be fictitious with regard to the knowing subject. Thus, in Hume, the notion of consciousness as the place of special and fluctuating sensory impressions is combined with a consideration of mathematical ideas as arbitrary earth identities which, like Diderot, are reminiscent of the forms and substances of his olastis ontology.

In fact, Hume speaks in unmistakable terms against the assumption that mathematical ideas are of spiritual nature; like all our ideas, they are copy'd from our impressions', and therefore they cannot claim absolute accuracy - in fact, they can only be used sensibly if they rely on it ^. But when mathematical ideas come from the senses, they know that they are not. It has to be like that, in a consciousness that itself becomes and is not. We noticed earlier that (modern) evolutionism in biology and genetic treatment in epistemology belong together logistically and structurally, since they emerge from the same rehabilitation of sensuality. Just as evolutionism becomes indispensable in order to separate the mind from matter, whose priority is rornui-

^ Main. Phil. on Mat. and the Mov. = OC II, 6s f. ^

Lettre sur les aveugles = OC I, 304¡ cf. Interp. de la Nat. II-III = OC II, 10.

•• Letter = OC I, 303. •° place. cit., 293 f.

'° Nadi two apt expressions of Cassirer, Problem of Knowledge II, 252, 253 f. "

Treatise I, 3, 2 = S. 72. ^ Ibid., S. 71. ^

on. cit., I, 2, 4 = S. 45.

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is set to be able to derive, then the genetic theory of knowledge is also required if one starts from the sensible origin of knowledge. For the higher achievements of intelligence, from art to mathematics, are there (that is, before the emergence of this epistemological conception) and require an explanation just as the existing organism or soul life (before materialism) demands them . A consistent genetic approach to epistemology was only conceivable under empiricist conditions. Nidit happened to be the first Lo‹:ke his Vedahren consciously and programmatis& a historical, plain method' called ". Audi Maupertuis spridit von der histoire de notre esprit' " and even follows Condillac rather than Lo&e •' in her presentation; Although he mentions, somewhat casually, two cognitive faculties, namely aper9evoir and raisonner, he nevertheless understands the abstract ideas as the conclusion of a development that must go through perception, mtmoire and signe ^. Mathematical ideas are no exception, and Maupertuis, like Hume, even sees the chance of a fruitful application of them precisely in their sensual origins and the repeatability (replicabilité) guaranteed by this is justified by sensible circumstances: precisely because mathematical ideas do not arise from pure intellect, they can retain practical relevance to some extent ^! In this sense, Maupertuis welcomes the use of geometry in physics, while at the same time demanding that it be controlled by experience. He attaches such great importance to the primacy of experience that he sometimes speaks as if the use of reason in physics had only one purpose, namely the saving of time and effort. As expected, the biologist Maupertuis not only asserted the empiricist mode of knowledge of the subject, but also the nature of the object against mathematical intellectualism. Thus he denies the applicability of mathematics to a physique plus particuliére' such as e.g. B. the Medicine ", which deals with living matter. The 'e philosophie experi mentelle' examines bodies as they are, while mathematics disregards the greater part of their concrete properties '^.

To the extent that the mathematical-intellectualist approach set total knowledge as its goal, its rejection had to result in a skeptical-phenomenal ^

Essay, Introd. = I, 2Z.

•' Ref1. phil. on the origin of languages, § III = Works I, 261. °'

Brunet, Maupertuis, 406 f.

°° Aefl. phil. §$ VII ff. = Oeuvres I, 264 ff. °'

Cassirer, Erkenntnisproblem II, 335.

•• Speech on the duties of Acad. = Works III, 291 ff. °° place cit., 289. °' °"

Letter XV - Works II, 318 f. Discourse on duties Works III, 293.

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menalistic attitude. For Maupertuis, the cause of our perceptions" or the thing in itself is unknowable and the limits of our cognitive faculty are insurmountable, although we must assume that our perceptions actually have an objective cause outside of us". This phenomenalism allowed si ‹:h in antimetaphysis‹:her — anti-Cartesian and antitheologis‹:her — absidite, and so he was not unpopular with materialists such as La Mettrie.” We know how d'Alembert opposed him the hypotheses' set in". Also for this, as for Maupertuis, both the unknowability and the existence of the thing in itself are certain". D'Alembert does not show himself ready on all points to distance himself from Locke in favor of Condillac, especially since the intellectualistic component, above all in his earlier thinking, was more pronounced than with Maupertuis, for example ", because he considerably relativizes the independence of reflection or the inner sense". Thus, au‹:h's assessment of mathematics is predetermined. Mathematics arises in the process of operations et des abstractions successives de notre esprit' "although it can proceed deductively during its formation; but even then the definitions from which it starts do not contain the essence of what is defined". Mathematical knowledge is essentially tautological insofar as its principles only contain what we have put into them '7 — and that in the best case: for it is not uncommon for axioms and definitions to be either empty or ambiguous ^, in which au‹: h the possibility of the misused mathematical procedure for metaphysicalspeculative purposes lies". Mathematics theories are therefore fictions, n'ont pas rigoureusenient lien dans la nature', and can nevertheless offer solutions to concrete problems, the correctness of which has been proven in practice. The is d'Alembert's decent answer to the skeptics on the one hand,

°• Ref1. phil. on the origins of languages $ XXVIII = Works I, 283; see Letter IV = Oeuvres, II, 233 f. ^° Treatise on the Soul, X $ IV = Works I, 87 f. •' S. Kap. IV, Absdin. 2 b. * Elem. d. Phil., VI = Oeuvres II, 135 f. •° Essar, Language Theory, Epistemology and Aesthetics of d'Alembert, 65 ff. ^^

Kunz, Epistemology d'Alemberts, 102 f.; Grimsley, D'Alembert 228. Grimsley then very nicely illustrates

d'Alembert's difficulties in trying to bridge the gap between sensation and idea. •° Disc. Prel. = Oeuvres I, 198. •• Elem. i.e. Phil., IV = Oeuvres II 33, 36; on the nominalist approach d'Alem Berts also belongs to linguistic criticism, ibid. 57 ff., 249 ff. •

7

•^ '•

on eit., XIV = Oeuvres II, 291. on eit., IV, XIV = Oeuvres II, 29 f., 331 f., 358 f. on eit., V — Oeuvres II, 75.

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physiciens ignorants en mathématique' on the other hand ". At the same time, the Exaggerations of the mathematical procedure in physics must be strongly condemned, and with regard to the newer fields of knowledge it is emphasized that not all levels of reality would be equally capable of mathematical registration •'. At this point, d'A1embert makes the distinction between the general experimental physics and the physico-mathematical sciences: the mathematical calculus may only be applied to the latter. Thus the (ontological) criterion of the nature of the object of cognition is again introduced. With d'A1embert this point of view is not as important as with the biologists, but with regard to the inner logic of the thought structures that we are studying here, a brief reference to d'A1embert's late flirtation with monistic-materialistic theses should not be entirely uninteresting ".

The extent to which mathematics has been degraded as a result of the fundamental epistemological and ontological rejection of intellectualism is highly indicative of the fact that even Newton was dragged into imprisonment by it, who empiricized inductively from all sides as the apostle Knowledge was praised. The distinction that has become common between Principia and Optics as the representative of two methodological views that at least differ from one another expresses a certain distrust of the mathematician Newton. With the ever-increasing anti-intellectualist current, not everyone was satisfied with Newton's contrast to the Cartesian understanding of mathematics - a contrast that was inevitable given the application of mathematics to a substantially differently conceived physics - or with his references to the necessity of the mathematical procedure depending on the nature of the respective object of knowledge ^

madien, as well as the impossibility of translating all problems into mathematical terms. In the upper framework of Newtonianism, very different views on mathematics were conceivable, and that was the reason for the continued existence of the belief that Newton did not have all the shackles of Intellectualism stripped away, as audi for the efforts of the empiricist Newtonians, according to what the master had neglected

^°

•'

op. cit., XV = Oeuvres II, 305 ff. op. cit., XX = Oeuvres II, 466 ff.; Disc. prél. = Oeuvres I, 207 f., 203 f.

•• See above all the letter to Friedrich dated November 30, 1770 = Oeuvres XVII, 210 f., 213: Interweaving of intelligence and matter in people and in the universe, dh Materiality Gottes. ^ Guerlac, Newton's Changing Reputation, in: Essays, 76 f. •• Chap. IV, Absc n. 2 b. •° Koyré, Newt. Studies, 10. ^°

Burtt, Metaph. Foundations, 206, 210.

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to meet the needs of the zeitgeist. The above-mentioned suspicion could not only be supported by words of praise from neo-Cartesians like Fontenelle about the foundation of Newton's physics through the plus profonde geometry, but also from Newtonians like Keill, who represented a mathematical realism. The (extreme) opponents of this extreme Position limited They do not emphasize the empirical character of physical knowledge (e.g. Maclaurin), while at the same time skeptically adducing the arguments against the validity claims of mathematics in general, but even went so far as to consider Newton's use of mathematics to be accidental or tactical (e.g. B. Gordon) ". But also the mediating positions within the Newton's sdiule are indicative of the ongoing disparagement of mathematics. Thus s'Gravesande, anticipating corresponding positions of Mauper tuis' and d'Alembert's grosso modo, distinguishes between purer and misditer mathematics and declares that only the latter can serve physics. In order to complete our picture, it is necessary to remember those cases in which one found oneself prepared to defend mathematics as the acu of an autonomous intellect for purely political reasons. An example: Voltaire praises Newton's empiricism with a reference to abstract sdiolastism and syllogistics and regards experience as the "master of the philosophy of philosophy." But in the same paragraph he reminds us that scholasticism does not only mean syllogistics, but also authority, and rebuke those who "fight the raison par 1'autorite" by misusing the Holy Scripture. But against authority it is not empiricism (that would make no sense), but rather reason. That is the reason why Voltaire, when he presents Newton as a thinker against all authority, does not only point to the empiricist, but also to the mathematician: Newton vous dira: Ne m'en croyez pas; n'en croyez que vos yeux et les mathématiques' " . Solid statements regarding mathematics are rather rare, but they must be registered, because they show the shift in position depending on the respective polemic goal, which is very clear in the question of the rejection or use of "systems".

s'Gravesande's distinction between pure and mixed mathematics comes from Bacon, and this indirectly shows his increasing reputation as a result of the spread of epistemological anti-intellectualism. It's a pity

•' Eloge Newtons = text selection, 240. •• Strong, Newtonian Explications, 55 ff. loc. cit., 70, 74 f., 81 f. •• place cit., 67 f., 72. •' Elem. de la Phil. de Newton, II, 2 = OC XXII, 449. •• Op. cit., II, 10 = OC XXII, 485. °° Transl. of De Augmentis” III, 6 — Works IV, 370.

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see why Bacon, who disliked daintiness and pride of mathematicians', but only recognized their discipline and logic as 'handmaids of physics' and also wad mathematics and speculative metaphysics in the same pot", Diderot's conception of mathematics e.g . B. could influence ". But literary influences were only possible because the basic options were available. Its origin from the ontological appreciation of matter is already evident in the intensification of the controversy about the essence of force with that about the status of mathematics". With Leibniz as force Understandably, theorists and mathematicians see this reduction in a particularly clear light. His introduction of dynamics into physics draws the new universal method of combinatorics in mathematics sidi, which in turn must be based on a collaboration between imagination or intuition and discursive thinking, such as could not occur with Descartes °'. In his polemic against Bayle, Leibniz, among other things, took mathematics into account; although he admitted that there are no "uniform uniformities" in nature, as mathematicians want to imagine, at the same time he pointed out the indispensability of mathematics Rules for the grasp of reality: even if they are fictitious, they still correspond to reality, which, because of its rational structure, cannot behave other than according to fixed rules. However, this rationality is metaphysically founded, in the sense of a dynamis metaphysics, under the aegis of which dynamism physics stands. The - in comparison to Descartes - new definition of the relationships between mathematics and physics or metaphysics within the framework of the general dynamism approach now allows Leibniz to upgrade or dynamize, but at the same time to downgrade it of mathematics, since its dynamization takes place in earning and after the needs of the metaphysical concept. Leibniz viewed mathematics' claim to do without metaphysics as a sign of dangerous philosophical blindness and not independence. Also, people like Hobbes would use mathematics, so materialism and atheism cannot be refuted by these, but rather by meta-

•• ibid., 369 f.

•• Diedunann, Influence of Bacon, in: Studien, 37 f. ^ This entanglement has been well illustrated by Belaval, La Crise de la Gtometrisation, esp. 345 ff. But this in particular forms a strong argument against Belaral's thesis (349 f.) that the autonomy of the Cartesian machines prepares the materialist Monism . That may have been psy‹:hologis‹:h mzn× , logis&-structurally, for example, the assertion is false‹:h. See above, Kzp. IV, paragraph‹:hn. 4 b and note 430. ^' Vuillemin, Difference and identity, 271 f., 298, 301. ^ about his concept of mathematics in connection with the revaluation of the so

zialges‹:hi‹:htliÖien Sensibility see chap. VI, paragraph‹:hn. 4 b. °• Response to reflections etc. — Phil. S‹:hr. IV, 568 f.

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physis, the truths to which mathematics must be subjected. This rebuke of mathematics from the perspective of metaphysics, however, logically pointed to the opposite tradition to the usual Enlightenment evaluation of mathematics based on physics or empiricism. The impression that Leibniz was taking an anti-mathematical position was inevitable, and it was reinforced particularly by the rediscovery of the dynamisdi-anticartesian side of Leibniz's thinking.

b) Ambiguities in the rejection of the systems and the polemisthe meaning of appealing to empiricism The degradation of mathematical intellectualism as a result of the radicalizing rehabilitation of sensuality was accompanied by a general rejection of the systematic spirit. A system in the bad sense was understood as that which empiricism forces reality into an arbitrary formal framework or simply overlooks it in order not to endanger its established intentions and goals by taking empiricism into account. Systems are built on uncertain facts, writes Buffon, and serve the tendency to bring different states under one denominator or to level the concrete diversity "—whereas he recommends collecting established facts and avoiding de tout esprit de systeme". ". But Buffon also touches on the anthropological and worldview aspect of the problem. Systems are etres moraux crées par des vties purement humaines', they would be based on 'convenances morales', and in them or through them there takes place a fusion or rather confusion of empiricism and knowledge with feelings, passions and desires '•. This is written in the context of the rejection of the causae finales, and therefore the anti-theologis‹fi tip is opensi‹fitlidi. Audi Condillac had been open a few • years earlier the same factors to explain the genesis of (metaphysical) systems pointed out. They are not based on logical thinking, but on passions and temperaments; precisely because they are 'jouets de caprice' they arise and disappear so quickly'. From a sociological point of view, Condillac emphasizes the alliance between (metaphysical) systems and religious prejudices promoted by despots 'and the formation of schools around an important *°

Second letter to Clarke — Phil. Sdir. VII, 355.

"

Hist. Natur., 1. Disc., Of the Manner etc. = Works, 9 A.

'" Sdion in one of his earliest publications, see the preface to the translation (1735) von Hales’, Vegetable statics, in: Oeuvres, 5 B. ^ Hist. des Anim., V Oeuvres 258 AB. *'

Treatise on Systems, &. II = Works I, 126 B—127 A.

”

hope. eit., the. V = Works I, 140B.

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tigtueris‹:h philosophers whose authority silences criticism and thus ensures the continued existence of his system. Condillac now remarks that philosophers make their own authority unchallengeable by talking about things that they know Empirisdi cannot be checked ", and this is where his logical criticism comes in. According to Condillac, the strategy of the system constructors is simple: they set up general principles in order to then deduce the verités moins générales from them. Nevertheless, these are Principles are either so general that their eventual truth becomes irrelevant, or they are applied to cases to which their partial truth does not fit, or ultimately their vagueness serves to lump completely different things together In fact, their generality is fictitious, because it always arises from the generalization of a particular aspect, and that is the reason why, with regard to a multidimensional problem, several systems are produced at the same time ' ® . For the same reason, the basic concepts of the metaphysical systems, such as being, substance, etc., can be interpreted arbitrarily, so that the dispute over their content degenerates into a battle of words: la verité dépend des caprices de notre langage' “. - Dadurdi had told Condillac the essentials in all questions of systemic criticism, and his remarks were in fact authoritative, at least in the sense of an in-depth summary of widespread views. Maupertuis also refers to him with praise in his discussion of the systems, whose special interest si‹:hs‹:hon derives from the Vedassian's closest contact with the scientific practice of his time. Systems like that of Leibniz z. B. are de vrais malheurs pour les progrés des sciences', because they are based on 'etres invi sibles', which cannot be confirmed or refuted by any experience. Whoever constructs a system does not think of sadie or nature at all, but only of his own work, ie he confuses thought-things and reality ® °. The issue itself becomes increasingly distant the more philosophers become entangled in disputes, i.e. in the web of their own fictions . In the spirit of his phenomenalism, Maupertuis sdilassen1i‹:h refers to the objective unknowability of the thing in order to explain the subjective inclination towards systems. One does not want to accept the fact that our mind cannot have any other objects than those discovered by the senses, and it is precisely beyond this insurmountable barrier that the systems' complacent flights of fancy find their freedom ®' .

'• "

op. eit., ‹ff. I = Oeuvres I, 122 A. op. eit., ch. IV = Oeuvres I, 131 A.

'® This complex of thoughts in op. eit., &. II = Oeuvres I, 125 A-126 B. op. eit., di. III '•

Oeuvres I, 129 B—130 A.

^ Letire VII = Oeuvres II, 257 ff. The reference to Condillac on p. 260. ®' Letter VIII Oeurres II, 263 f. ^

Venus phys. VIII - Oeurres II, 45 f.

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These typical statements contain all the basic motives of the criticism of systems, and therefore it is unnecessary to investigate the countless variations on the same theme in many authors of the 18th century. What this criticism offered was undoubtedly a largely accurate description, and Gondillac alone anticipated crucial arguments of modern positivist metaphysics criticism. But it didn't stop at description and criticism. Because the bad system was contrasted with the good one, which was supposed to reflect the order of things without arbitrariness and prejudice. We have previously tried to explain why one cannot do without the system in general or the idea of the whole on the occasion of the first major confrontation between modern rationalism and theological ontology: only on the basis of an all-round refutation of a (all-sided) opposing position is there ideological struggles have a chance of long-term success. You don't seem convincing in polemics if you can't answer basic questions, although you have to reserve the monopoly on deciding what the (relevant) basic questions are. This means that the position of the Enlightenment philosophers, in order to fulfill their polemic function, was in no way obliged to answer those questions that, from the opponent's point of view, should be the first and last. On the other hand, one could only leave aside the disputes about God, the soul, etc., etc. with impunity if one could establish a different type of cognitive system, which would make the opponent's final questions irrelevant or meaningless due to its existence and structure . One was even allowed to act as an agnostic - but only with regard to the opponent's ultimate questions. However, the reasons why one wants to be an agnostic in this particular respect are themselves taken from a sensible series of thoughts, which in themselves contain an answer to the final questions that are now considered relevant. The new cognitive whole is in a very paradoxical way - the flip side, indeed the prerequisite, of that agnosticism that one displays (regardless of whether honest or sinful) in relation to the opponent's ultimate questions. Incidentally, if what is relevant within the new position were unknowable, then the propagation of a certain scientific ideal in contrast to “abstract systems” would have no meaning at all. In short: in order to be able to answer final questions polemisdi convincingly, one does not need to answer the opponent's final questions. In the struggle to change the relevant levels, the polemic meaning of the debate about the systems becomes clear. Behind the epistemological objection stands the ontology of content. The role of empiricism in the establishment of the good system is only emphasized because one has upgraded sensuality in advance or now sees it not as Cartesianisdi, in its opposition to the spirit, but in its intertwining with it. As I said, empiricism or sensualism is just as little as intellectualism

“natural” or presupposition-free epistemology position. The radical rehabilitation of sensuality created a different conception of the

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The nature of being as that which corresponded to the rehabilitation of sensuality in the sense of the mathematical world models of the 17th century, and this worldvisual shift was also reflected in epistemology. So Empiricist-based knowledge alone was able to prove the validity of the new contentontological position because it itself came from this latter position. The (unconscious) connection between epistemology and ontology supports the (conscious) attempt to construct the latter on the basis of the former. But there you see the method of knowledge based on certain content If preliminary decisions have resulted, then they must produce them in the form of results if one starts from it, i.e. proceeds methodically. This tautological circle did not look much different in the old metaphysical forms of thought. At that time, however, being served as the starting point, while now knowledge or the method should be at the beginning. However, this does not reflect any progress in Sadi's impartiality, but rather only the shift in the levels considered relevant that we have just spoken about. The accusers of the systems do not reject every system or every coherent overall position, but only a very specific one. They set up systems themselves and like to use this word when it serves to rationalize their own overall position. We now understand why, every time the system appears on the scene in a good sense, reference is made directly or indirectly to the content-ontological background of that overall position. This is expressed in various forms, which can be illustrated with a few examples. The same Shaftesbury who wrote his famous sentence "The most ingenious way of becoming foolish, is by a system" immediately after a subtle reference to the inadequacies of mathematics and thus clearly outlined his idea of the intelligent system, praises it Elsewhere, his moral philosophy had the evidence of a moral arithmetic. He could only claim this because this morality inevitably resulted from an ontological conception, which was not in an externally systematic form, but nevertheless: h was formulated with inner consistency and as a solid that was able to offer the basis for a coherent overall view ^. The systematist in this sense came from the desire to answer final questions. Now if there was someone to whom philosophy as a profession was as foreign as Shaftesbury was unable to resist the temptation to use the power or polemics of systematist to serve one's own position, then the 'good system' had to

^ Charact., I, 290. •• op. cit., II, t73. A clumsy attempt to fulfill Shaftesbury's promise or to introduce "a Mathematical Calculation in Subjects of Morality" was made by Hute:heson, Inquiry into the Original etc., Treat. II, Sect. 3, XI = p. 168 ff. ®° Above chap. VI, Para‹?tn. 3 b.

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the more it is used by others. Voltaire, who saw every system as an insult to his reason 8 ', praised the lack of a system in Newton' and accused Descartes of cet esprit systématique qui aveugle les plus grands hommes', at the same time saying of Locke that there is none "Esprit plus sage, plus method, un logicien plus exact", as this one, who therefore proved, qu'on pouvait avoir l'esprit géométre sans le secours de la geométrie'. When Voltaire defends Locke's thesis about the possibility of thinking matter in the same context, he means that the good systematic mind must also have different goals in mind than the bad one. The praise for Lo&e that he acted comme un excellent anatomiste is therefore not only to be understood epistemologically, but at the same time ontologically.

However, the examples of the founders or main representatives of Enlightenment positivism themselves are even more instructive. As is well known, Maupertuis' criticism of the systems did not prevent him from writing a "Systeme de la Nature" himself, which also makes it clear what such a system was based on company was based, namely on the belief in the order and law of nature ••. Con Dillac tells us expressly that a (good) system and (law-structured) nature - that is, the epistemological and the ontological - are very closely related, indeed they are two sides of the same coin, who nevertheless wanted to be a strict phenomenalist just as much as Maupertuis or d'Alembert . In his view, the (good) system forms a closed whole that is based on a single principle - and the university for its part is only a system, since the phenomena that take place in it relate to one another as cause and effect and are subject to a supreme law . °. It is true that we will probably never be able to completely reconstruct the world system - but precisely because the interdependence of all phenomena does not allow total explanations as long as even a few of them remain unknown or unexplained ". The aforementioned interdependence or the law-like order of nature is therefore assumed and considered both the cause of our ignorance and the orientation framework of our knowledge. The train of thought in d'A1embert runs similarly,

For Condillac, by the way, one of the best philosophes and definitive

^ Dialogue of Pegasus and the Old Man - OC X, 205; see the satirical Gedi&t 'Les Systeme' in the same volume 167 ff. ^' Brief an L. C. vorn 23. 12. 1768 = OC XLVI, 202 f. ^ Letters phil. XIII = OC XXII, t22 ff. ^° Syst. d. Nat. XXVII = Oeuvres II, i54 f. ^ Dict. of the synon. = Oeuvres III, 5t1 B—512 A. Cf. Knight's analysis, Geom. Spirit, 56 ff., cf. 128. °' Treatise on Systems, di. XII = Oeurres I, t97 B.

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The conqueror of abstract systematics is ". D'Alembert now distinguishes between the healthy esprit systématique" and the pedantisdien "esprit de systeme" ". Assuming the healthy orientation of the systematic endeavor, d'Alembert is prepared to accept the system idea to such an extent that he elevates the possibility of achieving a scientific whole as a criterion of truth. Our knowledge is inadequate, on the one hand because we know too few truths and on the other hand because of défaut d'en&ainement entres les vérités connues' *'. The systernatis, the chaining, is co ipso a necessary part of complete knowledge. For the ontological tendency of the time, which stands behind the epistemological considerations, it is highly significant that the words come from the lips of the nominalist d'Alembert, who considers the knowledge of the foundation of the world to be impossible, the possibility of the systematized whole To this or that extent, ultimately, it rests on the real existing unity of being: "Tous les etres, et par conséquent tous les objets de nos connaissances, ont entr'eux une liaison qui nous êdiappe' " It would be wrong to attribute d'Alembert's striving for systematising to a secret Cartesian component of his thinking, although the idea of systematising as a whole was given credit not least by Descartes, which is not easy despite the radical contrast to the content and method of construction of the Cartesian system as a whole could be forgotten. Nevertheless, the actual reasons for insisting on the systematic construction of a whole despite the rejection of the systems can be found elsewhere, as we have just explained. Diderot, however, is no further closer to the Cartesian ideal of knowledge than d'Alembert, and he therefore makes the possibility of an epistemologically convincing procedure just as dependent on the ontological assumption of a lawfully functioning natural whole: "Si les phénomenes ne sont pas endiainés les uns aux autres, il n'y point de philosophie ... Toute notre science naturelle devient aussi transitoire que les mots' e '. Precisely because epistemology and ontology are supposed to coincide in this perspective, the solidity of the system does not rest on the power of the intellect, but on the structure of being. It is therefore not necessary to grasp them by means of abstractions which, as Condillac says, are "absolument necessaires" but only "pour mettre de 1'ordre dans nos connaissances"; otherwise nature itself directs the steps of empiric knowledge. Systematic thinking and intellectualism therefore have nothing to do with one another—and

•° Dise. Prêl. = Oeuvres I, 288. •• place cit., 202. " Elem. of Phil. IV $ I = Works II, 41.

•* up. cit., IV = Oeuvres II, 28.

•• Interpr. de la Nat. 58 = OC II, 57. •' Treaty of Syst. di. I = Works I, 122 A.

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indeed because of the recourse to a certain conception of the possession of being, which is ultimately supposed to be identical with the inner possession of knowledge itself. Thanks to this way of thinking, even the toughest opponents of intellectualism were able to use the polemically useful system idea at the right moment. Thus Rousseau writes in the preface to the €mile that the novel's partie systématique is nothing other than 'la marche de la nature' be built up with intellectualistis‹:the means when in the matter itself the intellect is subordinate. In this way an identity of system and sa‹:je arises, which aims to support an anti-intellectualist position with ultimate arguments. But not only in The Enlighteners could not do without the system or the idea of the whole, not only in the narrow philosophical but also in the socialpolitical polemics, if they did not want to leave the field to their opponents.Typis‹:h in this respect are Turgots Elaborations that testify to a good feeling for the polemis‹:h substantive sense of the debate about good and bad system Turgot freely1i‹:h rejects systems that are based on arbitrary assumptions, but at the same time‹:h he points to the dangerous consequences that the discrediting of the system idea in general has among the laity. Many condemned any reasoned proposal to change existing grievances as a system that stifled the diversity of nature; the won 'homme 1 systémes' was 'une espéce d'arme', namely in the service of the privileged or conservative rather than the other way around.

Turgot insists on the good system, which is indispensable to every thinking person, but regrets the mixing of both senses of the word, which serve different purposes according to need.

Under these circumstances, it is easy to understand why Diderot's succinct statement: sans ludée de tout, plus de philosophie' '°° could have met with general agreement. One had to hold on to the idea of the whole in order to be able to present one's own knowledge as well-founded and irrefutable. But the whole thing could only be understood and interpreted speculatively (especially since its interpretation was often intended to establish certain values), and that was objectively in contradiction to the declared wish of the Enlightenment thinkers, strictly empirically or with the rejection of anything arbitrary ' hypotheses to proceed. The The fact that the Enlightenment thinkers usually eliminate this contradiction or rather behave as if it did not exist can only be explained if one understands the appeal to empiricism in its polemical sense. It is a weapon against scholastic syllogisticism on the one hand and mathematis intellectualism on the other, that of the radical rehabilitation of sensuality

® Oeuvres, IV, 242. •• Praise of Gournay = Works I, 618 ff. '^ Translator de la Nat. = OC II, 15

•

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stood in the way, no matter how much he might polemicize against traditional theology and metaphysics. The opposite conclusion is now drawn from this: views that are substantively opposed to the two positions just mentioned are viewed eo ipso and a priori as compatible with empiricism or as a commitment to empiricism and are welcomed as soldiers, regardless of whether they are there of whether they actually emerged from an empirical process. The commitment to empiricism is actually a highly symbolized act, a sign of belonging to an ideological party. With this, I do not in any way want to deny the importance of this confession for the development of knowledge, or the honesty of the efforts of many researchers to study the empirisdie world empirisdi — quite the contrary. However, this honesty drew its strength from a basic attitude that could not be empirically given. The empirical-inductive procedure, if it is to be taken seriously, can by no means explain the form and content of the natural science literature of the 18th century. The stage is not dominated by monographs on an empirically limited and completely interpretable problem, but by ambitious and voluminous 'systèmes de la nature', written not only by mediocre compilers, but also by the most important representatives of the new science of nature ”'. Partial questions are almost always dealt with in the context of general considerations about the essence and nature of nature, which are presented with the greatest of ease alongside the praise of the empirical procedure and the rejection of unbridled speculation. La Mettrie sums up the usual attitude when he mocks those who get bogged down in details, only to add the most remarkable words: øpour moi qui ne suis curieux que de la philo sophie ... la nature active sera toujours mon seul point de vue. J'aime à la voir au loin, en grand, comme en general, ct non en particulier ou en petits details, qui quoique necessaires jusqu'å un certain point dans toutes les sciences, communion sont la marque de peu de genie de ceux qui s'y livrent' "'. It is no wonder, then, that La Mettrie's transformism and evolutionism were not the result of scientific observation, but rather the logistic conclusion of the combination of the two assumptions of productive matter and the chain of beings "'; indeed, many of those

'°' See the comments Morneu, Diderot, 34 f. Mornet notes the same contradiction in Diderot himself: on the one hand he appears as “pretre austere de l'observation ct de l'exptrience', on the other hand deno& oil n'est stduit, transports, enirrt que pzr les 'grandes vues', par les 'reves' lyriques ct prophttiques” (49). Mayer also presents the contradiction between explanations and practice for the science of natural science 18th century and mentions a number of doctrinal examples (Illusions de la phil. exptr., esp. 356 ff.). '^

Plant Man III = Works II, 19.

'^ Vartanian, Trembley's Polyp, 274.

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who gave new impulses to the new biology, natural philosophers without special training, who often incurred the wrath of the empiricists of the laboratory. The epistemological concept on which the undertaking of the encyclopedia was based left the tendencies of the empiricism behind, that is, it was based on the metaphysis-colored postulate of total knowledge, so that even Bacon's empiricism, which was considered exemplary, was reinterpreted in the lidite of the speculative ideal of totality. '. Given this sad situation, the contradiction between the condemnation of the systems and their actual use for one's own purposes sometimes had to become so blatant that protests could not be avoided, as the controversy over Buffon's "Histoire Naturelle" shows. For the various “metaphysicists” and “systematists,” it was, in the long run, a provocation to be denounced by a priori and deductionists for precisely these sins. In fact, the attitude of the Enlightenment thinkers is, for example, B. relying on general instances such as nature to interpret individual phenomena is paradoxical in its polemic consistency. In reality, one proceeds deductively, except that the principles of deduction are defined as given empirically , whereupon the whole procedure is called inductive with a clear conscience. It is more a question of the decision, it is based on the

'^

Roger, Life Sciences, 458. '° Die&mann, Concept of Knowledge in the Enc., in: Studien, 247 f., 249, 253 f. I cannot follow Dieckmann when he attributes the encyclopedists' ideal of total knowledge at least largely to the influence of Cartesianism (254). What remains primary is the polemis, the necessity of the idea of the whole. '°° Details in Mornet, Sciences de la nature, 108 ff., especially 121 ff. '°' Metzger, Newton-Stahl-Boerhaave, 89, has described things like the Cartesian ones 'Speculations' on the part of the representatives of Newtonian chemistry were fought in the name of empiricism, but largely with 'conceptions a priori', which in turn could be questioned by a new, more radical appeal to empiricism. — I would like to recall Bn&le's largely forgotten statements on deduction and induction, the respective use of which, in his eyes, determined the entire intellectual character of an epoch (History of Cirilization, 793). While Buckle had the impression that deduction was prevalent in Scotland and Germany as opposed to England and France, this does not prevent him from making some very subtle remarks on the problem in general. At first he states that the deductive method is a continuation of theological thought, but which now appears in merely metaphysical guise (op. eit., 797, 799). For him, metaphysics without an open theory is such constructions as human dilidy nature, etc., and on this basis he subjects, among other things, Hutdieson's work to a solid criticism. His analysis of Leid's polemics against Hume is also very interesting. I actually argue against the possible practical consequences of Humesdian skepticism, confusing the problem of morality with that of truth (op. eit., 832). Hume's scientific credentials are in question

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To invoke empiricism as the highest authority whenever one needs a highest justification authority than to linger patiently with it, if necessary renouncing the idea of the whole. We are dealing here with a speculative empiricism or with a speculative use of empiricism, which is based on the world ansdiaulidien decision to enhance sensuality. The speculative element is often clearly included via a detour into the empiricism itself. By expanding the concept of empiricism, its boundaries become fluid and its capacity expanded at will, although the magic symbol of the south: "empiricism" remains the same externally

“meaningful” combination or interpretation; It is a whole that includes the phenomena in itself and the subjective activity of the researcher in it - that is, also his basic attitude. Thus d'Alembert distinguishes between "observation" and "experience": the former corresponds to the "physique vulgaire", the latter to the "physique expérimentale", which poses the real questions to nature. For him, the 'experience' is the instance that goes beyond 'observation' and at the same time “reflection” stands; While the latter collects the facts and combines them, empiricism verifies the results of the work of reflection "°. Bla véritable maniere de philosopher' encompasses the entire scale from the mental operations and the senses to the practical application of the knowledge of nature "', In this way one can simply forget the (deductive) philosophy rationale' without having to worry about remaining forever with the chaos of the individual, even if the progress of the (inductive) philosophy expérimentale' is slow.' Diderot then made it clear that that with this expansion of the empirical concept - and despite the rejection of rational philosophy - large-scale generalizations (which he called "conjectures") come to mind do not contradict the induction. By making the same the draft of that Gan

he accuses him of using a deductive procedure and in doing so wonderfully analyzes its shortcomings. However, he can only support his own position or scale of values deductively. When he is atta&ing the philosophy of Hume, he holds de duction to be wrong. When he is raising his own philosophy, he holds it to be right" (op. cit., 834). A comment on this is superfluous. It must only be pointed out that in the polemics of the enlighteners against the old theory, exactly the same con The concept of nature usually serves as the basis of the Enlightenment deduction (see paragraph 4 in this chapter). '^ Cohen speaks to Redit of a speculative experimental science', Newton and Franklin, 15. *°• Elem. of Phil. XX = Oeuvres II, 450 ff. "• Interpr. de la Nat. XV OC, II, 18. "' on eit., XVIII = OC II, 19. "' Op. cit., XX-XXVIII = OC II, 19 ff.

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zen, which, according to his conviction, makes natural philosophy possible, he can use other means to achieve this, such as: B. the analogisthe procedure, condemned as misleading "'. Dennodi had to gain popularity the procedure per analogiam, propagated early by s'Gravesande s&on "• and claimed by many, including La Mettrie "'. Because as Lo&e "• and in response to him, Hume said that analogy, as a kind of "probability", serves precisely to transcend the limits of experience - that is, to lead to the idea of the whole. Because one started from experience, one believed eo ipso to remain faithful to experience to the end. However, this impression could arise because experience had at least implicitly acquired a substantive meaning and stood for a certain view of the world and nature. And if the opponents of the radical rehabilitation of sensuality are also based on the Er The fact that they invoked the experience to illustrate the truth and reality of the view they were fighting was not just because they wanted to keep the distance between them, but also because this view had now become strong enough to be able to dictate the nature of the controversy . About the need to expand the concept of experience in Blink

Buffon thinks of a world-wide and knowledge-based idea of ganxen when he speaks of the natural scientist next to the "petites attentions d'un instinct laborieux" and les grandes vues d'un genie ardent qui embrasse tout d'un coup d'œil' requires "'. The speculative-intuitive component of empiricism is directly addressed here and is not accidentally linked to the concept of genius. Because at the dawn of the Enlightenment, under the influence of the enormous rise of natural knowledge and the associated development of an independent culture of natural knowledge, which strives to present itself, it is not least in the circles of the The Royal Society itself conceived the natural scientist as the new epodial figure, as the heroic benefactor of humanity who accomplished the deeds. The concept of genius, which in the Renaissance was used in connection with the person of the writer and the artist, not that of the discoverer or inventor, is now primarily referred to the natural scientist, whose genius way of thinking even included writers and literary critics

"°

op. cit., LIII = OC II, 50; see Interview = OC II, 119. Brunet, The Dutch physicists, 58. "• Plant Man I = Works II, 2. "® Essay, IV, 16 $ 12 = II, 379 ff. Lo&e recognizes the usefulness of the analogis&en

"‘

Express the procedure in the science of natural sciences.

“' Treatÿ5e I, 3, 12; I, 4, 2

pp. 142, 209. Hume himself makes analogies

Proceedings Brau&, see Appendix des Treatise, p. 624. "^

Hist. Natur., 1.Disc., Of the Manner etc. = Works 7 A—B. "• Zilsel, emergence of the concept of genius, esp. 143, Iss f.

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want to inherit a role model for the artist "°. Not only imagination should show the talent of natural knowledge to the new understanding. "' — Mathematicians and Didites even used them in the same way, says d'Alembert '^. All of this shows that the specific and enlightened lack of speculation and empiricism, on which the new idea of the whole was founded, had its special intellectual prerequisites.

with

However, it also shows that the addition, indeed largely replacement, of the intellect by sensory-related faculties in the process of cognition was no longer perceived as an impairment of the rationality of cognition.

Behind this view lies the existential concept of knowledge and the associated anti-intellectualist understanding of rationalism, which we now want to turn to.

3. Rationalism from an anti-intellectualist perspective a) The existential concept of knowledge The development of the existential concept of knowledge runs parallel to the gradual assertion of the assumption that the pure intellect is not the essence of the spirit, let alone of the human being as a whole. Now the intellect was regarded as the bearer of eternal truths, completely independent of the fluctuations of empiricism or of the mind . The primacy of mathematics and logic was based on the inviolability of the intel leku. However, Jesus was degraded in the struggle against Cartesian epistemology, which was dismissed as identical with the S&o1astic syllogistic. The necessary result of this double rejection of intellectualism was therefore a far-reaching displacement of logic by psychology. The speedless or colorless nature of the logical recedes in front of the continuously developing multiplicity of psydiology. The genetic development of the development of faculties and also of the logical categories replaces the establishment of logical tables, which raised claims to the grasping of reality by means of their consistent classification. In contrast to the statics of the intellect, the dynamic plasticity of the other faculties now asserts itself, and

"’

Fabian, natural science expert as an original genius, especially 48 f., 53, 55. "'

Omasreiter, science and literary criticism, 59 ff.

'-’ Disc. Prtl.

Ocuvres I, 237.

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thus the historical perspective gains the upper hand. We have already said that and why the empiricist approach in epistemology had to draw a genetically historical approach just as necessarily as the valorization of matter in evolutionist views of biology, and we also noticed that in the polemic against the priority of the question of being in the sense of traditional metaphysics, the primacy of knowledge or the knowing subject was asserted within the framework of the modern primacy of anthropology . This is expressed in the profound transformation of the concept of metaphysics, which was not already evident in Bacon, but only through the Enlightenment turn to psy ‹:1iis‹:the sense1i‹:hness carried out all along the line. The term metaphysics is now used very often to describe the knowledge of the mental faculties in which the first principles of all knowledge are based. So Condillac suffers between the "ambitious" old metaphysics, which aims to solve all the world's riddles, and the more "different" new one: this "proportionate ses re":her":hes a la faiblesse de l'esprit humain' and leave any magic aside in order to limit it to "les ‹:hoses comme elles sont en effet"'. Only the exact knowledge of the mens‹:1i1i‹ This ability therefore allows deeper insights into the nature of our knowledge, which gains in theoretical strength because, from the perspective of the new approach, our world view is only a function of nature our knowledge can be. In

In this sense, metaphysics as epistemology is now ultimate knowledge. The ultimate things - they are to be found in man's possession, which in turn implies that the new metaphysics might explain the possibility and emergence of the old one. It would be instructive to disparage logic against the background of to pursue the new essence of metaphysics among thinkers who, precisely because of their clear insight into the nature of the scientific method or their personal systematise, were less prepared than others to concern themselves with it to move away from logic altogether. D'Alembert also sees the task of metaphysics in the writing of the histoire de nos pensées and adds that all other possible objects of metaphysical treatment would be enveloped by an obscurité impénétrable. ^. Lobe created the new metaphysics in a similar way to how Newton created the new physics by turning it into what it should have been, namely, la physique expérimentale de 1'ame' "'. If now the goal According to the new metaphysics, the genetic investigation of our ideas is supposed to be a matter of logic, then logic should compare the ideas with one another. D'Alembert knows the dilemma: neither can the ideas '-° Advanc. of Learn. II = Works III, 353. '°• Test the orig. of conn., Introd. = Works I, 3 A. '•• Elements IV $ 1, cf. VI = Works II, 41 f., 126 ff. '•° Disc. Prel. = Works I, 275 f.

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are compared to each other if their origin is unknown, one can examine this origin without using the logical categories. However, he does not want to suppress the vicious circle through the thesis of the priority of accommodation, but rather tends towards the opposite. As he thinks, we build our metaphysics not with the help of scientific logic, but with natural logic, because it is not a logique naturelle et comme d'instinct'. Because this instinctive logic with the acts of Intelleku right has little to do, the privilege of knowledge of the faculties remains inviolable compared to logic; Only after the exploitation of our ideas has become known can the philosophical investigation move on to the proper logic. So logic cannot radically justify or say the very first or the very last word. This is also shown in the Alemberu classification of knowledge, which is not based on logical categories, but primarily on the hierarchy of assets. What d'Alembert calls exposition métaphysique' of the entire field of knowledge is supposed to be a "division générale des nos connaissances suivant nos trois facultés" (näm1i&: memoire, raison, phantasy); and the exposition histori que, which is intended to complement the preceding exposition métaphysique, consists in turn in the facilitation of the successive phases of the history of knowledge, each of which is characterized by the predominance of a faculty should be '••. Systematic and historical considerations are combined on the basis of the structure or hierarchy of assets — and this connection only becomes possible through the repression of accommodation by psychology. The existential concept of knowledge arises within this development or rather he summarizes them. It means the rooting of knowledge in a sensually conditioned, i.e. in constant interaction with the sensual environment and in which it shapes, plastic existence. Two concise formulations that complement each other can outline it. Rousseau explains the primacy of the existential after the repression of the intellect with the following words: Exister pour nous, c'est sentir; notre sensibilité est incontestablement antérieure a notre intelligence ... In some ways ideas are feelings and feelings are ideas. And Vauvenargues establishes the connection between the intensity of existential or sensation and the degree of perfection of knowledge: 'Gelui qui a un grand sens sait beaucoup' "' (both aspects are united in one sentence by Humboldt: What ... is the final result of all combined forces,

'^ Elèm. XIII = Oeuvres II, 240 ff. "® Dise. Prèl. = Works I, 235, 242, 247 f. "" Émile IV = Works IV, 600 und Anm. a. *^° Refl. and Max. Nr. 896 = Works, 488.

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can only be understood again with united forces.' "'). The displacement of the intellectual logic by the historical psychology had, however, to pave the way for a perspectivist conception of truth, which in the end did not raise any concerns because of its moral-philosophical consequences. For anyone who questioned the smooth, healthy immutability of the intellect was not far from doing the same with regard to the eternal validity of reasonable moral commandments. If our worldview is a function of our abilities or our existential situation, this can also be the case with morality. In Leibniz's criticism of Lo‹:ke This idea plays a significant role with '^, while Diderou's "Lcttre sur les Aveugles" then openly expresses the embarrassment that resulted from the extreme relativization of all statements about the world and people by psychology. In this respect, logic and morality shared the same fate, and it was no coincidence that Kant... "Copernican's turn" is, by the way, nothing other than the express adoption of the new definition of the concept of metaphysics "' - its distinction between pure and applied logic (this is "based on the rules of the use of the understanding under the subjective, empirical conditions that apply to us psydiology teaches, is taught') by adding the note that pure morality is related to the applied logic in the same way that pure morality is to the empirically oriented doctrine of virtue. — This brief reminder of the moral-philosophical dimension of the problem is intended to explain in advance the seriousness with which the debate about the new concept of knowledge was conducted on several levels at the same time. The implications of the new way of thinking were felt everywhere because they reshaped all areas in their spirit A discussion of the existential concept of knowledge on the basis of basic concepts of Enlightenment aesthetics is worthwhile in many respects. Aesthetics is one of the areas in which the Enlightenment did significant work - alongside psychology, which inspired the historisdi-empirist approach to epistemology. As part of the Enlightenment, it can be understood in its general features within the framework of detachment from Cartesianism,'^ and in its own way it also carries out the turn from being to knowing as the main object of interest, in that it is no longer the rule of discovery of the work of art, but rather the states of the aesthetically active subject

'°' tlber den Gesdile&uuntersdiied = Works I, 270. '°° New Essays I, &. 2 = Phil. S&r. V, 89 f.

'^ OC I, 329 f. '°'

In this sense, Kant calls his “Art of Na&forsdiung” Edie Metaphysik von der Metaphysik”, see the letter to M. written on May 11, 1781. Herz AA, X, 252. '^ K. d. r. V., B 77 ft. = AA III, 76 ff.

'*° Very general comments on this in Knabe, Sdilüsselterme, l4 ff.

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However, its special certainty is shown by the fact that it coined terms that in turn shaped the era and are effectively stamped on it as a seal. A soldier term that was also perceived by contemporaries as a soldier is that Taste concept. In fact, the studies on it only appeared around 1700 and became increasingly rare after 1800. It does not appear at all in Boileau's main work published in 1674 , but significantly the author uses it in the preface to the edition of 1701 "'. From a purely conceptual point of view, however, it must be noted that basic concepts of the new aesthetics, including the concept of taste, are already being prepared or discussed within classicist theories under various names, such as dêlicatesse, sentiment, etc. "'. Their importance, for example But they were essentially different, and that also had its own consequences. The taste of the (French) 17th century is above all an intelligent taste and thus colored by intellectualist and Cartesian ideas. Boileau coupled his admonition to the artists: aimez doric la raison' "' with the conviction that rien n'est beau que la veritê' "'. Together, both statements show that (aesthetic) truth is what can be clearly and clearly understood by the intellect. In aesthetic terminology, this can be defined as decorum (npinov), which itself is analogy and proportion (ratio), i.e. reducible to the same mathematical structures. Although concepts such as harmony, proportion, etc. continue to live on in the new aesthetics, the decorum that can be intellectually grasped or constructed and is visible in its well-ordered stability on the outside is now replaced by the sensitive, inner one that takes place almost in secret Activity of Gesduna&s; the judgment of the intellect must prevail

'•' Cassirer, Phil. d. Aufkl., 422. '°^ So writes La Harpe in 1786, terms like genius and goût would be in 17. Jahrhundert unbekannt; 'this way of speaking... is from our century', Lycÿe I, Intr.,

S. VII, Sp. B. '°° boy, key terms, 244. '•• Bäumler, Problem of Irrationality, 29 ff.; he follows stone, expropriation of the newer ones

Asth., 86 ff. '•' Sdiümmer, development of the concept of business, 130 ff. Schümmer emphasizes It's true that siÿÎi au‹fi Gracian's Schmadttermin, which refers si‹fi to the art of living, can never be separated from the understanding, even though it is ni‹fit identis‹fi with it (124 f.). Despite the fundamental difference between Descartes and the classicists in the Question of the authority of antiquity (Midda, Variations de lv raison, 188 ff.) as well as the Because of the looser personal relationship of the latter to philosophy in general (Stein, Emergence, 33 ff.), their spiritual affinity with the intellectualistic ideal of Cartesianism, however vague it may have been, has never been lost sight of become (cf. Stein, Genesis, 48 f.). "'

Art port. I, v. 37 = Oeuvres, 161. "°

Oeuvres, 140.

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give way to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure "'. Inexactness or free, plastic movement of line and language now becomes the ideal (this obviously goes hand in hand with the change in the feeling of the beauty of nature "'), because it resists mathematical comprehension and evades it thus the responsibility of the intellect; The je ne sais quoi gradually dies out, precisely because it becomes, as it were, the rule in the expanded form of feeling or Gesdima&s, that is, precisely because the classicist aesthetics, from whose discreet undermining it actually lived, no longer exists "'. The elevation of The pleasure and displeasure of aesthetic basic categories is now paired with that historical consideration of mental phenomena, which strives to derive the highest abilities from the lower levels: otherwise, as I said, it could not proceed historically at all, i.e. without primacy of the intellect.

The Gesdima&s concept completely satisfies the desiderata of the new attitude, especially since it is flexible enough to allow tactically necessary reinterpretations. Its suitability for relating to both the sensual and the spiritual not only suggests a collaboration between the two, but can also be understood as an indication of an entanglement or a transition. Since the Gesdima& makes judgments, i.e. conveys knowledge, it seems to equally embody the rooting of knowledge in sensual existence, indeed to form proof of the possibility of knowledge without the mediation of the intellect or through the mere intensification of existence. The coupling of purely sensual meaning and knowledge is, however, old - sapere and sa pientia belong together etymologically, and at least some Romans were aware of this, because under the current intellectual-historical conditions it acquires a completely new explosiveness. Already in one of the first major presentations of the principles of new aesthetics (t 7t9) Gesduna& in the purely sensual sense and Kunstgesdunack are "7 expressly connected —, with each other. How

Du Bos writes that if food is judged directly and not only on the basis of mathematical insights into its nature, then the assessment of a work of art takes place without any input from the intellect; There is a sixiéme sens at work here, whose organs are in us even though we cannot see them and whose operations precede every deliberation and every raisonnement. This sense, like the others, depends on our "organization", and therefore it changes through now changement physique' "'; c'est le physique qui donne le loi au moral' ”°. The task of the intellect (raison) is to develop

'•• See Klein's good comments, There is no disputing, 144. '•• See above chap. IV, paragraph & n. 3 a. '^^ Köhler, )e don't know what, 50 f. '•' Luck, On the Gesdlidlte des Terminessapientia, esp. 203 f. '•• Ref1. crit., II, sect. 22, p. 341 ff. '•" on. eit., I, sect. 49, S. 514. '°° on. eit.,II,sect. 19, S. 326.

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to rationalize and justify the development of the mental image or feelings "' But even Montesquieu, who takes a much more moderate overall position, emphasizes the absolute priority of "sentiment" in the Gesdima verdict. Gesdima‹:k is not a connaissance de theory', but application prompte et ex quise des régles meme qui 1'on ne connait pas' - or he is what nous ratta&e Ä une diose par le sentiment ' . It is true that the soul does not only know through sentiment, but also through ideas, because there is no such thing as solid intellectual purity, so that it does not have to be felt first through the senses On the physical side the badness was directly achieved, with Montesquieu it comes about through the detour of the feeling of pleasure. The secret source of the badness becomes visible when we discover the causes of the pleasures of our friends; only on the basis of which knowledge is known a refinement of the theory is possible. Montesquieu does not deny the involvement of reason and practice, as his distinction between good nature and good acquis shows. However, the priorities cannot be reversed. Even Voltaire, who draws a much sharper line between gout sensuel and gofit intellectuel and particularly emphasizes the role of practice and education, defines the Ge sdima& as discernement prompt, comme celui de la langue et du palais, et qui prévient comme lui la réflexion' "'. However, Voltaire believes that one's sensual taste can be wrong, and therefore he makes the demand all the more narrowly precisely with regard to its similarity to the intellectual tion nadi conscious training of the latter. Du Bo's position is immediately accepted, only to be watered down or reinterpreted. We shall see the reasons for this in a moment. The repression of the intellect, the traditional bearer of solid truths that are sensibly rooted in plastic historicity , had to prepare for a perspectivist conception of truth. Audi in the area of aesthetics came up with the devaluation of accommodation in favor of psychology in the form of a declaration of war on mathematics. When he first appeared in England, the concept of Gesdima was defined in opposition to mathematics: Gesdimack, as Howard wrote, refers to concrete things; on the contrary, mathematics is applied to all possible objects, regardless of their own characteristics. However, it was not the concern about the authority of mathematics, but rather the danger of relativism, which would ultimately make any systematic art criticism impossible, cried the prompt

"'

on. cit., II, sect. 22, S. 340 f. ’^°

Essay on taste, OC, I (III), 615.

'^ place. cit., 612.

"• loc. cit., 613. '•* DÎCt. phil., Art. Gout = OC XI X, 270.

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Dryden's reaction to the new Gesdima&s concept just set up before '•'. The reasons for the future controversy could be set so early because the logical possible solutions to the problem were counted - and obvious. For obvious reasons, rejection of mathematics and emphasis on taste relativity go together. Du Bos expressed his disdain for mathematics s‹:hon in his famous comparison of sensible and art-related Ge sdima& quoted above; He also doesn't think much of the systematic spirit or Cartesianism . For him there is no point in aesthetics, for example. B. to build systems if the principles are so vague that they cannot be interpreted arbitrarily , but the success of their application can be judged completely differently by everyone. So it must also be, when principles depend on place and time '^. The thesis of the anchoring of the taste in the biostructure is now supplemented by the detailed description of the climate influence on the human mind; Mensdi and Früdite e.g. B. are equally conditioned by the climate.

It is less the climate than the social policy actions in themselves that justify the same attitude in Cartaud de la Villate, who, by the way, offers us, beyond the obligatory condemnation of Descartes or the praise of Locke, a sharp examination of mathematics, which he himself eradicated as superfluous for the advancement of Tedinik "'. The healthy actions in general were mentioned earlier, namely in the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, as reasons for the relativity of the taste (Car Taud is of course a fanatic Follower of the moderns). Perrault differentiates between the "beautés universales et absolutes" and the "particulieres et relati yes", to whom le goust et la mode du siécle or the goust particulier "en spridit". against the claim of ancient models to eternal validity , that is, it serves a limited polemical purpose and is not a consistent relativism.

For the same Perrault speaks elsewhere about the gradual perfection of Gesdima over the centuries, which is a repetition

'•• On Howard's approach to theory and Dryden's reaction, see the good explanation by Klein, There is no disputing, 9 ff. '^' Réfl. crit., II, sect. 23, pp. 360 f., 366 (cf. in general Lombard, Du Bos, 194 ff.). '^ place. cit., 366 f. '*° on. cit., II, sect. 2 p.m. 18, s. 250, 310ff. *•• Based on a formulation by Stein, Genesis of the newer appendix, 235 f. '^' Hist essays. and phil. on the taste, 258 ff., 274, 277 ff.; Critical Thoughts on Mathematics, 186 ff. Parallel II, 48 ff.

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Some of the mistakes of ancient writers in the modern era are impossible. Here, however, the existence of an objective aesthetic norm is implied. This, as well as the above-mentioned assumption of beautés universals, show that the expansion of the historical sense through the Querelle was not strong enough that we are able to trace the beginning of modern historicism back to them although it had a preparatory effect in the sense of the same "'. The consistent relativism or perspectivism first requires the understanding of the dependence of the spiritual on the sense of meaning or the development of matter on all levels, so that this also allows social sense to become a determining, i.e. relativizing, factor of the spirit becomes "'. But this goes hand in hand with the thesis (not just social history, but anthropology) of the rooting of the spirit in the biostructure. This whole complex is reflected very badly in the fact that the historian and sociologist Montesquieu makes anthropological epistemology the considerations that go beyond phenomenalism in the sense of Maupertuis or d'Alembert to the perspectivist conception of truth according to the inner logic of existential knowledge bring the concept to its conclusion. It is not by chance that they are found in the well-known Essai sur le gout, in which we read the following: “Notre maniere d'etre est entiérement arbitraire; Nous pouvions avoir été faits comme nous somme, ou autrement.

Mais, si nous avions été faits autrement, nous aurions senti autrement ... toutes les loix établies sur ce que notre madiine est d'une certaine fa9on, seraient dif férentes, si notre madiine n'était pas de this fa9on' "'. Because of its transfer to the genre level, perspectivism becomes so radical in its entirety that even the possibility of a consensus on geometrical questions within the framework of the existing biostructure loses much of its attractiveness: because the illusion verdadit has clearly become too strong and too general.

Looking back over the course of the century, La Harpe could remark on Redit that terms like goftt were expressions abstraites en elles-memes, vagues et indéfinies dans leur acception, susceptibles d'équivoques et d'arbitraire' "'. Diderot noted similarities "' . The substantive ambiguity of the terms was of course not primarily due to the fact that they or synonymous terms had been used by the classicists in aesthetics in other respects of objectivity or relativity

'^

on eit., III, 146.

*^' About this effect see Naves, Goss de Voltaire, 108 ff. *^^ For more details see chapter. VI, Section 4. Cf. o. chap. II, Section 3 b. '•° OC I (III), 613 f. '°’

Lycée I, Intr. V. Sp. B.

'° ® Encycl., Art. Common Sense — OC, XIII, 489 (there is nothing more felative...'). '•• This is how Boileau's bon sens dews, despite all the exaltation of reason times as the highest authority, e.g. Art Pott., I, vv. 28, 45 = Oeuvres, 161 f.

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activity of the Gesdima&. Since the relativity thesis was based directly (Du Bos) or indirectly (pleasure or unpleasure theory) on the assumption of a dependence of the body on the biostructure, its refutation had to mean an emphasis on the intellectual factor in the objective formation of the body, where to (actually surviving) motifs of classicist aesthetics. Formey explicitly leads the Ȏquivoques' with regard to the Gesduna&sconcept back to the existence of two basic directions&, one of which wanted to limit the Gesdima& to knowledge, the other to feeling. How he wants to bridge the gap and end the quarrel characterizes very well the new situation, which requires the rehabilitation of sensuality in epistemology and aesthetics.

Even those who,

,

This is about the objectivity of the Gesdima&s through the Hin

namely, make an effort on its intellectual component, can now simply not pass by the sensually given prerequisites of the Gesd ma&sbildung. »Gout supreme' is therefore for Formey »le plus haut degré de connaissance joint au sentiment le plus exquis' ”'. In its elementary form, taste is based on the feeling, but this is only "perception confuse" "', it must be refined with the help of lois antérieurs et immuables, celles de la raison et du bons sens' ”•. In the roundabout way of distinguishing between the raw and the finest taste, the dictamen intérieur de la

raison "authoritative"'. And for Batteux the feeling only had to fulfill a preparatory task and therefore had to take a back seat as soon as the maturity to receive idées claires was reached "'. However, Batteux wants the objectivity of the sense to come from the agreement with nature win "', but this could be interpreted in very different ways, and therefore Batteux does not find it in any way incompatible with the thesis that objective measure is ultimately only achieved through the logical subordination of feeling to reason or through the processing of the former by the the latter achieved en '^.

The objectivity of taste had to go hand in hand with an appreciation of the freedoms of genius, which in Batteux takes place through the formulation that genius is not a force aveugle', but rather a raison active qui s'exerce avec art sur un objet' "'. We understand this endless turn of phrase when we get embarrassed-

"’

Analyse, 176. "'

"°

on. cit., 190. on. eit., 180.

'"

on. cit, 190.

'" op.cit, t86. "• Cours, I, 53 f. "° "'

"^

on. cit., I, 80. on. cit., I, 47, 48. on. cit., I, 10 f.

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Expect that the concept of genius, which was simply used by the defenders of modernity as a tangible example of the constant overcoming of ancient rigid patterns, now threatened to break the binding nature of all rules. In this respect, it had a similar effect The concept of taste, because it also represented a version of the existential concept of knowledge, articulated in the language of the new aesthetics, which shattered the symmetries and hierarchies. Genius is now doubly inoperable, at least from the side of intellectualist classifications and evaluations: it draws its power from ability such as the imagination '*•, which in the new association psychology processes and combines the material acquired through the senses, and beyond that, since it has little value in its pulsating individuality and creativity with the general commitment of the intellect to all people has to do, then it must obviously arise from the biostructure of the brilliant human being. Both aspects come from you

Bos zur Spradie, who, on the one hand, regards the imagination as the faculty par excellence of genius, while, on the other hand, reduces genius to 'un arrangement heureux des organes du cerveau' and the quality du sang'". Gerard does not go so far on this latter point, However, it also remains the main concern of his work, in the sense of (Hume's) association psychology, to allow the greatest intellectual achievements to arise from elementary factors or factors dependent on the senses. He wants to explain genius on the basis of the simple qualities of the human mind'"', and accordingly, he becomes 'the first hint of every invention' in 'sense and memory' '^. The main activity of the ingenious mind, however, takes place on the higher level of the imagination. Genius means invention, and this comes about through imagination, the power of which in turn rests on association. Imagination, not reason, discovers new ideas, and is even in the demonstrations of the latter

»often the conviction intuitive« '•*. Gerard in no way wants to rub away reason, but every time he discusses its usefulness, he at the same time points out its limitations and dependencies . Let your patience be yours

"° Perrault, Parallel, II, 65; III, 157. '°° About the appreciation of the imagination in connection with development of the new concept of genius. Stein, emergence of the newer fYsth., 136 ff. ' ®' Réfl. Crit. II,sect. 2 = S. 14. '"'

Essay on Genius, 4. '^

on. eit., 96.

'“

On. Cit., 8. '"°

^

op. it., 29 ff. on. eit., 41 ff.

'"'

on. cit., 34. ’*^ ’**

on. cit., 281. on. cit., z. B. 72, 283.

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understanding of the relationship between (ingenious) imagination and reason in the context of his remarks on the Gesduna‹:k best understand: jud gement is necessary for its perfection, but it is never able to do it without the corresponding acuteness of the internal senses' Nevertheless, Gerard's effort is obvious not to let the activity of imagination appear as an indisputable quantity. He does, however - with all the emphasis on the possibility of a cooperation between imagination and reason, at least in certain cases and phases of the creative process - not in Batteux's intellectualistic way, but through the introduction of an authority that can draw up guidelines and have a corrective effect, while or even though it is supposed to be quite different from the intellect. This authority is in Gerard as in many other aestheticians of the century the Gesdima& himself, who must critically accompany the activity of the (artistic, if not scientific) genius"'. Voltaire takes a similar position. Since he believes in the connection of truly good Gesdima‹:ks "', he wants to make him subservient to the work of genius, which, left alone, can very often err "'. Outwardly this is the solution to a problem, but fundamentally it is the formulation of a dilemma. One did not want to succumb to intellectualism again, and one could not allow the plasticity of the existential concept of knowledge to degenerate into arbitrariness. Diderot's contradictory views of genius reflect the sadilage. For him, genius is now a gloriously creative enthusiasm, now a pathological condition, now sober and cool observation, far removed from sensibility or sentimentality in any form Enlightenment currents in their contradictory nature.

It was certainly more unfortunate to correct genius through taste than to establish the infallibility or objectivity of the guess itself. If Formey and Batteux were able to access the intellect directly, the empiri stisdi oriented people - and they made up the vast majority were unable to find this way out. From their side, only non-intellectual faculties - more or less, good or good - were allowed to replace what the intellect had previously represented, namely universality and connection; otherwise only consistent relativism would remain. The concept of sense became very popular because it was suitable for this purpose, not just a bridge between sense and meaning

'•°

on. eit., 400. *' t On the general tendency to supplement or correct genius through Gesdima& cf. Naves, Gout de Voltaire, 399 ff. '•- Essay on Genius, 392 ff. '°^ Dict. Phil., Ari. God = OC XIX, 273. op. '•• one., Art. Genius = OC XIX, 246. '• S. Dieckmann's fine analysis, Diderot's Concept of Genius, in: Studien, 18 ff., 22 f.

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not to beat intellectuals, but to compensate for empiricist relativism, which itself was based on empirical principles and thus could be regarded as solid proof of their ability to overcome relativism on their own". In this respect Hume's argument is instructive. For him, the search for the only true beauty etc. is in vain, especially since judgments about it depend on the disposition of the organs. So if the objectivity of the Gesdima& is not anchored in the nature of things, then it must be found in the subject. Given the assumed "great resemblance between mental and bodily taste" '^, which is reminiscent of Du Bos, but on the other hand the intellect of this subject cannot vouch for the objectivity of the Gesdima&judgments. As possible as the seat of the universal Gesdima&sprinciples, therefore, only the common sentiments of human nature are left. Precisely what is supposed to justify the universality of the Gesdimak has to explain its differences from time to time, even from person to person, which according to Hume himself are striking Universality is namely then visible and effective when the organs of internal sensation' function perfectly. Because this is not always the case, the differences "' arise, whereby either the feeling of pleasure that accompanies the aesthetic gesture is absent or it is takes a wrong direction. Human nature is, after all, such that it can experience pleasure under certain conditions; The universality or binding nature of the measure should be based on this. ancestor thinks d'Alembert, who bases his thesis, le gout n'est pas arbitraire', not on the supremacy of reason (on the contrary, he emphasizes that in the analysis of the law, intellectual shrewdness is not enough, none of the sens qui com posent le gout' itself may be missing), but by wanting to substantiate the assumption that the source of pleasure and displeasure is also inside us, i.e. in us and with regard to the feelings of pleasure or displeasure are also left find the régles génerales et invariables de gout' •'. The logical Achilles heel of this position lets us discover who. Because of the nature of human nature, I can indeed expect that I will feel pleasure or displeasure, but that does not say what will trigger such feelings, i.e. when to talk with pleasure and when with displeasure have. Hume's distinction between perfect and defective functioning of the organs in question is of no help, at least as long as it remains undetermined which organs functioned perfectly at which time and in which people.

'°° Cf. Klein, There is no disputing, 146. '** On the Standard of Taste, Essays I, 269. '° ® loc. cit., 273. '°° place. cit., 280. •°° place. cit., 278, 272. °•' Reflections on the use and abuse of Philosophy in matters of taste, Oeuvres III, 416 f.

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However, one cannot answer this question without at least implicitly making a judgment about the benevolence not just of human nature, but of the objects of aesthetic enjoyment, and therefore also of demeanor in general and in itself. Because of the necessity of the Da), the necessary character of the Das is not specified - and that is what matters, since the concept cannot be thought of without reference to a specific object .

Burke openly acknowledged this weakness of the empiricist justification of Gesdima's objectivity , albeit rather casually and poorly. Although he does not conceive of the Gesdima& in a one-sided way, but rather sees in it the collaboration between perception, imagination and rational faculty, he does not want to base his commitment in this latter, but in the common ground work of all these in the human mind: »for as the senses are the great originals of our ideas, and consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not uncertain and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of Taste is common to all' '°'.

Nevertheless: when it is said, Taste cannot be disputed, it can only mean that no one can strictly answer what pleasure or pain some particular man may be find from the Taste of some particular thing. This, indeed, cannot be disputed; but we may dispute ... concerning the things whidl are naturally pleasing or disagreable to the sense' '°'. Not everyone was willing to make any concessions, as the large amount of work required to prove the objectiveness of the subject was a sure sign of simmering unease. Additional criteria were introduced, but the logistical structure of the problem did not allow a final solution. Despite the importance of his contributions to individual questions of aesthetics, Home has not made any fundamental progress either. Since he ultimately considers all knowledge to be sensory knowledge, he must, within the framework of the genetic approach of empiricism, describe the transition from physical to pmore refined pleasure as a transition sweet and easy. Relativism in the form of the irremediability of genius and the unrestrained activity of the imagination should be repelled by the good taste "' (for the promotion of which, by the way, study and practice or education and reflection '•' are necessary: this is primarily emphasized, when an objectifying or rectifying function is assigned to the visual image) and the objectivity of the visual image should in turn be proven with regard to the nature of the human condition or based on the pleasure principle "'. The further criteri

°°° Inquiry, 15. °°°

on. cit., 6. •°• Elements, I, 1. °°• on. cit., I, 5. °°°

op. cit., I, 13 Anm.; I, 27. '°*

•°®

Op. cit., 1, 6 Anm.; III, 274. up. cit., I, l4 f.

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the general validity and binding nature of taste judgments, namely the consensus gentium or the standards set by society, is just as unsuitable as the recourse to sensually rooted human nature for bridging the gap between Dafi and What. In both cases it is actually an attempt to oppose the very thing from which relativism arose against relativism. By connecting taste and moral sense, which is meant structurally and functionally, since taste, like moral sense, is intended to keep blind passions in check, Home wants to support the objectivity of taste with the ultimate in worldly clear arguments. This question is seen as an aspect of the general problem of value; objectivity of taste and objectivity of values stand or fall together. Arbitrariness in matters of taste would also mean arbitrariness with regard to good and evil - but that is out of the question. The connection between taste and moral sense is actually obvious, since taste also has at least an indirect influence on values or on Things to which a special value is attached (beauty, for example) must be related. Studying the existential concept of knowledge in the form that it takes within the new aesthetics is also worthwhile because Here the transition from recognition to appreciation or the intertwining of the two takes place almost automatically. At the same time, in the search for a final justification of taste, which is objective from an aesthetic and moral point of view, a third dimension, namely the ontological one, also becomes visible, so that cognition, values and being (first as the being of the recognizing and developing subject, but which structurally belongs together with being as a whole of the world). In fact, despite all the polemics against the priority of the question of being in the sense of the old metaphysics "°, only an explicit or implicit new oncology could provide that firm basis which was missing after the elimination of the intellect. The existential concept of knowledge could only claim objectivity for itself if if its structure or the nature of the subject carrying it were analogous to that of being (in the new sense), and it could (as moral sense) only set up morally binding guidelines if these were its ontological basis, which it contributed to should condense or embody its specific act of knowledge, originally contained a normative component. In traditional metaphysics, the justification of cognitive objectivity through final arguments often took the form of the thesis of the direct origin of the human spirit from the divine, whereby the human spirit (functioning correctly, "according to its nature," etc.). '•• on. eit., III, 271 f., 269. "’

on. eit., I, 6. °"

°'°

on. cit., I, 10.

on. cit., III, 261 f.

-'° Cf. our comments at the beginning of Section 4 of this chapter.

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was equally condemned to correctly grasp being (prestabilized harmony between the subject and object of knowledge or knowledge as a tautology). The formal structure of the justification remains the same for important representatives of the Enlightenment, but the content is fundamentally different. For now it is not one spirit that is brought into contact with another, purer and higher one, but rather an all-round, sensually rooted existence with the new idea of the whole or with nature. An early and authoritative example of this constellation of thought can be found in Shaftesbury. The rejection of dualism on an anthropological and cosmological level or the exclusion of evil from the world gives him the opportunity to find the correct or natural orientation in knowledge and morality through an activity, in which not only the intellect, but the entire human existence takes part, which by definition carries the necessary driving forces within itself. (The same issue could of course also occur with pessimistism, which is what we saw "•.) The taste in terms of aesthetics and morals does not arise from one thing intellectual act that aims primarily at the logical evidentiary value of its respective judgment, but rather from a well-tempered existential elevation or intensity (enthusiasm in the good sense, to use Shaftesbury's vocabulary),

in which sense and understanding, desire (desire and good are desired) and devotion, conscious and unconscious flow into one another and produce the ultimate in true happiness and, at the same time, spiritual clarity. Whoever is active in this sense is doing so as a whole human being; Without trained sense organs, taste can no more be acquired than without the mind - and without the spontaneous desire for good and evil just as little as without their meaningful processing. Shaftesbury knows and emphasizes how laborious it is to cultivate what is innate or to achieve perfect taste, but at the same time he never forgives the fact that the taste is only the perfection of the natural eye, the most faithful observance imaginable

of nature: • J•stness of Taste ... is required in one who pretends to follow Nature' "'. Shaftesbury's statement: »'tis not merely what we call Principle, but a Taste which governs men' "' is therefore not to be understood as a resigned statement of the irredeemable arbitrariness of mankind, but rather as a nadidrü&li': ever preference for a cognitive and moral principle whose higher objectivity consists in the fact that it mobilizes all the disadvantages of mankind's existence or is based on all of them and thus allows nature, ie being, to experience much greater honesty than intellectually grasped principles do, which are inherent in only one faculty and possibly suppress the others. The ob"• S. and Chap. VI, Abscian. 3 b, where also the connection between Shaftesbury's oncology and moral philosophy is dealt with in more detail. °'^ Characteristics, II, 401; III, 164 f., 186. •'• •"

on. eit., I, 355. on eit., III, 177.

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The objectivity of the former thus lies in its peculiarity, not only to comprehend or to follow nature, but to actually be nature. By using all his abilities in a moralizing or aesthetic purpose, the human being sets in motion what is beautiful and gentle in him. What appears at a higher level as moral or aesthetic knowledge or action is in fact the quintessence of deeper existential dimensions. Such cognition is an outflow of ('true') existence and not an abstractly grasped insight that ignores the needs of the latter or even contradicts them. She is man himself in his all-round rootedness in nature. We now understand why, for example, Rousseau, the apostle of nature, whom bon sens' referred to as pl'instrument le plus universel de 1'homme' "'. It is sufficient that the human being is healthy, that is, unspoiled in its naturalness, in order to to have good moral and aesthetic skills.

b) The entanglement of thinking and willing or reason and feeling and the content determination of reason Insight into the ontological background of the existential concept of knowledge will enable us to grasp the anti-intellectualist conception of rationalism in its entire breadth, namely in its connection to certain substantive positions. However , after rejecting the primacy of the question of being in the sense of traditional metaphysics, this bond often comes about indirectly. However, even if we do not focus on the investigation of the concept of nature, but of the concept of reason, we will have to conclude that both its logical structure and its normative claim are incomprehensible, even unthinkable, without the ontological background mentioned. Now this investigation should not be satisfied with results that apply to the concept of reason at all times: it is vague in content, it is sometimes subjective (capacity or activity of the soul) sometimes objective (inner law of the world order) Taken in the sense that it relates both to correct cognition and to moral behavior, it denotes the objectively binding in contrast to subjective arbitrariness, etc., etc. All of this is so self-evident in relation to the entire intellectual structure that it doesn't need anything further helps or that its proof is unnecessary. If we wanted to limit ourselves exclusively to spradilidi-formal criteria, then even the elementary distinction between

"^ fimile III = Oeuvres IV, 445. ^'" I am afraid that most of the meanings of the concept of reason given by Dieckmann (Reflections on the concept of raison, in: Studien, 314) are unspecific in the sense that they can be found in almost all periods of intellectual history.

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sdiwer's intellectualist and anti-intellectualist position. For just as opponents of Descartes in the century used terms such as bon sens, sens commun, discernement, sagacitÿ etc. very often synonymously with the raison "', so Descartes himself calls the raison bon sens - in it ’"

following his time, which, by the way (although not the only one), used to mix raison normative and raison raisonnante ^'. With Descartes as well as with the Platonists of Cambridge, for example. For example, the coupling of the concept of reason with things such as sense or feeling was an indication of an existential intensity, which at that time was still primarily, if not inextricable, with the intensity or the feeling of madness of the person who was freed from authority at least in his self-understanding, and often intuitively operating intellectuals. In contrast, the intensity of existential knowledge, as we have developed it, puts under its spell a diverse existence, the essence of which no longer consists in the intellect, but is rooted in the senses, indeed in the biostructure. Therefore, we may only take note of formal-spradilic agreements in statements about rational knowledge and rational moral behavior with great caution. Rather, when considering the question of the fate of reason, we should begin with the ontological upgrading of matter or that rehabilitation of sensibility, which is noticeable in epistemology as an empiricist or sensualist current. We have to follow the process of the fundamental detachment of reason from the intellect.

At the end of the Enlightenment, a profound change took place in the concept of reason, which corresponded to the replacement of the concept of substance in traditional metaphysics by the concept of function. In short: reason gradually ceases to be a component (ÿópvov in the Platonic-Aristotelian sense) of the soul and becomes a stage of development of a spirit that gradually emerges according to the genetic approach to the empiricist epistemology; It therefore transforms it from an originally existing entity into an activity that, in turn, requires certain preconditions in order to be able to develop fully or successfully, that is, it remains dependent on the cooperation of other assets. This dramatic turn in the determination of the essence of reason '°-' therefore depends on the determination of its cognitive capacity.

"-° Boy, Key Terms, 414. °°' Disc., I = AT VI, 2. '°° Michÿa, Variations of reason, 183, 193. '-°* Ch. III, paragraphs 2 and 3. ”^ The revolutionary character of this turn of phrase becomes apparent precisely through a comparison

with Aristotle, who, with his epistemological empiricism, saw reason penetrating man from outside and ultimately saw it as an outflow of the divine intellect (see chap. I, note 11 and chap. II note 56). Plato voiis is characterized by the separation from everything sensual - even in contrast to the 6vóvovu — from (Chapter I, note 12).

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ity and function together through budding empiricism; however Reason, in the sense of the self-sufficient intellect or one equipped with innate ideas, continued to have followers - albeit a few - in the 18th century. The dissolution of the intellect now entails the dissolution of the entire old hierarchy of wealth. Even more: because As the boundaries between abilities become blurred, the dividing line between soul and body also becomes mixed; in the traditional view, the intellect was, so to speak, the stronghold of the soul, and therefore it had to perish after its collapse. The extent of the change is not revealed only from the general devaluation of the concept of the soul, but also from the terminology and language of the non- materialistic psydiological literature in general. The interweaving of mental and physical aspects or the consideration of the former from the side of the latter is shown here by the increasing transfer of terms how sensation or sensibility on mental phenomena or their parallel use for elementary physical and complicated mental phenomena "'. The same tendency towards unification is expressed in the simultaneous use of the concept of pleasure in relation to several areas or abilities (plaisirs des sens, de l'esprit, du cmur), which was not new, but was significantly reaccentuated. Among these Under certain circumstances the antithesis of reason and passion had to become quite uncertain. This general development is characterized by the logic and structure of the new concept of rationalism. The connection will become clearer if we illustrate it using the example of the self-contained position of a single thinker instead of getting lost in the overwhelming abundance of often stereotypical Enlightenment statements against the intellect and about reason. For our purposes, however, we could not wish for a more representative and influential thinker than Locke , who proves to be the initiator and representative of a mainstream Enlightenment movement on this critical point. (Cartesian) intellectualism is struck at its core when Locke puts forward the counter-thesis that thinking does not create essence

of the soul, but only one of its operations from "'. This opens the way to the discovery of inner sensuality and the unconscious (cf. the considerations about the activity of the soul in sleep, which Lo&e makes in this context). The intellect is degraded by placing it next to other components or life forms of the soul; it is rooted in the same unknowable being that also has its own opponents in the soul, ie the

•'• On this transformation of the concept of reason, see the excellent essay by Voitle, Reason of the english Enlightenment, insb. 1749, 1751, 1763. ••^ S&ommodau, Der franz. psycliol. Wortsdiatz, 31 ff., 116 ff. ••' °•® "^

op. it., 63 ff. on. eit., 99. Essay, II, 1, § 10 ( = I, 128 ff.).

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passions, arise. There is therefore a deeper dimension in which an intertwining of the intellect with the inner, and perhaps also with the biological, sensibility takes place. This assumption makes it understandable the crucial role that Lo‹ke assigns to the concept of desire (= uneasiness) in his theory of action. In contrast to later Enlightenment ideas, the concept of will is narrowly defined here or is clearly distinguished from desire, but the overall result is more or less the same. Here the will is the executive organ of the spirit, but the determination of the will by the spirit is perceived as an "unsatisfactory" solution, although generally correct; The real question is what drives the mind and will to behave one way or another. The answer to this is the reference to the desire or inner restlessness that sets the mind and will in motion. Not the ideas of good and evil nor the promised reward of virtue in heaven, but a need that determines the action (this is the spring of action), the satisfaction of which represents the first step to happiness. Deeper than spirit and will in Lo's narrow sense, there is a driving force, which, however, is connected to the latter as the executing forces.

Loée's distinction between desire and volition was actually only one between unconscious instinctual and consciously controlled wanting, where si‹fi the former proved stronger. Given the subordinate function of mind and will in Lo's narrow sense compared to desire, the entire psychological sensibility could be subsumed under an expanded concept of willing, since all of its components or all passions are characterized by the fact that they through which a desire or goal is set in motion and kept in motion (LoAes desire). In other words, after rejecting intellectualism, the intertwining of thinking and willing was on the agenda. It was not without reason that Descartes had ruled out that these two were missing on the human-filial level, even though he had accepted them on the divine level in the fight against God's schiolastic connection to reason."'. Sdion Spinoza made it unmistakably clear that the interweaving of res extensa and res cogitans in a metaphysical context had to be accompanied by the corresponding interweaving of the res cogitans with the psychic res extensa or sensuality. His formulation in this regard: »Voluntas et intellectus unum et idem sunt« ^' was a bit too succinct and provocative to be adopted early or openly, but it ni‹fit missed its secret effect, especially, na‹:adern its content au‹:h could be seen as a consequence of Lo‹ke's theses, what the embarrassing:the direct back-

**°

Op. eit., II, 21, $$ 29-40 (= I, 33o ff.). '°' S. o. Kap. III, Abs‹:hn. 2.

-°"-' Ethics II, Prop. 49, Coroll. - Opera, II, 130.

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resorted to Spinoza. Locke's influence in this sense can be seen in Voltaire. The representatives of the thesis of the direct control of the will by the intellect, we read in him, 'supposent que l'esprit agit physiquement sur la volonté', as if each of these two quantities were 'un petit etre réel'. In reality, however, valid terms such as will, thinking, etc. are des idées abstraites, which are used conventionally, that is, for the sake of understanding. L'entendement et la volonté n'existent donc pas réellement comme des etres différents etc.' In this view, Voltaire even sees a guarantee for freedom, since it is not based in the intellect, but rather in the ability to will and to act. Such a view was of course only possible on the basis of Voltaire's fundamental rejection of the Cartesian separation of res cogitans and res extensa, and therefore it is not strange if we find it again in a drift , which is dedicated to direct polemics against Descartes, namely in Condillac's Traité des Animaux. For Condillac, "Penser" is a multidimensional unit that encapsulates the modifications of 1'ame' in sidi. Understanding (entendement) and willing are only the two most important modifications of the soul, which have "une origine commune" and, in their separation from one another, can only be deux termes abstraits instinctive desire, cannot be denied; if willing and understanding or the ability to know are essentially related in the narrower sense, then the animal must also be recognized as having (potential) cognitive ability, and this only because it instinctively wants Not that instinct and knowledge coincide across the board, but they are closely related, especially since without knowledge (comparison and judgment) the satisfaction of desires is prob1ematis‹:h or accidental.

Knowledge is therefore rooted in instinct, as Condillac clearly says: "Instinct is nothing, or it is a beginning of knowledge“ "'.

Nothing could have symbolized the inexorable tendency to intertwine thinking and willing as a result of the dethroning of the intellect and the rehabilitation of sensuality, as its emergence in a treatise on the nature of animals, ie about the Sinn1i‹:h Biologis‹:je in the full splendor of its nakedness and vitality. Because the core of this conception consists precisely in the reference to the rooting of knowledge or the ability to know in the deeper southern elds of living existence. In other words, the intertwining of thinking and willing implies, even if this remains unconscious and unrecognized, a drastic incorporation of the existential into cognition. But the demands of a reason that was thinking and willing in one could only be fulfilled through interweaving

'^ Treatise of Metaph., di. VII OC 220, 217. II, 10 = Works I, 377 B—378 A; diese Thesis is: hou im Traité des Sensations klar impliziert, I, 7 $ 2 = Works I, 239 B. °°^ Treatise on Animals. II, 5 = Works I, 362 B.

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be underpinned by being and ought ^' - at least as long as and insofar as it is assumed that human existence, which is directly involved in the activity of thinking, is not worthy of the name if it does not contain certain norms either originally in itself or at least for the purpose sets the highest goal. This is the essence of Enlightenment rationalism, which therefore does not advocate cognition through pure thinking without consideration of the consequences of this cognition for values and morals, but rather represents a commitment to a certain scale of values. Nobody can actually get out of this Sidit

He can be a 'true' rationalist or 'truly' reasonable if he does not commit to the questionable values, regardless of how he acts as a thinker. In the eyes of the Enlightenment, Hödiste Ratio was following nature - and precisely this following, in view of the new definition of the idea of the whole, was based on the rehabilitation of sensibility rather than with domination of pure intellect was considered incompatible. Knowledge or reason is therefore in the service of a certain (assumed) scale of values, an ideal that is beyond any doubt or a goal that can be achieved at any price - which, to put it more clearly, means: it is in the service of a basic attitude, a ultra rational decision. Knowledge or reason contains not only the object, but also and above all the subject of knowledge, but not only in the sense of Kantian epistemology, namely as a carrier of forms of perception and categories, but in a decidedly more radical sense: the subject is included in knowledge along with its entire existential power and as a source of an irresistible will. Knowledge is accordingly a conflation of object and subject, which occurs under the sign of the former's submission to the latter, in the form of the interpretation of the former in the light of the basic attitude of the latter. With the devaluation of the intellect, knowledge and truth only come about with the significant contribution of the other faculties or the mind, in which the moral need and the practical want in the sense of the existential concept of knowledge should have their seat. The knowledge of the truth is therefore not ultimately considered a task of the will and the corresponding faculties, which are also intended to penetrate the understanding and subject it to reason: but reason is

°^^ I have often pointed out the distance between the objective function and the subjective self-understanding of a thought. It is clear from this that the existential concept of knowledge or the confusion between thinking and willing as a necessary counterpart to that of being and ought is not only found among opponents of intellectualism. It is objectively possible, even if someone is theorizing level gives absolute priority to thinking. We're done with the case then

do where someone, for polemic reasons, calls his will "thinking" and opposes it the blunt intention of the opponent must be ridiculed. Like I repeat Similar statements must not be taken at their face value.

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more related to the "heart" - in the specific Enlightenment sense - than to the pure intellect. Knowledge of truth and insight into nature Morality goes hand in hand, there is no distinction between what is and what should be. Knowledge therefore forms at the same time a moral decision, it has a strong existential dimension and the whole human being participates in it. The will of the thinker and the content of thinking, as well as ought and being, flow together into one. spirit and bound to certain values, but rather to existence and bound to certain values, which differ from the first-mentioned precisely in that they are no longer values of the spirit or of the intellect, and are therefore both against the uncontrolled mastery of God over nature also turn against the fundamental undervaluing of human sensuality under the spirit (in the sense of diristlid asceticism). The contentbased coloring of the concept of rationalism can therefore be seen in the often-made comparison between faith and reason, although at first glance this only seems to concern the opposition between autonomy and authority. Given this sad situation, any discussion of the concept of rationality or rationalism in texts of the Enlightenment is very probably absurd if one does not ask each time about the respective counterconcept. From the multitude of counter-concepts or from the multitude of basic attitudes that are formally conceived by the concept of reason, its content-related vagueness arises - which, paradoxically, is precisely due to the general, but always differently intended, effort to tie it to certain contents. There is therefore no contradiction between the thesis that the concept of reason in general is vague in content and the thesis that each of its representatives strives to be tied to certain contents; One only has to clearly distinguish the levels of intellectual reality of a time and our understanding of it from one another in the form of general judgments about its basic concepts. In addition, the second thesis mentioned above relates to the self-image or the subjective claim of the actors of mental health, who believe that the commitment to reason is based on the assumption of a content

°°' I have attempted a concrete clarification of this complex against the background of the rehabilitation of sensuality and other typical enlightening motives using the example of the young Hegel, see The emergence of dialectics, 109 ff. Some formulations are taken from this analysis. Diderot admitted the described entanglement of thinking and wanting or being and ought among the normativist Enlighteners when he wrote to Vialet: La passion, mon ami, dans les hommes comme vous et moi, parle souvent le langage de la raison' (late April—early May 1766, Corresp., VI, 179). ^^ This comparison in a typically Enlightenment form dominates the article Raison in the encyclopedia written by Di derot (= OC, XVII, 4 f.). about the same in Lo&e's nädisten paragraph.

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position (observance of nature, for example) directly or indirectly, while the first is based on the determination that the instance (nature, for example) in relation to which a final clarification of the content of the concept of reason is to take place itself requires interpretation. Hence the multitude of claims on the true interpretation of that authority or on the monopoly of interpretation.

Let us now return to Lodge in order to explain some of what has been anticipated in more detail. Lo&e's appreciation of psychological sensuality, as shown in the analysis of the functions of instinctual desire, results in the (actually absurd) identification of the intellect with merely discursive thinking, which is not ‹:ht is capable of grasping first principles ^'. Inadequacies and limits of reason in this sense are explained in detail ‹:h sdiil dered "'. However, this reason, which represents an operation of the mind, is opposed to another, much more extensive one, which encompasses the entirety of the faculties in sidi ("reason, I mean, our natural faculties' "' ). In this, its existential anchoring, it falls task of guiding men's behavior according to certain norms; in contrast to discursive reason, it is in possession of ultimate truths (at least in a normative sense) and is therefore suitable for the role of "our last judge and guide in everything" '^. When Lodge also calls it a "natura1 revelation", the contrast to the divine revelation that he explicitly formulates does not only mean a celebratory declaration of the claim to autonomy, but also implies the double thesis , reason as a natural revelation is grounded (unlike the commandments from above) in what is naturally given (i.e. in your natural faculties'), and therefore it must be an OJJenßnruiig (of the normative aspect) of nature because in the natural given and through this let nature itself hear its voice. This interpretation is confirmed by the statements in Lo&e's early treatises on the lex naturae, which are actually only taken up again and expanded or slightly modified in the essay. The lumen naturale is here identical with the recta ratio, which is understood directly normatively, since it does not refer to theoretical knowledge, but to practica aliqua principia, and should also be rooted in nature itself: how Lo&e says she is nothing other than ipsa lex naturae jam cognita'. In view of this nature, it is distinguished from the ratio in the sense of the "facu1tas animae discursiva' sdiarf "'. Now, according to the possible sources of human knowledge, three are: innate

^• Essay, I, 1 §$ 6—12 (= I, 42 ff.). op. et., I, 1 "’

11 (- I, 44 f.). '•'

-'•' '•°

"-•• 2"

hope. cit., IV, 17, §§ 9—13 (= II, 405 f.). up. cit., IV, 18 § 3 (= II, 417). up. cit., IV, 19 § 14 (= II, 438).

up. cit., IV, 19 § 4 (= II, 431). Essays ori the Law of Nature, III = S. 148.

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Ideas, tradition, senses. Since the first two prove to be insufficiently long or fictitious in Lo&e's eyes, the lex natura must be conveyed through the senses, which in this context should mean the same as lumen naturale. This identification of sense and lumen naturale remains conceptually unclear , that is, it is suggested rather than justified, but what is interesting to us is the effort expressed by Dadurdi to bring together normatively understood nature and human existence in their meaningful roots. In the essay, the senses are replaced in this function by intuition, which, just like before, is held up against the intellectually abstract as the natural and primordial intangible. The strong dependence of the intuition theory of an empiricist on Descartes may be strange: experience and intuitive thinking can be subsumed under the overarching desideratum of immediacy, because rationalism in the sense of existentially intensive direct thinking remains largely accepted by empiricists and non-empiricists common position in the fight against sdiolastics. Just as with Descartes, Lo&e also turns the praise of intuition against syllogisticism, in which Locke and with him the entire Enlightenment inherit the (epistemological) essence of sdiolasticism. (The essential difference between Descartes and Locke after the elimination of the common opponent is, however, expressed in the fact that for the latter, unlike for the latter, objects of intuitive thinking can be purely intellectual quantities.) - Intuitive knowledge is therefore for Loé the elearest with and most certainly that human frailty is capable of' "', arguments are alien to their nature ^', indeed, conversely, intuitive certainty should accompany the individual arguments of the demonstrative procedure '°'. But intuition must also operate in a normative sense, that is, as a lumen naturale, since precisely those maxims that all people readily accept as true (and these are obviously the natural theories or moral philosophies) do not require the services of the discursive faculty, but rather »are known by a superior and higher degree of evidence' "'.

In Lo&e's case we find the decisive connection between normative reason and experience or a meaningfully rooted existence, whereby the immediacy of the former is asserted against the intellect. When he is dethroned, the intellect (in contrast to the carte-

'•°

on. eit., II = S. 130, 132.

°"

Essay, IV, 17, §§ 4-7. Lo&e's essential statements about intuition can be found here significantly in the same chapter. '•' Aaron, Lo&e, 336, 338. °"

Essay, IV, 2 § 1 (= II, 177). '•• '•' '•'

Op. et., IV, 7 $ 19 (= II, 290 f.). Op. et., IV, 2 § 7 (= II, 180 f.). on eit., IV, 17 $ 14 (= II, 407).

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sianis the view of him) is treated as necessarily discursive, and on this basis antiintellectualist reason thrives. In the course of the 18th century it gained ground to the extent that the existential concept of knowledge was not ultimately further concretized through the contributions of the new aesthetics or as the entanglement of thinking and willing within the framework of the increasing radicalization of the rehabilitation of the Sensibility goes beyond Loÿke's position when his succession becomes increasingly narrow (this development is very evident in the dilution of moral sense and normative reason that became so popular in the Enlightenment). It is therefore not strange if Voltaire, whose thesis of the inner unity of thinking and willing we mentioned above, calls normative reason "une autre espèce d'instinct" in the sense of the existential concept of knowledge. This is precisely reason in Voltaire, as in Locke, with the loi naturelle identisdi, which is therefore supposed to have the same existential immediacy: it is ølaisse au fond de nos cœurs la règle et la morale', it is 'source pure' '^. The existential immediacy of the Reason again comes into play when, for example, Voltaire writes that the ideas on which social morality is based are "precèdent toutes nos reflections". Voltaire actually regards this living reason and not any mental constructions as the best weapon against this

"Fanaticism" or against theology and science "'. Of the reason 'as intellect he says the opposite, it has benefited both religion and literature "'. As with Voltaire, so with the anti-intellectualist and equally normativist mainstream of the Enlightenment in general, the statements about reason can be classified and understood - using the same double criterion. On the one hand, reason is the existential concept of knowledge with a normative coloring, on the other hand it coincides with the discursive intellect, which, precisely because it can only be discursive due to its epistemological reduction, is unable to establish any norms or world-based decisions that this most important task must fall to non-intellectual reason, i.e. reason, which is inseparably linked to the sensually rooted existence. If Voltaire now brought this reason close to instinct with Re&t, one could take a further step and (assuming a radically optimistic anthropology) treat instinct itself as reason in a normative sense. The idea of instinct had to be more or less worked on or refined, but the persistence with which it was used corresponded to the intensity of the effort

^° Dialogues of Evhémère V = OC, XXX, 488. '•• Poem on natural law II = OC, IX, 448 f. ^^ Tester of morals, Intr., VII OC, XI, 22. °^°

Remarks of the Essay on Morals, XV = C, XXIV, 569.

'^* Perishes, Remarques etc. = OC, XXX I, 119.

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To express the rooting of normative reason in living existence itself in an incomprehensible way. The best-known among those who refined the instinct so that it could be included in the normative framework was Rousseau, who called conscience or reason in the mora lisdi-normative sense pinstinct divin', in order to indicate its sidiness, which is not on Judgment, but based on feelings, is to be contrasted with the 'entendement sans règle' and the (intellectual) raison sans principe'^. But objectively, that is, seen in the context of mental health, this was not a rebellion against the Enlightenment, but rather a consequence or accompaniment of an anthropological attitude, which in turn was only possible on the general basis of thought of the (normativist and anti-intellectualist) Enlightenment, as we believe. 3i want to explain. Furthermore, in terms of its structure, Rousseau's concept of rationalism can easily be classified into the modified type of the two-sided view of the main stream of Enlightenment, as long as the sometimes significant differences in accentuation are not viewed as structural opposites: because different aspects of the same structure are differentiated in each case1i:h accentuated. When Rousseau says, on the one hand, that the mere (ie discursive) reason is actually passive and does not bring about anything great, or that it cannot achieve anything great without the intervention of conscience by virtue of the law of nature, which is founded in a besoin naturel au cœur humain to determine or justify "', he asserts on the other hand, that the reason conveys the ridiculous idea of the deity "' or it even orients us ridiculously, while the heart can serve us deceptively "'. Here there is only the usual double use of the concept of reason. If we are clear about it and hold on to the fact that reason as intellect cannot take on the task of normative leader, then we must also look at passages like the last one quoted, in which reason is seen as an opponent of psychological sensibility (instincts, heart) comes onto the scene , not suspecting a subjugation of the latter to an upper wealth that serves as sole ruler ; rather acts

This is a comparison of the accidental-immediate and the deeper, or existential need defined according to the normative dimension of existence: this is the reason that serves as a soldier for following the

°^" Emile IV = Oeuvres IV, 599 ff. °°° place cit., 645. °•° loc. cit., 523. In the context of this passage, Rousseau's statement in the first bu‹:h of the ßmile (Oeuvres, IV, 288) must also be understood, where the raison alone the men‹:men that Teach good and evil, while conscience only loves or hates the latter and therefore cannot properly develop without reason. Here, reason has the task of clearly elaborating something natural and not of bringing the principle of morality into existence. cf. and note 263. '•' place. cit., 607. •°• New. Heloise III, 20 - Works II, 370.

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natural norm or for the "well-understood", that is to say norm-compliant, satisfaction of the needs of existence, in no way ensures their suppression '^. The comparison between raison-passion and c‹cur corresponds to the distinction between “true” and “imaginable” nature (from the latter Function we will speak in the needist section), so that the mastery of the sufferings can appear as nature (i.e. not as intellect) just as these sufferings themselves '•'. For a proper assessment of Rousseau's rationalism, it is not enough to say that in Rousseau the distinction between reason and sentiment is fluid, especially since the former is fundamentally an instrument that can be used well or simply a constant, intellectualist-colored reason is silently presupposed. It should be added that the nature of reason itself changes depending on its use, or that it is only through its detachment from the intellect that the possibility of a good use of it is given.

The impression would be wrong that this analysis would simply identify the philosophy of feeling à la Rousseau with the remaining founding forms of the anti-intellectualist Enlightenment. What is more important to us is to find the two obvious differences where they actually exist. J•ner's impression would basically only be based on the conscious or unconscious, direct or indirect and at least very widespread - use of rationalism and intellectualism. But before that, it should be simple Tauadie warn that no one in the 19th century raised the accusation of irrationalism in the later pejorative sense against Rousseau, although very many turned against his "culture enemy" and defended the (relative) redness of discursive thinking within culture. If vice versa the philosophy of feeling campaigns against what it calls 'intellectualism', this is not a sign of the existing predominance of the latter (general anti-Cartesianism would be incomprehensible in this case), but rather proof that one si‹:h could not think of a worse accusation than that of intellectualism in the spirit of the times. In the general understanding of the Enlightenment, the valuable ratio is much closer to the heart or will than the "cold" intellect, and it could

'•° What is significant is the way in which the concept of reason is expressed in both passages just quoted. In the former (see note 261) it is synonymous with nature or the "voiz intrieure", in the latter (see note 262) it is intended to express only the solidity of the normative, not any intellectual authority. :k bring (ma raison n'a d'autre fin que cc qui est bien"). Cf. o. Note 260. -•• See Schinz's good analysis, Penste de Rousseau, 231 ff. A weak point in Schinz's presentation is that he distinguishes Rousseau's position from that of the philosophes too much or largely shares Rousseau's self-image on this question . '^ So for example Burgelin, Philosophie de l'Ezistence de Rousseau, 262, cf. 73.

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nothing different if ratio = nature. The success of the philosophy of feeling is therefore not to be understood as a reaction against an intellectualism that is supposedly dominant, but rather only proves the commitment of rationalism to certain values that are better served in the feeling of being in better hands, since this takes into account the rehabilitation of the ( psydiisdia) sensuality redness wore. The appeal to thinking or feeling is largely meant to be polemic, that is, it is always tied to certain content-based positions. Thinking is normally treated kindly by those who see their first task in combating nihilism or who do not assume unqualified optimism, while the philosophy of feeling, as she primarily represents Rousseau, is based on a radical anthropological optimism and therefore simply does not take the danger of nihilism seriously, although she also rejects it. (The optimist turn of the Enlightenment philosophy of feeling actually forms its differentia specifica in comparison to the philosophy of feeling of the 7th century, as it was designed by Pascal: this insists on the diristlidpessimisti sdien image of Menrdia, because its main opponent is the hubris of... Natural knowledge is a lid or Cartesian intellect, while Rousseau's philosophy of feeling does not ultimately turn against the doctrine of original sin. However, the drist lid-influenced current of feeling philosophy remains strong except in the 8th century and has an ambiguous relationship to Rous seauisd en, depending on whether their polemic goal is the intellect of hubris or the enlightened optimism '•'.)

Reservations against the philosophy of emotions in one form or another were primarily due to the fear of the possibility that someone could substitute evil or dangerous feelings for the good innate feelings: we would then have found morality on their support as the intellect, which is immune to suffering can? La Mettrie's man was, to the same extent as Rousseau's, mastered by feeling, and nevertheless the practical result in both cases was fundamentally different. Only the followers of nihilism verdadites gave (at least moderate) intellectualism a certain hearing, but this was not because of, but in spite of, the prevailing tendency, for which rationalism and intellectualism were nothing less than iden tisdi. (That was the reason why reason, which was supposed to keep dangerous suffering under control, was often conceived, especially by opponents of the philosophy of feeling, in a similar way to that of Rousseau himself.) This is where the dispute between thinking and feeling concerns In reality, it is not the priority of one or the other, but only the form and scope of the ontological justification of the values: within the framework of a radically optimistic oncology or anthropology, the entire human being, including all of its capabilities

••• S. z. B. Letter Ä C. de Beaumont, in: Oeuvres IV, 937 f.

°°' S. u. Kap. VIII, Absdin. 3 a.

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made the carrier of morality, but the search for a single, solid basis for it in thinking must appear urgent if one cannot share this ontology or anthropology or if one has drawn the obvious skeptical conclusions from the rehabilitation of sensuality . The subaltern character of the struggle between thought and feeling also becomes clear if we consider another aspect of it. Namely, it is always invoked by both parties in the name of the same moral values (it would therefore be completely misleading to assume that These values would necessarily arise from the primacy of feeling, and those values would necessarily arise from that of thinking : the values are already given with the basic attitude, which does not recognize any separation at all, such as that between thinking and feeling, while the appeal to thinking or feeling in polemical abstention when it comes to the question of the justification of values). Therefore, someone who asserts the primacy of feelings on the basis of an optimistic anthropology is, world-wide, closer to someone who believes in the same values, but without sharing the (radical) anthropological optimism, than to someone who asserts the primacy of feeling on the basis of a pessimistisAeii anthropology and thus at least flirts with nihilism. With regard to the basic moral and enlightenment attitude, Rousseau is known to be close to Kant and not to Sade. — This constellation only becomes understandable when we view the respective philosophical position, insofar as it seeks to answer ultimate questions, as a rationalization of a basic attitude that takes place with regard to a specific opponent. Then the traditional comparison between rationalism and irrationalism becomes largely irrelevant, as we explained at the beginning of this work. ,

,

Here we had to once again anticipate the discussion of Enlightenment moral philosophy in order to be able to clarify the concept of rationalism. However, this necessity only arose from the oft-emphasized connection of the respective rationalism to certain substantive positions. The very possibility of the antiintellectualistic concept of rationalism in general rests on a substantive position, namely the rehabilitation of meaningfulness. Now we can understand why Rousseau should not be treated as a prophet or pioneer of an alleged uprising against an alleged enlightenment intellectualism. If this view once had many supporters, it was only because the above-mentioned characteristic of the Enlightenment was not taken into account at all, with Rousseau's outbursts against the rule of the intellectual being interpreted as being directed against the Enlightenment. Intellectualism, however, existed primarily before the Enlightenment, and it was against this that the Enlightenment in its main stream and not just Rousseau - regardless of whether he denounced his contemporary opponents for obvious reasons as continuators of the old bad intellectualism, although he did often only those arguments varied, which were precisely these

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Opponents had previously argued against syllogistics or mathematics. Indeed, it is difficult to see against what extraneous intellectualism such influential thinkers as Shaftesbury no‹:h could have rebelled during the 1st century before 1200. What has been called a 'sentimental revolution' ' begins simultaneously with those mental and intellectual opinions which specifically characterize the Enlightenment (namely, with the turning away from Cartesianism, like Newton and Lo&e symbolize the same), and is also related to the tremendous rise of empiricist or genetic epistemology. "Reason" and "feeling" are not suitable as criteria for periodization, although it should be noted that the latter is not necessary and can in all cases be classified as a harbinger of 'romanticism', what au ‹:h suggests the attempt to place its beginning or heyday as soon as possible before the start of the romantic movement. This means, conversely, that one must not see the Enlightenment from the perspective of the romantic as has often been the case for a long time.They clung si‹:h näm1i‹:h to the concept of reason, which in itself is in fact &araktistis‹:h for the Enlightenment (especially as a counterconcept to faith), and ma‹: si‹:h took advantage of its ambiguity (it is much more conspicuous with the terms reason or raison) by largely equating it in po1emis‹:her Ab sidit with the intellect‹:h in order to regain the heart (but this time with essentially & new content) But, mentally speaking, they were only able to do it so badly because the anti-intellectualists, the main stream of enlightenment, had discovered the heart in its entanglement with (true') reason.

Furthermore, those who wanted to see Rousseau as the leader of the sentimental rebellion against the ruling Enlightenment current failed to notice that the Enlightenment was still in the making, or rather many of its "characteristic" works had not emerged when Rousseau suddenly appeared on the intellectual horizon. It is therefore methodically inadmissible to contrast Rousseau with the abstract term “Enlightenment”: Rousseau is an organizing component of the Enlightenment, namely q«a Enlightenment. The content of his religious and moral philosophy is also based on enlightened commonplaces. What gives him a peculiar position is his

'^ After the book of the same name by Atkinson, which contains a wealth of good evidence from French authors around 1700. cf. his posthumous work Prelude to En lightenment, especially 25 ff., 44 ff. '•• See the good essay by Mortier, Units ou scission, esp. 1210 f., 1219 f. °°° Furthermore, Rousseau's religious and moral philosophy are characterized by the dualism of vacillation that is typical of the main stream of Enlightenment (see my analysis in: Origin of the Dialectic, 118 ff., in connection with Chapter VI, paragraph & n . 2 and 3 of this work). Schinz (Pensée de Rousseau, 485 ff.) returned the thesis of the mystical character of Rousseau's religious philosophy to Re&t:k-

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Aadicalization or dramatization of things not invented by him, but in 18th century almost indispensable equation: nature = reason, with the focus being placed on the concept of nature; Everything ('truly') natural life is therefore reasonable or rational. Rousseau does not fight against the ratio, but only further deepens its economic content. As long as it remains the controlling authority, it only represents pure nature, which is supposed to restore the contaminated one to its original state. If nature and reason are so closely linked to one another, then it makes sense to treat reason and instinct as separate or equal species of the genus 'nature', whereby reason does not have to feel degraded, since from the outset it is preceded by instinct or by Will is imbued with desire: it is committed and polemic, and since it also argues for an anti-ascetic morality, it must even welcome the appreciation of (psydiisdia, etc.) sensuality. In this way, Rousseau's work gave anti-ascetic morality a gentle boost and was all the more effective because the pure instincts were not harmed in the sense of the pessimists, but in their noblest or most loving form and within the framework of a radically optimistic anthropology. Thus

pointed out or seen in it an early romantic construction. Audi Vernière (Spi noza et la pensée fran$aise, 489) remarks that Rousseau's natural religion "ne se distingue pas du déisme contemporaine par son contenu intellectuel". The personal relationships of Rousseau to the other enlighteners are a chapter for you, ie they must not directly or indirectly influence the intellectual-sensual analysis of concepts. Rousseau's monomania and unpredictable temperament were mixed up with the culturallyphilosophically rationalized aversion to the philosopher's circle, and this combination (in which the ideological component played a rather subordinate role) made the brudi inevitable, with Rousseau certainly remaining in the eyes of the uninitiated public belonged to the philosophers. Voltaire unintentionally promotes the objective sadness when he makes a humorous distinction between the fundamentally plausible appearing philosophy and the person of Rousseau: 'c'est bien dommage qu'il ait fait le Vicaire savoyard. La conversation de cc vicaire méritait d'etre écrite par un honnete homme”, he writes to Comte d'Argental on October 2, 1765 (= OC, XLIV, 77). He could never be forgiven for Rousseau's attacks on the philosophers, since they hit the elitist consciousness of the latter to the heart (see, for example, Voltaire's letter to Damilaville of June 14, 1762 = OC, XLII, 136) and, moreover, seldom occurs open sabotage of their activities (see the spicy story of Voltaire's theater in Geneva and Rousseau's alliance with religious fanatics to torpedo the theater, so Voltaire to d'Alembert in the letter of April 20, 1761 = OC, XLI, 271 f.). °" The fact that morality and suffering do not have to contradict each other was a particular advantage of Rousseau's moral philosophy for broad sections of the audience, see At tridge, The Reception of La Nouv. Héloise, 255 f. Attridge sdlildert Rousseau's success at large audience in contrast to the attitude or rejection of the »philosophes' (231 ff., 250 ff.) as well as the popularizing effect of the Rousseauists

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sdiien the possibility of being able to satisfy the nature of humanity without sacrificing decency and morality. Rousseau satisfied, at least in theory, this double need of bourgeois sentimentalism 18th century "', and that was one important reason for its popularity. A second was that he popularized the essence of Enlightenment rationalism. What was perceived by the general public as Rousseau's struggle against the "cold" intellect was not ultimately the popular or novelistic character of most of his widely read works. Now the natural ideal speaks naturally, without using the scientific and philosophical arts, which were the products of the cunning enemy of nature and the heart, namely the intellect, and were therefore considered to be worthless . Rousseau made morality and freedom more lively, that is, more sentimental and convincing and at the same time more accessible, by presenting them as an anthropological attribute rather than as an unnatural product of the laborious self-conquest of an evil person. It is almost testament to the essence of Enlightenment rationalism that it had to be clothed with a very anti-rationalist attitude in order to be able to express its ultimate implications in a clear and clear way. But what was really irrational in Rousseau was only his directness or simplicity of his language; By treating, like his audience, the more complicated logical reasoning as a new manifestation of the old intellectualist sin, he was the first to investigate the mistake of many later Enlightenment thinkers: he confused the form that Enlightenment rationalism mandally assumed with its content-based absidit. From this position he could of course accuse his own age of intellectualism - but the accusation was only heard because the age was intellectualism understood as a reproach, ie because Rousseau was wrong in relation to the prevailing zeitgeist. How great the error is, which consists in such a confusion of form and content or in the thesis that the option for thinking or feeling has intrinsically connected consequences for the procedure or for the moral conclusions of thinking, shows negatively but the example of Rousseau himself is eloquent: his passionate rejection of intellectualism in no way prevents him, like most enlighteners, from using a procedure in the service of his own sadness that derives from the side of enlightenment in

Sdiriften. cf. the brief remarks that go to the core of Sadie Barrier, Vie intellectuelle en France, 351. Of course, in this context we are only talking about the effect of Rousseau's religious and, above all, moral philosophy. His political philosophy, which incidentally has much more original aspects, only begins to have an impact in 1789 and hardly influences Rousseau's relationship to the actual period of the Enlightenment. See also Mac Neil, The Cult of Rousseau, esp. 197, 201 (on the quasi-religious character of the Rousseau cult, 199). -° S. and Chap. VI, para. 3 and my comments on the sociological character of Jacobi's novels, in: Emergence of Dialectic, 138, note 52.

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general as the unforgivable the philosophical crime of "scholastics": namely the deduction. The sentence: pCommen$ons donc par ecarter tous les faits; car ils ne toudient point a la question" ' 7 ', which appears programmatis& at the beginning of the second discussion, is not a lapsus calami, but rather expresses the deeper median sine of Rousseau's thought. This is where it comes into reality deduced, devoid of all ridicule against the abstract syllogistic of the opponent. The hediste (onto)ogisdie principle is fixed and was originally defined with regard to certain values. It is now important to get to know its structure in more detail.

4. The structure of the normative concept of nature The entanglement of thinking and willing in the existential concept of knowledge formed only a partial aspect of the general tendency to mitigate or abolish conventional dualisms. Intellect and psychological sensibility were lost in the field of the new psychology of epistemology in the same sense and to the same extent as soul and body in the field of anthropology or God and world or movement and matter in the field of cosmology . The same process took place on several levels at the same time because a single worldview attitude was at work here. The special conceptual design of each level basically represents only one aspect of a complex of thought that has been developed in situ, at least in its ideal-type reconstruction, so that the individual level, from a formal-structural point of view, serves as a reduction or enlargement of the others. It is no coincidence that the new empiricist epistemology is e.g. B. at the same time as the new idea of the whole or of nature was outlined. It would be

therefore hermeneutisdi naive, the polemiscli intended turning away from being in the sense of traditional metaphysics or the prioritization of the (knowing) Subject and epistemology in their nominal value and to conclude from this that the new epistemological positions would be equally conceivable as a pure method without certain ontological assumptions and under any intellectual-historical presuppositions. As we have seen, even consistent phenomenalists like d'Alembert and Condillac, who are convinced and after forces, are without a more or less explicit, in any case quite general and empirically hardly verifiable conception of being in the new sense or by nature did not get along. Tauadilidi leaves the central role of the concept of nature - whereby even with 'nature' something more

-

7° Oeuvres III, 132.

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as the object of natural science is meant - hardly understand if we describe the positivistic-phenomenalistic self-understanding of some (undoubtedly prominent) Enlighteners as the way of thinking of the Enlightenment in general."' if we overlook the oncological background of that thinking.

Because attributes of nature such as harmony and lawfulness, which in the eyes of most and authoritative natural scientists should reflect not only the phenomenal side, but also the essence of nature in the world of thought of the normativistic Enlightenment, the idea of a binding, because natural, should. Because nature was the most extensive of those levels whose structural connection we have just spoken of, because it therefore contained all the others as its own diminutives, so to speak, the latter also had to allow themselves to be permeated by the normative essence of nature. We have already discussed this using the example of the existential concept of knowledge, which really only expresses the epistemological implications of the world-view-related interdependence of being and ought. Like thinking and willing within the existential He knowledge concept, so also being and ought flowed into one another within the natural concept. Both concepts arose through the rehabilitation of sensuality on different levels, and if the concept of nature indicated the authoritative presence of the ought in being, the existential concept of knowledge indicated the authoritative presence of the will in thinking, by virtue of which thinking inevitably came to it , not only to morally accept the ought posited by the will, but to substantiate it downright ontologically.

As a polemic concept, nature was ridiculed against the supernatural. The This was already the case in the 17th century, although the rehabilitation of sensuality was then primarily meant in terms of natural science or in the consideration of nature as a worthy object of intellectual endeavour, and therefore amounted to an intellectualism that is in ontological terms with could be reconciled with the idea of division. According to Dennodi, the activity of the Creator was bound to certain rules derived from the study of nature: the natural had thereby indirectly become the standard of the supernatural. Supernaturalism continued to exist independently alongside nature, but it was less and less recognized as having the right to change the existing laws of nature from time to time at will (this was accepted even by those who claimed that God had all ”‘

This is the reason why Cassirer z. ß. The Enlightenment concept of nature in its multidimensionality (which also includes the ontological dimension) is hardly dealt with directly. Also in the first chapter. his Phil. the Enlightenment. ('Nature and knowledge of nature in the thinking of Enlightenment philosophy') he speaks more of natural science as a method than of the conception of nature as content.

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other natural laws s‹:weapons can). After the gradual implementation of the thesis of the immanence of movement in matter or through the onto logical appreciation of sensuality, the idea of creation gradually (and again despite the honest, subjective religiosity of many thinkers). The polemic of the juxtaposition of nature and supernatural si‹:h comes to a head until nature does not tolerate any tlbernatür1i‹:the next to si‹:h: qThe concept of nature is expanded by the contrast to the supernatural in such a way that it is there, where the idea of the supernatural, which falls under the critical verdict of the Enlightenment, becomes a concept for the totality of being, since it no longer has any counterpart at all but the natural lidie to the new deity. I explained in another context that a victorious position must take on certain lifesustaining functions of those it has defeated if it wants to successfully replace the latter in the long run. The formal structure of the victorious position must therefore exhibit those characteristics of the conquered or enemy that enable them to fulfill their lifepreserving functions. Above all, it must be able to substantiate a morality dur‹:h ontolo gis‹:je statements, especially since each new we1tans‹:hau1i‹:je position brings elevated moral claims to the field. The concept of nature was not only directed against the supernatural God, but also against all forms of domination that referred to him, and thus also against the morality represented by them ; In this regard, nature meant the opposite of asceticism. So how did the concept of nature have to be weapons in order to be able to satisfactorily replace God not only as a creator but also as a moral legislator? And, apart from the content of the morality or value scale, wel‹:the kind was the formal-concept1i‹:je structure that in the old We1tans‹:analysis made it possible at all to set up a morality or value scale i1i‹:Ute and from that a new position had to be adopted in order to allow a moral or value scale logisdi in general ? The basic feature of the traditional concept of God is the fusion of ontological and normative principles in it. God is being par excellence or pure being"', and at the same time, as the moralizing legislator, he not only establishes a scale of values, but he also embodies them, he is the embodiment of all norms withdraw any character of arbitrariness or contingency from norms associated with God (recall the struggle of the Church against the voluntarism of Ockham, which was by no means understood as pious praise of the Almadii Gotes), so that their

'*° So Spaemann in his brilliant essay, Genetics on the concept of nature 18th century, 66 "• S. o. Chap. II, Abs&n. 1. °" Ciber Augustine and Thomas' concept of God in this sense, see Gilson, Thomisme, ioo rr., ion rr.

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The following was all the more binding that had to be made - which, however, at the same time consolidated the position of those who had successfully claimed the monopoly of interpretation of the divine norms for themselves. If the ought is not a mere commandment, not the mere positing of a will that could be susceptible to discontinuity or subjectivity, but is actually identical with being itself, then it becomes just as absolute as being itself - it ceases to be a multiplicity to represent an intangible or even fictitious goal, and becomes a prerequisite (true, worthy, etc.) for human existence. Although this S&ema states the reason why norms must be followed, it does not explain why this world, which is founded on God as the "ought to be", experiences so many violations of the "ought" on a daily basis. The “causality of suffering” (Nietzs':je) must therefore be made clear through an additional construction. Since the firm connection between being and should between the ultimate foundation of values on the level of true being must remain unchallenged, the level on which the violations of the should take place is impossible with true being. allow being to be identified; It therefore necessarily forms the ranks of the world. In other words, being and existence must be contrasted because being must never be flawed: all inconsistencies in the world are blamed on existence, while the "edited" existence remains intact as a source of truth, morality and hope. The norm is derived from this e‹:Sten' being or is identified with it and is then made objectively and connectively; Only the dark forces of sin are responsible for their transgression1i‹:h. But God would not be what is implied by his definition as His Ought if He did not have these forces firmly under control. The fact that they exist can only be due to an intention or a plan of God, and therefore the violation of the should must actually only serve this plan. Here the idea of a complex whole is created, which stands in the context of what is supposed to be and within which what is intended to contradict its meaning - dictated by the nature of what is supposed to be - (sin, suffering, evil ), ultimately confirming this meaning and helping it to be realized. However, this conclusion is based on two premises: the identity of being and ought on the level of true being and the distinction between being and being as soon as one leaves that level. The distinction between being and being is actually only the other side of the identity of being and ought and aims to make the (very) inadequate existence of that identity hic et nunc, i.e. the causality of suffering, understandable. The unity of being and ought and the separation of being and being are the two basic levels from which the idea of the whole is constituted, which in turn serves to answer final questions and thus the overall construction

to immunize against polemics. In my opinion, the normativist concept of nature essentially allows the formal aspects of this thought structure to be recognized. Precisely because this was the case, he also has the acession of a new worldview position

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can form. Nature is being and ought in one, so that the binding nature of its normative rule is dismissed ontologically and thereby achieves a non plus ultra. The proof of this binding nature was all the more urgent as after the renunciation or actual elimination of the idea of God and the corresponding revaluation of anthropology, the danger of relativism became known for obvious reasons. The elimination of the verdadites of nihilism required a normatively colored oncology in one form or another in order to banish the specter of morality as a setting or Hobbess dien decisionism and, moreover, now in offensive absidism, to give one's own basic attitude the desired, polemisdi effective ontological basis to give or from one's own ought, which one cannot issue as generally binding in the form of the subjective credo, to produce an irrefutable being. The law Nature - through the existential mode of knowledge or through the "natural relation" (Locke) immediately introductory - should have this connection both in terms of natural knowledge and also in normative terms; It is not by chance that the confusion between being and should in the concept of nature corresponds to the confusion of the two concepts of the law. This unification of the levels now turns nature into that whole, which cannot be avoided if a worldview position can be made convincingly, i.e final questions should be answered in the sense of a plausible causality of suffering. The idea of the whole served to classify all those moments that would contradict the new basic attitude into a comprehensive framework and then to assign them that way with reference to the meaning of the whole interpret that they could no longer be presented as a complaint, but on the contrary as a confirmation of this basic attitude. Only with regard to the idea of the harmonious whole could Shaftesbury claim that there is no "rea/ Ill' "', even if it appears Nadi is different (the structural identity of the theologian and the enlightenment position at this critical point is shown in the fact that the thesis that everything is good was both affirmed and rejected by both sides in different constellations °'). The idea of the whole, which should be built according to a plan or in accordance with a norm, would therefore make it possible to differentiate between them "Being" and "being" which were taken over from the old metaphysics and applied to the

was transferred to new central terms. With regard to the normative component of the concept of nature, being and appearance could again be distinguished from one another because within the concept of nature itself being and ought were identical. The being of nature or nature as being lies deeper than the superficial multiplicity (that is, everything that contradicts nature as a norm) and therefore possesses the power that no experience can "® On this correspondence Bredvold, Brave New World, 3 ff. • Charact., II, 274. ^° S. u. Chap. VI, Abs&n. 5.

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demonstrable evidence. Only the assumption that nature actually has a deeper dimension than mere natural occurrence explains the bitter complaints that humanity and society have distanced themselves from nature, misadapted nature, etc., etc., which are completely pointless would have been, one would have completely identified nature and creation, being and existence. Incidentally, a solid identification would not only have the new causality of suffering (suffering is the effect of the distance from nature as the ought to be, i.e. the effect of remaining in the reidi of the "unnatural" or "unnatural" or "unnatural" or "unnatural" (the "unnatural"), but also blocks the way to elevating Maditan's claim in the form of the only "riditable" interpretation of the meaning of nature - an interpretation that also contains a substantive determination of life according to nature, i.e. a concrete, concrete Lord The moral code that implies social relations must be drawn. In this double perspective, e.g. B. To understand Rousseau's demand that one should exclude from the concept of nature and especially from the concept of human nature everything that is relative and variable or everything that relates to place and time. A distinction must be made between ce qui fait les variétés de ce qui est essential a 1'espece”. It is only against this conceptual background that one can appear, "qui ose assigner des bornes précises 1 la nature, et dire: voila jusqu' ou 1'homme peut aller, et pas au delä" '•'.

This is, by and large, the general formal structure common to both opponents, but the content of which varies depending on the definition of being and being that takes place in the polemic absiding. If in the enemy's world of thought, as seen from the Enlightenment perspective, life and nature or sensibility belong together, as do being and spirit or God , then the radical rehabilitation of sensuality means its celebratory loss drawn into being itself and thus - since the values are to be found in being not just their consideration as a value, but moreover a conflation of all values with the sensible world, which in the eyes of the opponent had the status of life. That's the nerve and the ultimate satisfaction in polemics: hodistilizing the opponent's existence into one's own existence and thus humiliating his being. The concept of nature fulfilled this task and, moreover, it was able to fully reflect the polemics of antiasceticism and the rehabilitation of sensuality. He did not refer to the at least potentially acosmic intellect, but rather to the pulsating life,

'•' nouv. Hol., Seconde Preface = Oeuvres II, 12. Incidentally, the distinction between being and being in nature is not only made in areas with direct moralphilosophical implications, especially since it characterizes the way of thinking of the normativistic Enlightenment in its entirety. Audi in terms of aesthetics is used. For example, La Motte writes: B., nature is not every accidental object, but only one that has diaractéres dignes d'attention'. So when we say that nature is worth imitating for the artist, we must understand by nature Rune nature dioisie" (Ré flexions, 226 f.).

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the colorful environment on the one hand and people in all their concreteness on the other. If the concept of nature, as a carrier of the formal characteristics of worldly positions, maintains the separation between being and seeing in order to be able to bind being and ought all the more firmly to one another and to preserve the splendor of being or . the still unrealizable norm, although anchored in being itself, does not allow the defects of one's mind to be clouded by the fact that it is in its own right as a concrete polemis. :th term, That is, with regard to the opposing view of being and being, it is exactly the opposite: it evaporates being and being, insofar as being is the spirit and being is sensuality applies. These two aspects must in no way be confused at the level of analysis, that is, it must not be claimed that the interweaving of sensuality and spirit and the mitigation or Abolishing transcendence in this sense would also eliminate transcendence in the sense of the separation of being and being. For this transcendence is based on the world-wide indispensable interweaving of being and ought in general, without taking into account the content of being, while seeing the abolition of the transcendence of the spirit or the opponent: A being refers to the po1emis‹:h-defined content of being (and the sol lens associated with it). This constellation makes it possible for transcendence (in the sense of the separation of being and being as the flip side of the intertwining of being and should) to live on unseen in that worldview that after the elimination of transcendence (in the sense of the old supernaturalism). In my opinion, this is the structural core point of secularization in general, which makes the secularization of individual theological concepts possible. From the standpoint of the radical rehabilitation of meaningfulness, all of this can be summarized as follows: norm and meaningfulness contradict each other: they no longer exist after the transcendence of the spirit has been abolished. Nature is the norm, not because it is not sensual, but precisely because it (au‹:h) Meaningfulness is. Because after the rehabilitation of sensuality, as I said, being and appearance are defined differently than those of the opponent despite the adoption of the general worldview, which is the interweaving of being and ought as so1‹:de enables or requires. The quintessence of nature is now preserved in this interweaving. The meaning of nature is simple and intuitive if one simply wants to accept the values associated with it. The simplicity of nature is a constant motif in Enlightenment literature, which has a concrete ideological function: if nature is simple, that is, recognizable as a being in all its forms, then the normative associated with it must be included to be present and enlightening at every moment and in every situation; no one has the right to disobey the commands of nature, because there is no one who has never heard her voice. Simplicity is understood in a double sense. In ontological terms, it relates to the transparency and stability of the laws of nature, and it is part of this

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the general monistic tendency, that is, it logically supports the thesis that all products of nature are based on an Ardie type, the metamorphoses of which have resulted in the diversity of phenomena. On the other hand, it means a turn towards existential immediacy: one should not first split one's own self in its relationship to the environment in order to then discover and cultivate one's better part in syllogistic detours, but rather the unified essence of this self in its psychic and physical concreteness suddenly grasp, whereby mental grasp and existential development seem to coincide. If the norm lies in being or in nature, then direct normative instructions of a metaphysical and moral character arise from this double simplicity. A religion e.g. B., which should actually help the soul to rise to edited being, should not, because of its simplicity, lose itself in pedantic and unconventional dogmas, which obviously no longer serve the natural God, but a certain unnatural authority, while one

Morality, which does not want to run counter to existential immediacy, has to eliminate asceticism and thus the division of humanity, which thwarts the discovery of one's own being and therefore makes a welcome advance to heteronomy. These implications illustrate the direct polemisdi emancipatoris, the function of the concept of nature, as it is asserted with reference to the evidence of immediacy - whereby the immediacy (ie ultimate persuasive power) of one's own norms and immediacy as a norm are most closely connected.

Nature is therefore being and should, reality and norm in one, and at the same time embodies the confusion of spirit and sensuality. It is imma nence and immediacy, but at the same time remains transcendent, since being and ought are one in it, but the ought is evidently nodi nidit realized. It therefore does not coincide with the norm-deviating creature, since it has a nobler dimension and a sublime meaning. Shaftesbury took this normative sense in stride when he accused Hobbes of speaking »so mudi of Nature with so little nieaning' '•'. Goethe once wrote: When artists talk about nature, they always subintellect the idea without becoming clearly conscious of it. Most Enlightenment thinkers did exactly the same thing - quite consciously, as long as they used the concept of nature polemisdi. The only thing they were unaware of was that they ontologized their own norms in order to gain possession of their most expensive weapon, thereby adopting the same formal framework of thought as their opponents. It has to be that way, because world-widening can only be combated with world-widening means. The concept of nature therefore had to be unconsciously and negatively based on the great and proven example of the theological opponent. In the mind•^’ Character., I, 110. '^

Maxims and Reflections, No. 750 = p. 125.

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world of the 18th century it therefore became a mythologie plutöt que simple ideologie' . Its mythologisdi-ideologisdie power lay chiefly in its logical ambiguity or plasticity, by virtue of which it is able to unite the two worlds, ie being and ought on the one hand and spirit and sensuality on the other. But it was the case that the world-answering struggle in which this concept of nature arose had long since - at least since Hobbes from a war against “sdio1asticism” had largely turned into a civil war between its opponents. The concept of nature delivered weapons to all fronts. Catholic theologians misunderstood the empirical and normative concept of nature just as freely - and rationally - as the Enlightenment thinkers. And since in intellectual science it often happens that even the original opponents of a concept and its assertion raise it willy nilly, whereby they try to reinterpret it in their own way and to defend their initial position with more modern weapons, so it happened that that political conservatives also used the concept of nature as an authority for legitimation ^'. This varied use in varied absidy caused the popularity of the concept of nature to become indispensable, but at the same time it made its ambiguity unavoidable. Its heterogeneous components were combined in different proportions and constellations depending on the basic attitude or opponent, with one "anti-sdiolastis-die" party applying the same formal principles as the other in order to accuse them all the more painfully of betraying the common cause can. In this sense, the concept of nature reflected the process of dissolution of modern rationalism into irreconcilable opposing positions against the ^', and its structure enabled it to do so just as well as to combat 'sdiolastism'; the multiplicity of its meanings has made it easy, and com mon, to slip more or less insensibly from one connotation to another, and thus in the end to pass from one ethical or aesthetic standard to its very antithesis, while nominally professing the same principles ' . However, none of this was a secret, at least for the most astute contemporaries. Boyle's well-known treatise De ipsa na tura (published in 1686) had already sharpened our awareness of the ambiguity of the concept of nature at an early stage, although it was actually only based on the sdiolastic-Aristotelian era

•^• Ehrard, Idea of Nature, 248. Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers, 208. Palmer sees the difference between them Theologians and "philosophes" with regard to the use of the concept of nature only in that the former is more about his normative, while the latter is more about his empiricism aspect - or so claim. However, the lack of both aspects remains together. Tilley, Eighteenth Century Background, 196 ff., 228 ff. ^'

S, and chap. VII, Absdin. 1 and 3 about the nihilists' concept of nature.

•^ Lovejoy, Nature as aesthetic norm, in: Essays, 69.

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related. Bayle received Boyle's remarks very positively at the time *', only to repeat the words almost twenty years later, this time in the light of his own experiences sdireiben: There are few words that are used in a more vague way, than that of Nature. It enters into all kinds of discourse sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, and we almost never focus on a precise idea. ur teilen: The word nature is one of those words that we use all the more often, as those who hear or pronounce them more rarely attach a precise idea to it. Und J hnsons Rasselas hatte sid ähnlidie Gedanken mitten in der Blütezeit der Aufklärung gemadit ^'. Of course, the vagueness of the content of the concept of nature did not only arise in the age of Enlightenment, but rather during the entire two previous millennia, in which the concept of nature each had different normative tasks "had to take over"', whereby he entered into such a close connection with the idea of the normative in general that one can confidently assert that, in purely logical terms, its vagueness is due to the innate vagueness of the normative itself. Its longevity would in turn always be the same desire to establish the normative through final arguments or through an ontology, namely to create a being from the ought and then to derive the absolute bindingness of the ought from the being constructed in this way.

The continued life, indeed the new vitality, of the normativist concept of nature in the Age of Enlightenment speaks eloquently for the unbroken power, That is, formal permanence worldviews the thought structures despite different contents and precedents determined by the respective polemic constellation. Following the Stoisdi-inspired "natural system" of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Enlightenment adopted the slogan óÿokoyovÿevu›ç Ty Dÿøev štjv own. Since the concept of nature only becomes structural in its stoic elaboration °®° Rip news. letters, Dÿc. 1686, Art. III = Works Div., I, 70a ff. '^ Rÿp. to the questions. of a province, II, Ch. CV = Works Div., III, 713. ^t Eloge de M. Tron&in, Oeuvres, 11, ô07. ^•° Rasselas wants to know what life means according to Naiur, to which the philosopher questioned amworiei: »To live according to Nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity etc.‘ Rasselas »soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer‘ (Kap. XXII, S. 60). ”' This happened primarily in the form of natural law. For the dependence of the nature refit on the respective content of the concept of nature, see Wolf, Problem der Naturrechtslehre, 21 ff., who lists the nine basic meanings of the latter. ^' The emphasis on the concept of nature by & the sophistical juxtaposition vóÿoç and øÿatç made nature not a fixed normative instance, as it rather implies that norms are products of vóÿoç, while nature itself behaves in an inward or amoral manner. S. Heinimann, Nomos and Physis, 47 ff.

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became mature enough to achieve the normative status that has not recently been achieved in Since the versions have remained authoritative since then, it is worth going into the implications and prerequisites of that solution in more detail. In it, the interweaving of being and ought is expressed in the form of an interweaving of freedom and necessity. If nature is and should be in one, then acting according to what should be must be acting according to the nature of nature, in which - especially for the sake of the stability of the should - blind chance is not allowed to prevail. On the other hand, it is precisely this trade that guarantees the attainment of "true" freedom, in accordance with the necessary limitations of nature. The commitment to the necessary becomes the basis of freedom - under two conditions: that the normative belongs to the essence of the necessary, and that freedom is not seen as the satisfaction of desires at will, but as the fulfillment of certain norms erected. The recta ratio is therefore subject to the law of agreement with nature, which, however, could hardly be realized if nature itself were not subject to a law that in turn must be essentially the same as the recta ratio . If man lives virtuously = freely, he follows his own and at the same time the cosmic nature of which he is a part, which is why the normative sense of the universe also resides in him. For the Stoics, morality is therefore part of an ontology, but game ontology is itself characterized by morality, with regard to which audi Stoic logic, psychology and physics were constructed. The same structure, namely the óÿokoyovÿÿvu›ç zÿ øÿaz‹ çtv in the sense of the interweaving of freedom and necessity, can be found in Émile' in a typically Enlightened form. 'Hommes, soyez humains', exclaims Rousseau and interprets his admonition as meaning that man can only be virtuous = free if he should succeed in

à mettre en ÿgalitÿ parfaite la puissance et la volonte'. He must therefore know what his human capacity or nature consists of so that he can express his will and his way of acting according to it: L'homme vraiment libre ne vent que ce qu'il peut.' Freedom is therefore eo ipso conscious commitment to the laws of nature; The certainty of the achievement of morality arises from the immanence of the norm in nature itself ("C'est ... la nature qui fait tout pour le mieux ..."). To amplify the madness of nature is not a means of gaining more freedom, but rather the easiest way to enslavement; You become a slave to your own imagination, you run into all sorts of different things (presumably the Stoisdie 6óÿo is alluded to here): because

^°• This results in e.g. B. if one takes two fundamental formulations of Cicero together. One (De republ. III, 22 $33) reads: rera lex recta ratio natural congrugns, diffuse in omnes, constant, sempiterna'. The other (De leg. I, 6 § 18) says: "The law is the highest reason innate in nature ... The same reason that is in the mind of man is the law established and completed."

°•° Hi‹&s, Stoic and Epicurean, 74.

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Nature alone is the measure of all reality. The overall construction aims The aim is to make the interweaving of being and ought so close that the obligation of the latter, which is identical with freedom, must eo ipso result from the necessity of the former. It would then be enough to be whole and full in order to be moralis‹:h = free.

Now the Enlightenment generally interprets the öttoloyovpJvtu9 qjj ginev §yv different than the ancient Stoics or the Neo-Stoics of the 16th and 17th centuries did. To the extent that the rehabilitation of sensuality becomes more radical, one distances oneself, either expressly or tacitly, from those ascetic features of Stoicism, which in earlier times served to form a bridge between it and the aristocratic morality. This in turn is related to the profound change in the concept of nature. that nature on which sidi z. For example, what the Christian theory of nature invoked was more a matter of thought than a tangible reality that could somehow have been connected to the idea of nature as an autonomous, dynamic whole. Before the rehabilitation of meaning in the modern double sense, nature or immanence had to appear immaterial and irrational because of its ontological inferiority. In itself, therefore, it could not easily be associated with the normative; rather, it stood apart from, if not in opposition to, it; The gratia was considered higher than the natura, even if the two could meet in their effects from time to time. Under these conditions, when one spoke of nature in a normative sense, one essentially meant an ensemble of norms that were distilled from God's character and projected onto a fictitious-ideal level located somewhere between God and sensual creation, in order to be mensdili. :h tangible dimensions and thus direct practical relevance. This ghostly nature, constructed with regard to God, dies out after the formation of the new idea of the whole. The new concept of nature is, of course, just as much a construction as the old one, and as such it exhibits the refined formal characteristics of normativist constructions in general.

However, the materials from which it is made are essentially different, and this represents the essential difference between the new basic attitude and the old one. Nature should now be included in the normativist concept of nature in the full splendor of its sensuality, in all of its perceptible reality, indeed the normative in this breathing and living nature

n' fimile, II = Oeuvres IV, 302 ff. '•* Voltaires Einstellung ist für die allgemeine Tendenz bezei‹:hnend: The school of Zenon, in its proud ignorance, / Formerly taken for virtue insensitivity', Disc. in verse on man, VII (On true Virtue) = OC IX, 421 (cf. die Wendung gegen die stoiques nouvelles' bzw. die jansenisten auf S. 411). cf. the good remarks of Bedter, The City of Philosophers, 36 f. S. Chap. II, Abs‹:hn. 1.

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become virtually tangible. The beauty of nature, fought equally against the dirist1i:he conception of nature and the Cartesian mechanicalism at the height of the Enlightenment, sees this undertaking of seeing the normative dimension of nature firmly to provide a basis; Incidentally, it is sung all the more passionately the more an ontological root is given to the normative (Shaftesbury, Rousseau). The new feeling for nature therefore provides a powerful boost to the seduction of being and ought within the concept of nature while at the same time making the latter meaningful. It was discovered in 1700 and soon reported in the form of a rediscovery the beauty of the country in contrast to the city as well as in the reputation of the Rü&return to the simple life " 1 and around the middle of the century, under the influence ,

of Rousseauism '*, it became a collective obsession. The exode rural is taking on a previously unknown extent (land ownership, by the way

for the citizens1i‹:hen still‹:h always the indispens1i‹:he ticket to a higher class), on hikes you are overwhelmed or carried away by the sight of proud mountains or you create gardens as a substitute and miniature of the great nature whose inner, mild and people-friendly order is supposed to be reflected in the artificial world. You speak with nature, you read your own thoughts and feelings from her face. The Mora1is‹:he or the ought becomes tangible in this elevation. Direct contact with nature is an act of moral purification and at least the preliminary stage of moral perfection, if not the latter itself. The same desire to establish the normative component of the concept of nature in the perceivable environment itself in order to vividly demonstrate the should in its rootedness in being, that is, in all its objectivity and connection , is largely inspired by primitivism and exoticism, which represents one of the great constant fashions in the age of enlightenment. The exotic models are utopian achievements or embodiments of pure nature, that is, of the pure norm, and in this very nature they are used as weapons against the unnatural “unreasonable” existing things are used: the weapon becomes all the sharper the purer the form in which the normative appears on the scene. This specific and clarifying function of exoticism can be demonstrated by the fact that the appeal to primary customs in critical terms became more frequent after about 1675, only to become apparent in the late Enlightenment; yourself

In 1789, however, English Jacobins offered the noble savage against the corrupted noble culture "'. His brilliant career in poetry "' and in °° l

Atkinson, Sentiment de la Nature, 18 ff., 66 ff.

•°• Mornet, Sentiment of Nature, 204 ff. •°'

op. cit., 22 ff., 98 ff., 259 ff., 237 ff.

^' Atkinson, Travel Relations, 20. °•° Fair&ild, Noble savage, 140 ff.

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Theater "' of the Enlightenment is known, and we also know, the influence that the idealization of primitive life in travel literature (typical of this are the three books by Baron de Lahontan, first published in 1703) had on Rousseau "'. Here we only want to focus on an aspect of the exotic literature that has only been slightly addressed in order to make the entire scope of the normativist concept of nature visible. In it, an integration of culture into uncorrupted nature is always consciously or unconsciously attempted, which promises a recovery of the former and at the same time an expansion of the latter, so that the expanded nature is combined with reason realized within the framework of culture and morality could be identified. If there were no possibility of a real realization of nature as reason within culture, then the reference to the wisdom of savages would be completely irrelevant for European conditions or, as a criticism, would be a blunt weapon. In the idealized depictions of primitive life, it is striking that the noble, good, etc. savages are not scattered in the struggle with the immediate need, but actually live in harmonious communities "' and know how to appreciate this, as they have meaning and The nature of good institutions is often lectured on; it was no coincidence that these descriptions inspired the draft of communist utopias. This is a case of barbarism civilized, as the author of a Beridites sdion put it in 1640 °".

Pure nature, that is, the primitive in the sense of the original element, is therefore nothing

eo ipso the opposite of culture, as culture is fundamentally understood as the social coexistence of people and as people are viewed as an inherently social being. This is how the prevailing view of the Enlightenment can be summarized as a whole. Primitivism in the form of a radical rejection of social life did not come into play with Rousseau. Return to nature does not actually mean a return to vegetative existence, but rather a purification of culture from everything "unnatural." "Unreasonable" means. Precisely because primitivism was so (mis)understood in general, the critique of contemporary culture was undertaken not only with reference to the customs of noble savages, but also to them

^'^ Fitzgerald, First Follow Nature, 28 ff. °" Chinard, America and the exotic dream, 225 ff. °°^

op. 167 ff. (on Lahontan), 345 ff. (on Rousseau).

°'• So e.g. E.g. the communications from Atkinson, Relation de Voyages, 46 ff. °'° Nodi in the 16th and 17th centuries, but also in the 18th, see Gounard, Legende du bon Sauvage, 72 ff., who attaches particular importance to this aspect of Redit. °" Wright, Noble Savage of Madagascar, 115. ^" about the actual meaning of Rousseau's so-called anti-culture diaft, which did not exclude the possibility of a true "culture" or a "natural" social life (otherwise the social model designed in the Contrat Social would simply be meaningless), see the good analysis by Cro&er , Age of Crisis, 367 ff.

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Way of life according to the general view of civilized peoples. The sinomania of the Enlightenment, apostrophized at Redit as a unique example of 'cultural misunderstanding on a wide scale' "•, ran parallel to its primitivism and was pursued in part by the same people"'. The example of Voltaire, with which the sinomania of the 18th century experienced its apotheosis"', is particularly instructive for the opposite reason; in his case, namely, the idealization of German culture is coupled with mistrust of primitivism"', since this is the universal longed-for reconciliation of nature and culture could endanger the continuous undifferentiated defamation of the latter. The refined Chinese, on the other hand, seek to embody the possibility of a culture in the age of reason or nature ; above all their alleged deism "' as well as the linking of their morality more to politisdi-social than to religious standards "' were regarded as proof of this. Thus the identification of nature and reason paved the way for an incorporation of culture into nature. Without this inclusion, the Enlightenment concept of nature and rationalism would have proved too poor to be able to claim leadership on a socio-cultural level; It would have been equally disastrous for him both to renounce the anchoring of reason or one's own norms in nature and to leave the defense of culture to theologians.

°'° Guy, Fren‹:h Image of China, 11. °'• The forms it took in England were quite similar to those in France li‹:h, s. Appleton, Cycle of Cathay, insb. 41 ff., 120 ff. •'• Guy, French Image of China, 285. °'° So Voltaire affirms the Spanish conquest of America and the extermination of the Indians, who for him were savages because they supposedly had no social life. Voltaire's attitude to this question is discussed in detail: Chinard, L'Amérique et le exotic dream, 367 ff. •" Interestingly, the legend of "hinesis" deism was brought into the world by the Jesuits of all people, who thereby proved the Chinese people's maturity for conversion to Christianity and at the same time the proof of God's consensu gentium dur. :h wanted to support another example. Dennodi had the latter his difficulties: if God himself is known to peoples who have not received revelation, then he could be easily grasped by mere reason. Either revelation is superfluous or the proof of God e consensu gentium fals':h - in this case the Chinese could be considered moral atheists. This was Bayle's interpretation partly following the position of early Sinomanian libertines such as La Mothe, while Leibniz more closely follows the Jesuits and a Chinese natural religion (see Pinot, Chine et la for mation de l'esprit philosophique, 184, 307 ff., 318 ff., 336 ff., and Guy, Frendl Image of China, 75 f., 89 f., 118 ff., 124 ff., 143 ff.).

°'^ Guy, Fren& Image of China, 131 ff.

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VI. The conflict between causal and normative

1. Outlook

Through the factual deification of nature as the intertwining of being and ought, the long dispute between natura and gratia came to an end for the time being; Nature clearly won, and the supernatural or divine arbitrariness was eliminated (the sdiolasty had actually already achieved this , at least in part, but the Enlightenment thinkers did not want to know about good sdiolasty, especially not if they followed it). Man now has to be the master of his own fate, since he did not have to expect his salvation from an irremediable act of God's will, but from the observance of fixed laws that arise from the constant nature of nature and are therefore known from the outset. Nature as being and ought embodied the physical and normative necessity or law against the transcendent arbitrariness - and since the concept of necessity was primarily conceived polemically, in the eyes of the Enlightenment thinkers it was completely compatible with their own concept of freedom: Necessity should expose the arbitrariness of the opponent's position and underpin the commitment, indispensability, even inevitability of one's own position (all that is necessary has been said about this polemical use of the concept of necessity in the early phase of modern rationalism in another context). . However, this self-image was only an encouraging ideological fiction that had to overlook the formal similarity of one's own thought structure with that of the opponent in order to keep it alive; Since the factual opposition between freedom and necessity continued to exist, the Enlightenment thinkers soon resorted to the old logical difficulties, but this time - which in itself already meant the (not logical, but actually actual) victory over the theological worldview - came to sprady in a secularized form. This was not an oversight that could or should be corrected, but was absolutely necessary for the fulfillment of the ideological function of the new world view, especially since it had to take over the life-sustaining power functions of the old one, albeit with different auspices. The following comments about the logical inconsistency of the normativist Enlightenment ' See above chap. IV para. 3 b and u. Absdin. 5 of this chapter. ° S. o. Kap. II Absdin. 2 b.

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as an expression of a nostalgia for the ideal world of theology (which is in at least equally great logical difficulties), but only as a scientific statement of the necessary connection between logical contradiction and the successful fulfillment of the ideological function. The reference to the physical and normative laws of nature, which also fully applied to humans, initially served to eliminate concepts such as original sin, which were used to direct the everyday lives of people in the interests of the opponent's dominion cared for. By definition, original sin could not find a place in the new world view, since its acceptance would also mean the acceptance of a sudden jump in the lawful course of nature or an immanently inexplicable change in human nature. The concept of necessity is therefore useful

the new freedom of humanity from this side. But what of the other Losing a page was at least as important as was recognized after the initial enthusiasm and under the pressure of the ever-increasing nihilism. In order to keep the sphere of action of the divine arbitrariness as narrow as possible or to eliminate it, one insisted on attributing everything in which one had previously suspected the finger of God indistinguishably guiding the fate of human beings to natural Ursadia. Not God, but biological, geographical and social factors (in other words: the sensuality on all levels) should now explain the temperament, attitude and behavior of the Merisdia. Every discovery in this direction was celebrated at Redit as a new victory in the struggle against theology or against the old forms of rulership and their representatives. The pure intellect as a faculty of freedom in man was degraded just as much as it was degraded as God, with all the emphasis on the good human nature. The assertion of determinism once again jeopardized the freedom it was supposed to protect against the arbitrariness of God. If the old dear God allowed himself to be appeased by tears, prayers and sincere remorse, and if his mercy or arbitrariness could sometimes turn out in favor of man, there was no escape from the laws of nature; the new rulership could not be influenced and no miracles could be expected. There was a tragic irony in the attempt to save human freedom from supernaturalism. Freedom from the supernatural became dependence on the natural. Impairment of the brain and nerves, climate, race, economy and morals - in short, everything that was called up against intellectualism or the machinations of God now showed itself to be a more inexorable lord than the old one. It was claimed against deity or theology that it represented human individuality through the heteronomous character of its regulations or through the reference to the nullity of human beings

° S. u. Chap. VII Anm. 9.

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outlook

359

God - and now people wanted to justify the new freedom by appealing to laws and instances before which the concrete human being was just as much a quantité negligéable. The contradiction was reported when one appealed to the lawful, that is, the impersonal or transpersonal, in order to assert a freedom that, as a deeply personal-existential emancipation, was impaired and violated by many and› really› felt that way. After all, the new transpersonal or superhuman personality was essentially different from that of the opponent, and in the intensity of their polemic opposition, the similarity of their formal structures and thus also the inner logic of the new position were pushed out of consciousness. Confidence and pride were great because we had finally succeeded in counteracting the opponent's worldview with one that was at least equal. And since the opposing view of the world was by definition equated with slavery, the mere opposition to it, without regard to its inner stability, was also by definition seen as a contribution to the theory and reality of freedom. For the new worldview position, both necessity, which went against the opponent's concept of freedom, and also freedom, which went against the opponent's concept of necessity, were equally indispensable. The cooperation of freedom and necessity in a common polemic setting enabled their coexistence in the concept of nature, even though they contradicted each other. It was the one goal of the polemic that ended the contradiction. Only the loss of the common goal or the clear defeat of the opponent allowed the internal logistical southern defense of the new position to be completely exhausted and thus triggered new international conflicts on a new level and between new opponents, which, however had to take up or vary older arguments. The merging of the causal and the normative in the concept of nature was dissolved into its component parts; the causal (in the sense of biological and social-health

• Ehrard (Idée de Nature, 793) put it aptly: l'idée de nature serait menacée d'éclater si ses deux aspects n'etaient également indispensables au combat philo sophique.' He also aptly notes the paradoxical replacement of divine arbitrariness by natural determinism (op. cit. 666 f.). I would like to point out this work with special reference. Ehrard's merit lies in the fact that he sees the concept of nature in its ideological and polemic function and establishes the Enlightenment philosophers' continuous differences between the causal and the normative, whereby the reason for this is precisely the polemic and ideological nature of the concept of nature and at the same time He knows that he is taking over or secularizing the thought structures of his theological opponent. To my understanding and knowledge, this is the most important piece of literature to date on the style of thinking of the Normativist Enlightenment, even though it only reflects the intellectual currents of a certain time period and country. An excellent knowledge of the sources and the author's strong sense of method and orientation had to result in this paradigmatic achievement.

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The senselessness) as a determining factor of the will now turned against the normative, which could only be based on a fixed concept of freedom or on the unassailable freedom of the will, without which talk of morality becomes empty. Nihilism must, at least in the long term, gain the upper hand, as many theologians had predicted, some in desperation and some in glee.

The verdadit of nihilism clung to the Enlightenment positions from their earliest days, and their representatives were therefore forced to vigorously defend themselves against him even before the main theological opponent was eliminated (and precisely in order to suffer this). For the normativist Enlightenment, as well as for every world diauli position that raises Maditan prudishness on a social level (in other words: propagates a new morality for the better shaping of human life), it was absolutely necessary to provide the Nadiwis for offering better norms and is therefore more capable than the opponent of solving individual and supra-individual problems, i.e. taking over the management of human affairs. Incidentally, the militant enlighteners were well aware of the necessity of victory in the question of values. Diderot formulated it epigrammatisdi - and these lines are not by any means written to Voltaire: Ce n'est pas assez d'en savoir plus qu' eux [the theologians], il faut leur montrer que nous sommes meil leurs, et que la philosophie fait plus de gens de bien que la grace suffisante ou efficace''. The vast majority of Enlightenment activists are fighting on two fronts at the same time - against the real rival and against the false brother. Therefore, in the positions of the Enlightenment, not only the moderated polemics and the collaboration between the causal and the normative are noticeable, but at the same time also their contradiction or competition. This is because determinism should be watered down at least to the extent that was necessary to initially circumvent nihilism. Watering down determinism now inevitably meant (at least partially) separating the causal from the normative for the sake of preserving the independence of the latter; the (partial) separation of both bradite but their open conflict (partially) with sidi, which had to remain hidden until then and was not allowed to be carried out to the end, since on the other hand one could not sdiledithin the confusion of being and should. One was sitting in a dilemma, and the confusion and thinking in circles only increased as one tried to help the conflict between the causal and the normative that arose in the pursuit of alleviating blind determinism

• ,Eighteenth-centu•Y j9hilosophy . . was intensely aware of the &allenge to re define the guarantees of social cohesion and morality. The philosopher were most anxious to show that not they, but their opponents, were the anarchists from the point of view of the natural order‘, Talmon, Total.Democracy, 22. • Letter dated September 29, 1762 (= OC, XIX, 464).

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new constructions of desire thinking. This typical thought structure appears at all important levels of Enlightenment thought effort, i.e. theological-cosmological, moral and historical philosophy. :hen. We have indicated here why this had to be the case: on the various levels mentioned, through the rehabilitation of sensuality, a single fundamental attitude emerged

to express it, and therefore it was to be expected that the logical implications or difficulties of this basic attitude would be noticeable at all levels at the same time.

2. God between spirit and nature

or the enlightenment between worship, Neutralization and instrumentalization of God A convincing discussion of theology (in the broad sense of the talk of or controversy about God) in the Age of Enlightenment must be able to explain the at least prima facie paradoxical difference that, although the atheists form a small minority and of the large The majority of Enlightenment thinkers are actually under attack because the overall result of the intellectual ferment is a significant elevation of God's position, in which they see his impending dethronement or killing announced (the intellectual development, however, went hand in hand with the social development). Only when asked in this way can this question be tackled fruitfully. The not‹:ht

'

The social health background of this dramatic turn of the divine evil must be kept in mind, especially since it is only before this that central slogans of the Enlightenment become understandable (thus the demand for tolerance is only conceivable and feasible on the basis of modern statehood). The beginning of the end of God is marked by the victory of the state over the Kirdie, and the 18th century represents a time in which the state wins decisive sediladites in the centuries-long struggle against the Kirdie (secularization in the jurisdi-politician sense, which the central areas of property ownership, governance and education).

The power of God was always just as great as that of his governors on earth, and it therefore had to gradually diminish as the latter were subjected to tough resistance, be it through force or through compromise, to an authority that was not primarily, if at all, in the acted in the name of God, but of man and his well-being. That authority was the state. Sdion's tolerance implied that God was less important to him than social peace, i.e. his own self-preservation. From this dialectic of the relationship between ChurchGod on the one hand and state-men on the other it is clear why the total state must be atheist.

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The rare embarrassment in relation to them, however, objectively arises from the paradox of the situation, which one tries to circumvent rather than explain - often out of polemic reluctance - by either overestimating the influence of the atheists (especially the Marxists In this assessment of the situation, we follow the conservative theologians of the 18th century as well as some modern nostalgists for the lost "unity of the diristli": Europe') or on the still always great, indeed in many areas: the practical, decisive effect ‹:hristli‹:the ideas refer to the people of the 18th century and not least to the representatives of the normativist Enlightenment themselves. The former is false, the latter, although correct in essential points, can hardly understand some of the specific features of the movement that was decisive for later cultural development in Europe and the world. We want to proceed in a more differentiated way here, not by looking at the self-understanding or self-portrayal of the actors of mental health, who, by the way, tend to die with them, but rather the structure and function of the terms they use, in which the logical “je cause” actually lies. : the more long-term processes are involved, we place them at the center of our attention.

A basic prerequisite for the clarification of the mentioned paradox is the precise determination of the reasons why most enlighteners cannot or do not want to dethrone God a fa‹:h, although on the other hand they fight positive Christianity (more mildly or tactically: reform, renew, interpret correctly) must — where they also see one of their most urgent tasks. Voltaire's S‹:hla‹:ht call ßcrasons l'Infame'' was meant for the church, not for the deity. This two-sided or ambiguous attitude is only to be understood in relation to the traditional function of God as the epitome and guarantor of all values that make social life possible. In the Age of Enlightenment this function is still alive and effective it is only now that it is being questioned to any significant extent. The traditional monopolization of values by God had to let every rejection of God first appear as an undermining of values or a life worthy of human beings in general. The Enlighteners do not live in a time when atheism and skepticism are understandable, self-evident, or even inevitable. The suspicions of atheism and nihilism are always equally important, and the enlighteners are not allowed to awaken the former because they can afford the latter in polemical terms e

.

However, their confession to God, whatever they may understand by it,

is in most cases not just a tactic to survive in an environment in which people have to do with the church from baptism to burial, but objective, ideal reflection of the bond that has always prevailed and been sanctioned through long centuries

^ Letter to Alembert, 28 December 1762 = OC, XLI I, 293; in Damilaville, 7. 1. 1764 = OC, XLIII, 78.

• Cf. the comments of Be&er, Gottesstaat, 64 f.

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Values in God - or that confession represents the way in which the power of the Christian past lies down in her own soul. The Enlightenment thinkers develop their activity in an interregnum, and the Janussedit of the time also shapes their own '°. Both for tactical (unehrlidia') and also for psydiisdi-ideological ('ehrlidia') reasons, they cannot avoid seeing in God the guarantor of socially indispensable values. It is precisely God's suitability for the "sacré lien de la société" that Voltaire thinks about when he Apparently it was in a late phase of his development, when he was no longer inclined " to easily derive the tout est bien from God - emphasized the necessity of inventing God if he had not existed "; however, he should only be invented for the people ", not for the 'educated' au-dessus du peuple'. And value nihilists like La Mettrie are of the conviction that human aggression can be effectively kept in check by religious superstition . " The impression would be superficial that the Enlightenment thinkers believed in God not from a normative point of view, but rather from e.g. B. from cosmological considerations. For in purely logical terms something is gained if one wants to accept God as the cause of movement and reject the self-movement of matter. The question is therefore more likely to be discussed above than solved, or one only speaks for one (and inexplicable) final ontological instance against another. In the case of logical equivalence (and very often even if this was missing), the normative point of view had to give the deciding factor.

After the tremendous social and world change in the world In the last two centuries, the Nidlt theologian has found it difficult to visualize the earlier self-understanding or evidence of the connection of values to God without further ado and in all its implications. The Enlightenment initiated and significantly advanced the dissolution of this bond in a socially relevant way, but at the same time it bore the burden of this bond itself. The new ontological instances, which were supposed to serve to justify values through final arguments, had not yet proven themselves sufficiently or, because of their nature, they were not capable of fulfilling normative tasks, which were, in the long term, due to the effect of these same instances should be kept more or less superfluous, but in the time of the Inter regnum, in the eyes of many Enlightenment thinkers, despite everyone's point of view, punishment was currently being invented. So could e.g. B. nature as a soldier for the immortality of the soul and thus for the possibility of a final reward or punishment for the individual's lifestyle

'° Cf. and paragraphs & n. 5 of this chapter.

" Cf. and Section 5 of this chapter.

" chapter CIV (1769) = OC, X, 403. '• Dict. Phil., Art. Atheism = OC, XVII, 463. '• S. u. cap. VII Abs&n. 3.

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vouch for ". With regard to similar questions, nature seemed normatively silent, so to speak." The conflict between causal and normative in the field of Theology or cosmology therefore takes the form that, on the one hand, God is more or less absorbed by nature or the reality of causality, whereby the idea of creation fades away against the background of the ontological upgrading of matter, but on the other hand, he functions in his own right as I nbc grip of the normative is kept separate from nature. Out of fear of the possible meaninglessness of the world or of nihilism, people distanced themselves from the mutual identification of the causal and the normative and related the latter to an independent authority, which is usually the personal God as the creator of nature or as the intellect of nature or the intellect in nature: the boundaries remained fluid anyway sig, especially since even after this confession to God, the concept of nature continued to be used to its full extent when the polemic and the need of the moment required it. This typical constellation can best be illustrated using the example of a thinker like Voltaire, who—just like Diderot in a different way—can be regarded as a true inventory of the currents and structures of thought of the normativistic Enlightenment in all their contradictions. When Voltaire polemicizes against atheism, he tends to emphasize God's intellectual character; only the assumption that God himself is an intelligence inef fable" is able to satisfactorily explain the intelligence in man (ie his capacity for morality)" - which precisely Holbadi's materialism could not achieve ". God as intellect is cleanly separated from nature; he is him

'^ Voltaire's attitude is very diarakteristisdi. He justifies the immortality of the soul with reference to the evil in the world (Poüme sur le désastre = OC, IX, 478), i.e. to the punishing or rewarding function of God (Dien et les hommes, II = OC, XXVI II, 133 ; L'A, B, C. = OC, XXVI I, 399 f.) and emphasizes the social usefulness of belief in immortality in this sense (letter to d'Argental dated April 20, 1769 = OC, L, 454) ; But if he does not argue directly morally, but rather ontologically anthropologically, then he declares his ignorance about the nature of the soul and doubts its substance (Dict. Phil., Art. Anne = OC, XVI I, 13s f., 141 f.; Lettres de Memmius only revelation can demonstrate it, he says (Dict. Phil. Art.

Anne = OC, XVI I, 145). Cf. Pellissier, Voltaire Philosophe, 52 ff., 173 f.; also Pomeau, Religion of Voltaire, 399 f. '• So formulierte es Voltaire im Poem on the Lisbon Disaster: Nature is mute, we question it in vain; / We need a God who speaks to mankind“ (OC, IX, 475). " Dict. Phil., Art. Atheism = OC, XVII, 469, 464. '^ To Alembert (27. 7. 1770) and to Dudiesse de Choiseul (8. 10. 1770) = OC, XLVII, 153, 216.

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great geometers and fabricators', but nature is not actually the origin of this, but rather through and through the work of art ", the nature of which is determined through 'les lois mathématiques' and la plus profonde géometrie' '°. (The proximity of this model to Med anicism of the 17th century makes it clear once again that the atheist materialism that Voltaire is fighting here was, in the decisive points, more of a refutation than a continuation of classical mediaticism".) — Voltaire's theology is now essentially different if he does not focus his polemic attention on it morally dangerous in atheism, but rather serving the dualist Malebrandle. This time a true intertwining of God and nature is envisaged, though the two are by no means identified. It is true that God is not l'universalité des dioses', but this émane de lui". In his connection with nature, God is certainly no longer primarily intellect, but rather power and "action", and in the lid of his new determination of being gets caught the idea of creation falters: a God who would have done nothing at all before creation can hardly be imagined". Voltaire counters the possible endangerment of morality through this pantheistic-seeming theology with the argument that we could not know exactly how the interweaving of God and nature, thus how it affects the personality of God - while he had no difficulty in identifying God (intellect, mathematician, builder, etc.) when he presented his first model A final remark on Voltaire: it would be improper to attribute his panentheist position to a late influence

attributed to Spinoza". In fact, Voltaire discovers materiality '°

Tout ari.” The expression is taken from Pope, Essay, I, v. 289: All Nature is but Art' — who, however,

a few verses earlier had referred to nature as the body of God (cf. o. Chap. IV, para. 3 a). It is obviously about the same twofold meaning. •° Dict. Phil., Art. Nature = OC, XX, 115 ff.; Hist. de Jenni, VIII = OC, XXI, 554 ff.; Dial. d'Evhtmére II = OC, XXX, 471 f. (cf. u. Anm. 24). °' Cf. o. Chap. IV Abs&n. 4. °°

All in Dien = OC, XXVIII, 98.

^ place cit., 97. ^ I cannot blame Verniére when he says that in his last years Voltaire generally viewed Spinozism in a more favorable light (Spinoza, 524). The very passage that Verniere quotes on page 525 in support of his thesis is preceded by three lines in Voltaire's text in which he looks for the difference between his view and Spinoza's deutlidi! I would think that in his polemic against Holba, Voltaire only emphasized certain "good" religious and moral aspects of Spinozism in order to make Holba's materialism all the more abhorrent : to cry . What would be worse than being no more atheist or fatalist than Spinoza? If Voltaire comes close to Spinoza's ideas, it is not due to Spinoza's influence, but thanks to the role that the anti-Cartesian approach plays in Enlightenment thinking. Against Cartesianizing opponents Vol-

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God, or rather his entanglement with space and time, as Newton's interpreter and vulgarizer, namely within the framework of the general anti-Cartesian approach of the Enlightenment. Both with regard to Voltaire's thinking and also to the entire thought pattern of the normativist Enlightenment, it is sadly moderate, not of two conceptions that follow one another in time, but rather to speak of a permanent swaying between them. The great caution or almost panic fear of the verdadit of nihilism is expressed diarakteristisdi in the Enlightenment thinkers' relationships with Spinoza. If one considers the fundamental parallelism of the Spinozist approach with that of the Enlightenment, namely the common rejection of the Cartesian radical separation of res cogitans and res extensa, then the small direct influence or one admitted by those affected must have Spinoza during the 18th century and, above all, the persistent attempts to demarcate him are strange, unless one remembers the constant fear of the Enlightenment thinkers of the final logical consequences of the rehabilitation of sensuality, namely of the fatalistic determinism of nature. The emergence of Spinozism on the intellectual horizon had a downright repellent effect and hindered the radical appreciation of sensuality rather than promoting it. The conservative theologians were thus given an example with which they could illustrate where the whole of science must lead. In their eyes, Spinozism was fatalism and therefore pure amoralism and this because it was atheism. Diderot, in his own way, confirmed this view when he declared Spinoza to be the spiritual father of his fatalist Jacques. If he distanced himself somewhat from his hero, this was obviously because Spinoza's moral philosophical difficulties served those of the - at least the absiding nadi - moralist materialism, i.e. Diderot's own, for obvious reasons. In fact, the great sadilidy lies, but also symbolizes the significance of the debate about Spinozism in the fact that in it the moral philosophy attitude is identified with the identification of res cogitans and res ex tensa ^ and thus connects it quite openly, almost provocatively, with the abolition of the personal God. Spinoza's further ideas in the field of anthropology and moral philosophy can easily be derived from the fundamental oncological decision that eliminates the traditional God. The

taire unconsciously come close to Spinoza. But his demarcation from him was conscious. Incidentally, it cannot be overlooked that Voltaire, in one of his latest texts (Dial. d'Evhtmere, 1777), represents the same cosmological view as in Art. Nature of the Dictionnaire (see OC, III, 471 f., cf. above note 20). "filtm. de la Phil. de Newton, I, 2 = OC, XXII, 404 ff. ^ OC, VI, 180. ^ S. and chap. VII paragraph bn. 4.

•• Eth., II, Prop. VII, Sdiol. (—Opera II, 90).

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Identity of God and nature “structurally arises from the entanglement of soul and body”. On this anthropological basis, however, morality as the subjugation of blind suffering to the sovereign intellect must appear to make little sense, as Spinoza did in a direct turn against Des cartes deutlidi madit ", and this is because no freedom of will comes into play in this ontological framework can ". Just ignorance The way in which body and soul are entwined allows the illusion of freedom to arise. No more: Judgments about good and evil depend, according to Spinoza, on the condition of the body or the brain *•, we do not desire a thing because it is in itself is good, but, conversely, we call it good because we desire it, "especially since the desire or the drive determines the essence of man." Spinoza denied objective validity to the concepts of good and evil a direct metaphysic reason, namely its equation of reality and perfection °', which - here as in every radical theodicy budistically removes evil from the world and which in turn is in the equation of God and nature or res cogitans and res extensa. It was precisely the sophistication of this scale of thought that strengthened its deductive effect, since it revealed the final moral-philosophical consequences of the ontological appreciation or deification of nature. There is more disagreement about the logical possibility of designing a constructive ethics on the basis of Spinoza's ontological prerequisites be of opinion ^. What remains undisputed, however, is that these presuppositions deem a solution - at least in theory - to the problem of moral philosophy. Therefore Benedictus became Maledictus, and the much-meaningful one

God or nature', Eth., IV, Pref. (= II, 206). ^ Eth., III, Prop. II, S&ol. (= II, 141 ff.).

" Eth. III, Pref. (= II, 137 f.). •-" Eth. II, Prop. XLVIII (= II, 129 f.). °° S.o. Anm. 30. ’^ Eth., I, App. (II, 82 f.). °^ Eth., III, Prop. 39, Schol. (= II, 170). •° Eth., III, Prop. IX, Schol. (= II, 147).

°' Eth. IV, Pref. (= II, 207 f.). ^ Most obviously, this possibility was denied by Taylor, who pointed out contradictions in Spinoza's argumentation in his correspondence with Blyenbergh (Some Incoherencies, esp. 282 ff.). On the contrary, for Joachim, a Spinozist ethics is made possible by a clear distinction between the level of the in-itself and that of the for-us: even if there is no good in itself, what is good for us is binding (The Ethics of Spinoza, 238 ff.). He just overlooks the fact that for us this does not necessarily encompass the entire human species, so that his commitment to certain groups or individuals could actually only increase competition with others. According to Spinozist presuppositions, man is indeed responsible for his own nature - but is his nature itself responsible in the absolute sense?

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This renaming did not fail to have an effect on the Enlightenment thinkers who were constantly fighting against the verdadit of nihilism, especially because, how said, their own approach in a broad but decisive sense lay in the line laid out by Spinoza: in the mind as well as in politics it is not uncommon that for tactical reasons one has to distinguish oneself most strongly from those with whom you are most related to.

Spinoza had to fall into disrepute all the more because pantheism or The atheism of his "ethics" only has to form the necessary flip side of the religious and biblical criticism of his "treatise"; this association, at least on the enlightened theological side, has stood in the way of a meaningful evaluation of Spinoza's work on biblical criticism. After all, the normativist Enlightenment could no more do without the Bible critic Spinoza than it could confess to being an atheist and amoralist. and this double attitude towards Spinoza is actually just another form of invention of their own divided theology or their own ambivalent Christianity. The early English deists already made extensive use of Spinoza's biblical criticism, "in which the French Enlightenment soon followed them." Its most notable representatives feel committed to the Treatise and publicly praise it, while at the same time distancing themselves from Ethics; so Montesquieu and so did Voltaire." And the Enlightenment has not found a way to alleviate the inconveniences of its - at least for theological reasons - inevitable alliance with the godless Spinoza, and even to gain a tactical advantage from them. In greeting to some Spinoza -Biographies, which first appeared around 1700 , "a Spinoza legend emerges that revolves around the person of the virtuous, humble and frugal philosopher and has a disarming effect even on those who oppose his teachings. In the line of Bayle's argument (albeit often presented in a moderate form) about the possibility of a moral atheis, Spinoza's example served to refute the theological thesis that any criticism of positive Christianity must result in the undermining of individual and social morality in general. go

If in the concrete situation of the 17th and 18th centuries atheism could not be considered as the flag of a socially relevant movement because of the nihilis musverdadites inherent in it, then on the other hand the fight against God and Christianity, as both were represented by the Kirdie, was U.N-

^• Slaughter, Farm. d. neuern color. Theol., I, 270 f. •° Colie, Spinoza and the early English Deisu, insb. 37 ff. •' Verniere, Spinoza and the French penste, 375 ff., 414 ff. •'

op. 459 ff., 509 ff. About Rousseau's evaluation of ron Spinoza's political philosophy, 488 ff.

'° S. Gebhardt's edition, for our context especially 8 f. •' S. nædisten Absdinite.

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observable goal of the Enlightenment, indeed its very reason for existence. Only a reinterpretation and functioning of the conception of God or the use of God in the spirit and in the service of enlightenment could help out of this impasse; by relying on a God who has been suitably prepared ma W. now both the new cosmology and the new Werukala (if necessary) sanctioned or just immunized against theologis&e attacks. This intellectually very important phenomenon, which we want to call the instrumentalization of God in the following, explains the paradox established at the beginning of this section that, although atheists in the Age of Enlightenment fought a small one, progressives' and 'conservatives' generally fought it in equal measure form a minority, but God ends up as the loser. In the face of this extremely complicated and contradictory development, it is not enough to register the significant remnants of religious and metaphysical elements in Enlightenment thought. However, this is necessary and praiseworthy, above all if one intends to avoid clutter and to draw a differentiated picture of the Age of Enlightenment or of the normative Enlightenment itself". that the function of those elements changes drastically when they are placed in a new ideological framework; therefore, for the most part, the brother takes place in and through what at first glance seems to ensure continuity.

Here again the heterogony of purposes is at work, the honesty and depth of the personal religious faith of the individual thinkers condemned to irrelevance in the larger intellectual perspective. One can even dare to claim that in some cases the attack against traditional theology is undertaken with a clear conscience in all seriousness precisely when the attacker is of the conviction that in doing so he is truly serving the true God. He mentioned the inability of nature to take over all of God's moral tasks (in reality, nature was only able to completely replace God when these tasks - especially the punishment or reward of the earthly lifestyle in the afterlife - were on a social level superfluous or no longer felt urgent), worked in the same way,

that is, it supported faith in God. However, this belief now refers to a God with a different conception, and therefore it would be at least one-sided to interpret it as a world-based alimentation with reluctance towards the possible speech of the theological opponent. On the contrary. The new, “purified” or The "rational" conception of God aims to leave to the opponent only that of God that could be described as nonsense, and at the same time wants to demonstrate that the Enlightenment position is above the verdict of nihilism in every respect.

'^ So e.g. B. Be‹ker, Gottesstaat, 21, and Die&mann, Religious and Metaphysical Elements in Enlightenment thinking, in: Studies, especially 260, 262 ff.

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Before we explain the two basic forms of instrumentalization of God in more detail, something needs to be said about his neutralization. As a rule, it occurs through the thesis that God's will and nature are unfathomable. Behind their pious garb is the polemisthe culmination: because no concrete and binding commandments can be derived from an unfathomable God, so there can be no governors of God on earth who would let His will be known and known convey. In other words: God as an appellate authority in the service of the church is eliminated. Bayle already pointed out with particular emphasis the difficulties of a coherent and generally acceptable definition of God's essence and added that the zeal of those striving to achieve this cannot be traced back to a purely practical and moral interest , but rather on un desir ardent que leur secte soit triomphante, ou bien établie, et fort en Stat ou de subjuguer les other, ou de se défendre contre el les' ^. The fact that the neutralization of God is only the first step towards his instrumentalization in the sense of the normativist Enlightenment is shown by the persistence with which the same Bayle maintains the goodness (i.e. a certain being of his own) of God defends, when it comes to it, the doctrine of original sin ie to refute an ideological cornerstone of the Church's claim to the guidance of men and women for the purpose of their salvation. Precisely in his polemics against the theologian Jacquelot, Bayle speaks of goodness as the ale principal caractere de la nature divine; it is inconceivable that a soldier god would use original sin and evil to carry out his plans for man and the universe. Of course, it cannot be overlooked that this assumption of‘7divine goodness occurs less from inner conviction than from the reluctance to fight the opponent with his own weapons; denno‹:h the double attitude with Ru‹:ksidit on polemis‹:he needs cannot be misjudged, especially since the opponent is being taken at his word this time, while he should be refuted pausdially and from the outside when it is a matter of the possibility‹ :ability of a determination of God's essence acted at all. This dual mode of argumentation became the basic feature of enlightened theology. Voltaire, who, following Bayle, "declares that we must admit our 'ignorance sur la nature de la divinité' if we fear de la faiblesse de notre entendement," seems, on the other hand, to be familiar enough with the nature and will of God to be able to protest that God cannot possibly torment mankind for all eternity". fihn1i‹:je statements come from Freilidi

•^ Continue. various thoughts, $ XX = Works Div., III, 214 f. 7 _ or quest d'un Prov., II Part., CLI, CLV, 165 = Oeuvr. Div. III, 812 824, 846; Entered. de Maxime et Themiste, XV = Oeuvr. Div. IV, f9 ff. •

’^

Mason, Bayle and Voltaire, 121.

•• Dict. Phil., Art. God, Gods — OC, XVIII, 359. *• For and Against = OC IX, 3f9; Poem on the Nat. Law, IV = OC, IX, 460; Henriade VII = OC, VIII, 176.

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predominantly from Voltaire's early period, but his later protests against God's toleration of evil also imply the same assumption of the incompatibility of a certain, indispensable characteristic of God, such as goodness, with the current world order - but this time the precedents are reversed Kirdili's competencies are also aimed at another (also typical for the Enlightenment) belief of Voltaire, which is based just as much on a certain conception of God: God the Almighty does not need our cult (so the tasks of the Church in this regard are not so important), but leave it alone honor our virtue and good works ". (The young Diderot said the same thing in a radical way: "But belief is worse than atheism.") Neutralization and instrumentalization of God or denial of the possibility of determining his essence and at the same time determining his essence in the sense of the postulates of the normative stisdia Enlightenment also go with Rousseau Hand in hand. In order to underpin the purely emotional certainty of his belief in God and also to forestall Maditan prudishness, he claims the complete unfruitfulness of theological-metaphyseal discussions, while on the other hand, in the interest of the fight against the doctrine of original sin and the doctrine of the eternal “The punishments, goodness and power of God are identified with one another” and thus makes a concrete determination of God’s essence. This ambiguity in Rousseau's argument was not lost on the Bishop de Beaumont, who drew attention to it in his Condamnation of the Fimile.

What has gone before may have indicated one basic form of the instrumentalization of God : it is about the task of God to be the founder and guarantor of a morality that differs significantly from that attributed to positive Christianity (or its caricature designed in pole misdier absidency). , that is, seem much more cosmopolitan. This form of the instrumentalization of God, which we want to call (in contrast to the science of science) the moralistic, is decisively shaped by English deism. It is true that deism does not appear as a closed system from the start, rather its individual basic aspects (criticism of the Bible and miracles, determination of the relationship between the church and the state or the demand for tolerance, autonomy of theoretical reason against authority and revelation, autonomy of practical Reason or subjection of religion to morality) largely worked out and represented by various authors

'* About this see paragraph. 5 of this chapter. ^- Pros and Cons = OC IX, 362; Ears of the Earl of Chesterfield, IV —

OC, XXI, 585. •° Thoughts Phil. XII = OC, I, 130. ^‘ Emile IV — Oeuvres, IV, 565, 599. ^ loc. cit., 588 f., 591 f,; see den Letter to Beaumont im gleidien Band, 938. •° cf. Kondylis, Origin of dialectics, 120 f.

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". Here, however, only the great common denominator or the general rule of deist thinking is of interest, namely the demand for agreement between reason and religion, which itself is based on the assumed consistent reasonableness of God. The deist rejection of divine voluntarism is based on this Immutability of the divine commandments and therefore opens up the possibility of not just establishing them once and for all or interpreting them in a coherent manner (so that interpretive instances are no longer needed in the future), but also as existing from all eternity (so that the previous activity of those authorities could only be described as a betrayal of the original, true religion). Now the demand for agreement between revealed religion and reason, no matter how moderate and unbiased it may sound, implies the supremacy of reason Because it postulates the expulsion of revelation in every version that is unacceptable to reason. Whether the agreement takes place or not should be determined by reason and not by revelation; reason should even decide whether the revelation at hand is edited or not 8 . More concretely, this means a claim by the self-proclaimed representatives of reason to gain the upper hand over those who presented themselves as the authoritative interpreters of revelation. The replacement of the latter by the former should also take place through the repurposing of religion or God in the spirit of reason. By not demanding the abolition of revealed religion, but rather its agreement with reason, one basically wants to use its still great social power for purposes other than those it has previously served, and at the same time radically eliminate the notion of nihilism. One wants to repurpose religion because one supports its social mode (both tactically-subjectively and objectively, i.e. through one's own religious convictions), and at the same time one supports the verdadit of atheism or nihilism, also with reference to the social one Madit of religion. In this complicated situation, the need for God's instrumentalization arises and arises through the detour of the agreement between religion and reason. There can be no doubt that the reduction of religion to

Reason should break the theological monopoly on interpretation. Toland expressly says that mysteries were introduced into Christianity by the priests with the aim "that we might constantly •' Lechler, Ges. i.e. english Deism, 325. At least in descriptive terms, this Budi still remains indispensable. cf. Meanwhile, the excellent presentation of English deism by Hirsch, Gesch. i.e. new Evangelical Theol., I, 292 ff., and of course aude Stephen, English Thought (I. Band). Audi Torrey, Voltaire and the english Deists, insb. 28 ff., 65 ff., 1o9 ff., 157 ff. • Locke, Essay, IV, 18 $ 8 (= II, 423 f.).

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depend upon them for the Explication'”. Since the highest interpretative authority should now be reason, those teachings would not just have to be reinterpreted, but rather interpreted away. Hardly any thought is given to the fact that reason, too, is in need of interpretation, so that the fight for the interpretation monopoly could continue despite the removal of its current holders and despite significant changes in content. The party of reason and thus reason itself is always largely unified, because it has not defeated its opponents. From the knowledge and evidence of reason one promises an end to the bloody chaos of religious wars, which, according to Collins, is due to the disagreement of the priests on theological questions °'. Incidentally, Collins shows the same clear understanding of the question of the monopoly of interpretation as Toland, "and the same applies to Tindall." In order to counter the kir‹:hlidien approach to the monopoly of interpretation a limine and to remove the breeding ground for those disputes that are supposed to arise from the existence of mediators between God and Man, Tindall takes the view of intellectual communication between God and Man ' would be based on self evident notions' •*. The religion of reason is written in the hearts of every one of us from the first creation' ^. Thus, Tindall can complement or support his call for the elimination of mediating or interpreting instances in the future by a radical review of the usual ‹:iiristlidian image of the past. For him, the purification of religion should not simply be limited to a return to primitive religion, as was often demanded in the 18th century, but rather through a direct reconnection to the original law of God, through the restoration of the Mensions are to be made to the day of his creation.

Christianity is thus greatly disparaged as a later, first invention and the Gospel is simply placed next to the law of nature. The latter, by the way, proceeds logically and ‹:hronologisdi; because it is not capable of additions" and God "impresses' the same 'on Christiane as well as Others'". As you can see, belief in God here amounts to a questioning of traditional belief in general - an impressive example of this indeed possible: the consequences of the instrumentalization of God. The use of God for defense

^^ Christianity not Mysterious, Sect. II, Chap. I = S. 26; cf. Preface, xviii ff. '°

Discourse of Free-Thinking, Sect. II = S. 46 ff. •' op. cit., Sect. III = S. 107 ff.

* Christianity as old as the Creation, XI = S. 170 ff. ^

on cit., XI = pp. 141 ff.

•• on. cit., XII = S. 184. ^

up. cit., VI = P. 60.

•• on. cit., VII = S. 70. °'

on. cit., IX = S. 135.

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the new scale of values in which the credit for earthly happiness was written up goes so far that Tindall accuses the martyrs of Christianity of having made their difficult sacrifice against the will of *

God!

The English interpreters, in the spirit of religious philosophy, continued the work of the Platonists of Cambridge. We know that their equation of reason and religion (which was, however, less radical in content than that of Toland and Tindall) was committed to the model of mathematical nature and knowledge in the broad sense: the commandments of reason-religion should be just as stable and binding as mathematically comprehensible laws ". From this consideration you can see the inner connection of God's moral instrumentalization with the natural sciences. God should therefore not only take the new Werukala, but also the new natural conception in his opinion and even use it against his own Defend traditional followers or representatives. The instrumentalization of God in natural science was already announced in the 17th century through the use of commonplaces in the sense of the new model of nature "; in Descartes, God does not ultimately appear as a purely mental entity that has certain aspects within the overall concept functions fulfilled". Given the tremendous rise of nature, no god can exist for long who does not respect or proclaim the laws formulated by nature. His mastery is not disputed, but what he rules over is structurally determined by the natural sciences, so that compelling conclusions regarding the physiognomy of the master must follow from the figure of the master. God may rule, but only over this nature, God may create, but only this world. Until then, God had to submit to theological decisions, but now he becomes dependent on those who discover or determine the laws of nature and the world: this shows the gradual assertion of that basic attitude towards worldview, which is associated with the reha connected to nationalism. Although God is actually defined in relation to nature, the situation is quite often the opposite, both in the religious self-understanding of many researchers and in the public statements of few believers. However, this should not be taken as a deception about the change in priorities that has taken place, but rather as a necessary manifestation of the Interregnum. Naturally, scientifically, the constructions are not seldom designed with direct reference to God's traditional competencies, but even these are now given as necessary logical conclusions from the new findings in some areas of the on eit., VIII = p. 89. •• S. o. Chap. III, Abs&n. 3. '• S. o. Chap. II, Abs‹:hn. 2 b. " S. o.Kap.III, Abs‹:hn. 2.

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Natural knowledge science or, as the true metaphysis, the interpretation of those findings. So even where there is undoubtedly a subordination of natural knowledge based points of view (in the narrower sense) to theological considerations, it remains crucial that one cannot simply ignore the former, but rather must interpret them in a clear way: the indispensability of natural knowledge based points becomes sidi sdiliedlidi turn into their priority. - Of course, the bond of God to the laws of nature, which is here fostered, does not always and necessarily mean the same as his ontological interdependence with nature. In this case, too, the conflict between the causal and the normative is reported. If God, always the epitome of the normative, is constructed with reference to natural causality, then the question arises to what extent he is allowed to violate the latter in order to realize normative goals, or, conversely, to what extent are catastrophes that are based on natural causality go back, be reconciled with its normatively understood nature or goodness, etc. Only against the background of the escalating conflict between the causal and the normative as a result of God's instrumentalization can it be understood why a natural event such as the Lisbon earthquake gave rise to a major controversy. Newton's example demonstrates both the general usefulness of a

The instrumentalization of God in natural science as well as its inconveniences for a believer - inconveniences that finally made it unavoidable to completely eliminate the always identical natural causality to establish the factual dominion of God over nature. With Newton, the instrumentalization of God takes place first in the form of the extraction of the concept of absolute space from the concept of God in an early phase of his spiritual development. The absolute space is then detached from its theological presuppositions, ie it becomes independent as a mathematical and natural science dimension and enables the new laws of motion and thus the new physics. In the model of nature developed in this way, God now appears in another instrumental function, namely as a non-mechanism, the cause of medianism. It is thus - at least if one follows the purely logical thread of the argumentation - not assumed but analytically discovered, namely at the point where the scientific analysis, after having arranged all partial aspects into a meaningful whole, the question nadi the creator, bearer and guarantor of this whole". God becomes a category of natural science in the sense that he

”

S. and para. 5 of this chapter. ^ S.o. Container. IV, Absdin. 2 a.

°^ Bn&ley, Motion and Motion's God, 197 f. In this respect, Strong has redit when he says that Newton's absidit was primarily knowledge-based (Newton and God, 150, 159). But if he denies the theological background of the doctrine of absolute space for this reason (loc. cit., 152), he is simply confusing the logic

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cares for the maintenance of the world order determined and described exclusively on mathematical natural knowledge s‹fiaft1idi way ”. Newton's religious conscience is particularly resistant to this. Before the hubris he s‹firo&en and strives to affirm his strict, Jewish-patriard alis‹fi understood God ", he undertakes a logically and empirically unjustified loosening of natural causality, so that there is no doubt about its incompetence could, to perpetuate si‹fi itself, ie to finally autonomize si‹fi.By sharing More's well-known reservations against the supposedly atheist Medianicism, he rejects the Cartesianist thesis that the world could without divine intervention, albeit because of the laws established by God, he emerges from chaos; he even revises his earlier belief in the everg1‹fie quantity of motion in nature". True, he maintains the view that the universe "being once formed, it may continue by those laws for many ages', but hastens to emphasize the need for God 's activity to further maintain the order of nature".

This puts him in a highly paradoxical and dangerous situation. He saves his Pantocrator's claim to intervene in nature as a manus emendatrix - but only to have to accept the high price of having to accept the south of the Masdiine, without this necessarily emerging from their purely natural-knowledge analysis." Nod sd worse: the assumed imperfection or occasional need for repair of the machine had to suggest the idea that the Creator God was not able to produce something perfect, but had to lie around with the defects of his own works for an eternity. For Newton's God there was it does not offend1i‹fi a Sabbath.

Apart from God as a scientific category in the sense explained, Newton's conception of God has two aspects: on the one hand he is involved with space and as a soldier rather passive, on the other hand he represents the manus emendatrix and behaves actively as a soldier. The first aspect stands before Newton's mature model of nature as its theological prerequisite

genetic level with each other or he only has the finished Newtonian model of nature in mind and ignores the early treatise De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum (which, by the way, was only published 10 years after his essay), of which we are talking above (chap . IV, Paragraph 2 a) speak. That Newton does not explicitly mention the theological origin of absolute space to Bentley is not a sign that it did not exist, as Strong suggests, but rather that Newton did not commit a Spinozism: ht wants to arise. '• Burtt, Metaph. Foundations, 293; Testfall, Science and Religion, '^ Manual, Religion of Newton, 23, t6 ff. " Kubrin, Newton and the Cyclical Gosmos, insb. 326 f., 337, 333 f. '• Opti&s III, Qu. 31 Opera IV, 261 ff. '° Fierz, About the Origin, to5 f., cf. 97.

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tion, while the second forms the theological complement or moderation of that model. Leibniz opposes both aspects: in the former he (tacitly) trembles with Spinozism ", in the latter he sees a degradation of God •'. We don't want to reconstruct the content of the now famous dispute between Leibniz and Clarke ". But there is a lot to be said about his argumentative style . Both sides accuse each other of implicit atheism, so that the controversy is dominated by metaphysical points of view. The impression would still be false that this is about theology in the old sense. Rather, what is characteristic of the new phase in the history of God and theology is that arguments are made with regard to certain models of nature and that each of them is associated with a certain conception of the nature of God. Both sides speak with enviable meticulousness about God's character, habits, and way of thinking, as well as the sense in which he is free or perfect, and the way in which he makes his choices in favor of this or that project. Under these circumstances, it is difficult for a third party to avoid the impression that God can be understood more or less arbitrarily or at least defined essentially differently with good reasons in each case. The undoubtedly honest piety of both sides - which forces us to always and primarily relate (different) conceptions of nature to God - paradoxically contributes more to a reduction than to an increase in divine authority. Because it does not form a basis for understanding, but on the contrary, it is the subjectively exonerating and externally most credible prerequisite for raising the verdict of atheism against the other side. The fact that both sides have suggested this belief (at least as the ultimate logical consequence of the other's position) objectively shows the difficult situation of piety since it had to take into account the new science of nature. In the

The impending demise of an idea often becomes apparent to those with intellectual wisdom because arguments for it can easily be transformed into arguments against it, whereby the idea in question imperceptibly loses its specific content. Seen in this way, Clarke and Leibniz rendered God very questionable services - and not only in terms of the opinion of each of them in relation to the other, but also in terms of the concrete effect of their teachings in the sense of the heterogony of the two. The argumentative style of the controversy between Leibniz and Clarke madite That's why school, because the instrumentalization of God is now on the agenda

Letters 3 and 4 to Clarke — Phil. Schr., VII, 363 f., 376. ®' 1st & 2nd letters to Clarke Phil. Schr. VII, 352, 357 f. "

For this see the excellent presentation by Koyrt, From the closed. World, chap. XI,

S. 211 ff.; cf. Priestley, The Clarke-Leibniz Gontroversy, 34 ff.

^ Cf. the remarks of Gay, Science of Freedom, 144. On Newtons and Leib Nice's effect in the materialistic sense see Chap. IV, Sections 2 and 4.

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was in order. Given the double necessity of natural sciences In order to operate from an immanent point of view and to dispel suspicion of atheism with an unmistakable and often pathetic gesture - but basically, because of God's plasticity, otherwise non-binding in terms of content - it became a custom, even a convention, to play off scientific views against others in the name of God , who in turn had previously presented themselves as the only strong bulwark against atheism. Maupertuis thus contrasts both the Cartesian law of the ever-same quantity of motion and Leibniz's law of the ever-same quantity of force with his principe de la moindre quantité d'action', which he considers digne de l'ßre supreme" and even considers it to be a new proof of God because it alone is truly general, he rejects Newton's proof of God from the supposedly ad hoc regularity of the solar system with the remark that this is based only on Newton's inability to Rune cause physique de this

—

uniformité' to call ••. However, the same Maupertuis is by no means prepared to simply recognize God as the cause of all movement; After he has presented the two opposing views on it - immanence of movement in matter and God as primum movens - he does not speak in favor of the latter, but rather says that the cause of movement is unknown. However, it makes little sense not to accept the proof of God from the origin of the movement and to only want to find proof of God in the way in which the movement or the “action” is carried out. It is clear from this that the principle of the "moindre quantité d'action" is not actually intended to be a new proof of God, but rather to substantiate the natural science thesis of the simplicity and universality of the laws of nature by citing the essence of God; The intelligence and economy of God differ only in scope and intensity from the corresponding qualities of a good mechanic. God is instrumentalized at the very moment in which the world appears as a machine-like instrument in his hands.

But Maupertuis also offers another version of the scientific instrumentalization of God, which we must pay particular attention to. This time it is about legitimizing by God himself the very conceptions that were considered by the adherents of traditional theology to be highly dangerous to God - and indeed fundamental by the materialists. A great example of the generous treatment of the concept of God

"• Essai de cosmol., II'Pan. = Oeuvres I, 4o ff. "• op. eit., I‘ Part. = I, 23. ^’

op. eit., II'Phan. = I, 26 ff.

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Depending on the respective goal, we can conclude that in this case the will and power of God come to the fore, while his rationality and wisdom were emphasized especially when, as we have just seen, it is based on the theological underpinning of the Natural law or causality arrived. For Maupertuis, the immanence of attraction in matter would be possible as a commandment of the Since our will of God. final understanding is unable to recognize the nature of bodies, we would have to assume that matter could have this property if God only wanted it." Maupertuis, also as a good theologian, also defends epigenesis, which is no less a thorn in the eye of the traditionalists. To their argument that God created everything in a single day, he replies that for God everything that comes to us successively is simultaneous, so there is no difference between epigenesis and preexistence. As you can see, the instrumentalization of God required beaditlidie casuististhe achievements, and they were also gladly and reidilidi erbradit. Significantly, the faithful Catholic Needham, a pioneer of the theory of epigenesis, had already wanted to place it under the aegis of God. Voltaire, who supported the atheistic consequences of the new biology, criticized Needham for this, but he himself did so, and Although in relation to an equally central question, God is invoked in order to make the sdimamatic that could scandalize the pious. Even matter can think, he says - why not, if the almighty God wants it that way? "How usual This style of argument was used by those authoritative Enlightenment thinkers who advocated the abolition of the atheism verdadite, the memory of this should make it clear that Voltaire here only repeats Locke, who had considered the case that "God can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking". The instrumentalization of God reached its extremely paradoxical climax when God was commissioned to do it through his own omnipotence to get rid of oneself: for nothing other than the beginning of the end of God meant the ability of matter to move, transform and also think. Now the instrumentalization of God was actually as old as God himself, ie the almighty God was always an instrument in the hands of 'sudid' people who tried to establish or defend their own Maditanian sayings through him. The crucial difference between the earlier instrumentalizations of God and the current one is that ^ Disc. sur la figure des astres $ IX I, 161, 169. ®* ^ "

Venus, XII = II, 68. Roger, Sciences de la vie, 513. op. cit., 511, 731 ff., 741.

"' Îlém. de phil. de Newton I, 6 = OC, XXI, 422 ff.; Dict. Phil., Art. Matiere = OC, XX, 50; Letter to P. Tournemine from 1735 = OC, XXXIII, 518. °'

Essay IV, 3, $ 6 (= II, 193).

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In the course of the ontological rehabilitation of sensuality, one conception of God could be replaced by another without the idea of God as such having to suffer — especially since there was no other ontological, world-view orientation framework. Since such a thing (as nature) has existed and competed with the old, the instrumentalization of God must prove fatal for the latter: because it takes place with regard to the new ideological framework competing with it, ie the respective conception of God now more or less stands at the time of the respective conception of nature, so that it is actually only logical to demand that God himself endow nature with his own ontological predicates or to commission God himself with the abolition of God. But even if it does not come to that, the instrumentalization of God in the times of the new world and the diaulidian basic attitude contributes significantly to the fact that he has his specific and binding (as they appear from the side of his previous representatives) Characteristics largely lost; He is belittled at the very moment when friend and enemy (as defined in the conventional view) criticize him for his actions. To the superficial observer it might seem as if this were proof of his still unbroken power - but his power is only just enough to maintain the old connection between atheism and nihilis musverdadit. Seen in this way, the criticism of God from all sides is only the flip side of his disintegration under circumstances in which suspicion of atheism and nihilism always largely coincide - i.e. under the circumstances of a global interregnum. However, the major controversies revolve primarily around the definition and only secondly around the existence of God. God will focus on certain goals defined (where these goals are then derived anew from the essence of the God thus defined, this time with an ontological auriole), and in his immeasurable goodness he disappoints no one who invokes him: he is at the same time on the side of all parties, just as he refuses no belligerent a blessing for good Sadie in time of war. Or God resembles a demented old gentleman who is being manipulated by his servants—for his own good, as the most devoted of these servants believe. But since several different positions are now ascribed to God, it ultimately becomes immaterial which of these one chooses, so that God can no longer guarantee the one truth and one morality. As a fighter against the claims of theology to represent the one truth and morality, Voltaire was happy about it: »Hereusement, quelque systeme qu'on embrasse, aucun ne nuit a la morale: car qu'importe que la matiére soit faite ou arranged?' ” In the undurdisidit situation that arose as a result of the instrumentalization of God

•• Dict. Phil., Art. Matter e = OC, XX, 53.

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However, with Maupertuis, one can assume the exact opposite: that one could draw conclusions ("consequences terribles") from every hypothesis philosophique' atheistis':h-nihilistis':he S':iil conclusions ('consequences terribles') if one only wanted to." .—

3. Between instinct and reason. The dilemma of moral philosophy a) General The conflict between causal and normative arises in a structurally similar form in the field of moral philosophy and anthropology. Because reason and instinct in humans generally relate to each other like God and matter in the cosmos. To the extent that one makes God independent of nature, one also makes human reason the mistress of biopsy meaning. In both cases, the preservation of the normative is intended, but in both cases the Enlightenment does not want to (or not completely) abandon the rehabilitation of meaningfulness; Therefore, reason is de-intellectualized or merged with the deeper existential views in the same sense as God is merged with nature (or else: reason guarantees the regular functioning of an innate moral causality of human beings Nature just as God does with regard to natural causality). However, the problems of mediation only arise after nature has been ontologically upgraded and the thesis that man is nature has therefore been taken seriously. Despite all the difficulties of mediation, this thesis could not be relied on, nor could the equally delicate one As long as God wasn't dead - the appreciation of nature could be foregone. The same Enlightenment thinkers who were concerned with the elevation of humanity through liberation from superstition and despotism and who envisioned its dominion over nature through knowledge and wisdom had to change its mind by pointing out its extensive or even mere nature To continually degrade naturalness. Her dream of becoming a man could often not be reconciled with her hatred of him. The polemic against theology, however, made this ambiguity unavoidable. Of course, it was important to fully include people in the new worldview framework.

•• Response to Dideroi's Objections = Works II, 197.

°• Cro&er, Age of Crisis, 78 j cf. and para.:hn. 5 of this chapter.

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pull; for there could be no comprehensive ontological appreciation of nature as long as man remained primarily the image of God . The extremely impressive exaltation of man through his resemblance to God had dangerous ontological consequences, with which moral philosophy and inconveniences were associated. For the downside of being made in the image of God was original sin, that is, man had to follow the entire path marked by God if he wanted to place himself under his authority from the beginning. Since the doctrine of original sin formed the ideal basis of diristlid ascetic morality, the Enlightenment, in order to be able to counter the latter, had to reject the diristlid anthropological concept in its entirety (at least as long as materialism and nihilism were not an immediate threat "), i.e understand man as nature and hold on to it all the more firmly, the more intense the fight against asceticism or everything that was understood by it became. Without a doubt, this fight constitutes a fundamental aspect of the Enlightenment. Not without reason In their ranks, the concern with the question of happiness became an obsession, with the well-being of the body playing no small role in the new conception of happiness. Under the pressure of the spirit of the times, the theologians moderated their tone, that is, they no longer spoke of selfsufficiency and self-denial, but rather of true or spiritual happiness as the goal of mankind; Nevertheless, initial efforts to reconcile religious and secular morality led to a hardening of the fronts (especially in France after 740). However, the demand for happiness contains the need for self-determination, for personal design of one's own fate independently of any authority. If we consider this essential aspect of anti-ascetic morality, we will not be surprised that the Enlightenment, in addition to the demand for happiness, also raises the need for suicide."°. Both belong together, if not entirely, then polemisd. Together they oppose the diristlid assumption that human life does not belong to man, but to God, who alone can determine it and give or take it through his commandments.

The perpetuation of the thesis of the fundamental naturalness of the Humanity is reflected very differently in the almost general rejection of the darn Cartesian separation between humans and animals. However, this was within the framework of the Enlightenment tendency to entangle res

°' We spoke above about the occasional convergence of &ristli& intended elevation of man (imageness with God) and moderate enlightenment. IV Section 4 b. °^

Mauzi, Idea of Happiness, 80, 300 ff. op. et., 398 ff., 180 ff. '•° Crofker, Discussion of Suicide, insb. 53 ff., 62 ff. •°

"' Aufier Rosenfield's work see Shugg, Cartesian Beast-Machine, 279 ff.

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cogitans and res extensa to be expected, as sdion Spinoza's position on this question implied "'. Bayle made the alternatives clear with his diaracteristic directness: either one remains with the Cartesian separation and saves the soul and its immortality or one questions it and ver If one does not want to simply give up this immortal soul, one is faced with insoluble difficulties (not excluding the diastolics). However, the difficulty of the alternative has not stopped the authoritative Enlightenment thinkers from adopting the Cartesian position in the interests of the Nadiwise human nature ‹: klidi. All of their arguments can be found in Condillac's Traité des Animaux '°', so that a reconstruction of them is unnecessary. The only thing that needs to be emphasized is that they do not only serve a biologisdi-anthropologi, but also have an epistemological aspect, that of all However, given its empiricist character, it can hardly be separated from the former. When examining the question of whether animals have souls similar to those of humans, Lo‹:ke's dissolution of the Cartesian identity of soul and thought is assumed; only if the soul is not identical with thinking can it (in the functional sense) also be attributed to animals. The connection was known to Voltaire even before Condillac. He refers to Lo&e's dichotomy of soul and mind (and, moreover, he draws on matter's eventual ability to think) precisely in support of his belief that animals feel just as humans do, and only "Une vanité ridicule" let the impression of the essential difference arise between the animal and human souls "^. Audi Maupertuis wants to refute the thesis that animals have a 'name sensitive' but not a 'name pensante' with the help of his epistemological empiricism. Tout sentiment, toute perception est une pensée', he says, so the distinction between the two types of soul becomes a limine obsolete."' The origin of the spirit from the senses claimed here is, however, basically only a component of the general conception of the nature of the human being Mensdien, and therefore it is not surprising that it became controversial in moral philosophy. Opponents of empiricist epistemology such as Bonnet "• saw the degradation of the intellect carried out by Dadurdi as a threat to freedom of will as great as the common subsumption of

'°' Eth., III, Prop. 57, Sdi. = Works II, 187 '°° Dict. hist. et crit., An. Rorarius, Rem. C, E, - III, 2473 f., 2476-78. Bayles ' reference to Rorarius illustrates the extent to which the Enlightenment is concerned with questions that modern rationalism raised in its early phase; cf. o. Chap. II, absdin. 3 b. '°'

Vor german s. Second part, &. I—II = Works I, 356 A—358 B. "'Traitt de Métaph., V = OC, XXII, 211 f. '°^ Letter V (On the soul of cocks) = Works II, 246 f. '°' Cf. o. cap. V Absdin. 3 a.

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Humans and animals fall under the umbrella concept of naturalness. And in fact, a radical empiricist like Hume claimed that free will as causally understood influence on objects by the mind was an illusion in the same sense as causality between objects - and shortly afterwards the "ex perimental reason, on which the whole conduct of life depends', as a common peculiarity of mensdi and animal to bezeidinen "' The thesis of the naturalness of humanity - indispensable for completing or consolidating the new ontological and worldview framework on the one hand and for combating asceticism on the other - had to in turn impair freedom of will and thus the ability to act morally to the extent that how the expression of divine autonomy required a causal conception of nature and humanity. The conflict between causal and normative in Enlightenment moral philosophy arises in the attempt to meet a double polemic need. In doing so, the logic of the differences should be accepted rather than a blunt confession of determinism, which could turn the verdadit of nihilism into a certainty. Because the logic is the interdependence of determinism and moralism: relativism on an individual and social level

was clear to all sides, and it was also known that the libertines used to present the violation of master-serving norms as deterministic, that is, as a determination of human behavior based on deep-rooted drives that no free will could overcome in the long term." ° Above all, the bourgeois supporters and supporters of the Enlightenment movement were unable to make any concessions to libertinism, and it was precisely from their circles that a large part of the edifying literature came, which wanted to ensure that the libertine "in reality" just be unhappy "'. So Voltaire once summarized a lord-serving, audi tactically expedient opinion when he wrote to Helvétius: "le bien de la société exige que l'homme se croie libre", and then added that he would reject fatalism even if it were true were "'. Now, however, required the siding of the

'•" Essai analytique, XI = p. 96 ff. (on the activity of the soul in feeling) ; XVI = p. 182 (on the connection between the ability to think and freedom); XII— p. 114 ff. (especially 122 f.), XIX = p. 277 ff. (against the phenomenalistic definition of freedom by Condillac and Locke) ; XVI = p. 178 ff. and XXIV = p. 462 ff. (differences between mensdi and animals). '°° Enquiry Concerning Hum. Underst., VI II u. IX = Essays II, 75 f., 88. "• S. u. Kap. VII Abs‹:hn. 3. "' Mauzi, Idea of Happiness, 34 f., 269 ff. *'• Letter of September 11, 1739 = OC, XXX IV, 577. As is known, Voltaire later took a different position by approaching sidl Lo&e and Collins (see above all Dict. Phil., Art. Franc Arbitre and Liberty = OC, XIX, 196 ff., 578 ff.), the statement quoted here remains largely representative of the normativist Enlightenment.

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Freedom of will is a dilution or at least a new interpretation of the nature of man, which, by the way, was not too difficult thanks to the ambiguity of the concept of nature (even intellectualist-oriented moral philosophers like Wollaston want to stick to nature in general, even if it excludes the animal part recommend extreme caution when it comes to human nature. "'). The problem now lies in showing that the naturalness of man, if only interpreted "correctly", is not a danger, but, on the contrary, the only solid basis for truth. (i.e. not asceticauthoritarian) morality ; Nature's ability to establish morality should once and for all make theological justifications superfluous. As in God's Fz11e, this is also about putting what seems to be the greatest threat to your own position at the service of your own position. In that case, however, the danger came from theology; this time nihilism is just around the corner. However, reinterpretations were necessary in both cases, namely the normativist Enlightenment Because of the suspicion of nihilism, there was no focus on (the instrumentalized) God and because of the fight against the God the theologians could not do without the naturalness of man (as understood differently by the nihilists).

b) The paradigmatic character of the British moral philosophy debate The British moral-philosophical debate, which begins with Hobbes and the Platonists and ends more than a hundred years later in Bentham, is paradigmatic in two respects. From a purely formal point of view, it can be said that this is an ensemble of positions that are achieved through conversion or Reordering of given fixed quantities for the sake of a certain effect is necessary. In other words: the given variables (drive or Sensuality and intellect, innate and acquired, self and nadist love, etc.) form the conceptual adises of the debate and are used in the sense of respective basic attitude or basic approach combined, resulting in structures that can be contrasted with others. Since the fundamental quantities are given, the number of their possible basic combinations also remains limited, despite the variety in details. It also happens that deviating or opposing basic attitudes are represented by combinations that are structurally similar (this similarity arises from the attempt to absorb the opponent's arguments and thus neutralize them) and only differ in the sign: that, what is good for one is bad for another; there is a negative here

"' Religion of Nature, 22 f.

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agreement, which allows the decisive difference in the basic attitude to stand out all the more clearly. (As indicated at the beginning, this s&ema also applies to the Enlightenment as a multidimensional whole "'.) — In essence, paradigmatic& is the direct inclusion of ontological and epistemological points of view in the narrower moral-philosophical debate. This, however, underlines the fundamental fact that that all levels of thought form a structural whole, which in turn is based on one basic attitude. Given this conscious and systematic diversity, one may venture the assessment that the moral philosophy debate in Great Britain was conducted on a philosophical (in the Germanic sense of the word) level which in France & similarly followed and was only achieved in Germany by & Kant. Lo&e provides the appropriate starting point for presenting Britain Moral-philosophical debate both in its continuity and in its turn to specific & enlightening questions. On the one hand, he continues the Platonists' debate with Hobbes, but not by speaking out for one side against the other, but by speaking of both more or less silently - takes over and processes important thought motives; but since these are logically incompatible, the old controversy continues in his own work, in the form of a theoretical sd en swerving. On the other hand, Lo&e loses his theory of knowledge tis&e orientation the level of the debate, so that his moral philosophy position is not completely understandable through its mere mental health reduction to the previous two mentioned, but only against the background of his theory of knowledge. In other words: Loée's moral philosopher's dualism is at least as much connected with the dualistic character of his epistemology as it is with the contradictory nature of intellectually weak influences on him, although the latter also appears to have been not uninvolved in the ambivalence of Locke's epistemology

"' The crucial role of the two combinations of the respective conceptual quantities in showing the respective basic attitude for the development of the intellectual character of a particular age is shown clearly in Stephen's following summary of British philosophy in the 18th century: "Lo&e, although at ta&ing the Cartesian philosophy, was a theologian and a sincere if latitudinarian Christian; Berkeley assaulted the older philosopher expressly and most sincerely and passionately in the interests of theology; Hume argued that the premises admitted by Lu&e and Berkeley led to conclusions irreconcilable with their theology; and Reid — so far agreeing with Hume — atta&ed their premisses in order to support their conclusions” (English Tliought, 21 f.). "^ Hertling traced the rationalistic or intellectualistic tendency in Loée's essay with good arguments to the influence of the Platonists, see Lo&e and the Cambridge Column, especially 212 ff. (epistemological influence) and 169 ff.

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When we turn to the structural relationship between epistemology and moral philosophy in Lo‹:ke, we should remember that his epistemological empiricism also has certain prerequisites, namely that it comes from the ontological appreciation of sensuality. Incidentally, only within the framework of thought created by it are questions such as whether matter can think or not (a question that Lo&e tends to answer in the affirmative with all the necessary forethought "') at all meaningful and possible. They belong to the same ontological attitude aud - despite its Moresdien origin - the entanglement of space and time with God "' as well as the rejection of the Cartesian equilibrium between soul and thought, or the decisive promotion of biopsy's sensuality caused by this. It would be based on these clear content-based positions It's actually naive to take Loke's protestation at face value that he only wants to know the operations of the human mind, and when it comes to the essence of things he is content with one

»quiet ignorance' "'. If you want to stick to it consistently, you have to separate. Rather, Lo&e's statement is to be understood in its polemical sense, ie as a limine expression of the whole area of traditional theological metaphysics.

Lo's epistemological dualism comes at an early stage Sdirift succinctly expressed. Ratio and sensus depend on each other, we read here; »si alterutram tollas, altera certe frustra est' "'. Also in the essay, Lobe always strives to put something next to what is given in the senses, which actually cannot come from the senses, if only its awakening to the activity of the materials and Stimulation of the senses is absolutely necessary "'. The only source of knowledge is experience — but experience springs from two sources, namely sensation and reflection"'. The entrenched ideas start at the same time as perception '^ and all come from things — but the mind can, starting from them , »by its

(theology). However, it is false when Hertling thinks that Lo&e's attitude towards Hob bes was more or less that of the Platonists (266 ff.). As Lamprecht rightly observes, Hobbes' influence on Lu&e is 'almost altogether internal, but none the less certain' (Moral and Political Philosophy of Lo&e, 30ff., 89ff.). We'll talk about him soon. *'^

Essay, IV, 3 $ 6 (= II, 191 ff.).

"'

op. cit. II, 15 $3 (= I, 259). The materiality of God is held as possible in IV, 10 $ 13 (— II, 316). "" See above chapter. V, Section 3 b. "°

Essay, Intr. $ 4 (= I, 28). "°

Essays on the law of Nature, IV = S. 146. "'

Essay, II, 2 $ 2 (= I, 145 f.). '^ '^

op. cit. II, l $$ 24 (= I, 121 ff.). on. cit. II, l$9 (= I, 127).

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own power‘ komplexe Ideen bilden, whi& it never received so united‘ "‘. Simple ideas are real because they correspond directly with the reality of things '^ — but complex ideas (substances excluded) are no less real, although this time reality is not in relation to things but in their uncontradictory nature The empiricist‹:je starting point sd thus shifts to the thesis that our cognition relates si& ultimately only to our own ideas, so the mind only recognizes things through its ideas from them"'. This double line in Lo&e's argument is reflected in the ambivalent meaning of his concept of idea (idea is now an object, now an instrument of the mind "') or in the ambivalence of his concept of the mind (sometime the mind contains the ideas, sometimes it perceives them '^) contrary. Lo&e cites mathematics as an example of a "not only certain, but real" knowledge that results from a contradictory combination of ideas "° and also claims that morality is capable of just as solid justification ". However, this was a desideratum of the intellectualists, which could only be realized based on their assumption of an innate reason that was also tied to certain contents . However, it is precisely this prerequisite that is missing in Locke, for whom reason is one of the natural abilities or faculties, but in addition: It is empty of all content, since Locke's elimination of innate ideas means the abolition of all innate contents or all "innate principles." means "'. That side of Loée's thinking, which can be apostrophized as intellectualistisdi (of course only in the sense that Lo&eée assumes the mind's self-activity), is in its character through ':h the other, the empiricististisdi condition of the side. Therefore, the deeper knowledge gained through contradiction-free linking of ideas must remain within the framework prescribed by the nominalist-phenomenalist approach, since real and nominal essences only always coincide with the established ideas and (simple) modes, but always differ with the substances are '^, and since the mixed modes, like the substances, are complex ideas that arise from the combination of different types of simple ideas through an act of mind, in which this com

1za

on. cit., II, 12 $2 (= I, 215). on. cit., II, 30 $2 (= I, 498). on. cit., IV, 4 $5 (= II, 230 f.). op. cit. IV, 1 $ 1 and 4 $ 3 (= II, 176 ff., 228). 1x8 Lampre&t, Moral and Polite. Phil. of Lo&e, 54 ff. in the Aaron, Lo&e, 106 f. Iso Essay, IV, 4 $ 6 (= II, 231 f.). 1st up. cit., IV, 12 $ 8 (= II, 347). on. cit., I, 3 $12 (= I, 102 f.). ru Op. cit., III, 3 $ 18 (= II, 28 f.). 1zs

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bination is given a name at the same time, then morally the ideas that form mixed modes, i.e. "a voluntary collection of ideas", must only be pingenerable and incorruptible in a purely formal sense: because this applies to all mixed modes or all "abstract" ideas with a name ". Due to the nominalistic approach, it can only be shown that logical and coherent moral views are possible, but not what they are supposed to prescribe in content. Morality remains formal, and moreover It is impossible to understand how the idea of moral obligation should be introduced into the ensemble of ideas of a mixed mode, especially since the "action of mind" should be limited to the (free) combination of established ideas or perceptions, but cannot produce new ideas. The ideal of an eternal morality had to have a completely different meaning with Loée's epistemological presuppositions than with the intellectualists, even though it was precisely the intellectualist elements in Loée's own thinking (action of the mind) that made the announcement of a social ideal possible in the first place. However, the rejection of the innate ideas did not go beyond this, especially since it aimed precisely at proving the claims of their defenders to the binding content and determination of the same as empty. In fact, Lo&e does not ultimately reject the innate ideas for polemic reasons, i.e. in relation to their social function. A certain party put this doctrine into circulation in order to consolidate its own authority by presenting its own positions as innate principles and thus forbidding people to use their reason."

'••

op. eit., II, 22 $$ 1 and 4; II, 23 $6 (= I, 381, 383, 396). Lo&e 's nominalistis&-phenomena1istis&e approach is

frankly committed to Hobbes and therefore raises the same aporias: what guarantees that the formal structure created by an arbitrary' combination of times corresponds to reality? Lo&e must either strictly limit knowledge to the linking of ideas (and thus give Berkeley credit for it) or resort to polemics against substances. Since the (nadi Lu&e fictitious) concept of substance formally arises in the same way as the misdited modes, so Lu&e feels compelled to name real existence as the only distinguishing criterion between the two (III, 5 $ 3 = II, 44; cf. IV, 4 $ 2 = II, 227 f.) — i.e. to access the senses, whereby he withdraws every essential content from his conception of knowledge as a combination of ideas.

'•'

'•°

Op. eit., III, 5 $ 5 (= II, 45).

Op. eit., III, 3 $ 19 (= II, 29 f.).

'^° Lampredit, Moral and Polit. Philos. of Lo&e, 78 f. '° 8

'°•

Essay, II, 2 $ 2 (- I, 145 f.). op. eit., I, 3 $ 25 (= I, 116). In the course of the usual simplification or vulgarization of the opponent's position or the

essence of the "sdiolastic" zwe&s Erführung":ii refuting its refutation, Lo&e overlooks or rather ignores the real sdiolastic views on the question of innate ideas, which only the polemisdi. n character of his own theses underscores. Ironically, the term is tabula rasa,

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While his eternal morality was not very productive, the question of moral philosophy arose for him in all seriousness. In view of the conditioned nature of the intellectualistic component of his thinking through his own nominalism, he had to pose this question on an empiricist basis or base morality on definable, simple facts (as the moral-philosophical counterpart of simple ideas). The interweaving of sensual-natural life and morality begins at the elementary existential level, through the fundamental connection of good and evil to the feelings of pleasure and pain. For Lo&e, the morally good is not just a further development of the physisdl Good, which could have taken place without the intervention of other factors . On the contrary: "Principles of actions, indeed, there are lodged in men's appetites; but these are so far from being innate moral principles, that, if they were left to them full swing, they would carry men to the overturning of all morality.

Moral laws are sent as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires etc.‘ ‘" As Shaftesbury's counterexample implies, Lo&e lacked the radically optimistic anthropology within a similarly conceived ontology to establish a morality based solely on natural dispositions. In order to inhibit the destructive outbursts of human nature, rewards and punishments are necessary: in this way the immediate pleasure can be sacrificed in favor of a later but greater one, without the pleasure principle itself being violated. The laws and public opinion establish moral rules and thus create morality by rewarding and punishing. Seen in this way, morality appears as the product of a positing or moralis‹: the concepts only arise alongside social institutions: where there is no property there is no injustice' "'. This thesis can be found almost word for word in Hobbes and in itself shows eloquently that Lo&e had to get close to Hobbes when attempting an empiricistic justification of morality. The common nominalist starting point certainly made this rapprochement unavoidable - along the entire line of argument. For Lo&e, for whom, like Hobbes, truth is the correct composition or separation of words and

to which Lo&e himself alludes ("white paper, roid of all 'fiaracters', II, 1 $ 2 = I, 121), sdiolastisdler origin (Baeumker, Zur Vorges&i‹fite of two Lodtesdler terms, 297 f.). "°

op. cit., I, 2 $$ 8—9 u. 3 $$ 8-9 = I, 71 ff., 95 ff. op. cit., II, 20 $ 2 (= "'

I, 303). "• '•• '•• "• "°

op. it., I, 2 $ 13 (= I, 77). Op. eit., II, 28 $ 5 (= I, 474). Op. eit., II, 28 $$ 9—10 (= I, 476 f.). up. cit., IV, 3 $ 18 (= II, 208). Lev. XV = EW, III, 131.

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Zeidien ist '", believes just like his notorious compatriot that concepts such as good and evil can always only be defined in relation to people and not in themselves, so that the universally valid real good is no driving force for the can be will "'; in response to him he also determines (nominalistisdi phenomenalistisdi) freedom as the absence of external obstacles, so that Freedom by definition has nothing to do with the will". The proximity to Hobbes also has a negative impact. Because Lo&e can neither use the criterion of pleasure and displeasure nor with reference to social factors to name the morally binding contents; the empiricist side of his thinking is no more able than the intellectualistic one to define a universally valid nature of the what beyond the necessity of the that. We know that Hobbes, as an empiricist-decisionist just as much as a normative-intellectualisti theoretician of the Law of Nature, had the same difficulties"'.

The desire to distinguish oneself from Hobbes as possible deut1i‹:h obviously prompted some additions in the second edition of the essay, which are indicative both of Locke's theoretical embarrassment and of the inner logic of the conceptual structures. The essay's heel lies in the assumption of an instance that is not given sensibly, but on the contrary freely combines material from the senses or established ideas, although it itself remains obscure; Their functions are largely recognizable, but their essence is not - indeed, the possibility of their existence despite all empiricism is hardly understood. (We also said that precisely for this reason the moralistic statements can only claim generality for themselves in the nominalistic sense.) In the second edition of the essay, the remark appears that with every sensation one not only perceives material beings, but also, and indeed with still greater certainty that there is some spiritual being within me that sees and hears" "'. The addition is short and by no means serves as a starting point for more detailed explanations of this delicate point, so that one can hardly resist the impression that Lo&e dadurdi only intended a general strengthening of the intellectual side of his epistemological construction. That this may have happened with Rü&sidit on mora1phi1osophis&e questions can be inferred from another, much more detailed addition, in which a definition of freedom is offered that is almost the opposite of the one we know. So freedom is now pthe power to act or not to act ac cordingly as the mind directs' "'. Lo&e admits that this addition has meanwhile

'•' Essay IV, 5$2 ( II, 244) and Leo. IV EW, III, 23. '•' Essay II, 21 $$ 44-45 (= I, 341 ff.) and Ler. VI and XI = EW, III, 41, 85. "• Essay II, 21 $$ 14-27 (= I, 319 ff.) and Leo. VI = EW III, 48 f. '•° S. o. Chap. II, Abs&n. 3 c. '•' Essay, II, 23 $ 15 (= I, 406 f.). '^' on. cit., II, 21 $73 (= I, 367).

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Apparently, however, he does not place his hopes of being able to escape the logical difficulties of empiricist justification of a universal morality in this strengthening of the intellect, but primarily and from the outset in God, in two respects . On the one hand, he lets God appear as 'the true ground of morality' and attributes to the divine effect precisely what was the stumbling block in the eyes of conservative theologians, namely the fundamental connection between social -utilitarian considerations and morals '^. It was precisely from this connection, however, that morality was exclusively a worldly product of a positing ; Lo‹:ke believes that by attributing the above-mentioned connection to God, he believes he is saved from Hobbesian decisionism, proceeding just as casuistically as in the case in which he derived the ability of matter to think from the omnipotence of God. God

is bu‹:hstäbli‹:h pulled out of the drawer to de&en those theses, who could most have borne the suspicion of ungodliness. God should also serve God in a second hinsidit in the same sense. By rewarding the good and punishing the bad after death, he removes the nihilistic implications of the thesis that good and pleasure or evil and pain belong together: every reasonable human being will want to be virtuous precisely for the sake of eternal pleasure Na‹:h rejection of the innate ideas had to be artificial. Lo&e's appeal to God artificially‹:h or he "' and at the same time absolutely necessary to avoid nihilism

forced to get that out of the way. The Platonists of Cambridge were only able to establish a straight and unproblematic relationship between God and man through the innate divine or morality: God was simply there, he did not need to be brought into line with the needs of the moment. In reality, Lo':ke's God intervenes suddenly in human affairs, and the difficulty for Lo':ke's position becomes all the greater because, on the other hand, he agrees with the Platonists in the view that God's essence is primarily nothing voluntaristic but rational; God may be almighty and free, but at the same time he remains determined by what is best' '*.

Because Lo&e has to instrumentalize his God, he falters, just as other

'••

'••

on. cit., I, 2 $6 (= I, 70). op. cit., lI, 21 §$ 67 ff.; 28 $ 8 (= I, 359 ff., 475).

'^Audi in epistemologythe Hinsidit is God's position at Lu&e sdiwadi, That is, it in no way describes its moral-philosophical functions. It is not surprising that in Lo‹:ke God is not an innate idea, but it is objectively a debasement of him that his existence cannot be grasped intuitively (like ours), but only demonstratively (IV, 9 $ 3 etc $ 1 ff. = II, 304 ff., the onto1ogis‹: every proof of God is indirectly rejected in $ 7). '^

on. cit., II, 21 $50 ( = I, 347).

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their enlighteners audi, between a rationalistic and a voluntaristic conception of God. The dualism of Lo‹:kesdien philosophy, or what can be seen as its logical heel, was a key reason for its great influence. Preliminarily keeping the door open for intellectualism made it possible to demarcate against amoralist materialism, while at the same time the entire construction stood in the extremely modern, anti-sdiolastist style of empiricism. Lo&e thus became a prophet of moderates, but his philosophy, despite all its dualism, was unsuitable to fulfill conservative expectations. The very aspect that caused the most attention seemed to confirm the worst conservative beliefs : it is, of course, the question of innate principles. As Lee put it: if there are no innate moral laws, then there can be no reason given why any action whatever should be in itself really good or bad' '^. The practice that an opponent of free will (and a radical deist) like Collins made of Loé's theses was of course bound to make their consequences all the more bleak. And if we also look at the points of objective agreement between Lo':ke and Hobbes, then the extent of the danger becomes understandable, which forced the first non-conservative reaction to the implicit Lo&esdie skepticism to appear in the guise of a radically optimistic anthropology or ontology. Its mouthpiece was Shaftesbury, and the intensity of the needs that he satisfied, as can be seen from the enormous popularity of his writings "'. Lo&e had adopted approaches to intellectualism and rational theology from the Platonists, but at the same time he had decisively departed from them by rejecting the innate ideas and, within the framework of a general appreciation of sensibility, connecting the moral phenomenon with effects and drives Shaftesbury proceeded as follows: he followed the Platonists on the question of innate ideas, but at the same time rejected their intellectualism and adopted the connection between morality and affect as his own. Shaftesbury sees himself faced with the challenge of Loke forced to examine the ontology, the justification of morality, as provided by

'•° Lampredit, Moral and Polit. Phil. of Lu&e, 105. '^ Anti-Scepticism, l3. '°' Inquiry, 15, 4l, 90 f. Collins appropriates the Lu&esien concept of freedom as well the binding of good and evil to pleasure and displeasure. '°• Eleven editions of the Characteristi&s” between 1711 and 1790. The complete The French translation appeared in 1769 and the corresponding translation in 1776-9. *^*

Passmore, Cudworth, 96 ff., notes the great influence of the Platonists on Shaftesbury with Redit,

but he is wrong in the assumption that Shaftesburp's appreciation of the bio-psychic sensibility is consistent with the intellectualism of the Platonists, specifically with regard to their humanism , agree.

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had been undertaken by the Platonists to further deepen by not only carrying out the same with reference to the (intuitive) ratio, but to the whole scale of human faculties. So Locke became house i Shaftesbury's teacher, but not his mentor. The most modern aspect of Shaftesbury is that he does not base his ontological foundation of morality in the style of old metaphysics, to which the Platonists of Cambridge were at least partly attached, but rather by elaborating and prioritizing an (anti-ascetic) rehabilitation of sensibility pertinent anthropology, which obviously stands within the cosmic framework that enupred it. The same same turn towards anthropology, which is carried out in the common demarcation against the "south olasticism", etc., is present in Hobbes as well as in Shaftesbury, and yet the respective basic decisions fall in completely opposite directions. Shaftesbury does not want to throw a hopeless, dangerous person into a meaningless or median universe , but to place a good person at the center of a cosmos from whose nature the values emerge freely and which is saturated with values. The absence of evil in Shaftesbury's world is not, as in Hobbes, a mere theoretical counterpoint to the absence of good within the general meaninglessness, which in turn is linked to the value-free or nominalistic treatment on the basis of the incorporation into the posited or artificial character of good and evil. On the contrary, it results from the omnipotence and omnipresence of the good: 'Tis good whidi is predominant; and every corruptible and mortal Nature by in Mortality and Corruption yields only to some better, and all in common to that best and highest Nature, which is incorruptible and im mortal' "'. As this sentence implies, evil is actually not just bland Inferior to good things, it does not exist at all from the standpoint of the perfection of the whole: "This order, if indeed perfect, excludes all real Hl" in Shaftesbury offers the usual strategy of normativist ontology: about the meaning and value or status of individual phenomena To determine, he classifies them into a whole, which represents the epitome of his own basic attitude, which in this detour becomes the standard against which the phenomena are measured; the whole is good, so the individual phenomena should serve the good. i

". Yes

As far as obtaining the concept of a whole in general is concerned, So Shaftesbury, like his other contemporaries, is committed to nature's knowledge 1

", although he probably didn't want to fully admit it and against it

'•' On Shaftesbury's criticism of Lodge, see Uehlein, Cosmos and Subjectivity, 19 ff. l^

Characteristi&s, II, 216 f.

'•• op. cit.,II, 274; cf.9 f., 20 f., 364. '°° About Shaftesbury's knowledge of contemporary natural science see Osske, Ganz

unity, infinity and form, 89 ff.

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had deep mistrust of mathematical procedures and abstraction. Nevertheless, towards the end of the 17th century, the world view of natural science was so good or ideologically so useful that it could serve the most diverse purposes and aspirations. Shaftesbury also includes that of natural law in his concept of harmony. For him, nature is a living, organically grasped whole, but at the same time it is subject to independent, changing laws (inathematis&-medianisdie and organ&e harmony thus become one, and yet a certain tension or ambiguity remains within the concept of harmony "'). Miracles become eradicated and those who believe in the voluntarist God are referred to as “daemonists”. Shaftesbury fights here against Calvinism and Cartesianism in the line of the Cambridge Platonists; and like them, he unhesitatingly falls back on teleology (although he does not say a good word about sdiolastics) in order to assert the existence of God and, above all, the value of the cosmos through the secondary order of nature; The belief in this duality forms the core of healthy theism." Teleology and harmony on the one hand, like harmony and the whole on the other, belong inseparably together. In the context of general teleology, the individual serves the whole, thereby eliminating evil. The all-encompassing harmony based on teleology is therefore not mere being, but value; and the harmonious world is not only a model, but also a direct source of value: For Harmony is Harmony by Nature ... So is Sym metry and Proportion founded still in Nature.' That's true of art, but it's the same case, where Life and Manners are concern'd. The same Numbers, Harmony and Proportion will have place in Morals; and are discoverable in the Characters and Affections of Mankind; in whidi are laid the just Foundations of any Art and Science etc.' "'The equation of beauty and truth' amounts to the same thing: beauty or harmony becomes co ipso the bearer of moral values; since the whole thing can only happen through her, thus the truth or scale of values that is identical to it proves not to be a human attitude, but rather the voice of being: nominalism is thus decisively opposed. The values are therefore binding, even unavoidable. The valuable worldly concern is transferred to people by means of innate ideas. A solid pre-conception or presentation is the concept of a concept

'^

on eat., 8 f.

'^' Characteristi&s, II, 11. '•* ibid.

'“ op.ct “I,353. "°

op.cit.,I, 142; 11,399,422.

*" op.cit.,11,412.

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natural Passion' or Affection' is the Hang nad' Religion "', and there are s‹filißlidi and› the natural sense of Right and Wrong' "'; moral' and 1 ". Thus the is equated with an ontologis& well-founded moral problem of natural conscience' optiuiistic anthropology Here, with regard to the teleologis& perceived world, harmonie asserts that the natural state of man is social inter course and community' '•; self-love is acknowledged, but at the same time interpreted in such a way that if it is 'true' and 'healthy' must coincide with the social instinct"'. Crucially, in his polemic against Hobbes, Shaftesbury in no way resorts to intellectualist positions, as the Conservatives (and not only they) did. For him, the source of human goodness and morality is not the ratio asserting itself against sensuality, but inner sensuality itself, it is the instincts and affects that are good because they represent components of a harmonious and valuable nature . So morality and freedom emerge not from oppression, but from the development of what is given in nature—if nature is defined a limine in this way. The ratio does not need to put the effects in chains, because it is itself only the purest expression of the "ed'ten" will of the same. The highest development is therefore the highest perfection; and since the affect is pure nature, the truly rational life, viz. to live according to Nature', is simply unrestrained and total affect, 'intire affection'. 1

The structural similarity of this moral-philosophical attitude with that of epistemology should be emphasized. The organ of supreme cognition is not demonstration (to say nothing of the diolastic syllogistic) but the 'common sense' or the taste, within which several faculties work together; this cognition is just as multidimensional and harmonious as the world itself, to which it is supposed to relate, and since beauty and morality are ontologically rooted in this world, common sense and taste do not merely allow for cognitive but In addition, and primarily, moral and aesthetic questions are to be mastered". It is therefore due to the nature of the world itself that cognition, moral philosophy and aesthetics cannot possibly be separated from one another - neither on the level of the object nocii on that of the subject. This interweaving of levels and the

"’

on. cit., III, 36. "°

"^ "° "°

on. cit., II, 41 f. on. cit., II, 120. op. cit., II, 309; cf. I, 16, 310. up. cit., I, 118 ff.

"'

on. cit., II, 113 f. ""

Op. cit., III, 161 ff.

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Fortune corresponds to cosmological hindsight Shaftesbury's Panentheisuius God soaks the world;

".

Last but not least, the appropriate form of religion is based on this insight. Within the framework of general godliness or goodness, there is no place for such concepts as the fall of man, atonement, etc. Good man and loving God are sides of the same coin. Punishment and reward after death do not represent the driving force of moral action; they even contradict the immanent morality of the harmonious world order. Religion is supposed to be the uplifting entry into this world order, it therefore has nothing at all to do with sadness and asceticism, which only lead to fanaticism (or

Enthusiasm in the sweetest sense, in Shaftesbury's terminology) "'. This religion of joie de vivre and freedom must eventually turn against authority, intolerance, and the suppression of independent thought. The ontology, the sema, and the optimistic anthropology that

"1 .

goes with it, thus amount to a sharp rejection of positive religion: that was Shaftesbury's direct contribution to poleuiic against the old world opinion and the rulership foruien carried by it '^.

Shaftesbury combined the innate nature of the Platonists with the rehabilitation of the (inner) sensibility of Hobbes and Lo&e within the framework of a radically optimistic and strongly monistic approach. The opposing position arose from the combination of innate morality and intellect within the framework of a dualistic anthropology, which resulted in the thesis that only innate rationality, not innate drives, could form morality. Dadurdi did not want, on the one hand, to deprive morality of its ontological basis and, on the other hand, to eliminate the danger of being in Shaftesbury's position; According to the opinion of those who did not share his optimistic monism, the formal structure that he set up could, if the precedents change, lead directly to Hobbes's thesis: if the drives are not good by definition, but evil or dangerous, which can then to save morality, if not the firmness of the intellect, which remains above every capricious fluctuation of sensuality? This opposing position was developed in the controversy with Shaftesbury himself, but above all in that with Hutdieson, who

"" Grean, Shaftesbury's Philosophy, 66; Osske, Ganzheit etc., 204. '*° Characteristi&s, I, 22; II, 57 f., 119 f., 278 f. take op. cit., I, 35, 96. l ^ Despite the ambivalence of Shaftesbury's relationship to the Dorsten (Grean, Shaftesbury's Philosophy, 59 ff.), the theological polemics against him were particularly bitter, not least because of his great impact. Tlieologists like Brown saw in part a tactical maneuver in his abhorrence of wi&ed Unbelierers; his "concealed method of raillery" was said to be even more dangerous than "open war" (Essays on the Characteristics, 243). l^ Brown's equation ron Shaftesbury and Mandeville (Thus one Extreme per duceth another") is revealing (op. eit., 145 f.).

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Shaftesbury's moral philosophy partly to systematize or theorize the insights and partly to supplement sudite '••. Hutdieson was aware in his own way that his difference from Hobbes lay in the (anthropological) basic attitude, namely in the signs. A 'benevolent observer' would wish that the human nature was good; but the opposite would have been a 'malicious observer', such as 'Mr. Hobbes', wished '^. The struggle against intellectualism while at the same time defending morality makes sense only if one starts from a monistic and at the same time optimistic anthropology."' This, in turn, was only possible after the anti-ascetic rehabilitation of sensuality that underlies Hutdieson's approach in general The anti-intellectualist attitude is therefore obvious, and in view of the existing firm moral intention it is nourished by the consideration that one should not leave the fate of morality to our certain outcome of the struggle between intellect and instinct, but rather must integrate the moral so deeply into the nature of the instill into whole people that his victory can never be doubted. Morality and goodness must therefore become s‹bi&sa1 and therefore lie no& deeper than the intellect can see through; they must even be there independently of our will and must not be values of achievement of the rational will are understood, which could fail to appear. The necessary conclusion from this view, that morality is not arduous self-conquest, but rather free or true self-development, meant freely breaking with the entire moral-philosophical tradition, especially the diristic one, which was more or less based on the principle of self-conquest. Mandeville noticed this break even then"'.

All this implies Hutdieson's definition of 'moral sense', which is supposed to have the same characteristics as the senses in epistemological terms. 'Sense' generally means 'every determination of our minds to receive ideas independently of our wills', which refers to the moralistic sense

'^ In addition to the influence of Shaftesbury, Jensen has emphasized the Lu&es to Re&t, Hut&eson's Ethbical Theory, 39 ff. '^ Essay, 238. '^ For Hut&eson there is a pre-established harmony between one's own interest and that of others; it is founded in some Instinct, antecedent to all Reason from interest, whi& influenced to the Lore of others' Inquiry, 124, 143. 1"' An einer sehr bemerkenswerten Stelle heißt es: »The Generality of Moralists and Philosophers have hitherto agreed that there could be no Yirtue without Self-Denial; but a late Author [Shaftesbury] . . . is of a contrary Oeinion, and imaginesthat Men with out my Trouble of Yiolence upon themselves may be naturally Yirtuous. He seems to require and expect Goodness in his Species, as we do a sweet Taste in Grapes and China Oranges, of whi&, in any of them are sour, we boldly pronounce that they are not come to that perfection that Nature is capable of‘ (Fable of the Bees, I, 323).

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means: »Mora1 Perceptions arise in us as necessarily as any other Sensations; nor can we alter or stop them etc.' '*•. From this point of view, the assertion that reason leads people to morality becomes empty, since this is no longer a goal to be attained but rather an existing reality. Besides, as far as intellectualists are concerned, there are two functions of ratio: it motivates or justifies an action. But reason cannot motivate; the rational knowledge of the relations between things does not form a motive as long as there is no goal, and that is only put aside by an affect or a desire: pthere can therefore be no exciting reason previous to Affection' ' 8 ' . Ratio also presupposes a "moral sense" when it intends to justify an action morally"'. As with Hobbes, here too the prioritization of affect leads to the view that reason has a purely instrumental character, that is, it only finds the means to achieve the goals of the instincts. This argument runs because both affect and morality Sense to be assumed to be given to the human being as originally given results in an entanglement of the causal explanation of the action with its normative production; Ursady and norm, being and ought are ultimately identified. It must be emphasized that the strong anti-intellectualist or emotional philosophy current The Enlightenment is largely based on this identification. Because here the should no longer stands above reality in the form of a (unnadistically) abstractly formulated goal, but rather it stands within it. The dispute between the abstract and the concrete, thinking and feeling, is decided in favor of the latter , as soon as the former ends, since it no longer has a task to fulfill. The intellect is used when one first has to abstractly design the should as a goal to be achieved, since it is not present in the immediate existential reality; But the abstractions of the intellect are superfluous if ought and being are originally and existentially lost. The abstract universal is then ineffective, dead and cold; According to Hutdieson, constructions like the “infinite good” and similar “very abstract general ideas” cannot explain concrete desire and pleasure; Precisely because one clings to these abstractions in order to assert the moral good, one traces the concrete mental life of the human being back to these factors such as egoism, etc."'. Hutd eson turns against that dualism which, through the separation of being and ought, leads to the glorification of the latter or the abstract and at the same time to the appropriation of the former or the concrete. And there he

'^^

’^•

'••

Essay, 4. on. cit., 216 f.

on. cit., 222. '•' Inquiry, 175 f.; System, I, 58. '•° Essay, 219.

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The Conflict of the Causal and the Normative

Sensing the logical connection of this dualism with dualistic anthropology, he also rejects the many confused arguments on this subject, which in human beings want to establish two principles of action, ratio and affect - 'the former in common with Angels, the latter with Brutes' '^. This sdiema is sdilievlidi projected into the deity itself; their nature contains moments that enupreciate the noblest human emotions and, just as in Meosdia, should serve as the driving force of the intellect. In the eyes of the critics , as I have said, Hutdieson was a Hobbes with optimistic credentials. It was natural, then, that they should seek to adopt the arguments of those who in their day had defied Hobbes, and resort to the intellectualism of the Cambridge Platonists to one degree or another to oppose Hutdieson."' Sdion the first refutation, which took place in 1728 and referred to Hutdieson's 'glnquiry' of 1725 , presents all the essential theses of this philosophical party, which is not to be based on the limited number of possible combinations mentioned of the conceptual sizes. Balguy sums up Hutdieson's desire to justify moral ontology: »I am as unwilling, as our Author can be, that Virtue should be looked upon as wholly artificial' "•. He also wants to do the same, but not on the basis of instinct, whose concept and essence can never be fixed and unchangeable"'. With reference to Hobbes, he avoids tying morality to a (monistic) anthropology and instead merely associates it with an anthropological constant that would also be found in a dualistic anthropology. This is reason, which is also inherent in evil. Would we be ultimately incapable of morality if we did not have the affects that Hutdieson ascribes to us? Balguy cannot accept that '^. Hutdieson's thesis would imply that animals behave morally, since they act and react impulsively, and that there is no essential difference between saints and sworn people, since all equally follow their own affects.' Balguy therefore makes the distinction between Hutdieson's monism between 'moral' and 'physical or natural necessity'

'•° '*'

on. cit., 216 f. on. cit., 239.

In the meantime, Clarke had renewed the positions of the Platonists (more journalistic than substantive) through his work on natural religion and revelation, published in 1706 . His main thesis is that moral truths, like mathematical or physical ones, are inherent in the nature of things, from which their absolute bindingness arises. Through these same truths let God determine his own will (Discourses, esp. 45 ff.). '•• Foundation of Moral Goodness, I — Selby-Bigge, II, 60. '°' loc. cit., 61. '•• Come on. cit., 62 f.

'^ place. cit., 64, 73.

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opposite, whereby the former is supposed to coincide with freedom "'; this corresponds to the distinction between "moral" and natural good" "'. Balguy's opposing position thus leads to a separation of being and ought, which, however, does not differ in knowledge for the purpose of attainment When freedom ensues, the aim is to detach the ought from that area of being that could contaminate it and to tie it to another where its ontological dimension would become more prominent , and since the spiritual is even treated as the higher being, a new intertwining of being and ought takes place on the level of the spirit or intellect: the morality of the human intellect remains rooted further ontologisdi in God Should on the level of the spirit as publicly corresponds to the separation of the levels of spirit and sensuality or the mentioned distinction between being and ought, which is exclusively directed against the interweaving of the latter with sensuality. In order to be able to replace Hutdieson's monism with an intellectualistically shaped being-should-structure, Balguy had to assert the dualism of spirit and sensuality, not least out of anthropological pessimism.

»Sensibility seems to be as distinct from the understanding, as the understanding is from the will. The intellect has nothing to do with biology or with inner sensibility, and therefore morality is also defined as self-overcoming. '. As expected, the dualistic structure is reflected in God's nature: God's intellect controls his will, and therefore even he cannot will the unreasonable ••.

Dualism in the developed sense was adopted by Price a few years later. Interestingly, his criticism of Hutdieson's moral philosophy goes hand in hand with his criticism of Loée's (and Hume's) epistemology. Although Hutdieson, in contrast to Lo&e, sticks to the innate, both positions from Siditron Price amount to the same thing, since both deny the original supremacy of the intellect, i.e. the innate that is the only relevant thing for him. Against Lo&e he made the dualist thesis valid that a faculty that surveys and compares the objects of all the senses cannot itself be a sense; psense and understanding are faculties of the soul totally different' '°'. Only a relativist or subjectivist morality can emerge from a one-pirist epistemology like Locke's,

•• lock. go., 62. ^* place cit., 65.

^• loc. eit., too. ^°^ place cit., 72.

'°° Review, 18, 21.

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which is understood as a product of a positing "'. Price sees in the empiricists the worthy descendants of the sophists '^, and he feels envious that the renewal of Platonism is a suitable antidote "'. He therefore bids Cudworth against Lo&e on "•, and he opposes the solidity of the idea to the relativism of empiricism. The concepts of good and evil are therefore only accessible to the intellect, the posits that are not nominalistisdi to be grasped, but rather areal diaracters of actions' represent "'. As with Balguy, so too with Price, the dualism of spirit and sensuality is only the reverse side of the interweaving of is and ought on the level of intellectual purity. Both approaches, both that of Shaftesbury-Hutdieson and that of Balguy Price, advocate the interweaving of being and ought or the ontological foundation of morality, only that they do the same on different levels and using different combinations of morality to reach conceptual basic sizes. The most modern, however, was the riding style, which more or less disregarded the rehabilitation of sensuality, but there was a common basis in the oncological justification of morality, which was created in the common defense against nihilistness. This basis underlies various attempts at mediation, which were aimed at at least softening the contrast between reason and instinct, ie avoiding both the degradation of reason to a mere instrument of instinct and the condemnation of sensuality, which has now become old-fashioned. 'Healthy' modernity and healthy' tradition or 'true' Christianity and “Well-understood” secular things should be brought into harmony with one another. Why such attempts at mediation in times of transition, of course and popular - we don't need to explain them specifically.

Butler's attempt at mediation has typical significance, because it represents that logically unclear dualism that represents the at least quantitatively predominant Enlightenment current and not infrequently derives from a marriage of empiricism of Lo&es&er provenance with the conception of the innate moral principle. It is therefore also useless to try to classify Butler in the intellectualistic or in the empiricalistic pillar. For his intention and strategy consists precisely in combining, even if possible mixing, the rational and the instinctual on several levels and in different ways in such a way that an overgrowth of one can be prevented at any time by referring to the other. Since this strategy involves a plasticity of the basic

^' ^"

on eat., 61 f. on eit., 43 Anm.

For Price's relations with the Platonists of Cambridge see Passmore, Cudworth, 103 ff. "’ Review, 20 Anm.

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griffe nadi sid pulls, the rhetorical clarity and elegance of Butler's Sprad e should by no means be confused with logical stringency. And indeed his goal is not logical complacency based on unambiguous definitions at all costs, but rather that of finding a way out of the embarrassing situation which the skeptical implications of empiricism had created. Out of the same desire, many people have also enjoyed the harmonious balance of heterogeneous factors working together in moral phenomena, as Butler painted it in bright colors, as a logically satisfying solution to the moral-philosophical problem - in which, however, they are an optical illusion are experiencing. Because of the above-mentioned great intellectual significance of Butler's attempt at mediation, it is worthwhile to follow the tangled threads of his argumentation somewhat .

Significantly, in opting for the empiricist method, Butler does not condemn intellectualism as a whole, but says much more that both approaches »1ead us to the same thing, our obligations to the practice of virtue« and thus exceedingly strengthen them and enforce one another' "'. This isn't just a courtesy gesture to his friend Clarke. For Butler, for whom empiricism means precisely the analysis of human nature as opposed to the 'abstract relations of things', adds that only the 'reef nature' of human beings is morally philosophically or normatively relevant.' distinction between being and being made by empiricists fighting against skepticism - here from the beginning factors are presented that could have proved to be dangerous for the establishment and realization of the ought. Only with regard to the purified, real nature, which, how it is asserted against Hobbes that it is kind and sociable "', it may be said that man is 'by his nature a law to himself' "'. The normative function of the distinction mentioned emerges in Butler's statement that our real nature leaves the Influence of reflection and conscience' on our behavior towards "'. Since Butler does not want to limit the morally philosophically relevant real nature to the intellect, he combines his option for the empirical method with the content-related position of an appreciation of sensuality in general. » Appetites, passions and affections are in themselves impatient and useful if they only serve theirs

»natürlid en' Zwe‹k serve "' or if they their just proportion' within

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The hierarchy of abilities does not go beyond "'. By portraying human nature as a multidimensional and at the same time hierarchically structured unit, Butler does not allow the distinction between real and real human nature to become so clear that only the intellect remains as real nature, And at the same time, he keeps the way clear for a selective procedure by relying on the "just proportion". This is related to the fact that he does not define the concepts of appetite, passion and affection in more detail, and instead tends to bring the latter two together in terms of content and to use them thus to be distinguished from the former or from the "animal" part of the human being. The concept of sensuality is thus ennobled or spiritualized a limine or processed in the sense of 'real nature'. But even these presidencies mafinahne do not entirely reassure Butler, as his statement on Shaftesbury makes clear‹:St. This would have shown the identity of virtue and self-love or happiness beyond all contradiction - but how could he have saved morality if a skeptic simply denied this identity? Butler thinks that only the thesis of the natural authority of the principle of reflection could help here. But since at the same time humanity should not be divided, the question arises about the inner relationships between reflection or reason or conscience (the terms are used synonymously) and the higher, general emotions (namely self-love and benevolence ”') as well as between these latter to each other.

To this critical question, Butler gives all conceivable answers at various points, precisely in the spirit of his mediation strategy . Given his fundamental agreement with Shaftesbury, he is particularly interested in avoiding too frequent drastic interventions of reflection, namely in allowing morality to emerge as a product of the automatic effect of the emotions; hence the important role of self-love in inhibiting suffering - an inhibition that can be brought about by self-love just as well as by moral considerations. When Butler says that suffering can in turn triumph over self-love,

"• up. cit., VI $ 9 — P. 61. '•° Duncan-Jones, Butler's Moral Philosophy, 45. •* Sermons, Pref. $$ 20—21 = S. 8 ff.; cf.III $ 11 = S. 35. "'

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The dilemma of moral philosophy

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"', he implies that he ascribes self-love to man's 'preal nature', i.e. expects normative achievements from it. By focusing on the true or long-term G1ü&, it actually belongs together with reason ^' But benevolence is also a principle in reasonable creatures', so that it is difficult to see why moral action should not always be done simply and out of benevolence, especially since Butler himself emphasizes the complete harmony between it and self-love * • , or even asserted that the greatest "satisfaction to ourselves" (i.e. the deepest satisfaction of self-love) arises precisely from benevolence . Elsewhere, however, he measures the strength of the benevolence as dependent on the intensity of self-love "' or considers the benevolence that he this time in the particular affections', as an 'instrument of private enjoyment' and as such subject to long-term planning self-love". One can surmise why Butler is so keen on harnessing self-love for morality, so that he at least ge occasionally— placed above the benevolence: precisely self-love in Hobbes' version, against which Butler polemicized, embodied the greatest danger.

But because he wants to proceed more presciently than Shaftesbury when it comes to repurposing self-love, he does not simply identify it with benevolence, but rather tries to show that it is of its own accord - namely in its difference from benevolence, which is however tentatively through: h their definitional difference is supplemented by lower passions such as greed and lust for power - can have an impact in a moral sense. This somewhat daring elevation of self-love in its separation from benevolence requires reason as a possibly useful counterweight, and so Butler must, in addition to the ambiguity in the relationships between self-love and benevolence, also have that in the relationships between affects in general and the Take self-love especially to reason. On the one hand he writes: "conscience and self-love, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way" '^, but on the other hand he gives conscience or reason the right to supervise all emotions '^. Of course, this has something to do with the deep distrust of self-love, but at the same time the ambiguity of the relationship between reason and emotions comes to the fore here. The

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'Reason in sid' does not form a 'sufficient motive of virtue' according to Butler, while the affects are 'sufficient principle of action', but their sole lord SOlaft would throw people back into the animal state: as a solution they offer the 'strict government and direction of reason '^. But why should the dominance of the affects have disastrous consequences when the higher ones below them are just benevolence and a self-love that works closely together with it? And vice versa: why can't reason think of a sufficient virtue motive if it is still able to rule over the affects nodall with severity? Butler's mediation strategy permits neither the phrasing nor the answering of such questions. Rather, he envisages a merging of affect and reason not only within the elastic hierarchy of faculties, but downright on the level of reason.

For he once said that the supreme moral authority could be called 'conscience, moral reason, moral sense or divine reason', no matter whether it pas a sentiment of the understanding, or as a perception of the heart; or, whid' seems the truth, as including both', betrad'tet wird "'. Here we have that de-intellectualized reason that bears the traditional rationalism. It's no wonder that we encounter it primarily in such attempts at mediation as Butler's . From this analysis we have found the conceptual type of British moral philosophical debate, and it is therefore unnecessary here to discuss other cases in which it has appeared in this or that modification (e.g. in the polemics of Reid against Hume and A. Smith '•'). The following basic positions are covered in it: an empiricist approach which, after removing the innate ideas, oscillates between morality as a function of biological constants such as pleasure and displeasure and morality as a social setting and in this indecisiveness that God and, to some extent, also reason must call upon

(Lodte); a radically optimistic oncology and anthropology for which morality is innate, i.e. not self-conquest, but rather free development of the deeper, "noble" existence, so that reason only has executive tasks (Shaftesbury, Hutdieson); a prioritization of the intellect as the ultimate guarantor of morality when anthropological optimism is lacking, so that morality must be defined as self-conquest (Balguy, Price); and sd'Lesslid' an attempt at mediation that somehow wants to circumvent the needs of the alternatives and processes the concepts relevant to moral philosophy in such a way that ^^

on. cit., V$$3—4 = S. 51 f. *^ Dissertation II = Selby-Bigge, I, 246. '•' See especially the Essays on the Active Powers of Man, Essay V, Chap. V— VII = Works, 651 ff. on Reid's criticism of determinism and Hume's moral philosophy cf. the good analyzes of Grave, Scottish Philosophy of Gommon Sense, 203 ff., 224 ff. Against A. Smith the main argument is Leids, Smith can explain the origin of morality, but cannot determine what is moral (Duncan-Baird, leid's Criticisms, 520). About Hume's moral philosophy see Chap. VII, Sect. 2.

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The Dilemma of Moral Philosophy

they can be classified in an upper hierarchy or spoiled within it (Butler). However, these are only the positions of the normativist Enlightenment. Next to them lives and weaves the spiritual specter of nihilism, for which morality is nothing more than the product of a positing of girls to consolidate or suffer their rulership, which can be achieved without pacifying society or without inhibiting the innate unbridled egoism of men not possible; Mastery and culture therefore belong together'*. As Mandeville's attitude to the moral phenomenon shows, Hobbesdie's thinking was by no means dead, despite zealous refutation of all the normativist arguments mentioned.

c) The difficulties of optimistic anthropology and the ambiguity of self-love and happiness Nature could not replace God as long as it did not demonstrate its ability to take on his normative tasks across the board . Nature had to m.a. W. not only displace God on the cosmological level (which it did as natural law or causality), but also take his place as the supreme guarantor of a scale of values. Lasted not without reason Bayle considers the derivation of moral imperatives from the harmonious structure of nature to be the strongest argument in favor of moral atheism '^. The instrumentalization of God from a moral point of view shows very clearly how difficult it was to found values on a completely new basis, but there was no way back for the Enlightenment or modern times more. Three solutions were on offer: to succumb to nihilism, to admit the artificial or posited character of values and at the same time to assert their absolute indispensability for every social life or to found an ethics of nature". The first was only possible for isolated individuals , the second was overly exposed to the verdict of nihilism because of its excessive relativism and utilitarianism , and so the third had to be given all the more preference as the anthropological-ontological underpinning of the new values increased their polemisic power , since they proved their binding nature, indeed their inevitability sdiien. The simplest way was to supplement the cosmological the deification of nature with the anthropological the thesis that human nature as a whole is good. However , this solution was not accepted in its extreme form by most representatives of the Enlightenment, although very many flirtted with her.If the deification of the

Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, I, 41 ff., insb. 47. Continuous of Various Thoughts, CLI = Works Div., III, 405 f. '•° Cro&er, Age of Crisis, 40.

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Since nature could not explain its destructive outbursts or its often downright anti-human behavior in a satisfactory way for everyone, the theory of the sidily good human being encountered similar and no less difficult difficulties. The optimistisdie anthropologisdie monism, which wanted to present morality more or less as a necessary outflow of human nature, should be as great a pretext to fatalism as the optimistisdie cosmologisdie monism (materialism with the opposite precedents, etc.) that corresponds to it. Objections were raised against the open or deduced identification of the causal and the normative in moral philosophy because The moral behavior of the people hic et nunc left much to be desired, as everyone could easily see: the palette of dark colors extends from the wars to the small and large caresses of everyday life. But if a moral causality were inherent and active in human nature, then everything that occurs through human existence would have to be considered morally satisfactory. The problem also had another aspect. If morality is almost unavoidable because of this causality of human nature, then where is the freedom? Isn't morality identical with freedom? Isn't it difficult? Overcoming the evil, and if that's not the case, then there's no point in praise and blame in this regard.* The Bible apparently belonged to freedom and morality. After all, monism has not been able to solve the problem of evil in a generally acceptable form, neither as pantheism nor as well-intentioned determinism devised for the sake of the irrefutable justification of the good. If the main difficulty for the optimistic monists was to interpret everything that happened causally according to the norm, it was the opposite for the materialists: they could not derive any norms from their determinism and therefore had to do so if they derived it from socio-political ones Reasons needed to gain a logical leap ”'.

In spite of all the difficulties, however, one could not entirely rely on an optimistic concept of human nature in one degree or another; the basic forms of enlightened ethics are, if not entirely optimistic, then closer to optimism than to pessimism. The reference to this good or at least educable human nature provided the indispensable weapon in the fight against original sin, asceticism and the entire conceptual apparatus of the clergy. And what could have been the gravest accusation against the "despots" if not their ennoblement for the dignity of human nature? The new worldview could not afford to be defeated on the anthropological level, especially since anthropology had become its own terrain was; nadi the degradation of God and the corresponding rise of man "' Billicsisdi, The Problem of the Ubels, II, 35F. '^ S. u. Chap. VII, Abs&n. 4. '^ Lanson, The role of experience, in: studies, 167.

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The worldview decisions had to be made primarily in the dispute over the definition of human beings, and it was precisely the modern era that sought and achieved this reversal of the point of contention . The category “human nature” now served as a logical basis for justifying or deductively obtaining the theory of virtues and duties based on the new scale of values. People, nature and morality must therefore remain connected in some way. In view of the ontological revaluation of matter, the anti-ascetic rehabilitation of sensuality and the collapse of the intellect, the connection between humanity and nature in moral-philosophical terms had to be given priority consideration. mean meaning in the foundation of morality. The question was posed as follows: which are the constants of the meaningfully rooted existence, on the basis of which the desired moral code can be determined in advance? can be formulated? However, the attempt to derive morality or normative reason from man's relationship to nature corresponds to the internal logic of the existential concept of knowledge is only fully understood in the light of our definition of Enlightenment rationalism. Of course, the optimistic monists did not have any major difficulties in determining the existential constants relevant to moral philosophy. For them, the latter were not just there, but charged from the start with certain moral contents (goodness, sociability, etc.) that had the place of innate ideas. Those who did not want to accept innate ideas were faced with the difficulty of finding essentially value-free or meaningless existential constants such as: B. Desire and disinclination to deduce moral content. Understandably, this had to make it particularly strong against the opponents of innate ideas. Lo&e triggered, without really wanting it, a whirlwind in the field of moral philosophy "', and in view of s‹fii‹:kt's violent reaction, many enlighteners took note of Lo‹:ke's position to dilute or revoke. Also in this case Voltaire takes the typical attitude, or rather the typical vacillation. In 1734, in complete agreement with his philosophical mentor, Philosophen, he proclaimed the »le roman des idées innées', font abusé de leur raison', good and evil are to be equated with the useful or sweet; the argument of sweet relativity is used to a great extent "'. Four years later, si‹fi Voltaire is much more reserved; he is careful not to view the rejection of innate ideas as a questioning of the moral disposition in the human being

^** L. Stephen has used a sweet formulation regarding the expression of the innate ideas: in banishing them, indeed, he was really banishing more than he intended' (English Thought, 35). °'° Traité de Metaph., III, IX = OC, XXII, 202 ff., 224 ff.

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To let people appear, and never shy away from openly distancing yourself from Locke. Then the argument of historical relativity is essentially rejected and the existence of an innate sentiment d'humanité' is assumed ”'. The possibility of a regular reintroduction of the innate ideas, however, remained limited because of their intellectualistisdi cartesianis‹:the antecedents. Helvétius interpreted the spiritual sdiiditli‹:je constellation correctly when he wrote that the return to the innate ideas must be the derivation of morality from the physical existential, i.e. ultimately the priority of nature itself should be reversed"'. In the attempt to bring about binding morality, at least theoretically, without recourse to innate ideas, determinism had to gain ground, since that morality was to be based on recognized laws and regularities of human nature. However, enlighteners who did not really want to believe in free will could reject the accusation of determinism with the remark, even gain a tactical advantage from it, that precisely the necessity of human actions and reactions allows the normatively desirable regulation of moral behavior on a realistic basis. Thus an open opponent of free will like Collins explains that only the determination of man by the pleasure principle makes a moral code based on rewards and punishments possible "'. Voltaire thinks no differently, having revised his early conviction of free will "'. Audi Hartley's association psychology raised the claim that knowledge of the associative emergence of feelings and opinions could be used to guide them in a harmonizing manner in all human beings and thus to design generally acceptable formulas about morality and happiness ••'; the laws of association formation could thus provide a "principle of the artificial identification of interests'". The ideal of the human engineer, impressively represented by Helvetius ”', is formed out of desire, morality out of the normative zero out of knowledge and control mens‹:h1i‹:of the constants and regularities, whereby the three theses that the human being is nature, nature behaves si‹:h causally and morality should be based on nature are assumed.

°'° Elements I, 5 = OC, XXII, 420 f.; cf. the letter to Friedridi of October 1737 (= OC, XXXIV, 321) and the philosopher Ignorant, written almost thirty years later, di. XXXIV— XXXV = OC, XXVI, 82 ff. °•' De l'Esprit, III, 4 = OC, III, 218 Anm. °•" Inquiry, 87 ff. °' ® Dict. Phil., Art. Free Referee = OC, XIX, 199. -•° Observations on Man, Chap. I, Sect. II = I, 82 ff. '•' Nadi a formulation from Halevy, Growth of Philos. Radicalism, 15. Halévy contrasts this with the 'principle of the natural identity of interests', as advocated by Bentham . °•° S. u. Chap. VII, Abs&n. 4.

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The dilemma of moral philosophy The point is that the Enlightenment thinkers hope to invalidate their opponents' strongest argument through moral philosophy and the evaluation of natural laws, namely that determinism and the elimination of free will must mean the end of all morality. This is a very important aspect of the general effort to put in the service of one's own position that which threatens it most ^'. Within natural morality, the focus of attention was placed on that soul-deprivation which, in the Platonic-Diristian conception, was most closely related to the purely biological dimension of humanity: the affects and sufferings, that is, everything that is in contrast to the purity of the intellect can be apostrophized as inner or psychic sensuality. The confusion between psychic and biological sensuality is all the more readily admitted as the elimination of dualistic intellectualism brings about a unification of the human image within the framework of a broadly conceived sensibility. Dennodi this time the precedents are reversed; Affects and sufferings are no longer condemned because of their roots in the elementary sins of human existence, but rather are given special treatment. This rehabilitation of suffering does not only give rise to new trust in mensdi recognizing nature, which directly paves the way for the doctrine of the natural goodness of man"', but it dynamizes the sensuality audi be träditlidi, so it also points to its ontological appreciation. The term “passio” undergoes a radical change of mind: it no longer brings the passive and suffering, but rather the self-moving, the very own Driving force of existence to express ••'. Through the spradilidi-paradoxical connection between passion and activity, inner restlessness appears no more than imperfection in the diristlidi-stoic sense. On the contrary. As the young Diderot, following Shaftesbury "', writes that they are les grandes passions, qui puis sent Clever 1'ame aux grandes dioses'; happy, then, whoever has them, "si toutes sont i l'unisson' ^'. In fact, severe suffering could only be viewed as an incentive to grudge achievements because as a soldier, suffering could drain all human activity. "No passions are the principal instruments of our conservation," says Rousseau, and then turns against asceticism, citing God as the giver of suffering. “Our passions are the only causes of labour,” says Hume too, “and not only those like Hume, Shaftesbury and Hutdieson do this

'^ S. and Absdln. $ of this chapter. Lanson, The role of experience, in Studies, 183. ^^ Mauzi, Idea of Happiness, 432 ff. '^° Venturi, Youth of Diderot, 51 ff. ° * Thoughts Philos. I—IV = OC, I, 127 f. ' Emile IV — Oeuvres IV, 490 f. ^° Of COmmeree = Essays, I, 293. ^‘

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were close in many respects, but also Lo&e's successors, such as: B. Maupertuis, who calls pleasure and displeasure the 'deux maitres du monde'

»société civile' would be 'ruined'". In a different context and with the refusal to point out the possibility of a moral atheism or the moral ignorance of religion, he explained how human behavior is not due to moral or theological ideas, but to Rather, it is caused by the nature of suffering or the biophysical structure ^' Precisely from the assumed omnipotence of the nature of suffering, however, the conclusion had to be drawn that the evil in the world is also due to its effect and fertility were therefore called for caution and restraint, which not seldom went hand in hand with despair about mensdilidie Sdiwu‹:he. This entire range of thoughts and moods can be followed well in Voltaire. Despite frequent abuse, suffering is for him Fla principale cause de l'ordre' on this earth, viz. They are, however, no less dangerous than necessary, and attempts at moderation often prove arduous if not in vain. Dennodi wants her Voltaire

- not only because of their power, but above all in the sense of its option for antiasceticism, the rehabilitation of sensuality - not to eradicate, but rather to regulate. But that was the problem, not the solution. In assuming that suffering caused (audi) evil, the Enlightenment thinkers agreed willingly with the theologians. The big difference between the two parties, however, lay in the former's determination to establish a morality on the basis of rehabilitated biopsydissensibility. Now, from anti-intellectualist Si&t, the misjudgments of the Reason as the effects of suffering are held responsible for immoral actions"' - but then how could it be done the same way?

•°• Vtnus, XV = Oeuvres II, 77. *•' Letters on the History of Calvinism XVI = Works Div., II, 278. ••• PenSÿgS DÿVßï"SßS 135, 144, 111 = Oeuvres Div., III, 87, 93, 109. ••• Traits of Metaeh. VIII = OC, XXII, 223 f. ••• Zadig, XX = OC, XXI, 88. '•• Stances II = OC, VII I, 506. •°° Remarks on the Thoughts of Pascal = OC, XXII, 53. '•' So Diderot, Introd, to the great principles = OC, II, 88 Arim. Au & Rousseau tends to this view, and it becomes understandable when we think of the inner relationship between sensualism and the doctrine of the natural goodness of man: if only intellectual activity causes errors (in knowledge and morality), then these ni&I come from nature. This side of sensualism brings Rousseau in die Nähe Condillacs (Jima‹:k, Genèse ct Rtdaction de l'Emile, 91).

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common ones like diarakteristis explain the condition that the poet summarized in the words : video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor'? Shaftesbury's solution was hardly more satisfactory, as he simply separated natural and unnatural affections, assigned the moral ills to the latter and - apparently satisfied with the pejorative term unnatural - did not say many words about their origin and anthropological relevance. A third way is more realistic, namely, to admit the potential natural danger of the passions, but at the same time to accept their innate ability for selfregulation, from which a morally acceptable equilibrium would arise. In this way, the cause of the alarm could be transformed into a reason for confidence. From this perspective, it becomes easy to understand why the problem of self-love took such a prominent place in the moral-philosophical efforts of the Enlightenment. In this way, however, the continuity between the early positions of modern rationalism, as they arose from its definition of the essence, and the basic motives of Enlightenment thinking becomes visible. The self-preservation -assertion - declared the foundation of existence by‹:h Ma‹:hiavel1i, Montaigne, Hobbes, Spinoza and the Neo Stoics - becomes the central theme in

the moral philosophy and moral studies of the 17th century '•'. The paradoxical alliance of skepticism and fideism that we know takes the form of an adoption of the topoi of the dirist1i‹:h-Augustinian anthropology pessimism , whereby‹:h human‹:h human reason is fundamentally a factotum of passions , especially since of self-love. The alliance lives on in this form even in the Age of Enlightenment '7 '. In view of this, the opposite tendency, which was already represented in the 17th century, not least by Hobbes, to build a secular morality on self-love, is now stronger, at least to the extent that the antiascetic rehabilitation of sensuality has now gained ground has. Skeptics and nihilists, as a rule, adopt diristlid anthropological pessimism much more easily than the normativist Enlightenment thinkers (apart from the intellectualist minority). Against the background of the presented difficulties of pure optimism and with all its weight within the modern conception of humanity, self-love must now support a secular morality that

'° ®

Characteristi&s, II, 163 ff. '•• Krailsheimer, Studies in Self-lnterest, passim. •*° S. o. Kapitel II Absdin. 3 b. ’ 7* Cro&er, Age of Crisis, 257 f., 262 ff. '*• S. z. B. how Bayle connects the thesis of the excess of suffering with the doctrine of original sin, Dict. hist. et crit., Art. Helene, Rem. Y (= II, 1412 f.) and Eve, Rem. F (= II, 1130 A).

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The dangerous aspect of humanity in its naturalness should no longer be trivialized or simply overlooked, but rather we should extract norms from it and thus neutralize it in a deeper sense. The causal should be sidi

ma W. unfold in such a way that the normative emerges from it; So if sales and normative are not identified a limine here, as would happen in pure optimism, then it is expected that they will at least largely coincide in the end. Self-love is natural and, as such, internal causality, is the unavoidable motive of human action: this starting position cannot only explain moral missteps, but can also vouch for the naturalness of the new morality. Although self-love may violate the rights of others, as the original form of the species' instinct for selfpreservation, it nevertheless remains interested in the fact that a rules and moral order prevails in society as a whole, because only this grants people long-term solidarity. Even its most petty and self-serving forms can have a socially stabilizing effect; pride or vanity and honor can push people to act in accordance with norms if this is rewarded by social recognition. We noticed the heel of this thought in Hobbes: what guarantees that self-love and the inclinations and sufferings that arise from it will adhere to existing rules in the critical case where they violate them with impunity and thus lose both benefit their general existence as well as the benefit from their private injury at the same time? This practically decisive question is not answered directly, but rather through a unity of the rational-normative, whereby the conflict between the causal and the normative is to be sifted through the tacit determination of the former in the light of the needs of the latter. (The agreement between the two, which, in contrast to the thesis of pure optimism, should be the end result of the self-development of the causal, is again assumed a limine, but this time with all discretion.) The natural becomes normative by spiritualizing, rationalizing is made. The concept of self-love is generally processed in such a way that it can be adapted to normative demands. The distinction between being and being offers its good services, and that

“False” or unreasonable self-love is contrasted with “true” or rational or enlightened selflove; this is how the natural becomes fundamental

^° Voltaire zieht eine interessante Parallele zwis&en der Selbstliebe als instrument de notre conservation' und dem instrument de la perpétuité de l'specie', Dict. Phil., Art. Selfesteem = OC, XVII, 179. "^ Evidence in Crocker, Age of Crisis, 282 ff.; cf. Lovejoy, Essays, 62 ff. A. Smith polemicizes against Mandeville with the help of the distinction between pride and vanity, which corresponds to the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable self-love, see below (Theory of Moral Sentiments VI, 3 and VII, 2 = pp. 255 ff., 308 ff.).

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preserved, but eliminated its morally unacceptable aspect "' by relegating it to the normatively irrelevant realms of pfalsd en' self-love.

Now the careful distinction between the two types of self-love means an at least partial, if even indirect, rejection of the initial claim to derive a morality from nature (and not simply in the sense of pure optimism). Because sensible self-love should be characterized by the fact that it prefers the long-term satisfaction of selfpreservation needs to the short-term ones, and therefore can consciously resist the latter. But the question is, which instance of self-love shows its true interest so that the lack of immediate pleasure can be perceived as justified. If self-love as a soldier and as a soldier were able to recognize its own true interest, then the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable self-love would be superfluous. On the other hand, the rejection of immediate satisfaction in favor of a later and greater one presupposes both a deliberative and discriminatory, i.e. intellectual, activity and also a mode of thinking that can put a stop to unreasonable self-love. If rational self-love is this mode, then it cannot be self-love, but rather rational. The recognition of the “true” interest, as well as its pursuit, requires (self-)active reason. The factual abandonment of pure natural morality against the background of the conflict between the causal and the normative or the effort to achieve ret

The implementation of the latter, despite all natural morality, is shown by the fact that rational self-love is assigned precisely those tasks that reason alone should fulfill in intellectualist morality: self-overcoming and abandonment of what is servable in favor of the "true" good. (This However, this is partly neutered by sticking to the term "self-love", which continues to symbolize the approach to natural morality.) D'Alembert clearly uses, even if rather unconsciously, a word with reidier diristlidier Vorgesd idite to define enlightened self-love: "1'amour éclairé de nous-memes est le principe de tout sacri Jice moral' "'. Among the theorists Self-love is often the goal noticeably to offer the additional guarantees for the siding of the normative beyond the distinction between unreasonable and reasonable. It is true that the later Rousseau opposed the amour de soi, which was 'toujours bon et toujours conforme i 1'ordre', to the amour-propre from which all 'passions haineuses et irascibles' are supposed to come,' his early distrust of the social order effects of self-love ”' drives him, however, to last moral guarantees

" Cro&er, Nature and Culture, 275 f. "° Elements, VIII = Works II, 192. °" Emile, IV = Oeuvres, IV, 491, 493. "®

Origins of Inequality, Note IX = Works, III, 203.

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not in true' self-love, but in instinctive reason or conscience '7 ' and at the same time in the volonté génerale "' to study - unaddressed the existing deep contrast between the individualism of the former and the collectivism of the latter "'. Audi Hartley is not satisfied with the conceptual distinction between "big" and "refined self-interest"; since this does good only for purely private reasons, it is subordinated to q'rational self-interest', which enables a ' pursuit of a man's greatest possible happiness without any partiality ' On the one hand, self-love appears as the one source of good and evil, whereby the former is viewed as a product of the self-regulation of self-love without outside help: .So

drives Self-Love .../ Toone Man's power, ambition, lust and lust: / The same Self-Love ... becomes the cause / Of what restrains him' '•'. But when Pope elsewhere emphasizes the identity of “frie self-love and social”. If he raises '^, then he introduces an essential restriction, which then leads to the thesis of the normative inferiority of self-love to reason. Since nature most closely combines good and evil in self-love, reason - the byas - must bring the former out of it. Of course, it is not in her power to eradicate self-love, but it should guide it. ': because the individual sufferers, all the offspring of self-love, are not able to differentiate clearly between the "seeming" and the "real good"" 7 . So self-love should move forward drive, and reason should restrain it, both want something in common: to gain pleasure and avoid pain. This turn of phrase shows which concept of reason underlies the natural principle. We will have to come back to this at the end of this argument.

We encounter the same conceptual structure in the much-discussed question of G1ü& and its relation to virtue. In essence, the problem of happiness forms a further development of the problem of self-love: happiness is actually deep and permanent satisfaction of the self, and striving -'° Emile, IV = Oeuvres, IV, 600.

-^° Social contract, I, 8 = Works III, 365. ••' Cro&er, Nature and Culture, 278. ^° Observations on Man, Chap. IV, Sect. III - Essay on Man, III, vv 269—272 = S. 48. op. cit., IV, v. 396 = S. 69. '•• •"•

^• '" 7 '^ ^"

on. cit., II, vv. 196—199 = S.29. on. cit., II, v. 162 = S. 28. op. cit., II, v. 93 f. — S. 25. on. cit., II, v. 54 = S. 23. on. cit., II, v. 88 = S. 24.

I, 458 ff.

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Nadi her can only come from an equally deep and permanent effect of self-love; So happiness is saturated self-love. The anti-asceticism meant the Enlightenment and the praise of happiness therefore had to go hand in hand with the Versudi go hand in hand with building a natural morality on self-love — especially in Demand nadi Glü& the claims to self-determination of the Idi stuck ^°. Self-love as the basis and happiness as the goal of natural morality had to be hence the moral-philosophical problem in addition to their belonging together deal with it together, namely, shape the mutual relationship to virtue together. Because happiness in the new, anti-ascetic sense could only be achieved with a virtue that does not exist in incessant torment of self-overcoming, but should crown the natural morality established on self-love. As a saturated self-love, happiness was therefore exposed to the same dangers as uninhibited self-love. Just the The happy satisfaction of existential needs threatens agreement of happiness and virtue if it is followed at the expense of one's fellow human beings. Following nature as happiness turns against following nature Nature as a virtue. Nature, which is the common denominator of happiness and To form virtue, ma W. can hardly fulfill her task because she is in sidi split: it is moralized now as a source of happiness, now as a basis Values based on "'. The causal and the normative in it diverge logically, while the assumption that happiness and virtue left each other agree, was based on the belief in their unity. This belief can only be of paramount importance if . This is also a tacit theory that contains confessions that can be observed in the efforts to harmonize happiness and virtue. The embarrassment comes basically because, according to the new conception, happiness is self-development must, while at the same time referring to the traditional view of virtue as Self-overcoming cannot (entirely) be avoided if the self-development of one person is not to come into open, socially unacceptable conflict with that of the other. So the theoretical concession is surrender the programmatisdi presented complete identity of G1ü& in the new sense and virtue; Just as he distanced himself from pure anthropological optimism with reference to the potential danger of self-love, so too should this abandonment of Abel, who cannot be interpreted away to speak to the world. On the other hand, however, moral anti-asceticism must be adhered to, and with regard to the double goal, one sets oneself the double task, against the background of the entanglement of being and The aim is to bring about a harmonization of happiness and virtue in the concept of nature, which is based on the theoretical concession just mentioned would stand The question is actually trivial and goes like this: what is the individualistic '•° See above in this section under a. Mauzi, Idea of Happiness, 43o f.

"'

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sche, nadi outside at least potentially aggressive hedonism of happiness with the renunciation in favor of the well-being of fellow human beings, which virtue demands "'? We must keep in mind that this question attains its full poignancy when happiness in the sense of the radical anti-ascetic Rehabilitation of sensuality is understood, whereby virtue is no longer considered a sufficient or only prerequisite for happiness "°, while at the same time value nihilism should be avoided. Despite all its triviality, this question has a very specific meaning for the normativist Enlightenment. The rather forced theoretical admission that happiness and virtue are in fact not always completely and unconditionally identical made the conceptual mediation between the two an urgent task, with ambiguities arising which were as logically inevitable as that admission is factual had proven necessary. These ambiguities are noticeable in two ways. Firstly, in the pairing “Glüik” Virtue' now the former, now the latter, gain the upper hand and degrade the respective other to an appendage, without the pairing as such having been called into question of happiness under virtue (true happiness is of a spiritual nature and only predetermined for the virtuous) to the utilitarian view that virtue is a means of gaining happiness in a society that rewards the virtuous; as Vauvenargues put it: L'utilité de la vertu est si manifeste, que les mediants la pratiquent par l'interet' "'. Secondly, there was ambiguity in the relationship between happiness and pleasure —a relationship which, due to the anti-ascetic conception of happiness, had never become as close as it had ever been and for that very reason required clarification. The nihilistic consequences of the complete identification of happiness and pleasure in the elementary biological sense are now to be avoided by the normatively inspired treatment of the concept of pleasure. Just as the close approximation of happiness and virtue to each other required a distinction between the "true" and apparent" happiness, so the fundamental connection of ("true") happiness and pleasure could not be done without a separation of the true and lasting from the apparent and produce liquid pleasure. The pleasure principle remains untouched, but at the same time a hierarchy of the types of pleasure is established, at the top of which stands mental pleasure. An example may illustrate this ambiguous attitude. According to Maupertuis, pleasure and displeasure form the fundamental conceptual pair in moral

”’

on cit., 581 ff., 85 ff. '•° S. z. B. Silver, Phil. du bon sens, Ref1 VII $ 2 (- II, 343 f.). °•• Crocker, Nature and Culture, 225. °'^ Maxims, Nr. 759 = Works, 477. "^ Mauzi, Idea of Happiness, 404 ff.

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philosophy " 7 . Good things are a part of moods here, evil is a part of moments of misfortune '*'. The anti-ascetic tone is also clearly evident in the view that sensual pleasure is no less noble than intellectual pleasure or that the nobility of pleasure can be measured more by its intensity than by its origin •°. It is precisely with regard to this criterion that Maupertuis considers the spiritual and spiritual pleasure that is achieved through the "pratique de la justice" and "vue de la verité" to be the most intense and lasting, and therefore the noblest type of pleasure." He turns to against any intellectualist or sensualistic one-sidedness both in practice and in the theory of morality" 1 in order to ultimately consider the possibility of a world-affirming Christianity, within the framework of which the longed-for stability could be realized '°. It's easy to see how flexible Maupertuis' Sdiema is. The initial identification From Glüdt and Lust, with the help of the distinction between being and being, it turns into the demand for a modernized or instrumentalized Christianity. ,

Depending on the thinker and opponent, the type of satisfaction is defined of biological and psychological sensuality is 'truly natural' or 'truly reasonable' and which has nothing to do with the 'properly understood' voice of nature. The mutually overlapping or superseding definitions of this kind produce a confusing picture if one considers the entire epodx, for here the general effort is unmistakable to (partially) resolve the conflict of causal and normative by normative by means of (partial) autonomy of reason is provided with its own resilient seat . In this way one shows the theological opponent that one can get along morally out of one's own enlightened conviction and strength without having to succumb to nihilism. However, the dualism is accepted again, and the enlighteners can initially only oppose theology with the assertion that they can direct people even better than the theologians, whereby the latter are credited with a healthy moralistic approach '°°. The (partly)

However, the reintroduction of dualism entailed a new conflict between being and ought, although it was precisely intended to eliminate the conflict between the causal and the normative: if the causal threatened to overwhelm the normative through the rehabilitation of meaningfulness, then the normative, recognized as independent, had to

'°' Essay by Phil. Morality, I = Works, I, 193. '••

on. cit., III = I, 206 f.

°•° place cit., 212 f. °°' place. cit., 206, 209.

•°' up. cit., IV = I, 232 ff. ^°°

Wie es Ehrard (Idea of Nature, 384) treffend formulalie, rt: To triumph over

Christian morality must remain safe, at the cost of a contradiction.

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matative, for its part, bring the causal or sensuality under control, which jeopardizes the anti-ascetic morality '^. The philosophy of feeling owes its enormous success to this logical impasse: they seem to have found an authority in human beings that harmonized the ratio or voice of nature and (refined) psychic sensuality. The philosophy of feeling brings about an expansion or clarification of concepts such as passion and pleasure, so that these can hardly be distinguished from fine feeling (while theologians prefer to use those concepts in the sense of blind instinct)"'. And the The fiction of the century, which because of its new realistic orientation is in any case suspected and persecuted of immoralism, mostly concentrates on the development of noble or ennobled feelings and provides models that help the many to stylize their own behavior. The rehabilitated sensuality is tamed in these and similar detours and is only approved of in this form by the enlightened public. There is no need to condemn the feeling (and the feeling of pleasure) if it was of such a nature that it was hardly demarcated from ('true') reason and its precepts. The antiintellectualistic concept of rationalism also provides mediation here, it merges happiness and virtue, lust and virtuous happiness. In its existential roots, reason should remain both close to the sensual and firm enough to be able to offer its feared escapades one and a half if necessary.

It appears to be able to show the way to the realization of the norm over and above all oppositions between the spiritual and the sensible, because it carries the norm or the unity of the spiritual and the sensible originally in the sid. As a solid normative reason, it must therefore be clearly distinguished from the merely instrumental reason, which can serve both good and evil and is usually identified by the philosophers of feeling with the intellect as such. The present great unity of self-love and universally valid norms, of happiness without asceticism and virtue, freedom perceived as almost existential, is considered possible because normative reason is no longer tied to the intellect, i.e. no longer to anthropological dualism. However, that was only the program: because in fact the open and consistent dualism of the intellectualists was replaced by the dualism of wavering.

^°* Vor diesem Hintergrund sind mandie ziemli‹:h traditionell-asketisdi anmutende Aussagen von Aufklärern zu verstehen. So Voltaire z. B.: Virtue is not good; it is a duty: it is of a different kind, of a superior order. It has nothing to do with painful or pleasant sensations' (Dict. Phil., Art. Bien, sovereign = OC, XVII, 576). °°• Crocker, Age of Crisis, 226 f. May, Le Dilemme du Roman, especially chapters 2 and 3. ^'° Mauzi, Idea of Happiness, 521, 526, 544.

^°°

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4. The philosophy of history between esdiatological Confidence and relativistic resignation

a) The emergence of the new historiography and the concept of the cultural whole

The romantic legend of the Enlightenment that was alien to or even hostile to health has long since been refuted, and there is not a word left to say about it. Rather, it is important to satisfactorily explain why the Enlightenment had to bring into being a new type of spiritual science, which even in its various forms - from positivism to esfiatology has proven to be fruitful enough to strongly influence or (in)directly produce some leading historical or ge s‹fiiditsphilosophis‹fi school in the last two*' centuries; this continuity is one reason why the historical achievement of the Enlightenment could only be fully realized after the emergence of modern sociology and social anthropology and their increasing involvement with political intelligence. The romantic legend accused the Enlightenment of being alien to intellectualism, and even derived it from this. The double accusation was entirely false, but the assumed logical connection between its two aspects actually existed. That means: if the Enlightenment had been intellectualist, it would have had to follow Des Cartes in a manner that was alien to science - and vice versa: its groundbreaking historical achievement goes hand in hand with its anti-intellectualist fundamental trait. For the hegemony of the intellect was shattered by the thesis that Man is nature — a thesis which, for its part, was characterized by the ontological appreciation of matter and the anti-ascetic rehabilitation of sensuality. The assumption of a sensuous rooting of human existence among sdiied si‹fi because of what is implied in it, if not explicitly stated Priority of this world of similar theologies, especially s‹fiolastisdien views radical; It no longer indicated a temporary or inferior state, but rather served as a programmatic starting point for a new consideration and research into the human condition in its autonomy. The implementation of the program, however, required a closer examination of human ties to the physical and social environment. If sensuality cannot be imagined without human beings, then one can si'fi ^°^ Dilthey's valuable contribution to this is well known. See his treatise "The 18th Century and the Gesdiiditlidie Welt", in Ges. Sdir. III 209 ff. However, today Dilthey's statements on individual aspects of this problem must be read with great caution.

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one must not imagine the human being in a vacuum, but one must grasp him in his roots in the milieu, since sensuality cannot possibly eviscerate the milieu and, moreover, social life, species life, can hardly be understood without sensuality. As a sensual being, man is conditioned by geographical factors; as a sensual being, he inherits the characteristics of a race and is thus marked before his birth; as a sensual being, he fights for his survival or well-being, not just individually, but on the whole best within social organization. The appreciation of individual sensuality opens the way to insight into the meaning of supra-individual - geographical and social - sensuality also vice versa. The idea of man as a unity, developed in the fight against intellectual dualism, is now expanded by the idea of the unity of man with his environment. Under these circumstances, the basic modern motif of self-preservation experiences its large-scale historical-sociological concretization. Since the Renaissance, it has been implicitly or explicitly linked to the primacy of anthropology, which in turn was allied with the primacy of Narur in common opposition to the primacy of God. This alliance between nature and humans becomes visible in the thesis of the naturalness of humans. Man as nature and the nature of man now often mean that same. And just as in the view that nature is an autonomous whole, the enormous diversity of natural creations appears as an infinite scale of variations of the same constant basic themes or laws, so too does the colorful wealth of history in activities, situations and actions appear as an excursion by the one human nature. The prerequisites of history can be found in nature (this assumption forms another important aspect of the desired interweaving of nature and culture "'), in a double sense: in external nature as a geographical or even cosmic framework for human action and in that nature that contributes to humans, that is, provides the human biostructure. With this, however, that basic instinct of self-preservation, which man shares with all organic life, is eo ipso given, which is then powerfully developed in the most diverse forms and on the most diverse levels. If we remember the importance of the instinct of self-preservation (as self-love) in the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment, then its function in historical theory becomes clear to us. Social life serves to secure self-preservation, which in turn forms the basis of all cultural development and refinement - but the secret or open violation of the rules of that life, ie crime or war, should also serve this purpose (at least from the perspective of the person concerned). . Enlightened self-love and blind self-sue t

•°• S. o., Chap. V, Abs&n. 4.

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thus form the two poles of human activity - historical and moral. What remains crucial is that when explaining this activity, one always thinks of nature as it expresses itself through the instinct of selfpreservation and within it with elementary force. Ultimately, the Enlightenment philosophers of history do not have the natural nature of man understood in this way in mind when they speak of the one human nature as the basis of history; said Voltaire, "' one should not simply tremble with enlightened abstraction when the key word about the one human nature is mentioned. Because it concerns the nature of human e.g. B. and so also Hume "'. Da

existence, that is, the sensually rooted man who fights for his

self-preservation and thereby achieves great and reprehensible things schen, it is intended to emphasize the anthropological basis of stories in general and belongs together with the anti-theologically intended primacy of anthropology. Understood in this way, the assumption of one human nature does not mean an abstract construction, but on the contrary the prerequisite for a treatment of history in concreto. The turn to abstraction occurs when the one human nature is presented as the epitome of temporal norms, i.e. when the naturalness of humans no longer refers to the causal but primarily or exclusively to the normative aspect of the concept of nature .

A reference to Ferguson would be instructive in our context, especially since his essay represents one of the very few attempts at the time to provide a systematically structured presentation of a theory of history in a new sense. Ferguson goes by what has now become a commonplace "' — primacy of the an-

°'• Essay on Morals, Intr. VII = OC, XI, 21: "Man, in general, has always been what he is: this does not mean that he has always had beautiful cities... But he has always had the same instinct , which leads him to love himself, in the company de son plaisir, dans ses enfants, dans ses petits fils, dans les oeuvres de ses mains'. Selflove is all-encompassing here, social feelings and cultural achievements spring from it . "'

Human Understanding, VIII = Essays II, 68: »... human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same solives always produce the same actions ... Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit; thèse passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enter prizes . . .‘ ^ "Still Pope justifies his famous formula: The proper study of mankind is man' (Essay, II, v. 2 = p. 21) by the pious consideration that a final intelligence like the mensdilid'e can only be done by mensd'1id'. to recognize it, so endlid›es. Hume (the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences', Treatise, Introd., XX) or Diderot (mensd› should be the "centre commun" of all knowledge) take this into account “Aft1idier effort becomes, Art. Encyclopedie” — OC, XIV, 453) no longer any advice; the primacy of anthropology simply becomes self-evident.

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thropology and devotes the first quarter of his book to it human nature; Our principal study" should be Edie's laws" of her animal side as well as her spiritual side. The distinction between these However, Ferguson does not want to be understood on both sides in the sense of intellectual dualism. He speaks of man as of an animal Mother animals' "' and regards as the great common denominator the Self-preservation instinct, which in mensdien durdi reflection and foresight' accompanied or brought to bear much more effectively "'. Mental abilities and functions in humans are not the exact opposite, but rather the continuation and development of their animal skills - if also him specific - nature. But the instinct of self-preservation is also in Another hint is double-sided: it can bring about a single tradition and a dual tradition, solidarity and war. To the chapter on him, Ferguson leaves two others follow, the former the "Union among Mankind" and the latter the problem from "War and Dissension" is dedicated to "'. The men's mixed disposition to friendship and intimacy' "' is now put together with its spiritual-animal double character, and this creates a multidimensional overall conception of human nature, which Ferguson finds sufficient to understand what is happening in the past, present and future and to be able to understand it in an explanatory manner. The seeds of every form are lodged in human nature; they spring up and ripen with the season' "'. The progress is Specific to human existence, that is, it does not occur in the rest of the animals before "', and takes place within the framework given by human nature. Both the framework conditions of progress and audi His new achievements and content now madien this human dilidy nature. Art itself is natural to man' "', and therefore humankind becomes Nature is the summa summarum of all human realities and possibilities. It is therefore unnecessary to search for the "real" state of nature, when the human being is in his natural state at all times and everywhere."' This association of possibility and reality, of human nature and the human world, illustrates the close connection between Primacy of anthropology and the turn to the study of the social and Geschiditlidia. So it is neither a coincidence nor a contradiction if there is constancy

°'*

Essay, I, 1 = S. 3. *'• on. eit., I, 1 = S. 4. *' "'

°' 7 °'^ *'"

on. eit., I, 2 = S. 11 f.

op. it., I, 3 u. 4 - S. 16 ff., 20 ff. on. eit., I, 1 = S. 3.

on. cit., III, 2 = S. 123. on. cit., I, 1 = S. 4 f.

s'o up. cit., I, 1 = S. 6. °"

on cit., I, 1 = p. 8. Cf. Jogland, Sociology at Ferguson, 72.

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human nature and the diversity of forudl riding are addressed at the same time. Because it is precisely from the primacy of the human being in his or her nature that the priority in theory of science arises of those factors that have to do with the many needs of this very human being. That explains it strong anthropological-sociological orientation of the new historiography, which actually constitutes its great novelty. The new attitude is most impressively reflected in the previously unparalleled attention given to economic factors in history. The economistic trait of early liberal thinking is particularly evident among the representatives of the Scottish school, who pose the question of man's "mode of subsistence" in a way that sometimes anticipates Marx. The analysis of the material mode of existence of the socially living human being lies even underlies attempts at periodization, which are now necessary in view of the acceptance of historical progress. A. Smith designs a four-stage theory based on economic criteria, which, significantly, can also be constructed from the host diafu articles in the Encyclopédie re. The study of phenomena such as the division of labor, property, etc., in turn, leads to sociological considerations about the origin and function of institutions. The new social theory priority is anthropologically based on the thesis of the natural sociability of humans, although the dispositions of the individual psyche are sometimes seen as causes and sometimes as components of a given social structure. Whether crystallization or incentive of the psyche : Institutions are indispensable framework conditions for the activity of a naturally social person "'. However, as I said, this activity aims not least to secure material existence, and therefore the psychological and economic aspects of institutional theory must be considered together; the pure psycho

"'" Meek, The Scottish Contribution, 37 f. The expression "inode of subsistence" quoted by Meek comes from Robertson. Ferguson writes "way of subsistence" (Es say, I, 9 = p. 62). Cf. Ferguson's illustration of the life of primitive or barbaric peoples, in which the mode of production and property conditions play a prominent role (II, 2 and 3 = p. 81 ff.). °°° Hunting, pasturage, farming, commerce. For details about the characteristics of each phase, see Skinner, Smith, 156 ff.; Skinner speaks to Redit of Smith's 'almost Marxian reliance which is placed on economic factors' (155, cf. 175).

°" Hubert, Social Sciences, 289 ff.; on the new emphasis on economic and social factors in the encyclopedia, see in general Sdiargo Hoyt, Method et interpretation, esp. 367 ff. °'^

Bryson, Man and Society, Kap. VI, 148 ff., insb. 151 f., 170 ff.; audi die Enzy klopädisten suchen

in den Institutionen 'the influence of his [Mensdian's] most primitive instincts and his most material needs', Hubert, Social Sciences, 359.

°’• Bryson, Man and Society, 173 ff.

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In any case, the idiots don't fall for logistics. Either way, they always express the brother of the new social theory view with the traditional one in an unmistakable way. The social whole can be multi-faceted

Dimensionality cannot be a mere product of the sovereign will of a single legislator, as ancient, humanistic or absolutist historiography used to assume. According to Ferguson, such state founders and legislators were rather legendary figures; because the forms of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin; they arise, long before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not from the speculations of men' "'. The change and diversity of forms of government do not arise from the arbitrariness of individuals, but here are the extent, the way of subsistence, the diaracter and the manners of different nations' entsdieidend'"'. Ferguson's disparagement of conventional political historiography also comes in the form of the futuristic thesis that in every form of government, in addition to the formal establishment, there is a "casual subordination" that has to do with the distribution of property, and it does exist unofficially, the state its tone and fixes its diaracter" "'. Audi Millar questions the competing testimony of historians regarding the role of great legislators and asserts the priority of objective circumstances. He also attributes the differences between court law and government to the differences of situation, which are caused by the following factors will be: ,the fertility or barennes of the soil, the nature of its productions, the species of labor requisite for procuring subsistence, the number of individuals collected together in one community, their proficiency in

arts, the advantages which they enjoy for entering into mutual transactions, and for maintaining an intimate correspondence' "'. Shortly afterwards Millar remarks that the ideas and feelings' of the members of a society would be in conformity with their situation*, like this one just now has been outlined, located "'.

Ferguson, for his part, had emphasized that intellectual development was socially conditioned and dictated; Everyone sharpens their own mind in the effort to produce his mind in public or to successfully play his role "as a member of society, as a friend or an enemy": here, indeed, the understanding appears to borrow very muc from the passions' . These statements must be recorded precisely. They confirm that turning away from intellectualism and turning to poetry belong closely together as a field of activity for the natural human being. The genetic approach to epistemology, the nadi that renunciation

°"

Essay III, 2 = S. 122; cf. II, 2 = S. 86. °'"

on. cit. I, 9 = S. 62. °-•

on. cit. III, 3 = S. 133.

°•° Distinction of Ranks, Introd., 177 f. •" ibid., 175.

^' ibid., 176. ”’

Essay, I, 5 = S. 29.

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became necessary "', is now combined with the genetic explanation of the social manifestations of the mind. Just as the mind, according to the empiricist view, is to be rooted in the senses, so, according to the new historical attitude, the individual or collective ideology is to determine expression and outflow be in the right material circumstances. The Scottish emphasis on economic factors cannot be taken as representative of the whole new conception of history, although it does explain some important historical theorizing of the consequences of the fundamental thesis of naturalness of man brings to light. Incidentally, as the passages quoted show, the Scots themselves are far from economic determinism; on the continent, however, the idea of culture as a whole appears to be even more loosely or abstractly structured than with them. It generally includes, though in varying doses and combinations, the biological (race), geographic (climate, soil, location), and socio-historical (economy, customs, form of government) sensuality, and the related fields of arts and sciences . Against the background of this cultural whole, a meaningful connection and thus an explanation of the individual historical events should now be made. As a result, however, a preliminary decision had already been made with regard to the evaluation or significance of the events themselves. Voltaire says it explicitly. The "pile of useless facts" '" should be cleared out; only those that have to do with the customs and spirit of the time or nation in question are important"'; exclusively lidi with regard to them a selection should take place "', so that gen conservant celles qui peignent les moeurs, vous faisiez de ce diaos un tableau général et bien articule' '"'; the 'true history' is that of manners, of laws, of the arts, and of the progress of the human mind.' So when Voltaire demands that history be written 'gen philosophe',' he means both a particular conception of the human Activity or of the human in general as well as - in the narrower sense the corresponding treatment of the material: as so often, apparently neutral methodological principles serve to underpin a content-related position. In this way it comes at least to the Brudi with the gallant historiography and with the procedure of the polyhistors (see below). There is still a considerable gulf between aspiration and performance, not only with Voltaire, but also with

°" See above Chapter IV, paragraph 4 and Chapter V, paragraph 1.

^• Supplement 1 of the Essay, I = OC, XXIV, 543. °°^ Essai, 388 = OC, XIII, 123. "' Supplement to the Essay, III = OC, XXIV, 548. "'Preface of 1754 — OC, XXIV, 42. °°" Letter to Baron de Tott dated April 23, 1767 = OC, XLV, 230. °•° Letter to Thieriot dated October 31, 1738 = OC, XXXV, 32; cf. his Bern remarks on Hume's englisdle Gesdiidite in OC, XXV, 169 f.

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cultural-historical approaches outside of France"'. In their eagerness to prove the validity of the new conception of history as soon as possible and to have an impact on the present, the enlighteners very often stopped at the working methods of the humanists, so that their suggestions cultural studies appear to be much more important than the concrete results of their own work ^' Aside from such countries, there was also an objective reason why cultural studies could not supplant political studies across the board, although this time they were the latter more near Madiiavelli and Guicciardini than in that of the court historiography. The already functioning system of European equality must suggest that the factor "statehood" should be taken into account in the historical analysis of both the present and the early modern period; Robertson's and Hume's historical work undoubtedly (also) has a strong and conscious political dimension. The radical reorientation of historiography, as it took place through the presentation of the whole of culture, had just as much of its socio-political presuppositions as, for example, the disparagement of God The concept of the cultural whole expresses society's demand for emancipation from the absolutist state at the level of historical methodology

sellsdiaft when you feel this is mature and strong enough to take up open battle against that ^'. In this broad sense it is bourgeois historical

°•' See Se aumkell's comments (Gesch. der Deutschen Kulturgeschichte tssc friction, 61, 67) about Gatterer and Scfilözer. Universities and academies had a double effect in Germany; Although they promoted historical science in general, on the other hand they remained largely tied to the annalisticantiquarian process, since genealogical research was carried out in them - often on behalf of the ruler - or political history was written from a specific dynastic perspective (Kraus , Reason and History, especially 350 ff., 394 ff.). Kraus believes that it was precisely this apparent backwardness that later helped German historiography to achieve more mature achievements, as it never neglected source research, but rather knew how to organically combine the traditional and the modern (550 ff.).

Schlenker's statement remains correct, however, that in England, for example, For example, despite all the weaknesses of the organization with regard to universities and academies, they still offered significantly more favorable social conditions for the development of the new historiography (Beginners scientific Gehistoschr., 322). *•' Fueter, Gesch. the more recent histor., 346 f. *•° Schlenke, cultural history or political history, especially 66 ff., 74 f., 89 f. °•• See note 7 in this chapter.

"• The conceptual distinction between state and society is indeed in 18th century carried out only occasionally and without consequence, the tendency to do so

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riography, in it arises precisely what is the most important fact, which, according to the bourgeois understanding, is the highest value: productive work in all its forms, from the elementary ones that serve to establish material existence, to the most sophisticated that science and art produce. (The citizen scale of values is also increasing at the same time in the young political economy

through the celebratory upgrading of the factor 'work' ^' the status of scientific statement.) War, the traditional main occupation of the feudal aristocracy, is, on the contrary, viewed as unproductive and harmful or part of the parasitic way of life of those people. The parasitic and disastrous is now contrasted with the productive and happy; trade is supposed to replace war as a form of communication between nations ^'. Even the sociological thesis of the connection between economics and ethics is reinterpreted in the sense of bourgeois mythology or eschatology, for example: B. in the assertion that the development of trade and industry automatically improves morals because it requires compliance with contractual agreements "'.

Against this socially healthy background, the simultaneous attack against gallant historiography and archival polyhistory becomes understandable. These actually had very little in common in terms of content and style, but both were very often in the service of absolutist masters. The gallant historiography was partly a faithful and partly degenerate continuation of the humanistic historiography of the Renaissance *', in which, because of its origins, the lavish depiction of the great deeds of great personalities had priority and the deeds were often merely an occasion for them rhetorical intensification was used; It was therefore understandably a proven form of court historiography. But also the philological and editorial activity that advanced in the course of the 17th century which undoubtedly promoted a stricter historical sense, remained unaffected by dynasty influences, as older documents often present current claims

This can be seen very clearly in the statements and ideas of that time: says Angermann, The Separation of State and Society, 100. Cf. Conze, State u. Ges., 3 f. °•' A. Smith, Wealth of Nations, esp. Introd. and chap. I and V of the first budie (= I, 1 f., 7 ff., 34 f f.). Stewart, Moral and Polit provides detailed and precise information about the primary importance of the factor "work" in Hume's cultural-historical and political-economic considerations. Philosophy of Hume, especially 161 f., 177 ff. On the social and intellectual background of this appreciation of the concept of work see Conze, Arbeit, 174 ff., and Adel, 24. ••' Voltaire, Lettres Philos., X — OC, XXII, 110. '•' Millar, Selections, 383 f. Hume also thinks similarly, see Stewart, Moral and Polit. Phil. of Hume, 187 f. ^*® Fueter, Ges. i.e. more recent histor., 332 ff.

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historisdi should legitimize “'. The new one now sets itself apart from both versions of the court historiography in two ways. As far as the content is concerned, the deeds of princes and military leaders, if they are considered worthy of mention, are diminished by their placement in a framework that was established on the basis of values and criteria that are essentially different from those supposedly associated with them trivialized. Stylistically, one removes oneself from both the dryness of the polyhistorians and also from the rhetorical excess of gallant historiography and from the literary form

of the novel (another genuine creation of the 1st century) or to compete with it *'; tatsädilidi arises from it in style and

effect a relationship between new literature and new business writing ^'. This reflects the sociological fact that the representatives of the latter are enlightened literati. Also the special emphasis on the cultural in the narrower sense of artistic work by the new historiography corresponded to the increased self-confidence of the intellectual density that has meanwhile become more or less free. The scholar dependent on the court, who very often had to fear for his bread and not seldom for his head"', found it much harder to convince people like himself that they would produce the sweetest and most important things in history than the literary type of the 18th year hundred, who in some cases was financially independent or had an audience to whom he could freely sell his intellectual work - and beyond that as representatives of new values or as moralizing Ge setter saw. The young scholarly republic now showed its madit by setting new historiographical standards. Voltaire madite was their mouthpiece when he highlighted the intellectual achievements of intellectuals in a nutshell, while at the same time he described politicians etc. as illustrious mechanics.

The primacy of the cultural whole meant a double promotion of the relativisticsceptical view. Every culture in itself proved to be dependent on certain sensually given and empirically ascertainable factors, which also significantly influenced its spiritual side in the narrower sense. On the other hand, the astonishing variety of past and present cultures, which in the long run were to be regarded as equal entities, since each of them was based on certain unique circumstances, was striking was based ^'. As on the cosmological and moral-philosophical level, so ^°

Hay, Annalists and Historians, 148 ff., 151 f. Cf. o. Anm. 341. °•' Vierhaus, Ges&ichtss&reibung as literature, esp. 421 f. °•° Bla&, Art of History, 14 ff. • Hay, Annalists and Historians, 14o ff. Letters Philos., XII, cf. XXIII = OC, XXII, 116, 179 ff. °•• Both aspects are indispensable for a consistent historicist analysis, but the first must nevertheless be given priority - at least in the intellectual analysis of the Enlightenment. The great weakness of my work

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The Enlightenment thinkers initially did not feel despair about this relativism that the rehabilitation of meaningfulness brought with it, even in the philosophy of history. On the contrary, they tried to use it in their own interest. If the emphasis on the causality of socio-cultural sensuality or the cultural whole was a polemical act against the historiography of the priests' 1 la Bossuet and at the same time against the 'court historiographical preference of the 'Des poten', then relativism was also used as a weapon against the absolute claims of the orthodox theological teachings used. The principles of "Scholasticism" could no longer be declared innate and God-given when much of the nowknown world simply had no idea. We recall^' that Locke used this argument in his rejection of innate ideas and works of the travel literature of the time, whose proliferation, distribution and popularity in the 18th century are in fact typical both of the turn to the social-sensual and of the comparative-relativizing attitude ^ 7 .

The understanding *• description of foreign customs and religions that are rooted in a completely different environment and function in a socially expedient manner

about the emergence of historicism is that it misses this connection. The motif of the material roots of cultures is neglected in his presentation because he hardly recognized the significance of the thesis of the naturalness of man in the thinking of the Enlightenment (not to mention its oncological and ideological prerequisites) - so remains for The idea of individuality (quite romantic, one might say) is more of a metaphysis (again) Discovery: it is not by chance that his book begins with Shaftesbury and ends with Goethe. °^• See above absdin. 3 b of this chapter. ••' Schon La Bruyere hatte seinerzeit den Einflull der Bekanntsdiaft mit fremden Ländern and Kulturen auf die Religiosität so schön und typisdi besdireiben, daß es sidi lohnt, ihn zu zitieren: Some adieve to be corrupted by long journeys, and lose the little religion left to them. From day to day they see a new cult, various customs, various ceremonies; they are like those who enter stores, unsure of the choice of fabrics they want to buy: the large number of those shown to them makes them more indifferent; they each have their approval and their decorum: they do not settle down, they go out without shopping' (Les Caracteres, XVI § 4 = p. 372). Dudiet, Anthropologie et histoire, especially 65 ff. (extensive bibliography, 485 ff.) provides detailed information about the eagerly read travel literature of the 18th century. The transition from travel literature to scientific geography can be found in Broc, Geography of the Philosopher, esp. 187 ff. '"' How deep this understanding could go and how much skepticism it could be is shown by a statement by Ferguson: 'We are generally at a loss to realize how mankind can subsist under manners and customs extremely different from our own'; we imagine other times as unbearable - but every age has its consolations as well as its sufferers” (Essay, II, 3 = p. 105).

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in itself a disparagement of the morality and dogma of positive Christianity. But now the Enlightenment thinkers left, having established their historical and sociological position

had relativized the opponent's arguments, to a direct counterattack, which involved a reversal of their mode of argumentation, since the polemical consequence outstripped the logical one. For positive Christianity did not become mere rejected as relative with regard to the diversity of foreign religions and one's own sects. This rejection could actually only call into question its monopoly claims, but it had to amount to a factual legitimation of it, if one viewed it only as an objective product of certain circumstances, that is, purely sociologically - wanted to look at it historically: why should one condemn positive Christianity as a historical phenomenon due to general relativism or skepticism?), but rather it was blamed for violating universal values and ideals as well as human nature. The diversity of the historical world, under whose appeal one can which had relativized and degraded the values of positive Christianity, was now, after fulfilling its polemical task, once again unified or brought to a common denominator, which this time was not the agide of God, but rather the epitome of the Enlightenment's normative basic attitude. In this there was an excellent place for "true* Christianity, which on the one hand eliminated the suspicion of atheism or nihilism, while on the other hand it made the crimes of positive Christianity and thus the physiognomy of the concrete Christian, that is, the concrete opponent, seem darker . But the "true" Christianity was played off against the positive one in its capacity as the embodiment of a more extensive concept, namely rational faith or natural religion. This meant that one could attack the theological opponent not only from the perspective of "true" Christianity, but also from the perspective of other real or fictitious religions that bear the characteristics of rational faith in general. The same was true with regard to social conditions as a whole. Since the natural and normative should not have been lost in the diversity of cultures, the bad status quo was criticized with reference to what was supposedly still unspoiled in foreign cultures; The "voice of nature" was often put into the mouth of the noble savage or the wise Chinese. - The sensual dependency and variety of cultures or the relativistic-sceptical view is primarily intended as an argument of the Enlightenment against the intellectualistic or theological opponent; it should not detract from one's own normativism, especially since the Enlightenment norms are supposed to be inherent in human nature - and history, ie the diversity of cultures, is the work of man. But the question is precisely whether this person who creates history does it freely or whether his activity depends on heterogeneous, sensual factors, as the same enlighteners claimed, in order to cut off God's finger in history. In the emerging philosophy of history of the 18th century

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In hundreds of cases, from an ideal-typical perspective, two dimensions, that of the universal-normative and that of the causal-sensual-relative or relativizing, are equally strongly noticeable. The constellation of thought remains the same here as on the other levels: the two dimensions mentioned work together with a polemic intention, while at the same time logically contradicting each other. The mutual supplementation of the causal and the normative in the struggle against the opposing worldview turns into an open conflict between the two as soon as the enlighteners are given the task of seeing and justifying their own normative in the context of the causal-sensible world. The radical rehabilitation of sensuality opened a wound that became even worse after defeating the opponent. In general, it can be said that the empiricist direction in the clarified science theory and theory favored a skepticist-pessimistic attitude, while the optimistist attitude was based on an abstraction from the normatively inoperable diversity of meaning, i.e. on a factual-intellectualist approach. '. From a logisdi-structural point of view, the dilemma of historical philosophy was identical to that of moral philosophy. It is therefore not surprising if the mental means used to overcome the dilemma followed the same logic in both cases. Just as in moral philosophy selflove or the causal-sensual and potentially dangerous nature itself was supposed to provide the basis for a purely secular normativity, some Enlightenment philosophers are now attempting to extract the good or normative from the evil on the historicalphilosophical level or causality itself, that is, to see the reason for confidence precisely where the inexhaustible source of skepticism seems to lie.

The sensual roots and therefore uniqueness of the cultures are maintained, but at the same time an inner relationship between them is assumed, which, although the physically active people must have remained unconscious (especially in the distant past), becomes more and more social the more the culture grows progress is nearing completion. Since at the top of the ascending sequence of cultures is the realization of the ideals of nature, the causal is transformed - imperceptibly but sidier - into a vehicle for the normative. Under These circumstances spread the concept of the heterogony of ends, according to which individual action serves supra-individual purposes, which is usually unconscious to the person concerned and independent of his or her personal morality. Thus the species also gains the upper hand over the individual; Only it can support and complete progress, while the individual is limited in time and place." The heterogony of purposes and the priority of the species that is logically connected with it clearly show how expensive it is

°•° cf. Vyverberg, Historical Pessimism, 107 f. °•• Ferguson, Essay, I, 1 = S. 4 f.

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Bridging the gap between the causal and the normative on the historical level had to be bought: for what can the value and status of the otherwise it would be a personal moral responsibility, highly praised by the Enlightenment thinkers themselves, if historical progress occurs regardless of such things let real? As so often, the attempt to fill one gap in the argument opens up another, with the polemical needs of the moment determining which of the two must be overlooked for the time being. Be that as it may: after the collapse of the traditional concept of the lex naturae, which is under God's care, and in the face of the nihilism verdadites, certain enlightenment thinkers brought into being a philosophy of history that aims to integrate what is valuable in the new, to save the historical framework caused by the new ideological attitude; An explicit teleology or a smuggling in of normative principles as axes of structuring the historical material prove to be unavoidable. In the pursuit of its normatively conceived goal, human history is now unified; the stories of individual peoples now become one all-encompassing history as an independent being with its own laws. The unified history is only the other side of the philosophy of history; both concepts arise over time and belong logically together. The ancient topos of the historia magistra vitae must die out because, in the perspective of progress, the past cannot appear as a pattern, but rather as a phase that has been overcome." - It should of course not be overlooked that the conviction that one can learn from history is useful Drawing lessons, appearing among prominent enlighteners and corresponding to the truly enlightened position that a science can also be made from politics "'. This new combination of an exemplary conception of science with the concept of a general science makes it clear that history is no longer

is a sum of individual events from which behavioral patterns can be derived in specific situations, but rather forms a whole, according to the always valid laws of which human behavior should follow '•°•. The normative aspect of this behavior must, of course, be seen in its agreement with the demands of historical progress, which in turn is understood in normative categories, that is, not as the mere factual replacement of one social formation by another

*•' Sampson, Progress in the Age of Reason, 157, 158. °•- Koselle‹:k, Historia magistra vitae, esp. 205 f. The emergence of this topos in antiquity and its spread, especially in the 17th century, is examined by Nadel (Philosophy of History, 292 ff., 304 ff.); According to his view, the unification of society, which brought about the extinction of the topos, was the result of the influence of the natural-scientific model (312 f.). °•° Belege bei Stromberg, History in the eighteenth Century, 302 f. *^°* Bele3c bei Strichen, The philosopher's political mission, 176 ff.

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becomes. The enlightened version of the 'historia magistra vitae' therefore boils down to the One Gesdiidite and the One Gesdiiditsphilosophie. Indeed, these were now indispensable. Since the individual stories could no longer guarantee the permanent realization of supreme norms after their relativization with reference to their causal condition and in order to eliminate divine providence, the one story had to grant the longed-for guarantee It can be assumed that it was able to achieve this on its own, that the seeds of advancement were originally inherent in it, or that advancement was the realization of its immanent possibilities. The structural similarity to the new biology is striking: just as in this the idea of development was based on the thesis of the ontological self-sufficiency and self-movement of matter, its application to science was also based on the assumption of the independence and transformative capacity of humanity in its nature strength. The idea of the whole and that of development eventually flow into each other, and thus the story is completed. That paradise that people no longer wanted to be granted by God's grace had to be squeezed out of it - as long as and to the extent that renouncing it was not an issue.

b) Bayle, Vico and the anti-Cartesian presuppositions of the new historiography In the thesis of the naturalness of human beings, the anti-intellectualistic mainstream of the Enlightenment comes into its own in its special relevance for the new historiography. And since that mainstream did not finally appear as a rejection of Cartesianism and mathematics, the pioneers of the new historiography epistemologisdi proceed from precisely such a rejection. In negative agreement with Descartes, they consider the multiplicity of cultures in their rise and fall to be almost incomprehensible mathematically; at the same time, the statement that the mentality and morals of men depended on place and time and changed accordingly, must create and strengthen the impression that the mind was by no means omnipotent sovereign. It is therefore not surprising that one of the first to attack mathematics in the post-Cartesian period was someone with a keen sense of the multiplicity of the mental and the ensuing agency or relativity of the mind: the skeptic Bayle. With regard to the concreteness of the historical, he asserts that this can attain a higher degree of certainty than the mathematical; as for the subject of mathematics, let it be ,fort aisé de prouver qu'il ne peut etre qu'une idée

°•' S. o., Kap. IV Absdin. 4 b.

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de notre ame' "'. This is a defense of the multifaceted meaning against the leveling grip of intellectualism, which dissolves everything concrete into abstract concepts or dimensions. What Bayle counters, however, are not cultural units could serve as massive building blocks of a meaningful whole, but rather individual facts, whose essentially coincidental coexistence results in the chaos in which the skeptic feels he is being confronted. *' That is why Bayle does not make the decisive step towards the new historiography, but rather orients itself towards it the traditional view of politics and science and, moreover, shares with the humanists the high appreciation of stylistic elegance "' as well as the conviction (directed against the moral sterility of mathematics) from which science left them moralisthe lessons learned "'. The pious Vico was no friend of Baylesdien freethinking "', of which In terms of the internal logic of his health-theoretical position, however, he had to follow the historian Bayle in his anti-Cartesianism - no matter whether he knew it or not - if this time the intellect alien to mathematics was not just the concrete reality in its isolation, but a substantive, anthropological and epistemologically founded concept of culture. Vico protests against the identification of the method in general with geometrisdia and denies Descartes' redit, a specific method, that is, one that essentially applies to a specific object

^^ Dissertation concerning the Project, Dict. IV, 2983 f. °°' This prioritization of the property-individual has a very remarkable consequence in the field of philosophy, as Bayle pursues it. Precisely because he treats the philosophical systems without reference to the cultural milieu or traces them back to the intentions of their authors, he feels justified in subjecting them to a purely logical criticism (Pflug, Entwi&lung der histor. Methode, 462). Skepticism arises here because the question of truth is posed to all systems and is answered unsatisfactorily. However, in the historiographical assertion of the cultural whole, skepticism arises for the opposite reason, namely because the question of truth loses meaning when intellectual structures are seen in their social condition. The concept of ideology, which suppresses the question of truth, is gradually being shaped on the basis of the premises of the new historiography. °•' Farming, Bayley, II, 31 f. ^^ Dissertation concerning the Project, Dict. IV, 2983. The demand for objectivity raised on the neadist side is a humanist topos, although it must be assumed that Bayle, who is very familiar with all the tricks of theological historiography (see Dict., Art. Elisabeth, Rem. L = II, 1061 f.), in which historical objectivity is not just a rhetorical interest, but rather a purely personal, ie anti-theological, interest (cf. our comments about Voltaire's sense of historical objectivity in the neistist sect ).

'°' Scienza Nuova (1744) I, 3 u. Condliusone — Works Phil. 462, 701 : die These, ein A state of atheists would be possible, but is then rejected.

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to impose otherwise besd on open areas of knowledge: tutte altre matter, fuori dae noveri e misure, sono affatto incapaci di metodo geometrico'; Furthermore, the geometrical method is contentually non-binding because it has so far “proven” completely opposite positions. Interestingly, he bases his rejection or relativization of the geometrical method primarily on a particular view of cognitive ability. Our mind, he says, does not operate only knowingly. If the Cartesians want to take their own thesis that the method is an operation of our mind seriously, but aud nid twissensd afdid ; if so they have to recognize methods that do not operate scientifically in their sense, that is, they proceed geometrically. "Although now Vico Locke among the like-minded people of the abhorrent Epicurus speaks net "' (the contradiction between Vico's decision to remain a Christian and anti-materialist and the actual modernity of his followers is noticeable here as in many points of his work), he does so Locke's thesis that the intellect does not constitute the whole of the mind - which is of central importance in ,

,

view of his conviction that history is the work of the modifications of our mind (see below). These statements obviously had to be accompanied by an empiricist epistemology. Vico reduces the entire ancient theory of knowledge to the formulation that the pagans “omne mentis opus sensum esse putarint; hoc est, quic quid mens agat, vel patiatur, corporum tactus sit' —

and then he mentions, without explicitly accepting it, the opposing doctrine of 'our religion' "'. His subsequent remarks leave no doubt as to which of the two views he prefers. Even fantasy is not one for him detachment of the mind from the empirically given, but a combination of the material offered by memory, which in turn was acquired through the senses. Ingenium is nothing other than facultas in unum dissita, diversa coniungendi'. The condemnation of Aristotelian syllogistic (see be actually 'inutillima') and the use of geometry in physics (the English empiricist pillar is praised) therefore comes as no surprise to the reader. The only reliable principle of methodological knowledge is the 'inductio' or 'collatio simi lium' "'.

Despite all commitments to theological intellectualism, now connects Vico, just as other, less pious thinkers of his time did, combined his epistemological empiricism with a criticism of Cartesian oncology, which in fact had to amount to the familiar appreciation of the res extensa. With regard to Plato, the Christian Vico has nothing against him

"° S. Vicos Risposta on the objections to his treatise De Antiquissima The Wisdom of the Italians = Opere Phil., 164 f., 167. ° 7 ' Life — Phil. Works, 13. "'

De Antiquissima, VII, 2 = Opere Phil., 115. °7°

De Antiquissima, VII, 3-5 = Opere Phil., 117, 121, 123, 125.

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object dualism of body and soul or matter and spirit; On the contrary, the thesis that le sostanze astratte' have piu di realityta che le corpo lente' serves him as a good basis for Luna morale tutta ben disposta per la civilt*' 7 '. With regard to Cartesianism, however, he does not want to accept the same, although he recognizes that Descartes appropriated this dualistic central principle of Platonic metaphysics: but he would only have done that to deceive the Christians. to make his philosophy palatable to them! In reality, his physics draws a materialistic metaphysics nadi sidi, his philosophy is therefore largely fatalistis'3i ' 7 '. The Cartesian separation of res cogitans and res extensa is rejected from this point of view, and that is precisely why it is opposed to something like a spiritualistic monism, which, however, leads to similar results as the materialisti s‹3ie (we have this constellation in the Analysis of the position of the Platonicists of Cambride6• discussed). Vico wants to unify God and the world, so that this is not left to blind fate. Between the immobile God and the moving res extensa there is one, media res, inextensa quidem, sed capax extensionis*, which at the same time carries within itself the approach to movement, ie the “conatum, seu movendi virtutem” . The “conatus” is already established in matter (which therefore serves as the preliminary form of the res extensa, just as the conatus is only the beginning of movement), because it would be wrong to assume that God did not have the world in a simple way Wisely, that is, by producing matter and conatum through two separate acts, instead of doing the same thing with a single one: this is exactly what Descartes overlooked. It is not permitted to place the extensio directly in God; but there must be an approach to it in it : 'Extensi vero virtutem 'eminenter', ut nostri theologi loquuntur, in Deo conti neri fas omnino est.' In order to establish the presence of God in the world against medianicism , Vico combines extension and movement (which amounts to a factual appreciation of extension) and at the same time finds the root of physicality not only in the power of creation, but in the being sweetness of God. The ontology hierarchy is reflected in the knowledge theory : geometria a metaphysica suum verum accipit, et acceptum in ipsam metaphysicam refundit' '7 ' (no coincidence, this phrase is directly reminiscent of Leibniz). Recalling these aspects of Vico's thought should support the thesis between Vico's epistemology, anti-Cartesian ontology and There is a structural connection to the philosophy of history in the sense of the general Enlightenment approach, which in turn is intended to underline that his philosophy of history in particular is based on the basic assumptions of the Enlightenment.

° 7• Life = Phil. Works, 14. •'* lock. eit., 1s f. "'^

De Antiquissima IV, 2 = Opere Phil., 89, 91, 93.

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clarification and above all by the rehabilitation of sensuality. This is sometimes overlooked, partly because of Vico's personal piety, which explains the confusing or spiritualistic statement, and partly because of his general ignorance in the 18th century, which is seen as a discrepancy with the zeitgeist (au‹fi in the sense of Vico preceding him ) is designed. In reality, Vico only lived in discrepancy with the environment of Naples, and he remained unaffected because this Naples was by no means representative of the intellectual life of the Enlightenment, while at the same time being able to positively or negatively influence Vico's views to an extent data at least whose language was no longer the usual enlightened language (Goethe believed when he opened the Scienza Nuova that it announced 'Sibylline premonitions' " 7) and therefore could not be heard outside of Naples. — Now the rehabilitation is concerned of sensuality at Vico lidi the psychological sensuality, that is, the entire range of faculties on the intellect. However, the decision not to see the essence of man in the intellect only gains full certainty against the background of Vico's belief that the spiritual world is made by man; For him, this is the “primo principio indubitato” of his knowledge format '7'. However, a person does not create his or her mental fitness like a sovereign builder who, with the help of his intellect, has already worked out the plan of what he wants to build in every detail before the practical activity begins. Science is the product of all faculties or all possible forms of the human mind or the human soul, and the secret of its specific nature can only be found in all of them '7' . Since health is not the work of the pre-planning intellect, Vico's identification of factum and verum, diabetic and cognizant, means that health 's knowledge is absolute degree of certainty, not that historical knowledge can give concrete instructions about what should be done hic et nunc. It only means that the knower - who, looking back, knows - makes use of the same variety of abilities as the creator. Precisely because this does not act intellectually, historical science does not proceed more geometrically. Vico says that people had religion, morals and laws at least two thousand years before the philosophers appeared

° 77 Italienische Reise, Eintragung vom 5. 3. 1787 SW 26, 224. °'^ Scienza Nuova (1744) I, 4 = Opere Fil., 467. °'• ib,id.: finding the way within the modifications of our own human mind." °^°

Löwith has examined the theological origins of this principle as well as its secularization since Bacon, VicGo's circular sentence, especially 160 f., 171 ff. Mondolfo traces its traces into ancient philosophy, Il Verum-Factum prima di Vico, 9 ff., which also shows its importance for Renaissance thought through the examples of Ficino, Leonardo and Cardano.

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made pure reason the basis of their historical life; they would be governed all this time col certo dell' autorita'. The new science is based on the same principle, which therefore wants to be a 'filosofia dell'autorita'; like human physical activity, it is also based on il senso comune d'esso gener umano” which came to full development long before all purely philosophical intellectual efforts “'. Between Vico's conceptions of the The totality of the human faculties, the content of the human faculties and the process of historical science thus create an intimate connection that is formulated as follows: »questa Scienza e una storia dell'umane idee, sulla quale sembra dover procedure la metaphysica della mente umana' "'.

In reality, the intellect does not create anything vital in health; he only translates what was previously created into his abstract language. The indispensable ideal basis of society, religion, has its own Arising6 flegative and positive owing to the activity of passions; negative, because the destructive passions, ie the 'immane fierezza e sfrenata liberta bestiale', are to be tamed, and positive, because the need of the weak man nad help must arise in the fear of God "'. The intellect is gradually gaining ground and even dominates the last phase of every intellectual circle, namely the age of men, which follows that of the gods and that of the heroes; Nevertheless, this mastery of his does not lead to permanent equality, but rather means the beginning of the end: bla barbarie della riflessione" proves to be even more cruel than, la prima barbarie del senso", and the last phase of the "corso ' follows the first of » ricorso' ; Religion gains the upper hand again, people return to the "premiera simplicita", "e cosi ritorni tra essi la pieta, la fede, la verita, 'fre sono i naturali fondamenti della giustizia etc.^". The direction of the passions through the intellect is superfluous, because they carry their own logic or rationality, which is completely different from that understood intellectually. The socially healthy, purposeful channeling of passions does not require that people grasp the objective meaning of their actions and ideologies (if they had this ability, they would be above their own suffering and would be able to improve their lives with help completely different means) ; People allow themselves to be guided by certain mental structures whose content has nothing to do with objective truths, but which simultaneously embody the truth insofar as they succeed in the aforementioned channeling of suffering. The "morale poetica" is one of the prominent

°"' New Science I, 4 = Phil. Works, 467 f. °•' ibid., 466. '* ibid., 464; cf. I, 2 $31 - S. 440. °* Op. eit., Condiiusione = Opere Phil., 699 f.

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testing this structure. The mythical poet creates Jupiter, and the people believe in this god, which is actually a fiction, but a meaningful or true '•'. The human senses or passions on which belief in fiction is based are indeed falsi nella materia, veri per6 nella loro forma" and this type of truth is precisely the one that corresponds to human nature as it is ". (In view of the relative irrelevance of the content of the myth, despite all the primacy of the mythical in general, Vico does not connect the appearance of Christianity with any profound upheaval in the course of history). Human belief in mythical fiction is certainty; the function of this belief is truth. There is therefore a difference between truth and certainty a deep relationship, since the truth cannot come into its own without certainty or fiction. The truth, namely the objective course of history and the mechanisms that support it, is only known at the level of philosophy (which is not socially necessary or usable!), while the forms that human certainty takes are the subject of philology (in Vicos broad sense). But just as truth and certainty are intertwined on the level of history, so too are philosophy and philology intertwined on the level of knowledge: this is the double, ontological and knowledge-theoretical dialectic of vero and certo, which in itself is one direct polemic demarcation against the Cartesian identification of truth and certainty or clarity"'. If Vico had the Cartesian intellect

If he did not reject tualism or dualism, he could never have come to the fundamental assumption of his philosophy of history described. The rejection of intellectualism is (as always in the Enlightenment) only the flip side of the rejection of dualism: the rational and practical can be found in the mythical and sensual, just as the res cogitans are found in the res extensa. The same structure is noticeable in the interweaving of divine providence and the course of history. Providence is indispensable as a guarantee for the appropriate channeling of the passions,"' that is, it is indispensable precisely because the passions, that is, something that is blind in itself, form the material of history. On the other hand, it does not stand above the material of history, it guides it not from outside, but from within, so that in the end it does not seem to be an independent or arbitrary power, but only the inner logic of the balance achieved in each case. Vico sees providence as a historical fact (his science Idee essere una dimostrazione, per cosi dire,

^ ®* Weldie approaches a discussion of the sociology of knowledge in this view are included, discusses Stark, Vico's Sociology of Knowledge, especially 301 ff. °^^ the logic compliant with their natures', Scienza Nuova, II, 3 519. °^*

on. eit., I, 2 $ 9 = Opere Phil., 434.

^"" Belaval, Vico and Anti-Cartesianism, esp. 82 ff. °•• New Science, Idea de11'Opera = Works Phil., 379.

Fil. Works,

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di fatto istorico della provvedenza') and understands it not as an immediate intervention in human affairs, but as with the course of these affairs in the same way: it works » per vie tanto facili quanto sono i naturali costumi umani' "'. Incidentally, this is the basis of Vico's conviction that his conception of providence eliminates both fate and chance Separation of res extensa and res cogitans We had to have a Thorsten who thinks about the history.

The effect of divine providence, as Bossuet understood it, could no longer seem plausible in the atmosphere of Enlightenment anti-Cartesianism - not even to pious eyes. Nevertheless, it was in the inner logic of the development of intellectual history that a theistic approach, which was characterized by basic Enlightenment assumptions, had to inherit conceptual structures that were exactly the same as those emerging in atheistic or anti-religious approaches. The heterogony of ends, as Vico claimed, was an essential part of Mandeville's thinking at about the same time (private vices - public benefits), and it later became, via Hegelianism, a central motif in materialist history . Furthermore, the theist Vico had taken the decisive step in the direction of the Enlightenment: he logically combined his anti-intellectualism with the primacy of the cultural whole, which he proved to be the indispensable area in which the heterogony of ends should take place . In the long run, however, the pantheon of culture was the most powerful adversary of the One God: weaving him into history was the first step towards replacing him through history as the final judgment - just like his intertwining with the space or matter of the first step towards the ontological autonomy of this latter char.

Vico's most significant difference from the philosophy of health of the late Enlightenment is rightly perceived as his rejection of the idea of a happy ending to the course of history. Corsi and Ricorsi, but no permanent end state or kingdom of God on earth is envisaged here, although Vico would not deny the kingdom of God in heaven as the end of history. I would like to find the reason for this attitude in pessimistic anthropology

°•°

up. cit., I, 4 — Opera Phil., 465. op. cit., Idea dell'Opera = Works Phil., 381. °'- Thanks to his Hegelian interpretation, Croce has the meaning of heterogony The purposes or human illusions for the work of providence are very well captured and described using purely natural means (Filosofia di Vico, 116 ff.). However, it must be doubted that Vico's concept of providence extends to a conscious "critica della transcendenza del divino" (120); see Löwith's comments in Weltgesdiidite und Heilsgesdiehen, 118 f. °•'

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The streets are vermouthed. Die "corrupted nature" des Menschen "' permits no linear progression in history—and at the same time requires the providential direction of history. Without Providence, nihilism in the philosophy of history would be inevitable given the nature of human nature. Vico largely shares Hobbes' anthropology, but does not want to share his nihilism and therefore chooses the previous one

vision. From this point of view, pessimistic anthropology, belief in providence and the incompleteness of stories as such belong together. Vico has to Remain a Christian because he believes in both original sin, which prevents the redemptive end of humanity on earth, and in divine providence, which despite this gives history meaning. These fundamental Christian aspects of his thinking are joined by the basic Enlightenment assumptions just mentioned, and the resulting intellectual structure, no matter how closed and consistent it may be in itself, must still be considered ambiguous with regard to the basic direction of Enlightenment thinking appear ; The strongly different factor, however, is anthropology. On the other hand, the conceptual means that Vico uses to eliminate the nihilistic consequences of this anthropology are designed in such a way that their Christian origin is overcome by their Enlightenmentoriented structure. Divine providence becomes so intertwined with human activity that it ultimately resembles nature; Providence and the human mix together like the normative and the causal, just as happens in the concept of nature. And just as in Enlightenment (not nihilistic) thinking the interweaving of the causal and the normative entails the conflict between the two, Vico also gets involved in similar difficulties, since he shares basic assumptions of the Enlightenment. It essentially poses the question: what meaning and value does people's moral, subjectively honest behavior have when Providence manages to channel even the most inhumane passions in two ways and to realize its plans in this detour ? Vico can justify and demand personal morality as a Christian, but not as a philosopher of history. Because the Christian demand is selfevident for him, as a philosopher of history he does not ask the above question at all. Since God's providence takes over the functions of enlightened nature, the higher authority to which the individual is morally responsible remains intact. However, the conflict that is externally corrupted in this way breaks out openly where the universal normative is derived from (human) nature, so that every permanent and obvious unreasonableness in the causally developing history ipso had to arouse distrust in the power of the secular universal normative. How should the new normative authority be justified in view of

°°" New Science, I, 4 Phil. Works, 464.

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of causality, which very often appears meaningless, but which by and large should actually help the normative? Vico's Christian faith spared him this question, which meant that the less pious had to suffer.

c) Voltaires Palinodien Voltaire is not the father of the new historiography, although the fame he has already gained in other fields as a spiritual authority on the Enlightenment helped decisively to its breakthrough; if one applies stricter standards, one may even describe him more as a vulgarizer than as a pioneer"'. The intellectual significance of forerunners such as Lenglet-Dufresnoy or Espiard (not to mention Montequieu's Considérations published in 1734) must be emphasized all the more since the historian Voltaire did not represent the new direction from the first moment onwards, as did the significant presence of humanistic motifs in his Histoire de Charles XII' attests to "'. But both this turn of the historian Voltaire and his work in the sense of the new historiography or his historical-philosophical vacillations between the causal and the normative, despair and confidence, have representative value. We know that Voltaire formulated the methodological principles of the new historiography and at the same time made their substantive implications and prerequisites clear. The methodological principles understood in this way are intended to give the historian the common thread with which he can find his way within the confusing historical diversity A historical-philosophical concept guides the historical work in the narrower sense, which is based on two premises: that miracles are excluded a limine, i.e. the sources must agree with the course of nature in general and with human nature in particular , and that history generally serves a moral purpose "', especially since it is morally inspired "'. Both premises have direct ones _

°"• On the conflict between relativism and Christian faith, which Vico does not seem to perceive as a soldier at all, see the good analysis by Berlin, Vico and Herder, 73 ff. °•• Cf. the balanced judgment of Brumfitt, Voltaire Historian, 166, 168 f. °•• This importance is emphasized on Redit Wade, who also reports concisely on the work of the two authors mentioned, Voltaire, 461 ff., 497 ff. °•' See Brumfitt, Voltaire Historian, 15 ff. '•• See this section under a). ••• Dict.Phil., Art. History — OC, XIX, 359. '°°

Printed Lies = OC, XXIII, 439. '°' Pyrrhonism of History, XVI = OC, XXVII, 266; see Thoughts etc., XXI, 119. •°' Conclusion. and examination of the Essay = OC, XXIV, 475: humanity dictated it etc.'

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Consequences for source-critical work. For Voltaire endeavors to demythologize transmitted history in his sense, namely to unmask lies and legends that were circulated for religious or dynastic purposes '°': since tradition is said to have served such purposes, their refutation is eo ipso em polemical act against their beneficiaries. When it comes to such questions, Voltaire shows particular interest and is ready to go into all the details: here he finds for the cunning and wickedness of Priests and despots of all times have ample and solid evidence. Since source criticism and moralpropagandistic intent often coincide in this way, Voltaire by no means has the feeling that his own demand for objectivity could somehow contradict his moral-propagandistic goals. (There is selfconfidence for this However, there is an even deeper reason, which is inherent in the normativist style of thinking itself lies: since the objective validity of the moral position represented is considered evident, the validity of a historiography that serves this same position should also be objectively given.) Undoubtedly, it should be educated Essai sur les Mœurs e.g. B. une œuvre d'ardent prosélytisme humanitaire' "' which aroused

—

—, Diderot's enthusiasm "' on the other hand, apart from the occasional happy coincidence of polemics and source criticism, we should take into account the fact that Voltaire did not only write with censorship in mind , but also out of concern for his general historical credibility, his propaganda zeal to some extent, although not too much had to keep within narrow limits "'. Bossuet's belief that things happen through divine providence Guided by their fixed plans, Voltaire counters with two types of arguments. On the one hand, he points to the fact that the course of history cannot be edited, which he in turn attributes to two factors: the sudden, inexplicable appearance of great men who give events a new direction, e.g. B. to oppose the forces of evil '°', and to the workings of chance or to the small, yes often ridiculous causes of epoch-making events "' (function and symbolic value "° of the anecdotal in Voltaire's historiography are consciously linked to these historical

'°° Details of Voltaire's critical treatment of various sources in Sak man, problems of the historian. Methodology, 334 ff., 366 ff. '°' Supplement to the Century of Louis XIV, II u. III = OC, XV, 124, 136, 141. *°

Lanson, Voltaire, 128.

*** Letter to Voltaire from 28 November 1760 (- Corresp., III, 275). '*! Brumfitt, History and propaganda, 275, 280 f., 283. '°' Essay CII — OC, XII, 161. *•• Century of Louis XIV, XXIII - CO, XIV, 408. •'° So Lanson, Voltaire, 121.

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positions together “'). On the other hand, Voltaire asserted the notions naturelles' against the unexpected intervention of God, ie intervention that took place through miracles, and demanded historical knowledge on the basis of the pphilosophie naturelle, exemplified by physics. In other words: against the unification of the acts under the binding aegide of the divine plan, Voltaire emphasizes the virtue of the fortunate or ung1ü&1iden accident or the secularized miracle, while he opposes those miracles that precisely demonstrate the divinity of that plan and at the same time means should be for its realization, summons up the concept of natural lawfulness along with the thesis of the naturalness of man. Both types of arguments complement each other in polemic absiding, but logically they do not allow them to be reconciled with each other. Nodi more: each of them implicitly contains an aspect that goes directly against Voltaire's basic normative attitude, which also inspired the anti-theological polemics and thus also the arguments mentioned; This theory is complicated and contradictory, the relationship between logic and polemisdiem explains Voltaire's palinodies. If the worldimmanent coincidence disenfranchises divine providence, on the other hand its dominance makes society appear as a desolate chaos, where men are, in Voltaire's own words, blind tools in the direct game of Fortuna."' Although this Fortuna, like Voltaire, Explained, is identical with the iron necessity of destiny, but it remains an inexplicable and obscure force, it is therefore essentially different from the rationally comprehensible law of nature understood human nature is also that mensdilidie 'sottise' that thrives in the chaos of stories and perpetuates it, so that stories are apostrophized as 'tableau des sottises humaines' or as un ramas de crimes de folies et de malheurs' Voltaire would have had to ask himself what, in purely normative terms, was gained by the exorcism of divine providence from law if he had not accepted the diaotis, the rulership of chance precisely for the sake of that expulsion.

Audi Voltaire's 'notions naturelles', despite their opposition to the concept of chance, are just as ambiguous in their logical consequences as the latter. Insofar as they are supposed to put a stop to God's arbitrary interventions in health,

• "Century of Louis XIV, XXV = OC, XIV, 421. •'• Essays, Introd. = OC, XI, 28. •'° New. Consideration on History, OC, XVI, 138. •" Dict. Phil., Art. Théodose = OC, XX, 513. *'• Letters to Formons dated June 13, 1755 and to Thieriot dated February 29, 1756 = OC, XXXVIII, 395, 557; cf. letter to d'Argental dated November 8, 1755, on p. 502 of the same

Bands. "'Essay, CXCVII = OC, XIII, 177.

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They are purely causal, but their strict causality threatens to undermine the normative aspect of naturalism, which provides the standards for the sovereign condemnation of mensdilidier "sottise". Within the elementary unity of the new historiography, namely the cultural whole, a multifaceted causality prevails; It includes geographical factors, social politics, organization and the dominant ideology. All these factors determine the spirit of men, whose character cannot therefore be understood in an intellectualist way, but rather by delving into the causally determined character of culture: "Trois dioses influent sans cesse sur l'esprit des hommes: le climat, le government, et la religion; c'est la seule maniére d'exp1iquer l'énigme de cc monde' "'. All three basic factors of culture are obviously changeable quantities. There are many climates, governments and religions •", and if the climate only depends on the place If place changes, the changeability of government and religion has nothing to do with place alone, but also with time. Since the human spirit admittedly depends on certain factors, it can neither recognize nor realize absolute values. Voltaire opposes this dangerous relativism with the normatively colored concept of (mensdilidian) nature ; People are equal everywhere "par les passions et par la raison universale qui contre-balance les passions' "'. This human nature should not simply be discovered in this or that of its modifications in life; it stands before the beginning of the historical journey of discovery as a pure type whose normative dimension allows it to be used as a compass during the journey - or even as a yardstick against which the truth of the deed is measured: "Ce qui n'est pas dans la nature n'est jamais Irai" "'. Voltaire often judges the stories of travelers and historians from this perspective, although the inexorable historicity of what for him had the status of the natural-universal does not come to the fore; this is how he finds e.g. B. the Nadiridit is simply untrue that there is no private property in India, on the grounds that

»ce serait ... against nature' ': Nature is here the European bourgeoisie Redit. It is true that Voltaire considers it inadmissible to judge other people's customs on the basis of one's own, but he evidently does this primarily when he goes against the universal claim of the value standards of the positive Christian

•" loc. eit., 178. " ® It is obvious that the idea of a truly universal knowledge, which Voltaire defended against Bossuet's limitation to Jews, Greeks and Romans (Essai, AvantPropos - OC, XI, 1ö8, etc.), represents the danger of becoming lost in the diverse or . Losing relatives could only increase. "'Essai, 113 - OC, XII, 370. ^' Essai, Introd., XI = OC, XI, 36. ^" Essai, 113 = OC, XII, 371. ^^ Essai, VI = OC, XI, 208.

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tums polemicized; However, he has less understanding of the cultural independence or relativity of customs and values if he measures them against the postulates of reason. His attitude to superstition is also ambiguous: he can look down on it verifiably, in the causal-re1ativist perspective that opens up the prioritization of the cultural whole, but occasionally also recognizes it as a socially conditioned ideology Form, among others, "'. The insecurity of the historian Voltaire is connected with the insecurity of the moral philosopher. Following Lo&e, i.e. following Hobbes, he had early on adopted the view that morality was socially useful under given circumstances, but that its content :h place and time can be very different ^'. On the other hand, he countered the relativistic consequences of this position by defending the one morality"' or the raison universale ^', whereby the universality of reason was linked to the assumption of the constancy of normatively conceived human nature as the permanent seat of that If the main focus is not on the historically conditioned modifications of human nature, but on its enduring nature, which is also supposed to contain very specific approaches to morality, then history wins Hichuphi1osophy their optimistic basis, and at the same time their confidence: each perspective: nous voyons un amour de l'ordre qui anime en secret le genre humain ... C'est un des ressoru de la nature, qui reprend toujours sa force: c'est lui qui a formé le code des nations' But if human nature has always been the same, then the question arises as to why the moral order of reason did not exist earlier or from the beginning of the Mens‹:henges‹:hi‹:hte was err‹:h, but is to be realized now of all times. In response to this, the emphasis shifted from essence to modifications of human nature. But these refer to those souls that are affected by sensuality in nature and in the human body. In the struggle against intellectualism or the finger of God in history, both these traits and the geographic and sociological sensuality had been upgraded, but now the non-realization of the commandments of reason had to happen be attributed to their effect. The previous neglect of nature is thus interpreted in such a way that the essence of human nature was destroyed by its modifications.

'Instinct, more than reason, drives the human race', sd reibt Voltaire ^', den B1i& auf das Panorama der Ges&i&te ri‹:htend. I don't lie stupidity,

•'° Rosenthal, Voltaire's Philosophy of History, 161 ff. "'Traces of Metaph., IX = OC, XXII, 224 f. ^'^ Diet. Phil., Art. Morale u. Aristote = OC, XX, 111 u. XVIII, 371. "° Essai, Introd. VII u. CXLIII = OC, XI, 23 u. XII, 370; Diet. Phil., Art. Néces salary = OC, XX, 118 f.; Poem on the Natural Law, II = OC, IX, 446 ff. ••' Essay, CXCVII = OC, XIII, 180. ^^ Essay, Introd. XI = OC, XI, 35.

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which, from the perspective of the purely normative view of human nature, had to appear as an inexplicable, accidental aberration, is worth lingering on of the historian to find its causal explanation in the immeasurable variety of the geographically and socially sdiiditlidi conditioned, the relative and the past. The causal or the actedilidic seeing acts on the Normative paralyzing, although this, according to the definition of nature , should actually guide and inspire causal development. Voltaire now looks with resignation at this “endiainement fatal des causes qui entrainent les hommes, comme les vents poussent les sables et les flots”. Thus, since Voltaire cannot theoretically bring the logical consequences of his fundamental position under control, he oscillates between reason and historical relativity, the essence and modification of human nature - that is, between the normative and the causal. Accordingly, he remains undecided between the idea of progress and the catastrophe theory by suggesting or assertively formulating both views in a different context without going into them in more detail. Although he actually understands the advancement of health, precisely because it is supposed to be supported by the innate rationality of mankind, as a movement of the spiritual mind towards the full development of its possibilities, one should still claim that the health movement only interests him in terms of the progress of the human being Spiritual "', at least in a very broad sense. Because Voltnire speaks in important places about the progress of industry and trade, for example, and not only as a side effect of the intellectual development at the beginning of the modern era, but also as a phenomenon own dynamism and unlimited possibilities ^'. For him, advancement has many aspects and unfolds at the same time on several levels that belong together within the framework of the culture as a whole, even if the advancement of the spirit in art, literature and knowledge deserves his special attention for obvious reasons. In polemics, the primary consideration of intellectual progress is required if the ultimate meaning of progress is to be the victory of reason over superstition. Especially from this point of view

^° Essay, CXCVI = OC, XIII, 169. •^ Already v. Martin noted that Voltaire's philosophy of life is dualistic. One root is naturalism, the other the idea of ratio. Causality and Teleology' (Motives and Tendencies in Vs Gesdii‹:htssAr., 5). Unfortunately, he dedicated his essay more to the polemic against Voltaire than to the genetic explanation of the dualism he had identified. •°' So Dagen, History of the human spirit, 305. '°' Concl. et Exam. you Tableau Hist. OC, XXIV, 475. An almost complete list of Voltaire's statements about progress in various areas is offered by Delvaille, Idea du progrés, 3o7 ff., 329 ff. ‘°° Remarks from the Essay, III = OC, XXIV, 548.

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but the progress must first be described as very slow - slow and asymmetrical at the same time, as the considerable cultural differences not only from nation to nation but also among members of the same nation mean. In general, however, the fact of progress remains undisputed, gen . but above all (and this is significant) when Voltaire considers the modern development ••°, this even reaches - according to Voltaire's statement - such a high point in the 18th century that it reaches the end universal victory of reason with certainty s‹:flows "'. Nevertheless, such statements remain unde&t i&tsphi1osophis& unde&t, since sid Voltaire does not trust it, on the basis of historical material a straightline development of the human being towards the realm of reason On the contrary: while - despite all obstacles - continuous progress is claimed for the time after the 'Middle Ages', statements which concern the course of business as a whole are definitely within the framework of the catastrophe theory the Epod en dewi&e1ter Kultur times of barbarism follow '^, and apparently applies to all peoples "'. The occidental history is said to have known four great cultural epods “', in contrast to the first two (classical Greece enland, augustisd es Rom), the last two are separated by not a very long barbaric period from each other; The Renaissance and the Siécle de Louis XIV both belong to the modern era, the beginning of which, for Voltaire, brought about a stabilization or intensification of the pace of progress . However, this is only hinted at, the boundaries between the determination and the wish remain fluid, and nowhere is it expressly said that the catastrophe theory only applies to the distant past and has been measured retrospectively through modern times. The catastrophe theory is therefore not touched, at least theoretically, especially since it is ultimately associated with that permanent skepticism that arose from the insight into the strictly causal chain of events or from the determination of the extent and the causes mensd li&er "sottise'; In fact, Voltaire describes the culture epodia as 'quelques temps hereux' in the midst of that ramas de crimes et de folies' in which bus

•°' Essai, Introd. X = OC, XI, 29. •°• Dict. Phil., Art. Man = OC, XIX, 383 f. ^° The aim of the Essai was to show the transition from medieval barbarism to the politesse du notre temps', Remarques de l'Essai, II - OC, XXIV, 547. •°' Letter to Helvétius from 27 October 1760 - OC, XLI, 40 f.; Letter to AIembert from 26. 6. 1766 = OC, XLIV, 319. ^ 8 Dict. Phil., Art. Miracles = OC, XX, 85. •°° Remarks of the Essay, I = OC, XXIV, 545. ••° Century of Louis XIV, I — OC, XIV, 155 f. ••t Essay, CXCVII = OC,XIII, 177.

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If the results of human "sottise" suggested the theory of catastrophes, then, conversely, the philosophical philosophy of law and the legitimation of the sottise' via the detour of the heterogony of the two had to be indispensable for setting up a consistent theory of forudiritu des ténébres et de la lumiére' has not overcome '^, and that is why he was not the father of the mature fortification idea, but Turgot.

d) Montesquieu betweens‹:den Naturre‹:St and determinism In Montesquieu, the conflict between the causal and the normative takes on a quasiclassical form, precisely because the thinking here wants to be systematised and allround, that is, it claims, among other things, to grasp both the normative and also the causal aspect of the legal problem. It would be wrong to think, like many of Montesquieu's contemporaries, that his normative statements are a fig leaf behind which one can understand a determinism of pure water. On the contrary; They are completely sincere"' and spring from a simple reformatory will that strives to be close to reality on the basis of empirically based knowledge of the Tauadien logically to bring about in him the concordance of scientist and reformer, but paradoxically it failed & very often the factual independence of the two from each other in the course ,

of Montesquieu's long work.

In the belief that scientific knowledge can in any case not succumb to well-intentioned reform plans, Montesquieu was able to research causal chains free of moral concerns or as self-interests, which also purely theoretically satisfied the needs that he felt much more deeply than e.g. B. were with Voltaire '". The blame that Montesquieu was not able to achieve (at least theoretically) the harmonization of causal considerations and normatively shaped intentions to reform is therefore intellectually disturbed

• "Dagen, The End of History, 261. ••° S. EdL, Préface, the paragraph: »J'ai post les principes .. .' Only through the principles that enable systematic treatment does the diversity of social and intellectual life gain its meaning: quand j'ai discover mes principes, tout ce que je &erdiais est venu 1 moi' (OC, I (I), lix and lxij). “' On Montesquieu's reform ideas in detail see Waddicor, Montesquieu, 134 ff. "° This is shown in Montesquieu's ability to distinguish between facts and judgments much more clearly than most Enlightenment philosophers, see for example EdL XVI, 4 (= I (I) 353): Oje ne justifie pas les usages; mais j'en rends les raisons”.

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and logically so instructive because the ideal of such harmonization was actually in front of him despite all the occasional skeptical statements that sometimes suggested an internal struggle . Now Montesquieu's attempt at harmonization was based - trivially, one might say - on an ambiguity in the basic concepts used, such as the concept of law. B. Following on from earlier statements, Montesquieu opens his main work with a normative, natural law interpretation of his definition of the concept of law. Laws are "rapports néces saires qui derivent de la nature de choses" but these rapports are also the basis of morality or equité and exist, if only as possibilities, not before any positive legislation. The significant deviation from men's behavior With the normative rapports necessaires, Montesquieu explains the limitations of human intelligence and the predominance of suffering, but at the same time he sees the inadequate social-health realization of the a priori normative possibilities as no reason to strive to approach them through religion, morality and admit positive legislation." So the crucial question is posed about the mediation between supra-ethical and positive law, and Montesquieu tries to accomplish it by pointing to that one "raison humaine" that governs all peoples and whose applications are the positive ones Legislation of the individual nations should be "'. However, this suggestion is not explained in more detail, and furthermore it is ignored in a context in which Montesquieu discusses the diverse dependence of positive legislation on the concrete overall situation of a nation, i.e. the emphasis is not on the generality of the normative, but on the particularities of causality. Montesquieu himself suggests that these could stand in the way of the latter, namely when he clearly follows the abovementioned suggestion about one reason with the remark that, given the peculiarities of each people, tres grand hasard si celles [les loisl d'une nation can convenir a une other'. What is called the spirit of the laws depends in turn on the one (normative)

Reason is by no means combined, but rather arises from the interaction of constitution, geography, economy, demography, religion and customs "'. •'• Vor allem Persian Letters LXXXIII = OC, I (III), 170: "justice is eternal and does not depend on human conventions". Bezeidinender weise zieht Montesquieu s&on here consider the possibility that this view could be false: dodi ,that would be a terrible truth', zumal der Glaube an die ewige Gereditigkeit Rü&halt offer in life. The long, purely causal excerpts of the Lettres on demographic factors e.g. B. (CXII—CXXII), however, contrast here with the general normative statements.

•'* EdL, I, 1 - OC, I (I), 2 f. ••• 1o‹. eit., 4 (sd iußabsatz).

^e EdL, I, 3 = OC I (I), 8. • • loc. eit., 9; cf. XIX, 4 = OC I (I), 412.

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Montesquieu's concept of spirit is essentially anchored in the anti-intellectualistic, anti-Cartesian mainstream of the Enlightenment, i.e. it takes into account the sensual conditionality, even rootedness, of the spirit, and therefore represents the opposite of the one , constant and before every positive law - that is, before the spirit of the laws, which, in Montesquieu's terminology, refers to positive laws - represents existing normative reason. It is not only on the level of method that Montesquieu treats the prima causa intellectualisti and the causae secundae empiricisti':h "', but also on the level of being prima causa and causae secundae are similar Accordingly, the concept of law means two things: on the one hand, the ideal order of nature, which carries the normative ontology and whose unhindered functioning is supposed to be a sufficient guarantee for the realization of natural postulates, and on the other hand, the permanent effect of empirical causes, which is the same as against norms and always produces the same results.

ie, the empiris-conditioned redit cannot be reconciled with one another any more than the legal concepts mentioned. There is a gap between NóJivJiov and 6vzocov. Montesquieu, however, does not have the feeling that he has reached a dead end. Indeed, he derives the spirit of the Laws from a variety of factors, some important ones of which can obviously be influenced by man; the possibility›keit soldier Influencing should now also offer natural speech its chance - larger or smaller. Not least with regard to this, Montesquieu emphasizes with all his strength this possibility of appropriate humane action. The explanations of the famous chapter on the influence of climate on the intellectual and moral character of peoples could give the impression of a one-sided determinism and they did - but Montesquieu emphasizes at the same time that this is not the case with everyone Cultures share the same factors

'^' Just as with Vico or Voltaire, so with Montesquieu the demarcation against Cartesianism is logically the prerequisite of his historiographical and sociological attitude. This demarcation takes place in Montesquieu both on the methodist epistemological level (his statements against Descartes' mathematics and methodology are referred to in Stark, Montesquieu, 1 ff.) as well as on the ontological level ( on his early criticism of the separation of res cogitans and res extensa see Ver nière, Spinoza et la pensée française, 453). ^•’ Sha&leton, Montesquieu, 42. Bruns‹: vicg, Progress of conscience, 493 f. •°• EdL, XIV, 2 = OC, I (I), 305 ff. We1&e role played by the theory of climate in the aesthetic, political and medical literature of the French 18th century, Mercier sat‹:Wilders, who au& on points out the connections with the skeptical attitude (La Theorie des Climats, esp. 20 ff., 159 ff.).

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are moderately important. If nature and climate determine the life of savages almost entirely, morals and constitution gain the upper hand elsewhere. It is the task of the legislature to enforce the 'causes morales' against unfavorable 'causes physiques'. By playing the former off against the latter, Montesquieu believes he has found a balance whereby he could escape both blind determinism and the ignorant denial of causality'•'. The only question to be asked is whether Montesquieu is able to complete the deterministic circle without a qeräQaa‹$ eit ällo yevo9. In truth, this is already contained in the expression & causes morales°, the ambiguity of which results from the fact that one can place the first , now the second word in the foreground. In their contrast to the causes physiques, however, the causes morales are primarily morales, i.e. the effect of a subject acting in a considered manner; There are, however, important passages in which causes morales and causes physiques come together under the generic term “causes génerales”, in that they unite against the coincidence that Montesquieu famously excluded from his social history study . Precisely this wish leaves the weight on the first word of the expression

causes morales' fall and the deterministic point of view regains the upper hand precisely where it should at least be secondary. In fact, it is difficult to see why the effect of causes morales such as conventional, i.e., readily accepted, customs, prejudices or religious views would help the minds of the members of a society to achieve greater autonomy than the effect of the climate. The effect of the cause morales does not mean co ipso strengthening of freedom of will and thus diversification of the deterministic circle, but only that the determinants are of an ideological character; Seen in this way, the causes morales do not (always) have to stand in the way of the causes physiques, but on the contrary they can serve as a vehicle for them: car souvent la cause physique a besoin de la cause morale pour agir' "'. With knowledge of this interaction Montesquieu does not contrast all moral causes with physical causes, but only those that are brought about by the activity of the rational legislator; therefore he also carefully keeps customs and laws apart,

•*^ EdL, XIX, 4 = OC, I (I), 412. '*• EdL, XIV, 5; XIX, 27 = OC, I (I), 31 l f., 432 f. Many think Montesquieu remembering Mac Iavelli's remarks in Discorsi I, 1. •^' Montesquieu early on made it a point to avoid both Abels at the same time. The beautiful genetic analysis by Dedieu, Montesquieu, 60 ff.

'^ Expressis first found this hierarchy of terms in the Considtrations, Chap. XVIII = OC, I (III), 482, s. den Absatz: Ge is not fortune ...' ^°• Thoughts, 811 = OC, II, 238.

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by attributing the former to the entire life of the nation and the latter to the will of the legislator. But that is a distinction, not the desired mediation. The historical and sociological consideration namely stops at the will of the legislator, which seems to be a smooth outside party interests and ideologies "'. Montesquieu says how the legislator can withdraw such influences and find an outlet for a “raison humaine”. As a pioneer of the sociology of knowledge, he explains the dependence of mentality and worldview on physical and social factors so urgently that even the greatest skepticism regarding such ability to distance oneself must be considered appropriate. (There was an example of unwanted, ie ideologically conditioned, bias Montesquieu himself, when he derived his ideal monarchy from the fit of his own politics and social preferences "'.) What is meant here, however, is not that distance which, as a prerequisite for a cool consideration of the factors of the political game, is not only possible for every Mattedinian, but actually indispensable. The distance of the naturally fit & motivated legislature must be qualitatively different, because it is dictated not only by the changeable content of desirability, but by the constant reference to fixed norms. Montesquieu's dilemma thus assumes the form of the unclear conceptual distinction between political techology and natural politics. Because of his descriptive science, Montesquieu can serve the politician Tedinik well. However, he does not succeed in creating a prescriptive demand for knowledge from natural politics . This powerlessness is sometimes hidden behind the fact that he gives advice that actually relates to politics and technology, which gives the impression that the plan of prescriptive knowledge has been realized. The logical difficulties of Montesquieu's position let si‹fi audi on from what he doesn't talk about. Although he recommends that sensible legislators counteract unfavorable effects of the climate, he apparently has no advice for them with regard to loosening the other fundamental causal relationship that he has established between these spatial scales and believed to have discovered the form of government of a state. If the large area draws despotism, the middle one monarchy and the small one draws democracy, then the universal realization of political relations is

‘°° EdL, XIX, 12 u. 14 = OC, I (I), 418, 420. "' S. the good comments by Gurvit&, Soziologie juridique &ez M., 624 ff. '^' See the excellent analysis by Stark, Montesquieu, especially chap. VII-IX, 86 ff. Stark aptly summarizes Montesquieu's personal situation when he writes, "Montesquieu was not happy about the relativism in which he, nevertheless, believes" (t86 ). * Althusser, Montesquieu, 92 ff., 104 ff.; Ehrard, Idea of Nature, 494 f. ‘^ EdL, VIII, 16—19 = OC, I (I), 164 ff.

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Now, which should be laid out as a soldier in the people's country, should be released from the outset, unless one distributes the large states. Despite his sincere belief in the possibility of manipulating flexible laws in the sense of reason, Montesquieu cannot guarantee a universal triumph of reason. Is there a form of government such as the English lisdie possible for Asia, whose inhabitants should possess dod and mensdilidie? No, Montesquieu replies, and this no is valid for all eternity: "La puissance there donc ctre toujours despotique en Asie. Car, si la servitude n'y était pas eatréme, il se ferait d'abord un partage que la nature du pays ne peut pas souffrir' . These insurmountable limits, to which Montes quieu pointed out, serve to be more authoritative for his critics than the freedoms he granted, which the reasonable activity of the legislature should exploit - and they were not so dishonest about it. It sounded almost cynical when Montesquieu found slavery less sd o&pleasing to reason with regard to countries whose inhabitants were not willing to work because of the warm climate". , il faut dire que l'esclavage est contre la nature, quoique dans certains pays il soit fonds sur une raison naturelle' — dodi sd on this correction again contained the fatal ambiguity: in it, namely, nature' becomes first and foremost in the normative meaning and then used in the sense of the merely causal connection ("raison naturelle'). Tatsä‹:l1li‹:11 er s‹: Does nature weep- just like Montesquieu's concept of law, not accidentally, but equally programmaticdi in a double meaning, whereby that dualism of its tradi- tion, which by solving the causal for the sake of the normative, expresses it in a dualism that coincides with the direct conflict of the causal and the normative"'.

The value-free, that is, causally derived concept of nature should now be the 'structure particuliére' ••* denote a thing. In this sense , 11 the despotic government has a nature "', although its essence almost contradicts the normative nature "•. Offensid tlidi behaves somewhat according to his or her nature - but what about the two? What is a despot supposed to do? B. do to act naturally? Quand il ne peut pas anéantir Ä l'instant ceux qui ont les premier places, tout est perdu', says z. B. ', to Montesquieu '7 •^ EdL, XVII, 6 = OC, I (I), 375. •^° EdL, XV, 7 = OC, I (I), 332. '^ 7 It would be an illusion to think that Montesquieu removes this latter dualism with the help of the former, as Aron did for example. B. does (Les étapes de la pensee sociol., 53 ff.). Abnlidi Lanson, Etudes, 149 f., 153. •^ EdL, III, l = OC, I (I), 25. •°° EdL, II, 1 = OC, I (I), 10. ‘7° “Despotism causes appalling evils in human nature”, EdL II, 4 = OC, I (I), 22. •

7t EdL, III, 9 = OC, I (I), 35 f.

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To add that despotism would be imparfait if he had resorted to terror. Should a despot in China be humane, especially since despotism in his country is admittedly unavoidable? Or should he make this form of government as perfect as possible - although this There is no perfection in Montesquieu more a moralisdie, but a tedinisdie norm? Perfection in a structurally technical sense does not only appear in Montesquieu when he speaks of the nature of a form of government, but of its principle . This principle is defined without values and assessed purely functionally; It is therefore entirely possible that what is good for one form of government is bad for another, e.g. E.g.: “The ambition is pernicious in a republic. Elle a de bons effeu dans la monardie' ”': not as a virtue or vice, that is, not normatively, but simply in its function, a certain level of suffering is seen here. The principle of a form of action, understood in this way, is in direct connection with its laws "', and that is why Montesquieu did not seem convincing when he argued that these latter were only les cas particuliers oti s'app1ique [la] raison humaine' "'. How could have Moreover, one can believe his assurance when the same Montesquieu declared at the beginning of the same chapter, in agreement with Hobbes' absdieu1i, that the positive laws would arise as a result of the effects of a double war (de nation a nation and dans diaque société). ) ordained? If the laws are not the realization of good or reason, but rather the restriction of evil, then every law can be viewed as good, since it at least puts an end to the war of all against all. But that is how it is Hobbes, and Montesquieu was not prepared to follow him down the line .

Montesquieu's oscillation between nature and determinism reflects his indefiniteness in the question of forubritu. Montesquieu knows very well social change and social becoming as an act, and also knows what factors are involved in it. For him, becoming does not mean advancement, but rather decadence, a deviation from the principle of the constitution. The sensible reform presented by Montesquieu is not classified as part of a broad ongoing ritual and is therefore not treated as a subjective contribution to an objective overall movement of history. This attitude reflects the accusations that have been made against

•" EdL, III, 11 = OC, I (I), 38. ”° For the relationship between the two see III, 1 = OC, I (I), 25. "' EdL, III, 7 = OC, I (I), 34. *'^ Books IV-VII of the EdL are dedicated to this complex. "^ EdL, I, 3 = OC, I (I), 8. ' On Montesquieu's ambivalent relationship with Hobbes, see Dedieu, Montesquieu, 64 f., 118 f.

*'* Das Wort 'indecision' verwendet Delvaille, Idea of progress, 295. •'° Hubert, Devenir historique chez M., 608 f.

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To corroborate Montesquieu, although it actually reflected the same logistical difficulties that Voltaire, for example. B. couldn't overcome it. Voltaire, however, was too well known as a fighter to be accused of fatalism or paralyzing skepticism - despite his pessimistic outbursts and despite Candide. The embarrassing paradoxes of their method of argument that kept appearing, the reasons for which they were unable to understand in a strictly logical manner, nevertheless disturbed the enlightened people to such an extent that they sidi were constantly on the Sudie nadi a Bog& that would take on the Nihilis musverdadit and thus exonerate the Enlightenment as a whole. This task was of course mainly assigned to the materialists, But Montesquieu was not spared it, especially since what was classified as fatalistic in his work seemed to amount to an open rededication of what existed. In the foreword to Esprit des Lois there was the ominous sentence: Je n'ecris point pour censor ce qui est établit', which could actually be interpreted as a word that could be understood by the presidit if the theses of the Budies had the concerns about the Sdii&sa1 of the Don't let standards rise. Without a doubt, the deterministic component in Montesquieu's work was an important logical reason for his skepticism towards profound or revolutionary reforms (the politico-ideological reasons are ignored here). The distrust of him, however, lay beyond concrete statements in the striking difference between his style of thinking and the normativist flights of many of his contemporaries. This is shown very well in the remarks about the historian Voltaire, which he wrote down in Mes Pensées': Voltaire n'écrira jamais une bonne histoire: il est comme les moines, qui n'écrivent pas pour le sujet qu'ils traitent, mais pour la gloire de leur ordre.' ••' Voltaire, for his part, did not fail to accuse Montesquieu of the opposite. He made his antipathy to the general tradition of Lois's esprit evident in his almost subtle attempt to point out all of the Budie's possible mistakes with regard to the Realia. He naturally also questioned the decisive influence of the climate and the spatial size of a state on its form of government. Montesquieu's advice did not help his case and cannot help because there is actually only one remedy: to change all laws thoroughly offensively in the sense of radically adapting them to the dictates of reason. This is how Rousseau thinks about Montesquieu: he didn't actually have anything to say about the principles of the droit politique, but was only concerned with the droit positif des gouvernements établis.

’^° Vyverberg, Histor. Pessimism, 167. •^' Nr. 1446 = OC, II, 419. ^° Especially in the so-called Commentaire = OC, XXX, 404 ff. •^° L'A, B, C = OC, XXVII, 315 f. '^ Letter to Perret dated December 28, 171 = OC, XLVII, 579. "^ Emile, V — Oeuvres, IV, 836.

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e) Origin and structure of the consistent Turgot's idea of progress and Condorcets diarakteristisdie deviations from him

The statements on Montesquieu show how uneasy the ever-simmering and often escaping conflict between the causal and the normative is in the circles of the enlighteners *•'. It was Turgot who first attempted to escape the dilemma by setting up a development plan within which precisely those moments were to act as engines and guarantors of healthy progress, which seemed to constantly threaten it or to feed the catastrophe theory. With Voltaire we have seen them at work: on the one hand, there was the mensdilidie "sottise" or the dominance of the blind instinct anchored in sensuality, and on the other hand, it was the unmistakable fact of the "Middle Ages," that is, of such a total and long victory of the " superstition' that there could no longer be any talk of linear progress. Turgot now confronts them with the concept of the heterogony of purposes, whereby even the sotti involuntarily serve the purpose of forudiritt, and with a remarkable rehabilitation of the positive Christianity that cannot be covered away by the Middle Ages. However, the clearing of the path for the concept of progress presupposed something else: the conceptual detachment of the mind from the strictly causally functioning, unchanging nature as a whole. As a result of its naturalization, as it took place through the thesis of the naturalness of man and the special emphasis on geographical factors, history threatened to dissolve in the uniformity and constancy of natural laws. As a mere part of nature, it could only be an eternal recurrence of grace." 7 . The widespread desire to imitate the model of natural science in all fields might suggest the attempt at such a statistical study of medicine—which, mutatis mutandis, would be a forerunner of modern anti-sanitary sociology. In particular, Montesquieu's approach gave the impression of a far-reaching subjection of social science to natural determinism, in the double sense of emphasizing geographical factors and

Gibbon took Montesquieu's side, see Trevor-Roper, Historical Philosophy, 1678 ff. With Re&t, in contrast to the two tendencies that are reported in the appreciation of Montesquieu about Won, Trevor-Roper recognizes the inner division of Enlightened Risdian historiography in general. ^^ 7 It should at least be remembered that the supporters of modernity used the uniformity of nature as an argument against the uniqueness of antiquity (see Fontenelle's digression in Krauss' text selection, 147 f.). However, Sol's arguments only made sense in the constellation at the time, and indeed for the idea of progress, if not entirely logical, at least aunospherically favorable. But later they became downright dangerous, especially with regard to natural determinism.

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Assumption of a constant and always Gleidics-producing causality. In order to pave the way for the idea of progress, Turgot now makes a strict distinction between nature and law. pLes phénoinénes de la nature, soumis a des lois constantes, sont renfermés dans un cercle de révolutions toujours les meines', while on the contrary the 'succesion des hommes' in the Ges‹bidite gives the philosopher the impression of constant progress or wadistum . However, this sharp separation threatened to completely eliminate nature as the bearer of unchanging norms and thus unhinge a basic concept of the Enlightenment. Turgot therefore again resorts to constant nature, but this time normatively unified, in order to present his thesis to justify that all peoples must go through the same development phases, and thus the one and binding, norinatively conceived goal of the gediidit1i‹: the development lung applies to ma‹:den: La nature n'est elle donc pas partout la meme? et si elle conduit tous les hoins aux meines veritées, si leurs erreurs memes se res semblent, pourquoi ne mardient-ils pas tous d'un pas egal dans cette route qui leur est tracée?' '••. In order to definitively or ontologically substantiate the normative, Turgot introduces through the back door that connection between nature and thought that he questioned when it came to underpinning the idea of progress; the ambiguity associated with the concept of nature itself therefore persists, since Turgot draws the dividing line between nature and sex only with regard to empirical-causal, not normative nature, without being aware of it.

Against Montesquieu, Turgot freely offers the normativist concept of nature and at the same time he seeks to theoretically dismiss Montesquieu's natural determinism. He downplays the importance of natural factors such as climate, race, etc. and instead values the causes morales audi methodis‹:je considerations: one should only explain something through physical ursadies if the moralisdia would not suffice for an explanation, and at the same time he wants the effect of the former rather than indirectly ver

Tableau Philos., Oeuvres, I, 214 f. *•• This concept takes on its most extreme form in Rousseau, as is well known The same distinction between nature and history as Turgot makes—but with the opposite intention: Turgot wants to make progress possible, but Rousseau wants that explain degeneracy. For him, history is waste from nature - but it remains that way not. For Rousseau envisages the possibility and necessity of a socio-cultural activity in the service of a return to nature (via the term art' in this sense for Rousseau see Dagen, Histoire de l'esprit, 291 f.). Progress is here just the return. ••• Table Philos., Works, I, 217. •°' Nodi twenty years later he denied the thesis that there is no »ordre naturel unique', as 'sottise', on which Montesquieu's work is supposedly based, see the letter to Du Pont vom 13. 3. 1771, Oeuvres, III, 447.

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They knew: they would not directly influence a visible physical result, but rather the factors that would have produced it '•'. Even biological differences are relevant to him, at least from a knowledge point of view, since their cause must remain unknown; What is important, therefore, is education, which alone can form the subject of a systematic effort. Au& warns Turgot against exaggerating the difference in national characters and against generalizations in this regard. Natural factors are variable (from place to place) and at the same time constant (over time). In both respects they hinder the uniform progress of business. In their place, Turgot now sets quantities by which progress becomes visible, almost measurable. An important one among them is the Te&Nik. No matter how many criticisms the sciences speculatives or the gout may suffer in science, the achievements of science remain inviolable because they are transferred into everyday life through commerce. On the other hand, Tedinik serves the development of natural (manufacture of instruments for experimentation, etc.) and spiritual knowledge (Budi dru&erkunst) skills. By establishing a progression in this sense, especially in the Middle Ages, Turgot finds a way to include in the general concept of advancement the epoch that threatened to explode it. In the fight against positive Christianity and sdiolastism, the Middle Ages had to be taken into account It is possible to use dark colors to illustrate "'. But if this is compared to Greece "Miracles" or a different rebuttal to Roman vitality meant that the idea of an uninterrupted or necessary progression in health could no longer be meaningfully represented. One could use the ideal of reason Do not underpin developmental wisdom, otherwise you would have had to make too many concessions to your theological opponent. Turgot now acts differently. He doesn't just set neutral standards like Tedinik e.g. B., which does not require any concessions to the world, but goes so far as to point out the civilizing achievement of Christianity. He spridit Although he talks about the "barbarism" in the Middle Ages, he does not place it in a one-sided causal connection with the adoption of Christianity, but rather knows how to advise on the preservation work of the church in those times as well as on the moral progress that the teaching of Christianity represents in comparison

^°° Research on the causes etc., Oeuvres, I, 140. '°' loc. eit., 139. "• In a fragment from 1751, Oeuvres, I, 338. "^ Redlerdieson the waters etc. Works, I, 118, 121. ^•• loc. cit., 119, 133, 137; see Table Philos., Oeurres, I, 230. '°' Typical statements in Varga, Das Sllagwort vom 'Dark Middle Ages', 116 ff. cf. Voss, The Middle Ages, zs ff., 180 ff.

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to ancient immorality or cruelty meant "'. With reference to the ever strong 'obscurantisnius', Turgot of course does not go too far into this ridicule, because, as later examples - especially those of Herder and Hegel - clearly show, it was one Consistent developmental s‹bi&t1ithe view is impossible without the rehabilitation of Christianity. Fontenelle had already suspected that." Turgot, however, marks a programmatic turning point in this question. We would understand his willingness to make concessions to positive Christianity or the 'Medieval' if we realized how urgently the normativist Enlightenment needed a convincing Forudirituidee needed because only it could fulfill an important, double ideologisdie function: explain the previous nonrealization of rationality (time is only at the end of a development&-

development is ripe for this) and at the same time present the forthcoming realization of the same as inevitable (the principle of reason is the overdue product of the inner dynamics of a whole long development). As already mentioned, the concept of the heterogony of purpose forms, alongside this rehabilitation of Christianity, the other cornerstone of Turgou's groundbreaking conception of fortifications. Until then, it was primarily associated with Mandeville's analysis of the social balance as an automatically occurring harmony of innumerable apparent disharmony, especially since Vico's performance was still unknown. Turgot now transfers it from social syndirony to health diabronia and thus evaluates it in the sense of the foruc rituge idea; Only then does it gain its explosiveness for the historical and philosophical thinking of the second half of the 18th and - in tribute to Hegel - also of the 9th century. century Its appeal lies in its ability to transform, in an almost al&equalsthe way, everything that Foru‹britt would be impossible to achieve into an element that promotes forudiritu and thus proves the inevitability of forudiritu a priori. What could resist reason if the unreasonable people themselves unintentionally contribute to the realization of their goals? And what could prevent the ultimate victory of the normative if the causal itself brings it about autoniatisdi? The unreasonable is now - objectively - imbued with reason, the causal is not just blind from a historical point of view. Men's "sottise" or suffering is serious, illusion or even immorality are no longer an obstacle, but rather the engine of the spiritual movement - which, however, can only be assumed on the basis of an a priori certainty about their ridding and rejection. Possessing this certainty, Turgot does not hesitate to legitimately legitimize everything that, according to his own moral standards, would have to provoke repugnance

*^ Discourse on the Advantages which the Establishment of Diristianism etc., Works, I, 199, 201 f., 208 f. "'

Krauss, Middle Ages in the Enlightenment, 224 ff.

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The basis of the concept of the heterogony of the two does not count the subjective intentions against which the morality of the individual is to be measured, but only the objective consequences of his actions that he himself unforeseen or unwanted. The philosopher of science who operates on the basis of this concept can therefore allow sovereign amoralism in individual cases because he moralizes science as a whole by allowing it to flow into reason. For Turgot, even wars are not (only) reprehensible or disastrous, because blah lutte ... an augmenté les lumières et les talenu de tous' •°°. And since everything inevitably drives progress forward, the only prerequisite for this is that something happens at all among people; only Apraaie, ni‹:St »sd led te' practice can stop the Forud ride: qCe n'est point 1'er reur qui s'oppose aua progrés de la vérité, ce ne sont point les guerres et les révolutions qui retardent les progrés du gouvernement, c'est la mollesse, 1'entetement, 1'esprit de routine et tout cc qui porte ä lünaction' ”'. The flip side of this idea is the aforementioned equation between activity and progress: Les passions tumultueuses, dangereuses, sont devenues un principe d'action, et par conséquence de progrés' '••. There must be advantages from every change.

About Condorcet, the view is common that he largely adopted Turgot's progressive ideas and expanded them with prophetic pathos into a large-scale historical tableau. Such a misjudgment becomes unavoidable if the ever-present , role of the concept of heterogony of purpose for the consequent forud ritual thought is not taken into account. But this very concept is missing from Condorcet. Given his firm, orthodox nor mativist belief that moralism, intellectual and historical progress would coincide, a concept in which subjective morality and objective health were at least painful before the realization of reason had to remain alien to him diverged. He therefore does not speak at all about an objective effect of the unreasonable in the sense of the secondments of reason, but rather thinks directly about the fight against it ^'. The constant struggle that affects the entire world becomes necessary because the basic forms of superstition come into being in the first stages of man's development, in order to then become a reality

^”

Oeuvres, I, 284.

^" Redier&es on the causes etc., Works I, 133. ^°’ Oeuvres, I, 283 f. ^'° place. cit., 285. ^ "For example, Bury, Idea of Progress, 206 f. Although Bury notes the different appreciation of Christianity on the part of Condorcet and Turgot, he cannot explain it. The problem of the heterogony of the two eludes him completely .

^°• Esquisse, Introduction = Oeuvres, VI, 22.

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Destroyed t to be handed down". Accordingly, every desolate epic of history (apart from the utterly desolate Middle Ages) is promoted as a tense unity, within which a bright, progressive side as the effect of reason striving upwards and a dark side as the respective modification of old errors hostilely coexist 'The corruption de la raison' is indeed une suite presque necessaire des progrés', especially since the possibility of error only arises in the adventures of the awakened and searching human spirit '°', it remains a sad phenomenon and does not become the vehicle of the fort This is not necessary because it secretly puts error at its service, but because reason is shown to be stronger - relatively in each individual business phase and absolutely in the final phase Knowledge flow directly connected at all times Reason is the driving force behind progress and not only

Result; this is how modern times take on e.g. B. from the rebellion against the priesthood began '^. It is only against the background of these assumptions that Condorcet asserts the continuity and straightforwardness of the progression, which may proceed more slowly or more slowly due to chance events, but can never be reversed. The idea of progress is thus oriented towards the model of the development of mathematics and the natural sciences - as this development appears in the eyes of an enlightenmentminded scientist like Condorcet at the time. He himself says that the progress of the human mind, si souvent ca&ée et si irréguliére dans ses autres travaux', would take place in mathematics "plus simple, plus Ä decovert, et assujetti Ä and ordre plus méthodique' represent °". The mathematization of progress therefore becomes the ideal goal, in whose feasibility Condorcet believes because science obeys laws just like nature "': lies the rationality of mathematics and natural science ultimately rests on the immanent rationality of nature, then the internal laws of science must make the mathematization of progress possible, at least in the future. In that Condorcet, in direct succession of d'Alembert "', singled out the model diaractor of mathematics and natural science development for the advancement of science.

^°° Sketch, 1” Period — Works, VI, 29. °°' Fragment of the story. of the 1" EeoqUe = Works, VI, 378. Sketch, VII'Epoque = Works, VI, 125. Esquisse, Einleitung u. II'Ëpoque = Oeuvres, 6, 13, 39. ^'° Discourse on astronomy, Works, I, 484. ^ "Sketch, X' Period = Works, VI, 236. °'° Fiber d'Alemberis Fortsdirittsausfassung s. Dagen, Histoire de l'Esprit, 363 ff. Cf. Condorcets Worte über d'Alembert in seinem Reception Speech at the Academy: the profound philosopher, to whom we owe the most mocking picture of the progress of the human mind' (Oeuvres, I, 404 ff.).

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raises, he indirectly confirms his demarcation against the concept of the heterogony of Zwe&e and thus also his one-sided combative attitude to error and superstition: because knowledge can (at least according to Condorcet's view) not through it, but only against error break its path serve. There is a logical connection between Condorceu's historical and philosophical difficulties and his orientation towards the mathematical ideal of progress. The direct identification of forucbritt and reason, which is valid to a different extent for all phases of the story, prohibits a legitimacy of the 'Medieval', and thus it tears a considerable gap in the straightforward conception of forudiritu. From the point of view of reason, Gondorcet can hardly explain how this very long 'époque désas treuse' "' was even possible. It is characteristic of his theoretic impotence at this point that he flirts with the catastrophe theory".

The difference between his and Turgot's view of the future is so obvious. And while Turgot anticipated Comte's three-stage law "', Gondorcet had to answer the accusation from the same Comte that his Enlightenment-revolutionary prejudices against the achievements of the (Diristlidian) past had prevented him from developing a contradiction-free Fortsdiritus diemas "'. The comparison between the Turgou and Condorcet views shows that consequent forudiritt concept has by no means emerged from the mere transfer of mathematics and natural knowledge&aftlidier development patterns to the entire movement of science, although it has undoubtedly taken into sidi the sidi specifisdi forudiritte confidence relating to the development of knowledge decide

^'° Sketch, VI' €poque = Oeurres, VI, 109. •'• S. the Arertissement, which was to serve as a preface to the Esquisse, Oeuvres, VI, 281: He wanted to present the 'traits genéraux' of the various epodles of the human mind, in which tantot ses progrés, tant6t sa decadence ' reveal. ^'• Delvaille, Idea of progress, 398 ff. ^'^ Cours de Philos. Positive, IV, 205 f.; cf. VI, 259 f. Au& Sorel emphasized the theoretical superiority of Turgou over Condorcet, referring not only to Turgot's legitimacy of Christianity, but also to his explanations about the role of technology and their continuations in the Middle Ages (Illusions de Pro gres, 225 ff.). ^ "In Dagens Wonen: the idea of the progression of the human spirit "a em prunte 1 l'histoire des sciences la certitude du progrés de l'esprit et de l'efficacité de la pensee physicomathématique" ( Histoire de l'Esprit, 251). Brunetiére very delicately pointed out the relationship between the new self-confidence and -feeling of how it is in the anti-ascetic way of life, and that optimistic, world-view attitude that supports the belief in progress (Formation de l'Idée de Progrés, esp. 210 f.). Genetic epistemology also contributed to the development of the concept of the progress of the human spirit (Dagen,

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The resulting impetus is due to the positions of the moderns in the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes - even if we ignore the fact that it appears in them rather incidentally or as an auxiliary construction " ®. In reality, important theoretical aspects of the Querelle form a mere continuation of the with the early modern thesis pveritas filia temporis ° related to the philosophy of philosophy. We know that this was formulated by representatives of the new natural sciences and even earlier by humanists "'. The followers of modernity, especially Fontenelle, are inspired by the natural sciences and advanced concept of Cartesianism, but at the same time they move within the framework of humanistic views, which is due to the humanities, not the natural sciences origin of the veri tas-filia-temporis -Thesis was unavoidable. But now the humanist position wavered between the assumption of the maturity of modern times and that of the exemplary value of antiquity. Both assumptions could not be easily reconciled with each other, but together they turned against the "middle ages": to the extent that antiquity represented its counter-concept, it remained an insurmountable pattern, but to the extent that the appeal to antiquity functions as a call to new, autonomous life or as the first step towards it, it comes into play Instead of the imitatio of antiquity, there is aemulatio with it - but competition should be with this example, which embodies very specific values, and with no other. The idea of a linear progression, which is implied in the aemulatio thesis and then flows into the veritas-filia-temporis thesis, is nevertheless addressed to the needs of the fight against that

The "Middle Ages" was overshadowed by the catastrophe theory or the cyclical conception of health, especially since the veritas-filia-theoiporis thesis could, indeed had to, be interpreted in the sense of the superiority of the "Middle Ages" over antiquity. Precisely because the followers of modernity are in the ranks of the humanists, they waver between the belief in the progressive self-liberation of human reason and a cyclical view of humanity. They adopt the idea of aemulatio

Histoire de l'Esprit, 69 ff.) - and that is another reason for relativizing the Significance of natural science & nftlidier role models. Au& Condorcet refers to the gene tis‹:he epistemology or Lu&e in this sense (Esquisse, preface and IX' Epoque = Oeuvres VI, 22, 182 ff.). ^'^ Even commentators admit that the Querelle is of great importance to the attach importance to the development of the idea of progress, according to Bury, Idea of Progress, 125.

°'• See above, chap. II, note 320. ••° Delvaille, Idea of Progress, 210 ff., 224 ff.; Brunetiere, Formation of the Idea of Progress, 237 ff. ^•' See the one in Chap. II, note 320, mentioned essay by Baron. •" So Jauß, Origin and Significance of the Fortification Idea, 62; very carefully considered Jauss, as a mental and physical result of the Querelle, the antagonism between perfectability thinking and historical or relativistic meaning, 71 f.

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sharpen it, but on the other hand they do not want to give preference to the "Middle Ages" over antiquity, since they do not radically question the validity of universal aesthetic standards that were violated by the "Middle Ages"; Their relativism or their historical sense is sufficient to legitimize the moderns and to appropriately relativize the achievements of the ancients, but not to rehabilitate the 'Middle Ages'. Our conclusion is: the consistent concept of progress begins where the fluctuation between a linear and cyclical appearance of history, which has continued since the early modern period, ends. But it didn't stop because of the positions of the moderns or because of the influence of the natural sciences Aufsdiwung's expressed continued idea: because this too had to resort to catastrophe theory in order to be able to eliminate the ambiguity of the veritas-filia temporis thesis if necessary or to explain the assumed regression of the natural sciences during the "MiHelage". Condorcet's historical-philosophical position is instructive in this respect. Although it greatly influenced his further intellectual development through its prophetic pathos, it still logically belongs to a constellation of thought that had been overcome by Turgot. Since the approach initiated by him again: logistic-structural, not through direct literary influence - found its further development and culmination in Herder, Hegel and the philosophy of history of the 19th century, its conceptual axes also deserve special attention. First of all, Turgot's struggle against the extremely relativistic consequences of historical determinism, such as those made clear by Montesquieu, must be emphasized. The consistent idea of progress does not ultimately emerge as a systematic, not just confessional defense against value nihilism. The rehabilitation of geographical and socio-historical meaning, in which determinism and relativism were rooted, forms its first, albeit too naively negative, prerequisite. The second lies in the decision not to simply throw factors that hinder progress onto the garbage heap of science through the catastrophe theory, but to transform them into moments that promote progress that is, to take relativism into account in an essentially new way. This is achieved through the concept of the heterogony of purposes, the central importance of which for the consistent idea of progress can be sufficiently demonstrated by the statements of Hegel or the Marxists. In other words, this concept means that human activity produces historical results that are unforeseen, unwanted and... are therefore completely independent of subjective goals and motives, and therefore it can be in the sense of a

^'^ Hegel, Philos. i.e. History, introduction to works IX, 25 ff.; Engels, letter to J. Blodi from 21/22. 9. 1890 - MEW 37, 464; Plekhanov, Monistic conception of history , t23 f. (ef. contributions, 33, 62).

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Its function, however, changes drastically when one combines it with your belief in a goal of the scientific movement that has been established from the outset: now it says that it is the objective one , that is, the direction of action leading to the stated goal cannot be influenced by any subjective error, so that the realization of the goal is absolutely better and necessary. At this crucial point, the consistent idea of progress intersects with the theology ‹:the concept of providence: because this was also based on the assumption that God uses you to realize his plans in a variety of ways, without you those concerned are aware of this "'. The A11ma&t the front Vision should be proved by its ability to put even the works of the devil in the service of its own plans - just as the inevitability of the victory of normative reason is now justified with the unconscious effect of the unreasonable or blind causality in its sense . The thought structure and the thinking style that supports it are identical in both cases - despite the diversity of the thought content. So it wasn't a coincidence and it must be fluently underlined that the consistent —,fort s&rituidea was not carried out by its originator, the inetaphysis‹:h ni‹:St, who was interested or gifted national economist Turgot, but by sol‹:den thinkers , who believed in a radical theodicy: von Lessing, Herder and Hegel"'.

••• The reader will not have missed the fact that in this work the effect The heterogony of the two in precisely this sense was mentioned several times. •^ Bossuet, Discours, III, 8 (- II, 315 f.). Löwith has already emphasized the similarity of this view with Hegel's theory of the cunning of reason (Weltgesdii&te und Heiligens&ehen, 133 f., cf. 97 f.: The difference between the perceivable actions and the hidden drives of the healthy life goes back to Theological is the distinction between the will of God and the will of man. It is the basis of the two-dimensionality of salvation and world development, on which the theological understanding of science is based.'). Comte's praise for Bossuet's philosophy of health is very eloquent - malgré l'inévitable prepondérance of the chÄological principle“ (Course, VI, 253 f.).

°•° S. u., Kap. VIII, Absdin. 3 b c.

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5. The polemic and existential aspect of swinging between optimism and pessimism The previous analysis has shown that the logical root of skepticism and pessimism lay in the basic approach of the Enlightenment, namely the rehabilitation of meaningfulness itself. Skepticism is therefore not limited to thinkers such as Hume, for example; it is not so much a clearly defined, homogeneous philosophical current alongside the others, but rather a necessary, even if often only implicit, aspect of all the intellectual traditions of the Enlightenment - from the right Apart from a few who have accepted the logical difficulties of undiluted optimism and designed a corresponding ontology or anthropology. Only this factual omnipresence of skepticism explains the intense interest in it, as is evident in the almost obligatory positive or negative statements to her. The usual misuse of pessimistic skepticism and optimistic normativism in different doses can only come as a surprise if one ignores the mentally frail fact that almost all of the insidious and Beliefs that gave rise to skepticism when it came to the logical justification of the Enlightenment ideals, at the same time provided the ideal weapons that could be used in the fight against traditional theology and could therefore arouse confidence in future victory or optimism. It made sense to let the former aspect take precedence over the latter. If the rehabilitation of sensibility demonstrated the many dependencies of the spirit and thus aroused moral skepticism, then on the other hand the emancipatoris‹: each side of the anti-ascetic morality or the cooperation of body and soul. If the diversity of cultures allowed the power of one reason to fall into ambivalence, on the other hand, the ability of mankind to shape his own affairs without the interference of divine arbitrariness was asserted. If the individual seemed small and stubborn in the midst of irrefutable nature, on the other hand, there was confidence in the possibility of recognizing the laws of nature and putting them at the service of mankind, without doing the unrealizable, namely violating them

^'° In his treatise Scepticism in the Enlightenment, Popkin identified, in a rather superficial manner, skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment as a whole with Hume, to whom the rest of the Enlightenment supposedly did not want to pay much attention in their pure optimism ; It was only in Kanu Werk that Hume's philosophical achievement was (critically) evaluated. About the specific prerequisites and reasons for skepticism, the relevance of which Popkin himself notes in the 18th century, no information is given here. *- ® S. Absdin. l and 3 c of this chapter.

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To pray and wonder, to wish and to strive for. Even the epistemological skepticism - which had to result from the degradation of the intellect and from the obvious inability of experience or induction to arrive at ultimate truths in the foreseeable future through the collection and evaluation of all facts - was as much as possible by the Consideration makes up for it, you at least know something about it, you run into more ghosts. These are the reversals of argument through which the norms of the Enlightenment sought to assert themselves. The Janus head of the (normativist) Enlightenment has developed in simultaneous apologies and polemics or in the simultaneous fight against 'sdiolastism' and the nihilistic mindset. In our view, the Enlightenment was forced to move between extremes and to transform the nihilistic poison into a medicine against the theological illness with the same ease as the alleged panacea against the plague of "priests and despots" had previously been transformed Her own hands had turned this poison into a suicidal nihilistic poison . In this double perspective it is possible to understand why skepticism in the circles of the normativist Enlightenment could not only be hidden and unpleasant, but also open and self-confident, even aggressive. Because it had proven itself so well in polemics that one could and wanted to do without it without further ado. We know what role the phenomenalism and agnosticism of a d'Alembert or a Maupertuis played in the completion of theological metaphysics '^. The apparently modest, if not resigned, renunciation of the knowledge of ultimate ontological truths was aimed at declaring the harassment of the opponent's most valuable ideas as practically meaningless. Precisely in order to question theology's claim to absolute truth, Voltaire casts doubt on the ability of the human mind to know everything. fites-vous donc des dieux qui savez tout?', he asks the theologians ^°. This function of skepticism was recognized early and clearly, as Shaftesbury's statement about the skeptics shows: 'They imagine that by this general skepticism, whidi they wou'd introduce, they shall better deal with the dogmatical spirit' "' - whereby bezeidinend What remains is that the same Shaftesbury is, under certain circumstances, prepared to play the game whose mechanism he has recognized; if, on the one hand, he is afraid of the dangers of "endless skepticism" emphatically warns, especially since it speaks from the standpoint of its firmly established optimistic ontology ^', otherwise it has nothing to object to the skepticism relating to sdiolastis dogmas and controversies '•'. Furthermore, skepticism was radiant in the sense of Cartesianisdien

S" See above, Chapter IV, Paragraph 2 b and Chapter V, Paragraph 2 b. ^• Diet. Phil., Art. Ame = OC, XVII, 169.

^' Characteristi&s, I, 95. '

hope. cit., I, 82, ef.II, 208, 230 f. •^

op. cit., III, 76.

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of doubt was generally perceived as a liberation from the pressure of authority and as a call to independent research (this was actually what the conservatives were never able to forgive Descartes, even if they occasionally resorted to his intellectualism). This is what Diderot said who, by the way, knows how to use both agnosticism to neutralize God's knowledge ^': Le skepticisme est donc le premier pas vers la vérité' '^ - but he should not remain the last if one does not want to move from active skepticism to passive nihilism. However, the opposite danger could arise as a result of a skeptical attitude, namely fideism, whose alliance with skepticism has not existed since Montaigne's time Rarity was ^'. In the apologetics of the 18th century, the reference to the sins of the human spirit continued to emerge as a valid argument. Audi from their side, skepticism should be the first step towards the truth - but to the truth of faith. In order to avoid this conclusion, the normativist Enlightenment had to move beyond skepticism into a different tradition than that of faith, i.e. it had to abandon programmatic skepticism and assert certainties that could not or should not be those of faith. So if it doesn't venture too far into skepticism, it's not just because of the fear of nihilism, but also because it could fall back into the arms of theological orthodoxy. One takes a double position in order to be polemisdi-argumentatively prepared for the opponent's double position. Just as in this case the skepticism about the finality of the human spirit is the other side of the certainty concerning God of this same human spirit (that is, the skepticism should stop where it becomes dangerous for God), so the Enlightenment also offers its skepticism against the ultimate certainties of theology in order to rely on empirical truths or empiricism as truth when it comes to the Nadiwis that faith alone cannot possibly lie beyond skepticism or that skepticism cannot be truly cured by faith.

We encounter the same constellation in the areas of the world and nature conception and anthropology. Both the apologetics and the nor mativistisdie Enlightenment represent two-sided and -unambiguous positions, which result from the logisdi problematis‹: the, but polemis& indispensable flexible entanglement of a pessimistic and an optimistic aspect. (Why this could not be otherwise, should be explained by the thesis that every world-viewdiaulidie position that comes into play with social Maciitan claims offers both a causality of suffering in the sense of Nietzsche

*" Lettres sur les Aveugles = OC, I, 308. On the use of agnosticism two & s neutralization of God see our comments in the 2nd Absdin. this chapter. •° Philos Thoughts., XXXI = OC, I, 140. ^° S. o., Kap. II, Absdin. 3 b. "' Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers, 132 f., 103 f.

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as au‹:ii must open up a perspective of redemption; With regard to the former, the world and humanity must be interpreted as fundamentally pessimistis':ii, and for the sake of the latter as fundamentally optimistis':ii.) Each party emphasizes the pessimistis':rian aspect of its own position, when the other party emphasizes the optimistis ‹:rien applies ma‹:iit, and vice versa. In this game, which has confused many commentators, some combinations are possible, but their discussion can only be undertaken on the basis of extensive textual analyzes of the entire relevant literature become. Here we can only outline the basic constellation or hermeneu tis‹:ii. — On the theological side, the ambiguity of the world or conception of nature took the following form. On the one hand, it was asserted in a pessimistic tone that this world is not the true home of humanity, but rather is only his temporary and in si‹:ii low-value domicile, where one si‹:ii is allowed to acquire that true homeland through faith, repentance and good works of redemption - and in fact: the world would basically be nothing: If a vale of tears in which humanity would have to pass all sorts of tests, heaven would have much of its attraction (and its earthly governors would correspond). ‹:iiend losing a lot of their size‹:iit). On the other hand, especially in the context of religiously colored Newtonianism or physical theology, the dual harmony and beauty of the world was praised as the

—

work of a wise, benevolent and almighty God; the evil was dismissed as incompatible or attributed to human dili‹:rie Sdiuld, while the redemption and bliss expected at the end of time was seen as a necessary part or culmination of the impeccable harmony of the world plan as God conceived it from the beginning have. But the normative Enlightenment thinkers also had to agree with this "everything is good" if they viewed nature (which they, however, valued above God) as a source of norms or if they did not necessarily achieve them: Turn and from them they wanted to place salvation in the hands of a soldier of God who fit exactly into the concept of orthodoxy. And yet, on the other hand, there were certain polemic reasons that stood in the way of implementing this strategy across the board. Insofar as the thesis "everything is good" was tied to a theodicy that was based on the concept of the chain or the fullness of being, one had to accept the inevitability of evil, since every evil unites as a unity in being ring of that chain and therefore his verse threatened to bring about a union between communities "'. The Stois‹:rie or Spinozisti‹:rie reconciliation with fate was a 1ogis‹:ii justifiable way out, but it could have a higher po1emis‹: rien requirements are hardly sufficient - and sol‹:rie were made with all urgency, because everything is fine' as well

S. o., Kap. IY, Abs&n. 3 a. *° Lovejoy, Chain of Being, Kap. YII.

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the idea of progress ^' could and was interpreted in the sense of a philistineconservative glorification of the status quo. A study of pessimism (but militant) on this question served to enlighten us in general better, although the rejection of the orthodox idea of Jammertal had to remain as strong as ever. The shift in apologetics from pessimism to optimism and vice versa can be seen in important situations during the Age of Enlightenment. Thus, religious circles in France used Leibniz's theodicy against Bayle in order to distance themselves from it as soon as they realized the possibility of its reinterpretation in the sense of the supposed deist hubris of Pope's essay. The theologians had been worried about the deistic coloring of optimism from the beginning, so that the extensive detachment from it after the literary crisis of 1755, which marked the end of Pope's boom, was not all that surprising. For apologetics, it was now important to explain the necessity and function of the evil eye in an introductory manner, not to deny it. The religiosity of this statement promises not to endanger the agreement with the skeptics regarding the reality of the evil. It was remembered, incidentally, that the first open attack on a broad front against theology was undertaken with Bayle's skeptic and pessimistic weapons was what also caused the temporary predominance of the optimistic tendency in theological circles "'. Bayles' persistent reference to the everyday triumphs of evil in the world was aimed at renewing the Epicurean thesis that God does not have to be either omnipotent or malevolent, and the effective effect of his argument can be seen in the clarity with which it is prominent ,

^'• Schlobadi pointed out with Re&t that si& the catastrophe theory in their polemic aspect against the case is good” in the Gesdiidite bzvr. against the Redit production of the existing as, by definition, a future development. The Philosophers sdiaffen es indes, die Katastrophentheorie audi optimistisdi zu deuten, vro bei sie sidi in die aufsteigende Phase des Ges‹:hiditszyk1us stellen: The ideological function of these different uses of the cyclical theory depends on the concrete stage where the thinkers situate themselves in the cycle' (Pessimism of philosophers?, 1982, 1987). ^' Monod, De Pascal l Chateaubriand, 301 f. ¡ Barber, Leibniz in France, 164. ^° Cro‹:ker, Crisis, 48 ff. *°

Hume vividly portrayed how dangerous it could become (Dialogues

on Natural Religion, X—XI Phil. Works, II, 494 ff., insb. 519 f.). •" Hazard commented on the brief merger of theology and deism at the time of optimism as follows: nous sommes ici l un des rares moments de 1'histoire ideas or an agreement seems to be made before its components unravel and regain their freedom, by fighting each other' (The problem of evil, 157).

^^ Answer to Questions, LXXIV ff. u. CXLIV ff. = Works Div., III, 650 ff., 795 ff.

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Enlightenment God responsible for evil madmen ^' - not from the perspective of the disillusioned believer, but rather with the intention of presenting the theological opponent with the dilemma of either declaring God to be defective or excluding him from world affairs. The price for this was the at least temporary identification with the theological view of the world as Jarnmertal, whereby nature as an ontology, an independent source of norms and a guarantor of salvation (if one only followed it) had to be pushed aside. However, this did not seem that embarrassing, especially since the pure normativist concept of nature could no more fully explain the reality of evil than the immeasurable goodness of God could, while on the other hand, the denial of that reality made any rebellion against what existed meaningless and thus the ground for enlightenment pulled from under your feet. In my opinion, Voltaire's oft-discussed pessimistic turn of phrase should be understood against this intellectual background. Voltaire himself gives the reason why he can no longer (without significant limitations) maintain the belief in the tout est bien, which he cherished without hesitation on the honeymoon of deism and optimism: he fears les abus qu'on peut faire de cet ancien maxime', ie his interpretation for the purpose of restoring prevailing conditions "'. His slow but constant distancing from that belief "' reaches a climax in the Poëme sur le desastre de Lisbonne. Precisely in view of Voltaire's personal intellectual development in the preceding years — which incidentally runs parallel to the Enlightenment's general detachment from optimistic deism, which coexists more rightly than badly with (modernized) theology — it would be wrong to overrate this text , namely to be interpreted as the product of an emotional outburst that causes a sudden mental reorientation.

The suffering is of course extremely noticeable, but Voltaire remains sober enough and has been mentally prepared for this for some time - to steer it into the polemical path he desires. His pessimistic mood basically arises from the unspoken insight that enormous natural catastrophes must make the concept of a human-friendly rationality of nature, as inherent in the normativist concept of nature, extremely questionable, while on the other hand they seem to confirm the theological view that nature is ontologically inferior , not in her, but in God man finds his firm refuge. As a real polemicist, Voltaire now lets the Ver-

••• Diderot, Perishes Philos., XV = OC, I, 131 f.; d'Alembert, Art. "Fortuit" and "Optimisme" in the encyclopedia. Cf. the reply of the always optimistic Voltaire to Maupertuis, who also doubted the goodness of God (Extrait de la bibl. raisonnée = OC, XXIII, 537). ••' Poem on the disaster, Preface = OC, IX, 467 f. ^ ® S. the good analysis by Morize in his introduction to Candide, especially XXIV ff. ^•• S.o., Cap. IV, Absdin. 3 a.

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bitterness about one's own sect can only be given free rein in the form of an attack against the opponent's sect. By changing the level of discussion, he does not ask what consequences the misanthropy or meaninglessness of nature could have for the basic concept of the normativist Enlightenment, but rather he holds God accountable *•• , where he silently and again without considering the logical consequences of this - accept the theological position of God's absolute rule over nature, i.e. initially suppress the fundamental modern idea of autonomous natural law. In order to hold God accountable, he must accept His omnipotence and freedom—but how useful is it to confront the Almighty? Isn't pious submission to his will more appropriate? But Voltaire gives the act a different twist: following Bayles, he wants to suggest that God's omnipotence is only the other side of his evil. Voltaire doesn't say what man actually gains from the belief that he is a toy in the hands of a malicious God, and the question doesn't really interest him either; Because the abstraction is only to reduce to absurdity the theological claim that was made at the time that the natural catastrophe was a punishment for sins or that the tout est bien was actually not disturbed by it Although this was a very difficult moment for the normativist concept of nature, it shows that after 1755 Voltaire in no way behaved as if he had the idea of a world subject to the whims of an evil God " _ _ '.

The differentiation from atheist materialism required this, but being different required an explanation for the distancing from the stout est bien'

^•° Nature is mute, we question it in vain; / We need a God who speaks an human race', Poem, OC, IX, 475. ^" This is what Voltaire says indirectly, but quite clearly: the catastrophe is due either to human sin or to the fact that God is sans pitie, tranquille, indifferent (loc. cit.). But he had said the former at the beginning of the Gedidit ka tegorisdi (loc. cit., 470 f.), so that the reader can draw his conclusions - without changing the author's lip service to divine providence, with which the Gedidit ends (loc. cit., 478). — On Voltaire's dependence on Bayle regarding the view of the malicious golf ("Dieu auteur du pé&é", L'lngenu, X = OC, XXI, 274), see Mason, Bayle and Voltaire, 64 f. ••' Rohrer, The Lisbon Earthquake, 27 f., 49, 34 ff. '^^ It is therefore inadmissible to speak undifferentiatedly about Voltaire's pessimism. cf. the remarks of Pomeau, Religion de Voltaire, 241ff., 283ff., 307, and Wade, Voltaire, 688ff.

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the evil in the world; This is what Voltaire wants to achieve - again turning the theological position on its head, according to which evil is the (by-)product of this freedom - by adopting a strict determinism. 'Tout est bien' now means for him merely 'que le tout est dirigé par des lois im muables'. His combative pessimism is bought at the price of a logical contradiction, just as his earlier belief in stout est bien was, as he himself discovered, in contradiction to his fighting spirit. To explain evil, Voltaire adopts the determinisoius; In order not to give up the hope of salvation or to not fall into the meaninglessness of materialism, he continues to hold on to God's justice, without thinking about the fact that without that freedom of man: Because of his will, which his determinism had eliminated, God's right judgments can no longer be right or only understandable. We said that Voltaire had to sacrifice the normative concept of nature in his rebellion against the malicious God, or that his embarrassment as a result of the natural catastrophe had ended in that rebellion. Rousseau remained e.g. B. not hidden In his reply to Voltaire's Poëme he takes nature in S‹:huœ by emphasizing its inner lawful harmony and for the catastrophe not her, but its opposite, namely the culture, the S‹:huld credited to you *”. Rousseau now combines the ‹:Christian‹:he concept of providence or the perfection and goodness of God with that of nature as a harmonious whole. This alliance with Christianity, ie the merging of the "tout est bien" as providence with the "tout est bien" as nature, becomes inevitable in view of Voltaire's opposing position, who is fighting against the "tout est bien' as providence dropped the tout est bien" as nature under the Tis‹:h since he wanted to discover in the blind outbursts of nature deficiencies of providence. Rousseau's answer to Voltaire's negative connection of God and nature had to be their positive connection, but it must not be overlooked that Rousseau does not consider theodicy to be the most important or at least not the only goal, namely that his theodicy is at least for the most part — sit venia verbo — a natural dicy that is sicli in that concrete constellation with a theodicy.Rousseau, by the way, endeavors to clarify his inevitable alliance with theology

^' Voltaire's development towards determinism supports Barber, Leibniz in France, 119 ff. Au & Diderot - against Pope - used determinism to explain the evil in the world: "Le mal existe ; et il est une suite nécessaire des lois generales de la nature', Introd. aux grands principes, OC, II, 85. ^• Diet. Phil., Art. Bien (All is well) = OC, XVII, 584. ^° This constellation of thought is most succinctly formulated in the Homélie on Atheism, OC, XXVI, 319 ff. ^^' Letter I Voltaire = Works, IV, 1064 ff., 1o61.

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to keep boundaries by distancing sidl from positive religion in the same letter to Voltaire exp&1id›; His theodicy therefore relates to natural religion and the God instrumentalized in its sense. On another occasion, the same Rousseau had to defend himself very energetically against an interpretation of the "tout est bien" in the sense of a practically paralyzing treatment of human affairs - - an aspect that, understandably, was hardly mentioned in the letter to Voltaire. e is bradited. The constant need for relativizing explanations, shifts in tone and distancing makes it clear that the Enlightenment Optimis mus Logis was not spared the difficult difficulties. If pessimism jeopardized the normativist concept of nature, optimism could not lead to a redo of the existing situation. It was equally bad that in neither of these two ways could an at least partial agreement with theological positions be avoided - as long as atheism was out of the question: if pessimism had to approach the valley of tears image, it could Optimism cannot fail to praise divine providence. Depending on his situation and his temperament, every Enlightenment thinker moved into an optimistic or pessimistic attitude, leaning more towards one than that or sometimes giving preference to one or the other; for both had their polemics, advantages and disadvantages.

In the field of anthropology, the ambiguity of the Enlightenment position is not ultimately determined by theology, in which man appears as the image of God and at the same time as a pitiful sinner. On the other hand , the Enlightenment must offer optimist and pessimist arguments in opposition , whereby the latter are not carried to the bitter end, but are usually put into the service of the struggle. We discussed the fact that, based on various considerations, the displacement of man from the center of the universe in the early modern period was not perceived as a loss: the destruction of the old world view was, eo ipso, seen as a step towards liberation from the authorities that represented it. '. The Enlightenment completed what resulted from traditional Sidit as metaphysis, the degradation of mankind, by massively incorporating mankind into the laws of nature and, through the dissolution of the intellect within the framework of the radical rehabilitation of sensuality, allowed the boundaries between mankind and animals to become fluid or even verwisdite "'. The thesis of the naturalness of mankind was therefore the answer to the theological conception of mankind as the image of God. The fact that he is not one is, however, readily accepted, since mankind ceases to be a metaphysis puzzle and in Know ^" loc. eit., 1072 ff. Lettre Ä Philopolis = Oeuvres III, 233 f. ^°° S. o., Kap. II, Absdin. 2 b, 3 a. ••' S. Absdin. 3 in this chapter under a and c.

°°°

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or driving natural factors become the subject of a scientific educational effort •••. The polemical negative force of the naturalness thesis automatically made it the source of confidence, and that is why its pessimistic, because deterministic, consequences did not inspire permanent despair: by transforming pessimism into a weapon, it becomes at least psychologically - overcome. By the way, it had to be contained in order not to unintentionally come to the aid of the doctrine of original sin. Their elimination was the primary goal of the normativist Enlightenment, since the Kirdie's claim to patronage of the people from birth was based on it. Instead of remorse and humility, moral consciousness now appears, and the new or instrumentalized God no longer knows sinners, but only people who have acted well or badly '^. The main argument against the doctrine of original sin, however, is not the reference to the causally understood naturalness of man, but rather the assumption of his original goodness or at least (neutral) his incorruption."' Causal and normative conceptions of humanity go hand in hand in the thinking of most Enlightenment thinkers and the reason why this is not initially disturbing lies in the polemic connection between the two concepts, which simultaneously oppose the two different aspects of theological anthropology. The objectively existing discrepancy, however, leads to the naturalness thesis being at least partially rejected with regard to an optimistic view of humanity reconnaissance forces, for example, who are otherwise ready ,

to build a secular ethics on self-love and pleasure regard these same motives as inferior or even despicable if they are taken up by theological ethics in order to make the teachings of punishments and rewards in the psychological beyond convincing or effective"' Not only through the original sin, but also through the redemption offered, theology seeks to humiliate mankind. Its ideal image, the heart of the normativist concept of nature, is opposed to this double humiliation, whereby its splendor outshines the limits of human nature and thus them forgotten in selfconfident pride.

However, the anthropological optimism raised against the doctrine of original sin was no more allowed to be propagated undiluted than the “tout est bidt” . For just as the former represented the Enlightenment as rebellion, the former seemed to make the Enlightenment as education superfluous. Just about the necessity

•°- This train of thought appears in an almost programmatic form in Voltaire's contradiction legung von Pascal, Remarks on Thoughts, OC, XXII, insb. 34, 40 f., 42, 53 f. •^° Groethuysen, emergence of the bourgeois. Weltansdi., I, 225 f. ••* Mercier, Rehabil. of human nature, passim.

^^ Cf. Bredvold's remarks, Brave New World, 77 ff. •°^ Crodcer, Crisis, 400.

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of education and thus also to assert one's own mission or elitist vocation, the enlightener must overcome the previous dominance of "unreason" or the inclination of the people to it at the price of clouding the of emphasize the ideal image of the human being designed for him. However, the same double attitude can also be observed on the opponent's side, since there too, sovereignty is required. The ambivalence on both sides serves on the one hand to bring into general consciousness the factors that stand in the way of salvation — whereby the task of the educator (no matter whether enlightener or theologian) is upgraded or his direct or indirect claims to leadership are legitimized — and on the other hand, to justify the certainty, even inevitability, of salvation and thus to save the meaning of life: the general meaninglessness also makes a claim to leadership worthwhile Come on. The opponents of the old and new Weltanschauung or their representatives were irreconcilable because both were fighting for the same price and therefore used the same formal thought structures in every difference in content. Novalis had already understood it at that time: »By instinct the scholar is the enemy of clergy according to the old constitution; the scholar and the intellectual class must wage wars of extermination when separated¡ for they contend for one place' "7

.

The social leadership claim ultimately determines the po1emis aspect of oscillating between optimism and pessimism, which is inseparable from the logical aspect of this oscillating (deterministic consequences of the rehabilitation of sensuality undertaken in anticipation of a new freedom) . Let us now turn to a third aspect of this same overall opinion

^•' Christianity or Europe = Scripts, III, 515. — Also in the question of the relations between Enlightenment and Theology, as well as in the question of secularization (see chap. II, note 10), a sa&according understanding without the one here Proposed distinction between thought content and thought structure impossible. Be&er, who pointed out the a priori-deductive train of enlightened thinking and its dependence on certain beliefs, and in this he saw a significant similarity with theologisdi-sdiolastic thinking To discover parallels between Enlightenment and theology in order to demonstrate their congruence across the board. In his response to Be&er, Gag made the opposite mistake: namely, he listed the most important substantive differences between Enlightenment and theology in order to conclude that the commonalities claimed by Be&er did not exist (Be&er's Heavenly City, esp. 185 ff. ). Emerson has undertaken a good defense of the Be&ers&en position against Gag, who, however, only reproduces the conceptual ambiguity of Be&ers by trying to track down similarities in the thought content to a greater extent (Gajr and the Heavenly City, 390 ff.), without doing so to be aware of the essentially new status of old concepts or their instrumentalization with regard to the nihilism conviction etc. (cf. paragraph 2 of this chapter).

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should be pointed out, namely to the concrete existential and social situation of the Enlightenment thinkers, which did not have to be less contradictory. At a late date, Condorcet gave an assessment of the ruler-serving relationships, which, in its twosidedness and generality, would have been approved by the Enlightenment thinkers of the two previous generations: "Dans quelques points, nos yeux sont frappés d'une lumiére éclatante; mais d'épaisses ténébres couvrent encore un immense horizon. The name of the philosopher is reposed with consolation on a small object name; mais le spectacle de la stupidité, de l'esclavage, de l'ex travagance, de la barbarie, l'afflige plus souvent encore' •••. In fact, there was no lack of good evidence, not only in the life of the states (English "freedom", efforts of the enlightened monarchies on the continent), but also in what the social position of the new ones Intelligence affected both the free (dissemination of journalism) and those dependent on the state (new opportunities for advancement in the newly founded or reorganized universities and research institutes "'). All of this was of course reason for optimism , on the other hand, the groups of Enlightenment thinkers seemed like small, scattered islands in the middle of the black sea of ignorance and superstition, even though the Church had lost its monopoly on education and a considerable part of its charisma (at least among educated laypeople). "', her lady was always unbroken in important areas; the upper clergy was able to influence important social policy decisions, while the lower clergy influenced the everyday life of the vast majority of people Mensdien was more or less firmly in his hands from the cradle to the grave. Only a fraction of the population could read - and even fewer people could or wanted to think in Enlightenment categories. Folk culture had not yet found its way into modern times, that is, it was based on a fairy-tale worldview in which fairies, giants, saints and men freely mixed together.

Church and Enlightenment work together, each with a view to expanding its own ideological influence, against magic and popular superstition, but if astrology e.g. B. over the course of the century there is increasing opposition from educated circles or there are approaches to physical explanations

••® Sketch, IX' ßpoque = Works, VI, 232. ••° McClelland, German Unirersities, und Emerson, Scottish Universities, passim. "On the eve of the revolution, the French clergy had fewer members than in the time of Louis XIV - despite the population increase, Palmer, Catholics and Unbelierers, 13. ^" Shortly before 1789, the public of the French provinces read primarily religioustheo1ogis‹: he books, some of them that were published decades ago and were considered classics¡ au& the majority of the religious books are still always religious content (Brancolini-Bouyssy, La rie prorinciale du livre, 11 ff., 18) The situation is no different in the other European countries. •" Mandrou, On popular culture, 162 f.; cf. Bolltme, Popular literature, 76 ff.

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"Magical phenomena" exist, on the other hand, occult and theosophical currents become ever stronger, reaching their heyday just before 1789. According to all available evidence, upper and lower classes are equally involved in superstition, although in different ways And when some Illuminati or Freemasons build bridges between their own superstitions and the Enlightenment's progressiveness, theosophical directions developed, which came onto the scene in the wake of J•nsenism and mystical quietism , a militant anti-Enlightenment activity "'. These brief statements about widespread inventions should at least demonstrate how necessary it is to make a fundamental distinction between the Enlightenment and its period.

If the Enlightenment nevertheless gained ground, it was not simply because of its quantitative spread, but also and above all because the importance of the elite supporting it in the social balance of forces gradually increased or because it was part of the ruling elite and was in the process of dissolution to penetrate elites. But that was a lengthy process that only appears irresistible in retrospect; At that time, the end was uncertain and the power of what existed was great enough to cause the mood of the Enlightenment thinkers to waver between (programmatic) optimism and (environmental) pessimism. Because the freedoms that were gradually opening up were subject to censorship and persecution and even in them one could not move completely unhindered. If the social reputation of the literary person generally increases, birth and wealth continue to be decisive; and if they do Although the relationships between authors and publishers undoubtedly change in favor of the former compared to the 17th century, for the great majority of them they are still everyth

* Wilkins, Some aspects of the irrational, 109, 121 f., 125 f., 158 ff., 198 f.; Bila, Belief 1 magic, 12 ff.¡ Faivre, Esotericism, 31 ff. ^”

Faivre, Esotericism, 59 ff.

"'Wais, Das antiphilos. Weltbild, 2, 19, 37 ff. Wais rightly points out that the fight against intellectualism comes from both the sub-rational spirit" (e.g. Helvétius and the materialists) and could also be led from that of the "superrational", so that a commonality of effects in terms of content can be established in completely opposite directions. His mistake, however, lies in the assumption that this double anti-intellectualism was the reaction to an earlier, intellectually stable phase of the Enlightenment. ^'° S. o., Chap. I, Abs‹:hn. 2. ^°° Pellisson, Hommes de Lettres, 1st chap. Wade protected the secret guerrilla war of the early French Enlightenment against the oppressive legality:hildert, The clan destine organization etc., passim. The psychological consequences of the occasional intermediate position of some enlighteners between legality and illegality can be easily guessed. 481

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as satisfactory "'. The (penniless) writer, unless he is unusually lucky, has to buy his independence with deprivation and uncertainty for the future. Like Voltaire's plastisdian formulation: "L'homme de lettres est sans secours; il ressemble aux poissons volants: s'il s'éléve un pen, les oiseaux le dévorent; s'il plonge, les poissons le mangent' ”'. Voltaire was not just thinking about material hardship, but also about the most diverse forms of open and hidden persecution in a society in which the party of reason was not strong enough to be able to fully guarantee the social welfare of its own members. Under these circumstances there is no need to be prepared to at least come to terms with what exists - even under circumstances those who have no material concerns but prefer social isolation and accommodation; The tugof-war on Montesquieu's deathbed or Voltaire's speaks volumes for the psychological and social aspect of the situation presented here. However, the arrangement is not eo ipso capitulation, it serves to continue the work either way. But since you are now If you have to move on two levels at the same time, tactics, maneuvers and casuistry on the outside as well as rationalization med-anisms on the inside become indispensable. In the field of tension between rebellion and adaptation, the ambivalent psychological attitude between fear and aggressiveness, pride and (Fake) humility, confidence and resignation, as can be reconstructed based on Diderot's statements, for example. He declares that he is prepared to give up his life for the truth, but on the other hand he rejects a dangerous manuscript with the reasons dung that he has a wife and child "'; he expresses his determination to complete the work on the encyclopedia despite all the difficulties and at the same time expresses the wish to withdraw and privatize it, since people are not capable of enlightenment ••'; His soul, as he says, is full of fear of possible persecution, and yet he does not flee, as an inner voice recommends, but stays and moves on, partly out of habit, partly out of hope, that he will die the next day everything could look completely different "'.

Generalizations would definitely be out of place. Not everyone felt the way Diderot did, because not everyone stood in the front row, as he doggedly did - and only fewer were able to examine their own psyche with careful insight and openness. The smaller stars of the Enlightenment

^°^ Pellison, Men of Letters, 244 ff., 83 ff.; Darnton, Literary Low-Life, 93 ff. ^'° Dict. Phil., Art. Letters, People of Letters or Letters = OC, XIX, 577. ••° Shackleton, Montesquieu, 394 ff. ^"' Pomeau, Religion by Voltaire, 444 ff. Brief an Landois vom 29. 6. 1752 = OC, XIX, 433. •^ Letter to Voltaire from 19 February 1758 = OC, XIX, 451 f.

•^ Letter to Voltaire from October 8th or 10th, 1766 = Corresp., VI, 334 ff. D'Alembert's similar psychological fluctuations are described very sensitively by Grimsley, D'Alembert, 118 ff.

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The movement - not to mention the mere followers - also had to deal with smaller problems, and since the internal tension was correspondingly lower, similar events within them were much less dramatic. Dennodi was given the ambiguity of her situation objectively, and everyone had to deal with that—depending on their temperament and immediate milieu — reconcile in any way. But as we must repeat with regard to Diderot's quoted statements and to the entire literary production of the Enlightenment, social adaptation and forethought - no matter how fluid their boundaries with cowardice or opportunism might be in some Enlightenment thinkers - is not, as a rule, treason principle, and that's what counts. For the enlightener feels above all as an exponent of a great principle - no more: he identifies himself (or at least his ideal self) with it and vice versa, so that he can relate his words and actions directly to it or derive them from it . Almost unlimited rationalization options are therefore available to him, which is subjectively and objectively advantageous: subjectively, because the adaptation, correctly interpreted, can serve as a service to the principle and therefore not as a practical, paralyzing burden of conscience, and objectively, because In fact, it is only through adaptation that the Enlightenment philosopher is able to have an impact on his environment (a great example of impact through adaptation is the instrumentalization of theological terms in the Enlightenment sense). However, whether the subjective need for adaptation arises exclusively and always only in relation to the objective need for adaptation for the sake of the effect may be doubted at least in some cases and, incidentally, is for our analysis, which only examines a situation and does not make any moral judgments want, uninteresting'”. What needs to be noted is the dual function of the principle, which, as a legitimating authority, can dictate or rationalize both rebellion and adaptation, so that

Even the latter can, under the given circumstances, benefit the spread of the principle, if only because it allows it to exist as something that is harmless to existing. However, in the long run, no adaptation could harmless a principle that defines itself in direct opposition to the opponent's principle or whose polemis is the pinnacle on a theoretical level - if not in the everyday behavior of its representatives - was unmistakable. Reason

In this differentiated perspective, the argument about the question of the social integration of the Enlightenment and its consequences for the Enlightenment principles actually becomes irrelevant (see Walter's remarks, Sur l'Intelligentsia des Lumiéres, 190, against Darnton's integration thesis; the latter, however, emphasizes that the social integration of the enlighteners went hand in hand with a certain opening of the existing system to enlightened ideas, Literary Low-Life, 91 f.). One should at least rid oneself of the sociologically naïve notion that ideas would only work if their proponents were completely moral and unreasonable; very often the opposite is the case.

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namely, stood directly opposite Grace, and the scout should use the former, e.g. B. Diderot deutlidi madite ^', represented precisely in their specific difference to the latter. Reason's demand for autonomy remains indispensable, no matter how much it is based on beliefs: the (unconscious) similarity of the thought structure does not mitigate the (conscious) content-based opposition of the two principles in the least. If the representation of the principle of reason causes the Enlightenment philosopher to get into a tense relationship with the maidens of darkness and thus into many difficulties, then on the other hand it has to offer useful compensation options. Not only because that principle can fulfill a complex rationalizing function, but also because its representation carries an elitist consciousness theo retisdi, which can console any temporary or permanent inconvenience by transforming fear of it into pride in it. No more: the elitist consciousness can - since in the eyes of the person concerned it serves not as a prosaic, morally questionable claim to leadership, but as a self-awareness-inducing conviction in the soundness of one's own situation - mobilize forces and inspire practical activity . Since, in his programmatic demarcation against diristlid acosmism, the Enlightenment philosopher should be worldly and socially oriented ••*, he must not consummate his elitist self-feeling by looking down on this stupid and dim-witted world, but rather he must do so with intense compassion connect at their outlets. Under this premise, elitism consists in the assumption that one belongs to a minority which, in possession of the principle of reason, is solely called upon to educate the actu unreasonable but potentia rational people (connection between leadership demands and two-sided anthropology!). Elitist consciousness and journalistic, even popularizing activity therefore form the two inseparable aspects of a single attitude - that of the (to one degree or another) militant enlightener. The pessimism caused by logic and socio logic is compensated for or aggressively overcome when the enlightener places his intellectual work in the service of one two and does not distinguish one or the other from one another. What is at stake here is not originality in the sense of creating dead knowledge, but rather the use of the weapon of criticism, the principles of which are firmly established where it is currently required. As Condorcet said: 'Philosophes' are Rune classe d'hommes moins occupés encore de découvrir ou d'approfondir la vérité que

^^ To. “Philosopher” of the encyclopedia = OC, XVI, 274.

^' Even if there is no agreement with the revelation from the outset is released, reason should decide whether such a present. Lxxke's statements about this have already been quoted, see Chap. V, Absdin. 3 b. Diderot, Art. Philosopher' = OC, XVI, 276 f.

^"' Cf. the good remarks by Gusdorf, Principes de pensee, 490 ff.

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de la répandre' "'. A consequence of this attitude is the strong popularization of philosophy, which increases its propagandistic value; in this sense Diderou's call is to be understood: "Hatons-nous de rendre la philosophie popu laire' "'. With popular philosophy both the content and formal opposition to the philosophy of the soul is meant, as it is expressed in the departure from the syllogistic procedure and from Latin "'. If we look at the overall picture, the at least relative simplicity and directness of the language used is striking. In general, philosophy is no longer understood as an obsession with fadi, but rather as the observation and criticism of things from the side of reason - an expansion of philosophy that clarifies the scope of the philosopher's ideological claims . Literature, journalism or even diet can now be called philosophical, and a philosopher is therefore anyone who has general considerations

over the people and nature employs. Spicy incidents remained of all

However, this does not explain what Goethe's somewhat ironic description of the philosophical fashion "'. After all: through the popularization of philosophy in the sense of general knowledge, the longed-for connection between theory and practice seems to have been established, especially since for the Enlightenment people knowledge (sdiaft) The engine of social development. Another aspect of the new connection between theory and practice is also important in terms of intellectual history and sociology As the contents of the Encyclopédie show, the marriage of sciences and belles lettres is no longer sufficient for the Enlightenment thinkers; The perfect "esprit philo sophique" is based on the synthesis of the two with the arn et métiers "'. Despite all its popularization and vulgarization, the new philosophy had to remain more or less distant from the broad masses, whom "superstition" always kept in check. But the elitist consciousness of the Enlightenment philosopher protects himself from every present disappointment through the thought of posterity, from which the recognition and praise that must remain denied during his lifetime is expected."°. What is the only consolation for the persecuted and misunderstood philosophers ? asks Diderot: c'est que le prejugé pas

s°° Sketch, IXth period = Works VI, 187. ••' Interpr. de la Nature, XL — OC, II, 38.

^•' Schalk, Forms and Disharmonies, 255 f. ^ "According to a precise formulation by Kortum (On the basic meaning of the concept of philosophy, 170): not a discipline of knowledge or a theory of knowledge, but a basic attitude that penetrates all areas of life and is oriented towards practical and social testing." "• Poetry and Truth, II, 7 = SW, 23, 71. ^•^ Schalk, Introduction to the Encyclopedia, 105, 108. Detailed information on this is Proust, Did. and l'Encycl., 163 ff., insb. 196 ff., und Gille, L'Encycl. diction te&n., here and there

^°^ Bedter, Theocracy, 94 ff.

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would be and that posterity would pour ignominy on their enemies. O holy and sacred posterity... The poster for the philosopher is 1'autre monde de 1'homme religieux' ”'. However, the vision of the happy and grateful Nad world does not distract from the present; The future is presented as a reversal of the present, and therefore there is an intimate connection between the intensity of the present struggle and the power of the vision. It is therefore still important to find the best way to make sensible use of the enlightenment potential hic et nunc. Since the 'philosophes', as d'Alembert once ironically remarked, had at least this in common with the princes that they could not take the slightest insult, personal and ideological disputes in their ranks had to be what was generally considered necessary constantly endangering the recognized alliance against the common enemy.”•. Although the Enlightenment movement lacked one major line, the feeling of the existence of a solid movement with solid supporters is evident in the (unsuccessful) effort to demonstrate this one line in an introductory and binding manner for all. In view of its ambiguity, the general commitment to the principle of reason had to be supplemented by concrete rules of practical behavior. Salary has e.g. B. d'A1embert tried to establish it, in which he first of all blamed the tendency of famous writers to seek the succor of the ladies. Since they are not educated enough to recognize the true spiritual value or the true talent, their benefit often has to go to the unworthy, which causes spiritual life to be confused; only humiliation and disorientation could be expected from a soldier." D'Alembert prefers poverty, especially since he is convinced that it is not birth or reed, but only talent, that determines the true value of a person or the only significant difference between them the people en exmad e "'. The practical ideal or tactical approach presented to him is to consolidate the independence of the writers so that they can have a full and direct impact. By wanting to limit this influence on the capacity of the mind, d'Alembert indirectly admits the political impotence of the writer. His suggestions reflect an early phase of the Enlightenment movement, in which the writer felt strong enough to assert his (intellectual) superiority and to aim for his independence as a realistic perspective, but did not dare to enter into open political struggle. That was soon to change, not least because of Voltaire's public advocacy for the victims of dishonesty and intolerance. In a nod later phase, that with the name of Turgot

^°' Brief an Falconet vom Februar 1766 = OC, XVIII, 100 f. •°^ Essay on the society of men of letters = Works, III, 45. •°° Pellison, Men of Letters, 195 ff.

^°° Essay on the society of men of letters = Works, III, 39, 64 ff. ^°' place. cit., 93, 63 ff.

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and Malesherbes, enlighteners even took on government responsibility. Nevertheless, it remains characteristic that they do not want to give up their independence even then; they do not see themselves as representatives of a government towards their subjects, but rather as the mouthpiece of the nation or of reason in the government itself"'. It doesn't matter whether they are active politically in the narrower sense or want to reserve the status of a higher intellectual authority: the enlighteners always think polemically, always with regard to the concrete situation in which they live and work. Their trains of thought are developed in terms of something that needs to be proven or rejected, whereby the argumentative victory is ultimately felt as a strengthening of one's own position of power. As we know, this can already be seen in the determination of the content of reason and rationality—and just as well in the inner logic of other Enlightenment postulates, which, taken in their nominal value, only seem to have a general human, not a polemical, content. This is e.g. This is the case, for example, with the famous tolerance requirement. Like the entire constellation of thought in which it emerged, it had a concrete polemical meaning: it was initially directed against the dominance of established Christianity, and At that historical moment, its realization would have itself meant a strengthening of the position of its representatives within the intellectual-social spectrum. The fact that demands are made in the name of humanity should not obscure their partiality, but should rather be seen as an absolute intensification of the latter. The demand for tolerance is no exception, although it seems as if it benefits all sides and must therefore be acceptable to everyone. As is well known, it is not, at least in practice, and this cannot be a coincidence or can only be explained with regard to its respective polemical meaning. The Enlightenment thinkers always made the formulation of the demand for tolerance dependent on concrete, politically conceived conditions. On the one hand, most of them did not want to show any tolerance to the atheists or nihilists because they compromised or undermined the enlightenment party. In 1769 , Voltaire wrote that tolerance should not be understood as “ la license des o pinions contraires aux moeurs”. Diderot also once expressed the idea in a rather sharp way that anyone who was not prepared to think in the sense of rational natural law would forgo his status as a human being and would therefore be treated as un etre dénaturé, i.e. be eliminated without further ado may '°. — On the other hand, it was allowed

"' S. the excellent exposition of Stri&len, The philosopher's political mission, insb. 150 ff., 158 ff., 205. °°• Guébres, Disc. Historian. etc. = OC, VI, 502; my blocking. ^•' Art. »Droit Naturel' in the Encyclopedia = OC, XIV, 301.

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of course no tolerance for the opponents of tolerance (which in concrete terms means: for the opponents of the advocates of the demand for tolerance). "Quiconque ose dire, Hors de l'Eglise point de salut, doit etre diassé de 1'état," writes Rousseau Sdirection "Sur la Destruction des J••ites en France" is expressed extremely clearly. The expulsion of the Jesuits from France is not discussed here at all from the point of view of whether everyone, without exception, has the right to do so to represent opinions publicly and then to act within the framework of the law (the Enlightenment thinkers used this criterion when it came to defending their own freedom of expression), but the question is asked whether the Jesuits' opinions are good and useful or not , whereby it goes without saying who has to decide about it. She shows little sensitivity d'Alembert against the legal inconsistencies of the trial against the J•-

suites: if the prosecution is si& riditig and its reasons (as he says himself) lie deeper than the legal aspects, then this or that formality is insignificant '°• . Significantly, the script closes in an almost inquisi torical way: verbind1i‹:je pFormules de déclaration' are drafted or proposed, which should be signed by the former Jesuits '^. The purely polemic treatment of the problem on the part of d'Alembert is also shown when he accuses the Jesuits of their tyrannomadic teachings, with which the Enlightenment philosophers are intended to be profiled as advocates of law and order (a truly Jesuit trick!), but especially when he does so goes far to defend the Jansenist doctrine of predestination against the Jesuit thesis of freedom of the will, since this is supposed to have only been a propagandist of this maneuver. D'Alembert's defense of the Jansenists goes In fact, he does not rely on considerations of principle, but rather on purely tactical considerations . But on the other hand, he advocates an excessively large increase in power on the part of the Janseni, which means that the expulsion of the Jesuits does not benefit "reason", but rather "obscurantism". would, he pleads for the cessation of theological debates in general "'. These details

°°^ Contratsocial, IV, 8 = Oeuvres, III, 469. ••• Oeurres, V, 93 ff. •°' loc. eit., 14sff. °° ® lock. et., 44 ff. °°° A purely principled discussion of the question should have moved d'Alembert to defend the Jesuits, who had not only adopted humanistic ideas and had also considerably expanded the view of nature in relation to grace (Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers , 33 ff., 51 f.), but also trust in a conception of God that was much closer to the Deistisdi Enlightenment philosophy than that of the Jansenists (Groethuysen, Emergence of the bourgeois world view, I, 140 ff.). •'° On Destruction, Works, V, 133 ff.

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It is clear that the Enlightenment thinkers, even when they rely on general moral principles, always act as representatives of a particular party and consider the respective constellation of forces or the relationship with friends and enemies in the interests of this party . They think concretely and politically, even when it comes to demands like tolerance. And› the principle applies to them: the enemy of my enemy is my friend °".

"' Even cooperation with the censorship was not excluded when it came to evicting an uncomfortable opponent , s. Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers, 6 f. — The usefulness of d•• J•f*S•f*i sten for d'Alembert openly admits his own needs in a letter to Voltaire of May 4, 1762 (= Oeuvres, XV, 202): Ils croient servir la religion, mais ils servent la raison sans s'en douter¡ cc sont les exécuteurs de la haute justice, pour la philosophie, dont ils prennent les ordres sans le savoir'.

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VII. Forms of nihilism in the Enlightenment

1. Definition of the essence of nihilism With regard to the intellectual spectrum of the Enlightenment, nihilism could be defined as the attempt to carry out the rehabilitation of sensuality completely and value-free, whereby nature was only raw or refined matter (the latter results in the spirit) and at the same time devoid of all values (but also of all is worthless). Nihilism therefore shares and at the same time leads to the extreme the Enlightenment rehabilitation of sensuality (in this respect it cannot be imagined without the Enlightenment as a whole), while on the other hand it rejects the confusion between nature and norm (in this respect it confronts the the most influential tendency in the Enlightenment) - but not in order to continue to cultivate norms apart from or beyond nature, but in order to finally eradicate them or to perceive them as human, changeable conventions, i.e. as subjective fictions without objective validity. In fact, after the elimination of the spirit on the one hand and the separation of nature and norms on the other, there is no longer any room for objectively valid norms: until then, such had been founded either by the spirit in its divine and human dimension or by the normative aspect of nature. The nihilistic universe is monistic-materialistic (because of the elimination of the mind) and at the same time causally conceived (because of the elimination of the normative aspect of nature). Monism and determinism, combined in their pure form, result in a closed construction that eliminates all logical difficulties of the normativist, necessarily dualistic Enlightenment with a solution. In other words: the permanent conflict between the causal and the normative, between the meaningful and the spirit, is ended by the separation of the normative and the spirit (logisdi). Nihilism can thus enjoy the logical coherence that the normativist Enlightenment was not allowed to achieve. There was only one theoretical possibility available to him to escape the dualism of vacillation: the unification of being under optimistic auspices, such as that envisaged by Shaftesbury or (occasionally and also unsystematically) Rousseau. Therefore, the nihilistic world view, viewed from a purely formal and structural point of view, is closest to that tradition to which it is diametrically opposed in terms of content.

' Köber Rousseau's ontological theodicy see Kondylis, Origin of the Dialectic, 119 ff.

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is: because the contradiction lies in the world-based diaulidia precedents, while the structural monism on both sides aims to make the world-based diaulidia decision announced in the examples absolute. It is precisely from the absoluteness of the content-based contrast that the structural relationship arises, which can be made particularly clear using the anthropological problem. In both views, nature should penetrate man completely, so that his actions, if they can only develop without the influence of heterogeneous factors, must obey the commandments of nature and must even express the essence of nature. Since man is entirely nature, he carries out the laws of nature with the full force of his unitary existence; The dualism of anthropology is abolished, which at the same time brings about either an elimination or an essential degradation of the intellect. We saw that at Hutdieson, for example, For example, the intellect is supposed to cope with the tasks or to find the most expedient way to realize what the voice of nature commands - and it has the same importance in Sade too. Now, however, the voice of nature issues very different commands, depending on how one has defined its essence. From the point of view of the normativist conception of nature, the unhindered development of the forces of natural human beings must eo ipso bring about the realization of those norms which, by definition, should arise from the essence of nature. If, on the contrary, nature is deprived of every normative aspect, then the uninhibited activity of natural human beings is likely to bring about what can be a crime for the normativist, while for those who act beyond good and evil the deepest existential satisfaction. Both sides want to let nature take its course, but they have very different expectations. The theoretical superiority of the nihilistic point of view becomes visible in the fact that pure optimistic normativism is not allowed to put into practice the ideal of non-intervention in the course of nature that it has in mind nidit hic et nunc. We have already pointed out his adiille's heel, which, however, did not make him the mainstream of all Enlightenment normativism': he cannot really offer an explanation for the evil in the world, and if he tries to ignore it, he loses his powers of persuasion or practical relevance. That's why he doesn't succeed audi nidit, logisdi durdi away to remain closed. For he introduces the enlightening distinction between the true being and the false appearance of nature, in order to avoid evil '

»If she [Nature] intended us to be healthy, I almost dare to assure that the state of reflection is a state against Nature, and that the man who meditates is an animal deprave', Rousseau, Discourse on the origin ete., I = Works, III, 138.

° See above, chap. VI, Section 3 b. • See section 3 of this chapter. ^ See above, chap. VI, Section 1.

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to assign it to the latter and thus to interpret it away, while at the same time The principle of non-interference with the course of nature must be reversed at least to the extent that this is necessary to combat existence or to restore the true being of nature; An infiltration of intellectual control bodies is inevitable. The nihilist treatment does not require any such auxiliary constructions. For the effect of what is evil for the normativist can be determined empirisdi, and since on the other hand there is no interest in the victory of the "good", the distinction between being and being is also unnecessary. Nihilism is and remains phenomenalistic, and existence (that is, what normativist metaphysics defines as sol&es) forms its only being. That's why he doesn't need to explain the good, because good and evil are only there for normativism, not for it. The nihilists therefore limit themselves to a psychological and sociological genealogy of morality, in which their theory once again shows its superiority over pure normativism. For it is far more difficult to see how evil flows out of the original spring and pure, ontological good than it is to see genetic evil, as is the case, for example. B. Self-love in the context of social life is transformed into morality through institutions etc. or how the internalization of norms of conscience and thus the impression of the autonomy or originality of morality arise. Not only logically, but also psydio 1ogis& the consistent nihilist must feel exonerated. World-wide pessimism and optimism are alien to him, since he has left good and evil behind: they presuppose this, whereby optimism is nourished by the hope of the victory of good, pessimism, on the other hand, by the fear of the perpetuation of evil .

We said that an important logical presupposition of nihilism was the withdrawal of all normative components from the concept of nature. The media nicististhe natural sciences had already undertaken this step, but in it stood the spirit or God alongside the natural machine, so that the norms ran no (direct) danger'. The anti-Cartesianism of the Enlightenment had, in turn, supplemented the intertwining of nature and God within the new idea of the whole with a substantial strengthening of the normative aspect of nature , so that the degradation of the traditional quintessence of all values could theo retisdi be compensated. The common, if also (very) different, normative function of God and nature shows why nihilism not only rejects the normative conception of nature, but

• Why the medianicism of natural knowledge differs from the atheist material

mus of the Enlightenment was logically incompatible, has been explained above, chap. IV, Section 4, ef. 3 b. '

See above, chap. IV, Section 3 a and Chap. V, Section 4.

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au‹3i atheist‹3i had to be. He is hardly interested in the disputes between God and nature regarding the content of the norms ; for him the latter is a mere transformation of the former as long as it retains its normative aspect. The complete disenchantment of nature thus appears as the logical continuation of what had begun with the disparagement of God. Tauäd 1i‹3i, the moral colorlessness of nature or the universe is emphasized most strongly in the 17th century by‹3i authors who of (a personal‹3ien) Thinking little of God: Spinoza and Hobbes—who, characteristically, put the self-preservation motive central to the nihilists in the foreground. At the height of the Enlightenment, Bayle discredited the newly emerging, specific Enlightenment normativist concept of nature by denying the goodness of all natural gifts or the naturalness of all good things , with the succinct sentence: La Nature est un Stat de maladie', her paralysis requires God's and men's laws'. But studies like the Lu:kesd e, which consciously or unconsciously, willingly or not, stood more or less in the wake of Hobbes and presented morality as a product of positing, convention or utilitarian considerations, were objective contributes to the separation of the pure normativist concept of nature. In this respect, Mandeville can already be classified as a Niliilist, but with him the ontological prerequisites of nihilism (atheist materialism) are neglected, and in addition, with him the early liberal optimist idea of harmony is still too strong for him to be able to do so Enlightenment nihilism could represent ideal typis‹3i. Even if we disregard the materialist approaches based on natural science, there were enough thought motives that could be further developed in a nihilist approach - if only they were provided with the appropriate precedents. These measures, however, make it clear that nihilism was also based on a worldwide decision, and therefore one should not assume that the Enlightenment should have led to it without further ado, as if it were a straight progression to a fixed goal were. On the other hand, a rationalized idea in favor of nihilism could only come into question when the aforementioned thought motives had gained ground. It is no coincidence and no error that can be interpreted away that modern nihilism was formulated consistently and comprehensively for the first time in the Age of Enlightenment. The Nihi

®

°

Response to the questions of a Provincial, CV — Works Div., III, 714. It is Cro&er's great achievement to have grasped nihilism as an organic component or as a logical

possibility of the Enlightenment. Cro&er hits the nail on the head when he speaks of the dithering of the normativist Enlightenment between the Scylla of supernaturalism and the Charybdis of nihilism' (Nature and Culture, 512). His philologically extremely skillful and knowledgeable treatment of the problem of nihilism is, however, logically and historically at least one-sided. He fundamentally identifies nihilism with an anarchic desire for destruction and considers it -

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lists bring to light the final logistical consequences of the complete rehabilitation of sensibility. But they are not admired for this, but rather educated. Because it's not about logic, but about polemis, consequence and effect

quite & trivial - as a harbinger of National Socialism etc. (Nature and Culture, 335, 58, 396). We have already noted (Chapter II, note 9) that Niiiiilism can be defined as the thesis of the relativity and fictitiousness of all values; if the objective validity of the should ceases, then destruction can be a consequence But not if you, as a consistent nihilist, are not prepared to create a new should out of destruction. The fact that there is no necessary logical connection between nihilism and destruction is clear from the simple, historically undeniable fact that the greatest suffering in modern science did not come from the destructiveness of nihilists, but from the struggles for the assertion of each "only true" morality or religion emerged. Concentration camps were named in the name of class or race - that is, in the name of certain values and not under Appeal to the bitter relativity of all humanity. As a liberal humanist, Cro&er can of course claim that these are not the "true" values, but in doing so he would only be asserting his own value judgments. The fact that in battles over values each party labels the opponent as a nihilist or destroyer of the foundations of a "decent" life is only evidence of the polemic style of this language and not a scientific statement (cf. above, Chapter II, Absdin. 1). . This is what Audi Cro&er does with regard to the nihilism of the Enlightenment. No‹:h more: ansidits der about the anchoring of nihilism in important intellectual motives of the Enlightenment, which he himself noted in Redit, he speaks of the "S":leaders" of the Enlightenment in general or of the "S"leaders" of the revolution of 1789, which precisely demonstrated the sophistication of Enlightenment ideas ( Age of Crisis, 376, 448). We do not want to examine here how revolutions can be "successful" or whether they have to be morally promoting phenomena just because they are measured in the name of ideals. If But Cro&er speaks of the logical side of the Enlightenment, so he obviously assumes that moral and world-view problems can be solved at all which is by no means self-evident. The features of the Enlightenment crisis, as Cro&er so beautifully - presents them, are often so general that one might think that the dark labyrinth of the human condition is being protected as a soldier (cf. Age of Crisis, 473). In this case, however, it makes sense not to accuse a specific epic of not having overcome those problems that no earlier or later one has been able to get logically and socially under control - at least in the sense that the proposed solutions are not only accepted by everyone as slogans, but also interpreted identically by everyone. Crmker seems to believe (especially since he speaks of particular ethical difficulties of secularism') that the theological worldview was more logically coherent and could therefore guarantee a reasonably homogeneous, if not free, social life in the liberal sense. Neither the one nor the other has been the case. We have also indicated several times that the logical ambivalence of theory (apart from its inner turmoil) was by no means less than that of the Enlightenment - and that in both cases logical ambivalence as such was not accidental or the product of a lack of reflection, but

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togetherness, and anyone who morally compromises the upwardly striving worldview must be isolated and fought against. J• Nihilism paralyzes the religion by virtue of a world view, since within the culture the instinct of selfpreservation is intertwined with the thesis of the meaning of life.

2. The Benevolent: Hume At least with regard to the elimination of the normative aspect of nature, Hume could be attributed to nihilism, especially since in our analysis this term means the thesis of the relativity of all values and not (necessarily) a desire for destruction or the cult of evil: objectively good and Evil does not exist on the basis of that thesis. Hume drew a very clear dividing line between the concept of nature and the moral values and disvalues; He says unmistakably that nature has nothing to do with moral good and evil, neither in the sense of the lawful as opposed to the miraculous, nor in the sense of the ordinary as opposed to the rare, nor in the sense of the self-confident as opposed to the artificial, nor anything to do with moral good and evil the nature of the decisive Enlightenment philosophy of nature

precisely served to fulfill polemic and ideological tasks or to legitimize Maditan's attacks. The Enlightenment not only secularized theology, but also - inevitably - the ambiguities contained in them (wavering between being and being, between optimist and pessimist anthropology, etc., see above, Chapter V, Paragraph 4 and Chapter VI, Paragraph 4). 5). As far as the social impact of the diristlidi-theologian worldview is concerned, Cro&er's particular aversion to contemporary concentration camps should not make one forget the religious wars, the witch trials or, for example, the Christianization of the Sa&sen. In order to proceed consistently, Cro&er should - precisely in the spirit of the connection he established between nihilism and totalitarianism - ask the question about the relationships between the crimes of the pre-Enlightenment past and the ideology that was dominant at the time: but this would make the questionability of that connection visible. The crime, even the organized one, was not brought into the world by Sade -

And vice versa: totalitarianism, at least in its hitherto victorious variations, does not refer ideologically to the humanistic heritage or to the idea of man as God in the physical universe. The relative naivety of Cro&er's personal philosophy of business stems from the good rationalistic view that there is a necessary, foreseeable connection between subjective views and intentions and the course of business. '° S. o., Chap. II, Abs&n. 1. " Treatise, III, 1, 2 = S. 473 ff.

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intervened in the intertwining of being and ought, it does not appear as less than by chance or astonishment, when Hume immediately beforehand makes his famous distinction between these two and one, whereby he treats the imperceptible transition from that to that as the actual basis of the ruler-serving or vulgar moral systems. It has recently become of interest A modern attempt to derive what ought to be from being was undertaken, the Humesdie Distinction, among other things, by trivializing the assertion that Hume himself was the leader a should or a morality of a being or of social-anthropologies Sizes from ". This view is based, I believe, on a serious misunderstanding. Hume does not deny the trivial truth that the Phenomenon of morality or the idea of what should be and what should be It is used when certain circumstances are meant in which the emergence of morality becomes necessary in order to satisfy the practical needs of people's social life. Everyone can admit that — and above all, there is then the sociologisdi-anthropologisdi proceeding skeptic, who even This assumption is primarily used to combat the confusion between being and ought, since, like Hume, he sees something different underneath understands. As the expulsion of the normative from the concept of nature clearly shows, Hume does not deny the origin of the idea from the ought an empirically given being, but the deductive derivation of the ought from a being that was considered to have original value. Should and have morals in other words, no ontological basis (since for epistemological reasons Hume could not have defended this thesis), ie they are not necessarily rooted in the nature of a being that is in reality only the projection of the ought into the ontology that would be. That has nothing to do with her The view of what to do, morality and ought would have to have certain objective prerequisites in order to be able to arise at all. For the view that Hume By combating the separation of being and ought, morality and ought do not arise at all, but exist in the things themselves." The paragraph, in

'•

on eit., III, 1,1 - S. 469 f. MacIntyre, Hume on 'is' and 'ought', esp. 39 ff. On the other hand, especially the Bemer kungen von Hudson, Hume on is and ought, insb. 79 f. '^ MacIntyre emphasizes the difference between Hume's material ethics and Kant's formalism to Redit, but it is at least one-sided to see the reason for this difference in the fact that Hume derives morality from a being, while Kant does not . This is true insofar as Hume's derivation of morality from social-anthropological factors must draw the priority of the material in morality nadi sidi, but on the other hand Knnt, like Hume, shares the view that the ought cannot be derived from a value that is defined thing to deduce sidi. The common stance on this question is related to the common point of Humean and Christian epistemology, viz '°

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in which Hume formulates his separation of being and ought, concludes with the remark: the distinction of vice and virtue is not found merely ori the relation of object, nor is perceived by reason. We know that it is the dur. :h Balguy and Price represented the uioral philosophy that believed in the objective existence of moral values and at the same time in the external responsibility of reason with regard to the discovery of them. Weldies polemis, which Hume had in mind when he wrote the quoted words, is therefore clear ". As mentioned, the BalguyPrice column completely shared the Shaftesbury column's concern for an ontological foundation of morality, except that it relied on the intellect. Since Hume has both basic components in the thinking of the If he rejected the former, he also had to reject what the latter had in common with the latter. If Hume follows the anti-intellectualist tendency of the Shaftesbury school in general, he does not do the same without regard to the ontological foundation of morality. If, as a follower of Shaftesbury's or Hut&eson's emotional philosophy, he had wanted to derive the ought from being, he would also have had to share Shaftesbury's oncology and forget any skepticism or any distinction between nature and norm. But since he leaves ontology aside, he does not feel obliged to regard the feeling as originally good and is content with the priority of the feeling independently of precedents. (Incidentally, this is the only way to explain why in the introduction to the Treatise he mentions Mandeville among his British pioneers alongside Shaftesbury and Hutdieson; the fact that structures are adopted in order to be put in the service of one's own basic attitude was never shown: It is only the reception of the Shaftesbury school by Hume, but also - this time in the opposite sense - the reception of Hume by Hamann.) So if Hume's derivation of morality from an empirically given being consists in its justification through socially relevant feelings, then on the other hand Hume's separation of ought or morality and value-defined being is expressed in the fact that these feelings as soldiers are not as primal springglidi be treated well. But Hume does not want to classify them as original and evil; Rather, he avoids any binding or in total irrevocable statement about it and points to a variety of factors and possibilities. One function of this anthropological attitude is his rejection of philosophical or ideal fiction, which is called the state of nature . 8 :

the priority of the formal, also has an epistemological basis — namely, the fundamentally different status of the intellect in Hume and Kant. '^ Treatise, III, 1, 1 = S. 470. '• Cf. the note against Wollaston, loc. cit., 461. '* S. u., Kap. VIII, Abs‹:hn. 2 b. * ® Treatise, III, 2, 2 = S. 493 ff.

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Neither paradise nor the war of all against all originally existed. One would now expect that Hume, since he considers honesty and morality to be unthinkable in both the former and the latter cases (in paradise such concepts are superfluous, in the war of all against all impossible), the existence of an original religion is in its beginnings the existing organization would adopt. He does this insofar as, unlike Hobbes, he does not link the beginning of morality with that of government or state collapses, but instead connects it with the existence soldier before state forms of socialization such as family and clan. On the other hand, he nevertheless emphasizes that righteousness is a product of positing, and thus he agrees with Hobbes at a crucial point , especially since he states the curbing of selfishness and confin'd generosity of men' as the reason for this positing . At the same time, however, he keeps the anthropological pessimism that could derive from this thesis within limits by saying that the (innate) qualities of mind mentioned are not always active, but are only animated when the lack of goods is felt will". Both need and self-love are therefore necessary in a negative sense for the development of righteousness. If Hume takes the first step to absolute skepticism by separating being and ought or nature and norm, he makes every effort to avoid the second and last step. He doesn't want to become Hobbes", and the first,

'° place. cit., 495. '°

This is finally shown in the tone verse, which is noticeable when comparing the moral

philosophical statements of the Treatise with those of the Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals and which commentators such as: B. Selby-Bigge led to the thesis that the later Hume had put forward an essentially new or optimistic moral theory in which sympathy as a mere communication of feelings was largely replaced by sympathy as “benevolence”. II share J. Stewart's opinion that no such BruA can be found in Hume's development (The Moral and Political Philosophy of D. Hume, 329 ff.), but I would like to justify it by saying that the position presented in the Treatise was ambiguous enough in order to enable a significant tone shift later without any substantive brusque. The shift in tone itself was now more personally & psychologically motivated. Hume's efforts to live in pleasant harmony with the environment and to mean something that is both good and harmful in their eyes is well known (see My Own Life, Essays, I, 7 f.), but in Hume's concrete environment he would be a new Hobbes was hardly acceptable. He adapts the ruler's moralizing tone all the more casually and readily because he does not want to be considered a moralist and does not feel like such a person. That is why he also adopts the knowingly misleading claim of the moralists that whoever thinks well of men is , eo ipso, doing a better service to morality than the pessimists (Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature, Essays, I, 151). Hume tends more and more to look at Sadie as benevolently as possible and to get the best out of the selfishness in people (his later interest in Butler is symptomatic).

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What he does in this absence is to keep his anthropology as open and flexible as possible in order not to endanger or possibly strengthen morality through the priority of feeling. Since Hume, even in this positive attempt to combine morality and feeling, never unconditionally pays homage to optimistic anthropology (phrasings like: there is no such passion in human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as su‹:h, inde pendent of personal are not uncommon qualities, of services, or of relationship to ourself "), he has to argue on two levels at the same time and is thus, as I think, confused into at least two crucial logical contradictions. The first taudit occurs when Hume uses the so-called artificial virtues ' through which the "natura1 virtues" wants to undermine. The concept of righteousness is necessarily related to the concept of moral virtue, but morality should stand higher than mere righteousness and be based on natural virtues. The talk may be artificial, but the feeling of its morality is natural (Hume explains elsewhere that moral judgments have to do with specific feelings of pleasure and pleasure). This construction is obviously used to dispel the belief that morality is merely artificial. However, it is impossible to understand why the moral feelings, which are naturally supposed to be inherent in people (and that can only meaningfully mean: originally created in people), cannot create honesty among people, but only become strong enough after some time after the artificial emergence of goodwill. in order to provide the moral foundation he desired for the latter and for social life in general. As Hure expresses, the people are first induc'd onlp by a regard to interest; and this motive, on the first formation of society, is sufficiently strong and for cible ... Self-interest is the original motive to the establishment of justice'.

Only after a society has become numerous or has formed a nation does that sympathy arise which enables inclusion in the general welfare and the purely oioralised consideration of justice. If sympathy in this form has '

purely healthy prerequisites, it cannot be an attribute of mensdilidia nature or natural virtue'. Hume undertakes .

everything

matis& for this). He uses the following strategy: he emphasizes the socially beneficial consequences of selfish actions so strongly that the consequences of the action appear to be out of touch with their motivation or the actual motivation becomes irrelevant (see, for example, Of the Dignity ..., Essays I, 155 and Inquiry, V, 2 in Essays II, 207). In this way Hume attempts some of the youthful spiciness of the Treatise, whose complete journalistic failure was never forgotten. •' Treatise, III, 2, 1 = S. 481. ^ ^ ••

•’

on. eit., III, 2, 2 S. 498. Op. eit., II I, 3, 6 = S. 619. on eit., III, 1,1 - S. 455 ff.

on. cit., III, 2, 2 = S. 499 f.

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Quite a reversal of the historical order, in that he elevates a self-determination that was acquired, but still firmly rooted and indispensable, to an anthropological constant, which puts him in the desirable position of being at least partially a benevolent moralist about the nature of man to neutralize predictions and the logistical effects of his initial agreement with the pessimistic view.

This inversion of the historical order is reflected in a central and similarly programmatic terminological inversion. The sympathy that bears the tnoralisdie feeling should, as I said, in contrast to the artificial honesty be a "pnatural virtue" or quite independent of " ari fice and contrivance of nien'", but in other places the justice becomes a natural obligation' in contrast to the 'moral obligation' and emphasizes that the limited generosity (= ^

selfishness) that has a decisive effect on the assessment of fairness is 'natural', even if it directly depends on the extensive syoipathy on whi‹:h our sentimentu of virtue ^ Hume hesitates when it comes to assigning the attribute "natural" because he cannot finally decide between anthropological skepticism and trust he could very well have put sympathy first as a moral phenomenon, since his structuring of the family begins with the family, within which one might assume such sympathy is strongest, and not with the state, which is actually more of a founder of righteousness can figure. Gesdiididi‹: the priority of honesty anthropologically means the priority of self-love. Besides, if one is not a convinced moralist or does not want to be (like Hume), one cannot see why moral feeling is necessary at all, if self-love from one's own work is able to bring justice into being. The artificiality of rhetoric does not mean that it is an unsubstantiated or transient institution. Hume writes: "The interest, on whidi justice is founded, is the greatest imaginable, and extends to all times and places...

All these causes render the rules of justice steadfast and immutable; at least, as immutable as human nature. And if they were founded on original iostincu, would they have any greater stability?' ^ The thesis that honesty is "artificial" but not "arbitrary" has the same meaning. However, the naturalness or non-arbitrariness of honesty only refers to the fact that honesty actually exists or

^

on. cit., III, 3, 1 = S. 574.

•'

on. cit., III, 2, 2 = S. 498. 8

•

on. cit., III, 3, 1 = S. 586. • op. cit., III, 3, 4 = S. 620.

°°

on. cit., III, 2, 1 = S. 484.

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must be, for the sake of regulating the mutual relationships. If there are certain regulations that are perceived as correct and are proven to be functional, then the problem of correctness must be considered solved on the basis of these prerequisites, regardless of what the concrete content of these regulations is and whether it corresponds to an eternal idea of the Redit ent spridit or nidit. In other words: even if the existence of a speaking activity is natural in Hume's sense (that is, unavoidable, given the anthropological constants or feelings that are constantly at work), So the concrete content of their commandments remains undetermined, that is, it can be determined decisionistically or taking into account the respective social needs and circumstances. The same applies to the moral feeling: the fact that I have to feel something as moral has no necessary relation to what I see as moral. Hume avoids this central question entirely, and not by accident: the quality of the socially set standards, which he often emphasizes, has no connection with the naturalness or unchangeability of the concrete content of honesty or morality agree. That's why he finds it more convenient to cover up or compensate for the inevitability of the what by the inevitability of the that .

The second fundamental contradiction in Hume's moral philosophical thinking becomes apparent in his definition of what moral feeling should carry, namely sympathy. As a 'communication of feelings and passions', it is accessible to everyone, because the minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations'. Sympathy therefore forms the bridge between the individual and society, making social life possible. The later Hume alone tended to identify self-love with moral solipsism in order to be able to underline its social unbridiness or its opposition to sympathy in general and to pbenevolence in particular through this narrowing of its concept. In the Treatise it is made clear in several contexts that the process of sympathy can lead to hatred or joy in suffering if it is a comparison of our own situation with that of others. All suffering has a sympathy basis : "Whatever other passions we may be actuated by; pride, am passion, avarice, curiosity, revenge, or lust; the soul or animating principle of them all is sympathy; nor wou'd they have any force, we were to abstract

" Cf. our remarks on Hobbes (chap. II, para. 3 c) and Lu&e (chap. VI, Abs&n. 3 b). •’ Treatise III, 1, 1 = S. 575, cf. II, 2, 5 - S. 365: ,the minds of men are mirrors to one another”. °°

on. cit., II, 2, 2 = S. 340. °• S. z. B. Enquiry, VI, 1 = Essays, II, 218. ^* Treatise II, 2, 8 = S. 375 ff.

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entirely from the thoughts and sentiments of the others'". Hume would have this aspect of sympathy, which theorizes will cause him inconvenience, could only be left aside if he had sharply contrasted sympathy with self-love within a radically optimistic anthropology. But he doesn't do that. On the contrary, he emphasizes that people "always" judge on the basis of comparisons of their own situation with that of others, precisely because they are dominated by feelings (the predominance of feelings does not serve here as a special advantage or paving the way of morality); in addition, sympathy with someone in no way means a willingness to sacrifice one's own interests. • In order to make the transition to morality through sympathy, Hume sees himself forced to divide it into two types and to say that the "sdiwadie" produce hatred or hatred, while the strong produce love".

This is already the distinction made in III. Book under the names

'limited' and 'extensive sympathy' occurs. Moral judgments are actually based on the latter, but at the same time they presuppose a detachment of the human being from the immediate environment and, above all, from comparing one's own situation with that of others. Conflicts and contradictions that necessarily arise through such comparisons should be avoided as follows: bwe fix on some steady and general points of view; and always, in our thoughts, place ourselves in them, whatever may be our present situation ... we over-look our own interest in those general judgments'". Far from being theoretical, Hume's anthropology and epistemology have little practical relevance at first, if indeed, as Hume has claimed, men 'always' judge by comparison, and moreover are reluctant to show themselves liberally outside their narrow circle ". On the other hand, must

In order to gain extensive sympathy and thus moral judgments, Hume had to cut up the main pillar of his epistemology - namely, the thesis of the subaltern status of the intellect - imperceptibly but without delay. Detachment from the narrow personal point of view means a parallel detachment from feelings and at the same time more intense activity of the intellect, which alone is capable of making theoretical judgments about the interests of society as a whole, especially since these judgments must be abstract because the judge

°°

op. eit., II, 2, 5 = p. 363; the s&harfe juxtaposition of comparison" and 'sympathy' in III, 3, 2 (= p. 693) takes place with regard to the description of pextensive sympathy' taking place in this section, see below °' on. eit., II, 2, 8 = S. 372. ^ Op. cit., III, 3, l = S. 586. °° on. cit., II, 2, 9 - S. 386. •• Op. cit., III, 3, l = S. 581 f. •' on. cit., III, 3, 3 = S. 602.

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only a part of society, whose general interest he is supposed to judge, has the personal idea present and a conflict of interests between this part of the brotherhood and the social whole does not arise from the outset can be fired. The possibility of a kind of sympathy that can support moral judgments and thus banish the complete coldness of morality requires the celebratory reintroduction of that faculty, the supremacy of which Hume wanted to break "Extensive sympathy for the activity of reason is a not too usual praise. After all, he could only have been consistent if he eliminated the skepticism of his anthropology or if he at least partially rehabilitated the intellect and epistemology or if he had relied on extensive sympathy and moral judgments. But he did nothing of all this.

3. The Consequences: La Mettrie and Sade Like Hume, La Mettrie takes the separation of nature and moralism more seriously norm and even made of it an irreconcilable contradiction in important respects. Because unlike Hume, he does not want to accept a qualitative difference between self-love and (extensive) sympathy, which could suggest the nature of morality versus the mere artificiality of talkativeness, which is why he does not need any smuggled-in rationality. For him, socially relevant (and not just theoretical) rationality is the ultimate refinement of the basic instinct (Rousseauism with the opposite precedent!), which consists primarily in the instinct for self-preservation or survival. Self-love in this broadest sense cannot be dismissed as moral solipsism, as Hume at least tended to do, since it is what drives the individual to associate himself with society (not least with absidism, one). It is possible to take an advantageous position in it) and thus makes a decisive contribution to the emergence of social institutions. Not just talkativeness, as in Hume, but also morality is the product of self-love. Morality, like honesty, serves to maintain society, namely to benefit individuals, and in this respect it is, of course, the product of a setting; Of course she is only in

•• See the good analysis by Mercer, Sympathy and Ethics, 66 ff. ^ Treatise III, 3, 1 = S. 583: reason requires such an impartial conduct‘, reason, whidi is able to oppose our passion” etc.

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in the sense that it is based on the human need for peace and solidarity, namely on an aspect of self-love. The other important side of self-love, namely the urge to strive or the need for personal satisfaction, regardless of all consequences for the social whole, remains unabated even after the establishment of an organized society, that is, after the emergence of honesty and morality and attempts to undermine them. if this is advantageous and can be done with impunity. Since morality in the broadest sense was born from self-love in a positive (need for conformity and rules) and negatively (necessary control of dangerous instincts), since it is a continuation of selflove by other means, it can never be implemented across the board , unless it is about maintaining the company as a soldier; as long as it appears to be safe,

Self-love allows you to do anything. Or again: self-love behaves as moral behavior when it is praised and rewarded by society, or, depending on the circumstances and temperament, as an outright violation of the moral rules when the person concerned has a major one benefit from it. But the root of morality and immorality is the same existential dimension, the same nature—which shows most clearly that nature and morality or immorality in themselves have nothing to do with one another. Moralisdies and immoralisdies are basically signs, words that serve social good. Nature is the striving for pleasure, morality is, on the contrary, the artificial understanding or inhibition of nature, says La Mettrie: Lil est naturel a 1'homme de sentir, parce que c'est un corps animé; mais il ne lui est pas plus naturel d'etre savant et vertueux que ri&ement vétu'”. He therefore makes the fundamental distinction between the "nature réduite a elle-meme'" and those constructions with the help of which an attempt is made to give morality a natural-ontological basis; thus philosophers would have gratuitement fabriqué les idées innées, pour donner aux mon de vertu et de vice une espece d'assiette qui en imposat et les fit prendre pour des dioses réelles'".

What is here under consideration is not only 'sdio1astics'; This criticism, because it is based on a norm-free concept of nature, also refers to the approach of the normativist Enlightenment, whereby it radicalizes the Enlightenment rehabilitation of sensuality in order to drive every moral norm or spirit out of the dominant Enlightenment concept of nature. This functional change of antiintellectualism in the sign of a non-moralizing attitude becomes apparent when La Mettrie views the mind and conscience or morality as the other side of the same coin, not in order to emphasize the indispensability of the mind, but in order to emphasize the irreconcilable •• Anri-Seneque or Discourse on Happiness = Works II, 89. '• loc. cit., 116. •• place cit., 117.

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to demonstrate the contrast between spirit and happiness: 11 semble que l'esprit donne la torture au sentiment' ", bla réflexion est souvent presque un remord' ••. Remorse is not natural, but artificial-mora lisdi; without it a sworn man can be happy without further ado, insofar as his deeds are advantageous to him". Happiness, the first existential goal, has nothing to do with morality, spirit and wisdom per se; These are all des ornemenu étrangers... Le bonheur semble tout vivifié, tout consommé par le sentiment' ". In the sense that, apart from moral inhibitions, people do not shy away from harming a fellow human being when their own happiness requires it , says La Mettrie: En général les hommes sont nis médiants' ". Or: "L'homme parait en general un animal faux, rusé, dange reux, perfide etc. ... Voile i quoi se réduit en substance tout ce que je dis' ". In order to put an end to the war of all against all, which ultimately becomes later for everyone, morality is established, the source of which is therefore le bien public' so-called virtue is in the absolute sense a "vain son' and its content changes sidi nadi time and place". Precisely because morality is not natural or, as we said before, a further development of self-love by other means, such motives as vanity or laudatory recognition or reward prove to be extremely effective for their observance. In literature and philosophy, for example, personal vanity is absolutely indispensable; achievement is reduced anyway without the desire for fame".

•' place. cit., 91. •" loc. cit., 92. •° place. cit., 151. °° place cit., 97.

°' place. cit., 103. °° place cit., 154 f. ^ place cit., 104. °' place. cit., 105. °° place cit., 112 f. ^° loc. cit., 107, ct. l l8.

^° loc. eit., 130. Hobbes had already viewed the desire for knowledge as a special form of the general desire for power (Lev. VIII = EW, III, 61) - and not just in Bacon's technicalinstrumental sense, but in a much deeper one psychological-anthropological sense. What essential points of Hobbean thought La Mettrie adopted can easily be gathered from our analysis. The question of direct literary influence in detail is rather secondary - important, however, is the determination of the continuity between early modern forms of naturalistic anthropology and social teaching, which revolve around the instinct of self-preservation, and Enlightenment nihilism. Au& Madiiavelli comes into consideration with regard to La Mettrie, while Helvétius knows how to mention La Rodiefoucauld in addition to Hobbes (see note 138 below).

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What is remarkable are La Mettrie's statements about the character and role of philosophy within a nihilistic view. Since this starts from the clean separation of being and ought, which in a second phase is transformed into the opposition between being and ought (this is the meaning of La Mettrie's contrast between nature and morality), philosophy here has no moralisdi -to fulfill educational tasks, i.e. she has no Should preach. -J• 22c moralise, ni ne pre&e, ni ne déclame, j'explique' ^: this is what La Mettrie sees as the goal of his intellectual endeavors. Philosophy knows know the true nature of man or what the motivation of his hand lungs is. To the extent that it gives practical instructions, it can only recommend following nature or the pursuit of pleasure and happiness, but this recommendation would not be understood in the sense of setting up a should, but only as philosophy's refusal to let go of to remove or to suppress the anthropologically given reality. In other words, the "ought" of nihilist philosophy consists in allowing the natural and fundamentally unchanging stream of being to flow freely without protests or attempts to intervene - which, of course, amounts to the eradication of the "ought" as a practically relevant moral attitude. This results in the fundamental opposition of nihilistic philosophy to morality, which must establish an active should and thus also have to make an active intervention in the course of things or in people's behavior. Nihilistic philosophy is an understanding view of nature, while morality is a suppression of (evil) nature for the sake of securing social life. The former is therefore "natural" because it merely reflects nature, while the latter is artificial or posited because it is ordained with political institutions. Anyone who wants to live according to nature, as interpreted by nihilist philosophy, becomes co ipso an enemy of morality and social institutions and has to live with their harshness

rechnen: But if you want to live, be careful, politics is not as comfortable as my philosophy. Justice is his daughter; the executioners and the gallows are

° ® loc. cit., 156. According to Vartanian, La Mettrie demands a pdémoralisation de la philosophie au profit d'une liberté de penser et d'une objectivité aussi intransigeantes l'une que l'autre” (Le philosoph selon La Mettrie, 176). For him, philosophy is the humorous grasp of the meaninglessness of the world, whereby the sober self-irony must be transformed into sarcasm against the (orthodox) philosophers who imagine that their abstract truths would interest people (169, 172). Vartanian also rightly remarks that La Mettrie's apolitical attitude complements his amoralism (175). But I cannot follow him when he traces La Mettrie's attitude back to the immaturity of the Enlightenment movement at the time (178). It is more than doubtful whether La Mettrie would think differently in the circle of normatively thinking and socially committed encyclopedists. Vartanian, like W., hesitates to accept La Mettrie's nihilism in his intellectual independence.

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i his orders; fear them more than your conscience and the gods.' It is too just that you give in to the same inclinations. I pity you, however, for thus reveling in public calamities, etc.' '• Nadisicht und Verständnis hat also der Mensdi nur von der nihilistisdien Philosophie zu erwarten und nicht von der Moral, so sehr sie auch den Mensdien in Worten vergöttlidien mag.

For the aim of the former is precisely understanding, without concern for the moral consequences of its findings (abstraction faite de toutes consé quences'), while the task of the latter is to establish and maintain the social order. This could be called the humanity of nihilism. It is based on the view that there is no should, the violation of which would make people appear deserving or would require harsh countermeasures in the name of violated morality. A human being should no more be despised because of his immorality than a dog: that is at least a good consequence that entails the equality of humans and dogs. La Mettrie says so explicitly: 'Savez-vous pourquoi je fais encore quelque cas des hommes? C'est que je les crois sérieusement des machines.

Dans the hypothesis is contrary, the connais pen dont la société fut estimable. Le materialisme est l'antidote de la misanthropie' ". The understanding nihilist view cannot, however, support programmatic humanism, since it cannot and does not want to put forward any arguments against the destruction of the human being; although it understands the destroyer, it is capable of the victim Not even to support it argumentatively. On the other hand, it can remind you that large-scale human annihilations have been carried out in previous history precisely in the name of norms. Since philosophy disputes truth, while morality, on the other hand, pursues practical goals, it follows that the one has nothing to do with the other and also (since only philosophy knows the truth and morality must turn against this philosophy) that morality, like religion, is based on illusions and prejudices, which are, however, vital for society; it creates des préjuges et des erreurs qui font la base fonda mentale de la société' '•. Since the truth that nihilist philosophy has known can never serve as the basis for social coexistence, truth and philosophy must remain parasitic peripheral phenomena. Like Hume, La Mettrie also emphasizes the complete uselessness of speculation.

^

°• place cit., 152.

°° place cit., 153.

"'Preliminary Discourse, Works, I, 6. °' System of Epicurus, XLVI — Works, I, 248.

Prel. Speech, Works I, 7. •' Treatise, I, 4, 7 = S. 268 ff.

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ments of the study for life, which is actually proven by the behavior itself of dissenting or rather nihilistic philosophers who often follow the most absurd fashions and customs without hesitation ^. Absolute skepticism paralyzes all activity, but since it is inevitably the salubrity of the one who knows the truth" — in other words, skepticism does not consist in mere agnosticism, but in the relativism that arises from knowledge of the factors supporting social phenomena — it must be left aside in everyday life, where one has to assert oneself within certain circumstances based on conventions, etc. And when one proclaims the nihilistic truth openly, he falls on deaf ears, because this truth serves the interests of the Gesells‹:Haft, who are most closely involved with their illusions, downright contradicts: "Les matérialistes ont beau prouver que l'homme n'est qu'une mad ine, le peuple n'en croira jamais rien. Le meme in stinct qui le retient A la vie, lui donne assez de vanité pour croire son ame im mortelle etc.' " If the knower of nihilistic truth wants to be active in practice, he must go into the realm of illusion and, since he has understood its vital necessity and medianism better than anyone else -

sdiaut, to put them consciously and systematically at the service of society. The struggle for enlightenment and reason is sd ädlidi if the truth itself is sd ädlidi. If one believes in the indispensability of religion and superstition for moral development, one must use them without hesitation*. In this important note, La Mettrie is associated with Mad iavelli and

°• Prel. Discourse, Works I, 31, 9 f. °° place cit., 30 f. °' place. cit., 15. ^loc. cit., 43. Starke interprets these statements by La Mettrie as a ruse with backlooks at the prevailing conditions (Die politik&e Position La Mettries, 130, cf. 144: here the anthropology of La Mettries is presented as such a list”, whereby si& Starke hardly bothers to explain which is why List was particularly necessary here, since La Mettrie was targeted primarily because of this anthropology by both conservatives and enlighteners). He is trying to save La Mettrie politis& because, as a Maraist, he would like to deny that materialism and naturalistic anthropology could lead to nihilistic consequences - in a logically correct way. He does this by confusing the levels of the descriptive and the prescriptive and then introducing this confusion as an interpretative thread in La Mettrie's texts. The fact that for La Mettrie state and religion are based on violence and fraud means for Starke co ipso a call for their imprisonment; From La Mettrie's distrust of the effectiveness of reformist efforts, Starke concludes that La Mettrie advocates violent revolution instead of peaceful reform; from La Mettrie's thesis that morality is a social phenomenon, Starke concludes that La Mettrie does not want individualism, but rather social morality and happiness, and even connects him to Rousseau (130, 131, 134 f., 142) . Therefore, as a politician, he initially only accuses him of tactical errors or baselessness and heedlessness”.

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Hobbes agrees; but because he is just as much a Denver who speaks of practice as they are, he overlooks the fact that in order to make the illusion socially effective to be able to be orphaned with it and to believe in it as an ultimate truth. The nihilist thinker is perhaps even more useless than La Mettrie himself portrayed him to be. Since morality is nature's oppression, it must be supplemented by careful and patient education. As shown in another context, educational concern is a result of both pessimistic and optimistic anthropological considerations. La Mettrie sees education in the service of protecting society from the dangerous nature of human beings. But since education, like morality, is artificial, it can only form a crust over the instincts, which tears apart with every outburst of the constantly coding interior of the soul: "Vraies girouettes, nous tournons donc sans cesse au vent de l'education, et nous retournons ensuite ä notre premier point, quand nos organes remis ä leur ton naturel, nous rappellent Ä eux, et nous font suivre leurs dispositions primitives. Alors les anciens determinations renaissent; celle que l'art avait products s'effacent etc.' " Here, of course, there is talk of education as the suppression of the drives. Despite his belief in its necessity, La Mettrie sometimes flirts with the idea of an education that at least partially puts the theoretical insights of nihilistic philosophy into practice and thus for people happiness would be achieved through the expulsion of the ghosts that tyrannize him, as well as through the fun-loving satisfaction of sensuality. That would be the prerequisite for lasting health of the soul. If La Mettrie thinks like that, he shares and radicalizes at the same time the anti-ascetic & emancipatory approach

of the Enlightenment and moderates his nihilism with Bli‹:kriditung to a eudaemonistic ideal, which, however, would not explode society. Nevertheless, his basic position hardly changes since then. For that possibility can be realized either on a social level and within certain limits, or fully and in private circles. But unrestrained gratification of the instincts of all members of society would bring about the dissolution of the latter, and therefore it cannot be considered as a real perspective.

La Mettrie doesn't say much about her either.

The associated partly ironic and partly blase reticence towards existing institutions may have led Sade to remark that La Mettrie had not expressed his deepest thoughts quite openly. In »celebre (t4t), in order to liberate himself& finally from the embarrassing situation by& the objection that La Mettrie does not see man historically, but metaphysis& and therefore he does not really want to believe in society free of domination, so that he must remain an anarchist-individualistis&es' element. ^° Anti-Seneca = Works II, 122 f. ” Juliette,I = OC, VIII, 171 Anm.

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At least he recognizes La Mettrie - and to Redit - as a spiritual father. That was not only meant in anthropological and moral-philosophical terms, but also in an logical sense: for Sade, all three levels are connected with the same logical coherence as with La Mettrie. On La Mettries materialistisd e Biology attacks Sade z. B. goes back to explain the nature of life, but he discredits Holbad' " no less. Holbad's influence on Sade could, however, only extend to ontological areas, but here it seems to have been important be ", especially since Holbad› offers a systematisd› articulated conception. When Sade called the system of nature 'la base de ma philoso phie', he not only made clear his intellectual-historical legitimacy, but also the systematic claims of his thinking. Logisdi he begins where the ontological revaluation of nature and matter culminated, namely with the thesis that nature represents an autonomous whole and the origin of sid itself, because it is 'matiére en action', originally inherent in movement live”. But if nature encompasses everything that is, then man must also be pure nature, whereby his determination of essence must result from that of nature. The thesis of the naturalness of man, which has been associated with the skeptical attitude since the early modern period ", now becomes the starting point of a programmatic nihilism; because the separation of nature and norm, which is fundamental to nihilism, could only be achieved in the conscious Negation of the meanwhile developed normativist concept of nature of the NuJ£Järung complete in all consequence. In fact, Sade's concept of nature at important points is a reversal or interpretation of basic aspects of the normativist concept of nature Nature, it merely represented those side effects of their activity, which was generally geared towards the good, which touched individual tragedies in an unpleasant way and could therefore also stand out as unpleasant or evil from the restricted side of individuals Sade, who knew about Robinet's work “must have”, takes up the idea of the balance in nature, which is based on good and evil, “by intervening at the same time - within the framework of the nihilistic abolition of the separation between being and south, which makes the former being the only being will — gives priority to evil across the board.

"

on. cit., IV = OC, IX, 115.

"

Deprun, Sade and the phil. organic, 190 ff. '° Leduc, Sources of Atheism by Sade, 11 ff. '^ Letter to Marquise de Sade from the end of November 1783 = OC, XII, 418. '• Phil. in the Boudoir, III = OC, III, 195; Nour. Justine, IV = OC, VI, 192; Juliette I = OC, VIII, SI. '• S. o., Kap. II, Abs&ri. 3 b. Deprun, Sade and Phil. biological, 198 f. ’ ® justine I = OC, III, 209.

"

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For him, too, evil is only apparent, but he does not think of the (hidden) all-night goodness, but rather of its fictitiousness. The elimination of the ontologically founded good prohibits labeling evil as “evil” in the normative sense: because this would imply the assumption of the reality of the good , which makes normative judgments possible in the first place. With this semasiological reservation, which we must keep in mind in the following, evil constitutes the natural par excellence, since upheaval and destruction, which must bring with them the downfall or subjugation of the weaker, are an indispensable part of the course of nature. With regard to this essence of nature, it is easy to understand what Sade means when he fully agrees with the modern thesis that man is nature. "The complete materiality of nature means, first of all, that man is also pure matter, the finer part of which is soul". In humans, the immanence of movement in matter takes the form of a continuous restlessness or a vital force that creates needs and at the same time strives for their satisfaction. Following Helvétius - and also moralists such as Montaigne and La Rochefou Cauld, as well as following the anti-intellectualist mainstream of the Enlightenment in general - Sade sees in the passions, whose voice actually only gives expression to the deepest impulses of human matter, the engine of human activity and compares its function with that of movement in physics. In addition to this dynamic materiality, human nature also has a second implication. The activity triggered by the materially rooted vitality must, in fact, behave according to the natural law, in two respects: it must arise from it (insofar as it is inherent in man himself) and serve it (in so far as it affects not only man, but also the rest of nature recorded).

Now human activity springs from the law of nature, set in motion by the instinct of selfpreservation and the pleasure principle. This is the first commandment of nature, which is itself directed towards self-preservation, in relation to man: to preserve oneself, ie to strive unceasingly for happiness and pleasure, to let one's own egoism run free and to take no account of other people's damage ". Under the sign of the by definition insatiable striving for pleasure, self-preservation cannot be in mere vegetating

"

^ ®'

new Justine, XVI = OC, VII, 212. on eit., V = OC, VI, 206.

Juliette, I = OC, VIII, 52 f., 58.

®' S. o., Chap. VI, Abs‹:In. 3 c.

^ Juliet, IV=OC, IX, 135; see Leduc, Sources of atheism, 29 f. •• Phil. in the Boudoir, III = OC, III, 437; new Justine IV = OC, VI, 194¡ Juliette, I OC, VIII, 104, 187 f.

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consist. As for Hobbes 's

So for Sade, self-preservation co ipso means selfimprovement, expansion of one's own power, especially since observation shows that one cannot sustain anything living in nature without constant growth; The end of growth means the beginning of aging, the vestibule of death. Viewed in this way , Sade is in no way questioning the overriding importance of the pleasure principle when he occasionally considers the desire for domination and power to be the deepest motivation for human action". Power and pleasure are, after all, closely ,

related First, ma‹:ht can ensure pleasure gratification either by removing external obstacles or, additionally‹:h dadur‹:h, by causing unpleasure in others; ‹:he fully felt when it contrasts with someone else's displeasure, i.e. when it is purely personal property that visibly distinguishes the possessor from the dispossessed and thus retrospectively confirms him in his position of power". Secondly, power can itself be pleasure. Sade's Freud pre-emptive notion that sexuality pervades all other instincts rests not least on insight into the intertwining of sexuality and power.

Sexuality is satisfied by mastering the object of desire, and since this mastery is not only felt by the master, but also by the master in full existential intensity, the latter :great increase in sexual desire and extreme development of the feeling of power together.

In this way, then, the activity of human matter arises from the law of nature. At the same time, it serves him by confirming so-called evil as the way nature works at all times. If nature itself has to destroy its constituent parts for the sake of its own self-preservation, and thus the right of the stronger becomes its own right, then only individuals can be of use to it, perceive and pursue self-preservation as an increase in power. But crime is just in the fight to expand the one's own power or pleasure in this or that form, and therefore it is not only genetic, as explained above, but also functionally anchored in nature, namely it guarantees the smooth process of the process Natural law or is even identical with the latter ". The destruction caused by it is only an optical illusion, especially since in nature everything cannot be completely destroyed, everything can only be transformed into other forms ". That's why and au‹:h, because that

"° S. o., Chap. II, Abs‹fin. 3 c. *• Juliette, II = OC, VIII, 305 f.

8' Phil. in the Boudoir, V = OC, III. 529 ^ Juliet, II = OC, VIII, 299. •• on. cit., I = OC, VIII, 201 f. °° on. cit., II, IV = OC, VIII, 297 u. IX, 138. °' Op. cit., III, IV = OC, VIII, 399 u. IX, 173 f.

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Verbredien comes from the voice of nature in man or is anchored in his biostructure ", his condemnation from normativist Sidit lacks any (onto)ogisdien basis: because "les crimes sont impossibles i 1'homme" ". The flip side of the same idea consists in the sharp contrast between the norm or moral law and nature, in which Sade directly follows La Mettrie and indirectly the Hobbesian tradition. As a pure natural being, man knows no moral norm, "virtue does not come from the evil of nature, but rather arises in the (already senseless) fight against it," pangs of conscience are the product of upbringing and fear ^ and can be dispelled: then one can act sidi and as soldiers provide pleasure, namely because it is natural, whereas the moral law is artificial. Mental health on the other hand is Sade's reference to the relativity of law and custom depending on place, time and nation to justify the thesis of the unnaturalness of morality * ; audi Montesquieu's name does not go unmentioned." In Sade's phenomenalistic treatment, the inherently contradictory diversity of the respective original forms of morality must be interpreted as proof of the absence of an essence of morality in general, which in turn can be explained or confirmed through the analysis of nature and natural humanity.

Morality is therefore a convention and therefore a fiction; it forms itself in the pursuit of certain interests under the circumstances of social coexistence - or more precisely: it represents the way in which interests are asserted in order to make social coexistence good or beneficial has become a reality from which every individual must assume willy-nilly. The fact that even evil people are able to behave virtuously when it is in their own interest "' is, for Sade, proof of the origin of morality not from nature, but from the intellect (the Sdividaia) that carefully weighs up the benefits. The fundamental connection is of interest But intellect can also be understood in a completely different way (especially with regard to the strong).

•• on. cit., I= OC, VIII, 101. •• Phil. in the Boudoir, VII = OC, III, 513 f. •• Juliette, V = OC, IX, 290 f. °^ on. cit., I = OC, VIII, 59 f. •• place cit., 24 f. •' loc. et., 171, 195 f.; cf. Op. et., IV = OC, IX, 107 f. 8 on eit., IV = OC, IX, 187 ff. •• op. eit., I = OC, VIII, 171 note. Sade thinks that Montesquieu, like La Mettrie, hid the final consequences of his position. He polemicizes violently against Montesquieu's natural reditli statements, and in view of his ambiguity he calls him a "demi-philosophe" (op. eit., IV = OC, IX, 16 f., 178). '°° Aline and Valcour (Hist. of Sainville) = OC, IV, 203. •

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as theological opponents of enlightened utilitarianism feared. If the intellect finds that the affected person is deprived of existential satisfaction much more by morality than by this social coexistence is granted, he must decide to commit a crime. However, he is not the author of the crime, but only the receiver, unprejudiced interpreter and conscientious enforcer of the commandments of the natural voice; Sade understands him purely instrumentally and calls him la ba lance avec laquelle nous pesons les objets' "'. Just like the enlightened self-love of the normativists, but in the opposite sense, the intellect of the Sadesque criminal is capable of sacrificing short-term gratification in favor of a later and greater one; the criminal is not a blind libertine, but acts coolly and (two&)rationally as long as he thinks it is necessary. Sade even demands - at least in the ideal case - that sovereign self—, control or "apathy" not only during the preparation, but '°' is also shown when committing the crime . Because it is precisely their loss that would prove that for the criminal his act is not yet something natural and normal; Incidentally, only beautiful souls or beginners in the drug confuse increased pleasure and mental confusion with each other. You don't have to lose your composure, says Sade, when you are finally at one with nature - while committing a crime. To this He wisely inverts the topos of traditional morality that self-control constitutes the first and decisive step towards the victory of normative reason, into its opposite and thus renders it meaningless. We said that Sade's idea of how nature works is tantamount to an inversion or interpretation of the stout est bien'. In his later work, the tendency to simply invert concepts of normativism in order to be able to use their inner logic against their authors and defenders generally increases. So Sade turns the diristlic conception of God on its head and calls God a "vampire" or "vilain", whereby he seems to assume his existence. He treats the normativist concept in a similar way concept of nature, in which he replaces the good Mother Nature with nature as the enemy of humankind's dildo." So what is being said is basically a provocation or revenge of an "unhappy consciousness" against the evil God or evil nature, a partly desperate,

'°' Justine, I = OC, III, 144. '°' Juliette, I = OC, VIII, 42 f. '^^

loc. cit., 104; Pbi1. in the Boudoir, VI = OC, III, 527.

'°• Juliette, I = OC, VIII, 46, 47. '°° new Justine, XI = OC, VII, 46.

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partly heroic rebellion "'. However, it is not necessary to use stereotypes of existentialist philosophy in order to be able to interpret Sade satisfactorily; spiritual health tlid means are - at least in this case - completely sufficient. If Sade denounces the malicious God , then he simply takes up, in his free and at the same time emphatic manner, the argumentative thread that Bayle began to unwind on the southern wave of the Enlightenment and by which Aud Voltaire had let himself be guided in his difficult hours '^ Sade, however, believes in the evil God no less than Voltaire, and when he calls God not just "fantome abominable" but also "ridicule fantome", then he makes it clear that talk of the evil God is not his personal assumption of an ontological given, but only the ultimate logical consequences of his findings about the function of the dowel the world who wants to bring the Christian conception of God to light. Sade leaves ma W. sd is based on the existence of God in order to reduce it to the point of absurdity, since by relying on this, the agreement can be presented as an act intended by God: otherwise his important role in this 'world of God' would be inexplicable. Sade's promise is not against a non-existent God, but against the fictitious, unreal, but extremely effective idea of God, insofar as it is connected to the moral conscience or to paralyze the will to make an agreement and thus the voice of nature is able to make the voice of the people refuse. In this sense, however, agreement means the autocracy of man in the world after the death of God in the conscience of man. The primacy of agreement is the primacy of man en towards the godlid en when man is nature and when nature does not know good and evil.

In reality, humanity is always and necessarily dependent only on the morally colorless nature, not on the gene ghost of God; If, in Sade's perspective, the possibilities of human freedom can actually become a real problem, then only in relation to this nature and ignoring any moral coloring of the concept of freedom. By allowing people to understand how nature works, not just in its necessity, but in the variety of possibilities that are contained in this necessity

'°° Klossowski, Sade, 59 ff., 71 ff. (cf. Camus, Homme revolté, 55 f.). Meanwhile, Klossowski himself states that in Sade, in addition to committing crime as revenge, there is also crime as a conformity with nature (71 ff.), and, with Redit, regards both views as contradictory. But only then would Sade contradict himself &en if he had meant the former seriously, which is not the case.

'°' Phil. in the Boudoir, III = OC, III, 395; J• 'ette, I = OC, VIII, 46 f. I am., Cape. VI, Absdin. 5. '°'Phil. in the Boudoir, III = OC, III, 394. '°• Non J•••., XV = OC, VII, 195. "'Juliet, III = OC, VIII, 329.

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whose realization helps this same necessity to develop, considers and accepts it, he can complete nature through his own works . His freedom lies in the unconditional and conscious observance of nature, but not just as it is, but as it could be. However, possibilities are only opened up through the destruction of existing ossified facts (if these, like those, have to obey the same laws), i.e. only through the dissemination 2 ". The destruction rejuvenates nature, and if there is in it Absidit occurs, so if the criminal is a philosopher in the Sadesian sense, then one can even say that reason creates or enriches nature. On the subject, the criminal reason brings more desire and power come about, which the blind natural law is incapable of, even if it has established the framework within which all of this becomes possible . The greatest of all crimes, namely the total destruction of humanity, would be to nature audi the greatest of all possibilities s‹:thinking: sidi make and realize a new creation draft 2 ". Whether life can be completely exterminated without destroying nature itself, which tirelessly produces it, is, however, very questionable, even for Sade. At least the thought experiment shown shows in which the ambiguous sense of humanity :h freely, yes, in his own way could be God, after he has killed God in his conscience. Only the intention to exhaust the recognized possibilities of how nature works makes it understandable, by the way, the urge for action of Sades's admonisher.

Not with regard to the question of God, but with regard to this Activism suggests, if anything, a logical inconsistency in Sade's thinking. The aim of widespread activism is to return to nature - even to the extent of identifying with lifeless nature, which the total annihilation of humanity is supposed to bring with it. The return to nature or the spreading thus becomes (indirectly) a should or a value, and it is also suggested that a distance from nature is not impossible - as if nature is not an all-encompassing necessity and as if that Mens& ni‹:St would be completely natural. Has culture reversed the way nature works, so that the return to nature now has to take on a more specific character, or has culture changed the way nature works, so that this commandment is actually meaningless? Sade takes an ambiguous position here, which can be easily explained by his double concept of rediu and law. On the one hand, law aims at the general welfare as opposed to the merely individual welfare; therefore it must force the renunciation of total pleasure satisfaction, which causes the more or less secret war between the individual and the -

"’

on eit., IV OC, IX, 325.

"• loc. eit., 172; ct. the good analysis by Baruzzi, Mens& and Masdiine, 130 f. "• loc. et., 180; Phil. dans le Boudoir, V = OC,III, 515.

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society founded actually for his benefit — begins "'. The law in this sense is the work of cunning, which the swedish uses to defend his survival against the law of nature "'; the phumanité' arises from the "crainte" and the egoism of the person, says Sade, "and the stronger one only goes along with it because he knows he is capable of violating the agreed law." the sweeter, but directly protects the interests of the stronger "'; Sade, who in this context refers to Hobbes' noininalistist view of redit "', shows an extremely clear understanding of the class function of the re&tes, its connection with property relations, etc. "'. Here the re&t does not ensure a fictitious general well-being, but rather serves as the continuation of nature in culture or as confirmation of the fact that nature dictates the rules of the game even when one pretends to have overcome them. If this is the case, then the demand for a return to nature can logically only be justified through the moral argument that one should leave aside the hypocrisy and lies that are associated with society and redit. But Nietzdie's question is appropriate here: why give preference to the truth and not the lie when you have already left good and evil behind? Sade is at least aware that the uninhibited satisfaction of everyone's desires would mean the dissolution of society and a return to the forests "; he can create an extremely libertine and lasting society - despite his provocative and strongly ironic calls for a soldier . " ' - can hardly be imagined in their concrete functioning, and therefore he only allows his libertines to practice their inventive gifts in private circles. Their usually high cultural level should be remembered

learn that more perfect, intellectual communication free from any distress is only possible within culture. The return to raw nature would not ultimately affect the quality and consciousness - and ultimately the pleasure itself - of consumption. From this point of view, the significance of the demand for a return to nature and thus, logically, relativize Sade's contradiction. One could dare to interpret that his ought is basically just the dramatized, extremely pointed form of his conception of being: the Ce-

"’

Juliette, IV = OC, IX,134 f. op. cit., I "'

= OC, VIII,173 f.

"° Phil. in the Boudoir, VII = OC, III, 543. "' Juliette, I = OC, VIII,118. "• loc. cit., l l7 ff. "°

Nous Justine X, III = OC, VII, 110 "° A good summary of Sade's gpolitical diagnosis can be found at Gorer, Said, 137 ff. '•' Juliet, VI = OC, IX, 513.

'^°Phil. in the Boudoir, V = OC, III, 478 ff.

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J›oi des Crime‹:hens actually wants to underline the fact that (total) extermination of the '^ — was human race would be completely indifferent to nature and would confirm the ontological view of its functioning and its meaninglessness. Sade gets into the logical difficulty that the establishment of an 'ought', including the 'ought to destroy', must entail for a nihilist, precisely in his attempt to simply turn the concepts of normativism on their head. The return to nature he demands is basically just an adoption and reversal of Rousseauism. By adopting the normativists' thought constructs with reversed precedents, he runs the same danger as the normativists themselves: the polemic and consequence also overtakes the logical one. Sade, however, knows the way out of the dilemma: it lies in sober reconciliation with the meaninglessness of the world and with death "', whereby neither virtue is rejected nor action condemned, but the motto is: 'sois homme, sois humain.' , sans crainte et sans espérance' "'. If this motive is neglected for him, it is because of the pathetic intensification of the fight against theism and normativism in general, which had to entangle him in logistical difficulties.

In this respect, however, La Mettrie is superior or more consistent as a hilistist thinker. But Sade's emphasis and boldness remain unique.

4. The logical dead end of moralistic materialism From the described logical harmony of materialist ontology and value nihilism, the difficulty of reconciling that ontology with normativist positions emerges negatively but clearly. It was obviously neither coincidence nor misunderstanding that the nihilists endorsed materialism so emphatically; Materialists who did not want to be nihilists had to either water down their materialism or accept an open logical contradiction - or both. This is noticeable in different forms and combinations in Helvétius, Holbach and Diderot. With the former, the ambiguity is apparent at first glance

"^ juliette, IV = OC, IX,171. "* Dialogue between a priest and a dying man = OC, XIV, 62 f. Cf. die Bemerkungen

by Ivker, Sade and Restif, 210ff. '°° place. cit., 64.

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by comparing it with La Mettri. Although Helvétius assesses human nature and the character of morality as a social phenomenon in a very similar way to La Mettrie, in contrast to La Mettrie, he not only wants to absolutize the power of education, but also entrusts it with moralizing and emancipatory tasks. If La Mettrie believes in religion and belief in addictive substances and thus as a promoter of social coexistence, then Helvétius insists on the development of religious values from moral education, and not just because he believes that these are technically incapable of doing so to maintain social coexistence, but rather rather because of an anti-theological normative attitude. The presentation of theology is the actual aim of his strict distinction between what is 'théologiquenient' and what is 'politiquement' good and moral"' - and not the concern for the subjection of theology under politics or the use of theology in relation to social-political goals as understood by Machiavelli and Hobbes. It is precisely the reformatory-normative absidism that pushes Helvétius to the thesis of the omniscience of education "', even at the price of the theoretically daring denial of any significance of natural talents for the educational process "'. For the epistemological justification of this thesis , Helvétius, as is well known, goes back to Condillac and, by tracing the power of judgment back to feeling or identifying these two with each other, he believes that the purposeful affection of the understanding through suitable sensations in the context of education The creation of the desired moral attitude would be sufficient. The mental abilities are the same in all people, only education differentiates or shapes them.

Belief in the omnipotence of education goes hand in hand with nominalism Conviction that morality in general is a convention - therefore nia&bar. But paradoxically, it is precisely this belief that cannot survive without the assumption of a constant beneficial nature: it was not without reason that Hobbes and La Mettrie based their nominalistic moral theories in B1i& on a particular anthropology. Do not act differently (silently and unwillingly) Helvétius, whereby he unintentionally drives a wedge between his normativistinspired view of the omnipotence of education, which is based on the tabula rasa theory, and his skeptic & relativistic moral theory, which goes hand in hand with the idea of a constant human nature. We will see the consequences of this shortly. After all, Helvétius has to occupy both positions at the same time, because in both of them the coveted thesis of the Madi-

*°^ Esprit II, 15 = OC, II, 242. "' Man, X,1 — OC, XII, 71, 75.

" ® Baumgarten, Helrétius, 14 f. "° Esprit I,1 = OC, I, 210 ff. '°° Homme, II,1 = OC, VII,156 ff.

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feasibility of morality, although he obviously misses the fact that in the former we are talking about the modifiability of the normative, while in the latter we are talking about the measurability of the merely empirical - and that feasibility in the normative sense can be subject to completely different laws than those in the empirical. The thesis of the conventional or opiate character of morality is now connected to a content-based anthropology insofar as morality is here seen as a function of self-love. For Helvétius too, morality is He evidence of an "orgueil eclairé" because it lives from the constant guidance of self-love through social recognition and reward. But if it follows from the existence and effect of this basic drive that it must be morality or education, then on the other hand it remains completely open , which is to be seen as oioralisdi; depending on the time and place, that is, depending on the constellation in which the basic drive is partly satisfied and partly inhibited, morality acquires a different concrete content, as Helvétius himself emphasizes '^. The relativity of The content of morality (and also of education, which is relative because it depends on the respective form of government '^) is based not least, as paradoxical as it may sound, on the existence of essentially constant reasons that drive morality as should bring about, but which are satisfied or inhibited in a different way. Education can therefore only take over the control of the basic instincts, but it does not change their existence and general effect; It cannot be all-powerful as long as morality arises as Helvétius describes it. That is why La Mettrie was consistent when he pointed out the impotence of education in the face of a military origin of morality.

Helvétius counters this difficulty by arguing that man is neither good nor evil, but rather infinite plastisdi "'. By nature he only feels pleasure and pain, selfish drives only arise within society "'. Apart from the unavoidable vagueness of the distinction between natural and social people, as well as its rather academic character (since we live in society), one must argue against Helvétius' classification of the drives that

Pleasure and pain originally relate to the needs of self-preservation, which is why their social processing results in self-suicidal suffering and nothing else. Helvétius himself gives the innateness of amour-propre to add at the same time that both good and evil can arise from this.

's Esprit, II, 5 = OC, II, 6 t f. t •' Esprit II, 13, 18-20 = OC II, 185 ff., 280 fu III, 1 ff.; Homme II, 18 = OC, VIII, 78 ff. (Hume is mentioned here as a relativist). t^ Esprit IV, 17 = OC, VI, 181 ; Homme X, 9 = OC, XII, 125 ff. Homme V, 3 = OC, IX, 137 f. '•^ Esprit, III, 9 = OC, IV, 37 f.

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Jump "'. Somewhat differently nuanced are formulations in which, for example, vain pride, when 'condamnable', is described as socially necessary and inherent in human nature"'. Helvétius always wants to be with us Back to his normative-educational goal - not as far as the moralists before him, above all the admired La Rodiefoucauld '••, went in the dark defamation of human diligent psydy', but on the other hand he himself offers this

e.g. B. an analysis of the friendship of friends - which has become infamous which certainly cannot be interpreted as a hymn to man's ability to selfless devotion even in the most intimate relationships. The frequent reference to Hobbes is diaracteristic for this anthropological tendency. The Sociability of the human being is not innate; this objection to Hobbes is reproached by those who tell the novel of the human soul and admired by those who want to destroy their intelligence." Finally, the fact remains unchallenged that the human being is originally selfish and therefore at least potentially dangerous for fellow human beings. However, Helvétius could have ducked behind the Enlightenment commonplace and asserted that morality would come about out of the free play of self-love with the welcome cooperation of education"'. He doesn't do that precisely because he basically thinks much more pessimistically about the (current state of) people. That is why the proposed solution, namely the equal creation of mankind ex nihilo with the help of omnipotent education, turns out to be much more drastic. However, pessimism refers to what is current, optimism to what is possible, so that Helvétius does not feel in tidersprudi, although in order to pave the way for what is possible, he redid or sidied the solid existential foundations of what was current, despite all the gloomy deterioration of the same had to deny. Be that as it may: if he had not recognized the far-reaching effects of self-love in all their dangers, then his upbringing would also have been absidence or method hasn't been that radical. When he charges Rousseau with all the glorification of education in fact abolishing it by identifying it with the free course of nature"', then he made it clear that his own

'°°

op. et., I, 4 = AD, I, 269. Op. cit., II, 7 = OC, II, 100; cf. II, 4 = OC, II, 41 f. '°" About La Mettrie, Mandeville and La Rodiefoucauld's influence on Helvétius, s. Cumming, Helvetius, 65 ff. '°'

"° Esprit, II, 5 = OC, II, 65 Anm. op. "° eit., III, 14 - OC, IV, 97 ff. '•' Homme II, 8 = OC, VII, 225 Note Cf. the explanations about the state of nature and the emergence of honesty, which also confirm Hobbes' influence (IV, 8-9 and V, 4 = OC, VIII, 253 ff. and IX, 151 ff.). "• S. o., Chap. VI, Absdin. 3 c. '•° Homme, V, 5 = OC, IX, 159 ff.

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trust in nature is much lower. His insight into the mechanisms of self-love is shown in all its depth when he tries to understand their consequences for the character of individual and social forms of thought. Self-love makes thinking perspectivist, that is, in it everything must be seen in a perspective that is conditioned by the basic attitude and concrete demands for power. pL'intérét preside ä tous nos jugemenu' "' he states and - without citing the source - cites Hobbes' statement that even mathematical truths would be undermined if they questioned tangible interests "'. Human thinking is not originally doomed to make mistakes, but these become unavoidable because of its perspectivistic character. However, perspectivistic thinking cannot be overcome in practice, since one's own suffering is continuous within society must rationalize so that s‹:hlieBlidi "l'intéret person ne1 est, dans diaque société, 1'unique appréciateur du mérite des ‹:hoses et des personnes" "' - and for this reason the suffering cannot be dispensed with because they represent the engine of all life; Incidentally, they can all be reduced to self-love, which is the same for all people

stark ist '^. Die Leidensdiaften sind in der Moral dasselbe wie die Bewegung in der t Physik "'; "the activity of the mind depends on the activity of the passions; they ^; No lead us astray, they alone give us the strength necessary to walk" " '. Moreover, for Helvétius, the dependence of the intellect on psychic sensuality, which gives rise to its relative or perspectivistic character, is only part of its broader dependence on the biological structure of man in general. If we had hooves instead of hands, he says, we would be wild animals"': a more radical intensification of Enlightenment anti-intellectualism in the service of relativism can hardly be imagined. The inextricable connection between the self-serving perspectivism of thought and biopsydiis‹:the condition of man, as Helvetius portrays him, can hardly be reconciled with his thesis of the omnipotence of education, which is not merely the infinite plasticity of the psy ':ever, but also the ability to (at least partially) overcome that perspectivism. Helvétius believes that error also arises from ignorance.

'•' Esprit, II, l = OC, II, 7. "• Homme, IX, 15 = OC, XI, 208 (cf. II, 16 = OC, VIII, 53 f.). '•° Esprit, I, 2 = OC, I, 218 ff. '•' op. cit., II, 7 = OC, II, 104. '^ ® Homme, IV, 4 u. 23 = OC, VIII, 231 u. 9, 67 f. "° Esprit, III, 6 = OC, III, 263. '•• Op. cit., III, 8 = OC, IV, 30. '•' op. cit., I, 2 - OC, I, 223. "’ op. cit., I,1 = OC, I, 191.

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"', he himself shows himself to be very suspicious of the human willingness to fill in the gaps in one's own knowledge at the expense of one's own interests. If ignorance can be a source of error, repression can also be a source of ignorance. And if selfish perspectiveism — no matter whether consciously or not - is such a significant cause of ignorance, then one can expect its taming through new (though not non-binding or academic) knowledge and insights in a more meaningful way. In reality, Helvétius has no other logical way out than that of an educational dictatorship, to whose ideological underpinning he is committed Sdiritt does this by making the distinction between "true" and supposed "interest", whereby it goes without saying who has to decide on this: the "reasonable" legislator. The normativist concept of education is therefore activist and more tailored to the educator. Hel vétius madit also uses a different concept of education, which could be applied to any previous society, since it means - nonjudgmentally - the shaping of one's diligent behavior or judgment through the entire life circumstances that affect the sensibilities. Helvétius knows that education in this sense has always been omnipotent - in order to conclude from this that future education, which is tasked with normative tasks, can, should and must be omnipotent. From the empirical determination of the all-round social roots of of the individual, this necessarily results in the all-encompassing character of the future educational dictatorship. This is not to say that Helvétius was totalitarian in the modern sense, he did quite the opposite. But we must realize this extreme possibility of his educational ideal, in order to show it that even its realization would in no way guarantee the fulfillment of the normative tasks of education. For, as Marx asked, who should educate the educator? Why should the human engineer escape the vicious circle of perspectivist thinking and, as a legislator, be able to regulate society in such a way that that this would not benefit any particular interest at the expense of others? Himself

his subjectively honest concern for the general good would not be able to prevent the objective enforcement of special interests, precisely because the rationalization of unconscious motives so subtly developed by Helvétius ( nous ignorons souvent nous-memes les motifs qui nous deter-

'^

op. eit., I, 3 = OC, I, 224 f.

'” On the contradiction between the two concepts of interest, see the comments comments from Plekhanov, contributions, 133 ff. '°• Esprit, IV, 17 = OC, VI, 181 ff. '•° His distrust of the absolutist state is described by Cumming, Helvetius, 228 ff. Cf. Meanwhile, his comments on the primary role of education in the mindset and politics of modern totalitarianism, 172 ff.

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minent' " 7) would work no differently on him than on his subjects. Approached from outside, the educator faces the same difficulties as those to be educated — and the difficulties of both lie in Helvétius' ambiguity. It also shows itself when he gives two different definitions of justice. In the empirical and genetic sense, righteousness as a modus vivendi in society has the exclusive effect of 'sensibilité physique' (pleasure-displeasure) and interet personel' '. In the normative sense, honesty should consist in the willingness to (partially) renounce the misleading close personal interest with B1i& on the 'bien public' ignored, it is just as little clear that the transition from one concept of fairness to the other, and thus also from the empirical to the normative concept of education, cannot be made without a revision of its epistemological starting position recognize only what is real, not what is possible. The individual, as legislator or subject, can hardly know what the common good is if it is not actually realized; if this is not the case, he is aware of it through the comparing operations of the The idea of the common good that arises through judgment is related to one's own feeling or interest, ie they interpret it in accordance with the content. Without the anticipatory activity of an independent intellect, education can only impart what is empirically given, but not change it; it continues to remain a111al only in its empirical sense. So it was no coincidence that Helvétius' enlightened critics, Diderot no less than Rousseau, saw the greatest danger for the attainment of the normative goals he had set himself as lying behind the intellect.

Helvétius' theoretical embarrassment is evident in his diagnosis of social evil and in his reform proposals. Here he reverses the order of being and consciousness, or of feeling and judgment, which was according to him, and introduces the subjective factor or the subjective will, whose freedom he only recognizes in Hobbes' nominalist sense. , come to the fore. Just as the cause of evil lies in the sinful intentions and selfish behavior of those who serve the master, so too salvation is found in the enlightenment of human understanding." The logical impossibility of making progress in a normative direction using purely materialistic means forces, in my view, the assumption of an active or determined

'•' Esprit, II, 2 = OC, II, 14. '

• Op. cit., III, 4 = OC, III, 218. '•• Op. cit., II, 6 = OC, II, 73 f. '•• op. cit., I, 4 = OC, I, 276 f. '•' Op. cit., II, 23, 24 OC, III, 100 f., 113.

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divisive will and understanding. On the one hand, the materialists deny innate ideas and reduce thought to physical and social being, but on the other hand they emphasize the primacy of ideas — no matter whether in the form of superstition or reason—in history '^. In order to be able to remain politically and normatively active, they have to put up with a contradiction, and if they are not aware of it, then again only because the polemics and consequences overwhelm the logic: both their materialism and their scale of values are equally opposed theology, although they stand in contradiction to one another. In Holbadi this contradiction is nodi clearer than in Helvétius and takes on its equally classical form. The dissolution of the intellect and free will, which took place in Helvétius within a predominantly epistemological framework and could thus be passed off as good Lo‹:keanism (especially since Helvétius acknowledged the unknowability of the thing with Lo&e

sidi or matter, etc.), now appears in Holbadi against an impressive oncological background and thus acquires a very special weight. By presenting the materialist and deterministic view of being in a systematised way, Holbadl himself offers a standard that can also be viewed from the outside for assessing the logical stability of his moral philosophy more precisely: the transition from natural to moral philosophy; because Hol badi himself wants to bring about this transition, that is, he wants to justify his moral philosophy through his ontology and thereby make it irrefutable '•°. In contrast to La Mettrie, Holbadi sees (“true”) morality as a continuation and not as a denial of nature. It is all the more striking that he, this time in agreement with La Mettrie, asserts the moralis, the colorlessness of nature. By opposing any personification of nature, he grasps it strictly causally and denies the existence of good and evil in it. However, the ontological monopoly of nature must also be completely nature, etre purement physique , namely in the above-mentioned value-free sense, so that the distinction between the two is homme moral' and phomme physique' are omitted "'. From his value-free natural determination, Holbadi can also torture, man is by nature neither good nor evil "', he has no ideas innate, and therefore no morals '••. Holbadi believes that he can free man from original sin

'°° Pledianow, Monistisdie Gesdii&tsauf., 18 ff., contributions 67 ff. '^ Syst. de la Nat., I, 211; cf. Tender. Univ. I, 1. '°• Syst. from Nat. I, 76 f. '^ loc. eit., 71. '•• lock. go., 67. '•' lock. it., 219. '^" loc. eit., 237 f.

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can; But since he eliminates the normative aspect of nature - and that means: evil as well as good - only with the help of an all-encompassing causality, the liberation of humanity must correspond to his complete submission to this same causality. The paradox arises that in order to open the way to a new moral creation ex nihilo or a new moral philosophy, Holbadi must eliminate the normative and free will a limine. The man is not free at any moment of his life, he says "'; and the freedom of choice does not mean freedom of the will, since one can determine one's own goals but not one's own motives"'. According to his naturalistic principles, Holbad attributes man's lack of freedom to his physical condition. The »qualités morales ... sont dues Ä des causes materias' "'; pnotre organization ne dépend point de nous, nos idées nous viennent involontairement ... nous sommes bien ou mal, hereux ou malhereux, sages ou insensés, raisonnables ou déraisonnables , sans que notre volonté entre pour rien dans ces différens états' '^. Since nature is uniform in its laws, but not in its products, as the diversity of the world testifies, the case is that of two completely similar people, thus audi two completely consistent ways of thinking "'. The situation in the field of ideas and opinions must appear even more unambiguous when one considers that one and the same cause affects the same individual in different ways and that therefore all individuals move at the same time in different ways.

The extreme perspectivism here results directly from the rigor and consistency of the concept of causality. Holbadi does not want to deny this connection , but he believes he is able to design a universal morality on the basis of perspectives and causalities that should be common to all human beings. The instinct of self-preservation and the striving for happiness form the two pillars of the new morality, by establishing the common perspective of all people. But even if one admits this, individuals can only agree that there is a morality must, but not co ipso about it, has to be considered moralisdi. The generally humane perspective only results in the fact that, the decisive what remains left —, to the personal perspective of each individual and Holbadi himself had shown how much one deviates from the other or "° loc. cit., 276. ° place cit., 269. "' loc. cit., 196, cf. 191. =• place cit., 259. '" loc. cit., 188 f., 252 ff. '* loc. cix, 387.

"• loc. cit., 282.

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must be unstable in sidi. An expansion or stabilization of the personal perspective with consideration of that of the fellow human being, that is, of the common good, is indeed acceptable in Holbadi's sense, but he cannot accept it without the lack of freedom of the will and the dependence of the thinking on the biological condition, at least in part to reveal; In fact, the role of reflection is particularly emphasized in his analysis of the concept of virtue. In fact, self-love is only the counterpart of blind physical forces (such as attraction or inertia) in natural human beings, so it is not even capable of sacrificing short-term enjoyment in favor of long-term enjoyment . Holbadi has to impoverish reason all the more because he - knowing that he is in possession of the only effective recipe for moral philosophy - wants to set up a morality that is not a convention, but should be valid always and everywhere. Significantly, he only points out the different physical and mentalities of people when he wants to explain the diversity of superstitious doctrines, but he does not agree with the diversity of morals, which would to some extent impair his dream of the one eternal morality sparsely passed, and in spite of this, he remains the least historically minded among the prominent Enlightenment thinkers. This is not only due to his preference for materialist ontology, but also paradoxically -

just as much in its strange, over-historical normativism, which is intended to mitigate or eliminate the fatalistic consequences of that ontology. Incidentally, this normativism inspired his implacable criticism of religion as well as his thesis that misunderstanding or non-observance of nature is guilty of human suffering The author is unfounded. In order to find the guilty, Holbadi breaks

the iron ring of natural law, and he does this to create hope. Following the same line of thought, he gets into the same logical contradiction as Helvétius, in that he takes the reasonable legislator out of the vicious circle of determinism and expects great things from him '•' J • more his argument to inspire his confidence "°

Mor. Univ., I, 73 f.

"' System of the Nat., I, 115. "® "°

on. cit., I, 204; II, 278. on. cit., I, 255.

'°• place. cit., 9. ' ®' Mor. Univ., II, 31 ff. The same logical contradiction in Helvétius and Hol badi is noted by Lough (Helvétius and Ho1ba&, 372, 383), who also points out the largely similar attitude of both thinkers towards ontology, anthropology, knowledge theorizing and Elaborate on politics and issues . Ladd emphasizes the commonality of their political views , whose epistemology and anthropological presuppositions he also points out (Helvétius and d'Ho1ba&, 222 f.). cf. Wolgin, Social Diaft Theories, 106 ff., 138 ff.

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the more the gap between the morale universale and the causal condition of man becomes unbridgeable. It allows one to imagine how strong the desire to eliminate the nihilism verdadit had to be, so that the inconsistencies could simply be overlooked. Understandably, he reinforced it every time an enlightener gave the theologians welcome arguments. Already in La Mettrie they found everything that they had always presented as the necessary consequences of the new ideas presented bluntly. Redit understood the early warning to mean that it was impossible for theology to be defeated as long as the Enlightenment was in the era of anarchy amoralism stood. The extraordinary violence with which La Mettrie was attacked by the leading enlighteners shows how sensitive this place actually was. Materialists in particular used expressions against him that hardly fell short of the theologians in terms of severity - because they were precisely the ones who most desperately needed an alibi. Nadi Holbadi argues La Mettrie in the Moral philosophie comme un vrai frenétique' "', while Diderot vociferously denounced his sophismes grossiers, mais dangereux', his diaos de raison et d'extravagance' etc. etc. '*. Soldi nadidrü ‹: the distance was sufficient, especially since theologians were generally willing and able

'^ Pledianow, posts, 42. Rhnlidi Neumann, 122 ff., 113 f. Neumann sums up the Marxist criticism of the Me&anicist' Ho1ba& in the remark that this only concerns the physical, not the physical and practical aspect of consciousness-raising. On the other hand, however, Neumann has nothing to object to the theory of the all-round determination of man by objective lawfulness. Should the desired consideration of practice only mean the supplementation of the causes physiques through the 'causes morales'? However, Montesquieu's example has shown us that this is by no means sufficient to avoid determinism (see above, Chapter VI, Para. 4 d). The Marxist criticism of the alleged Me‹:hanicists serves more to demonstrate the superiority of dialectical materialism than to solve the problem logically — more precisely: the assumption of that superiority is supposed to be a co ipso solution to the problem: a classical petitio principii. — Mens‹:hing also draws attention to the fundamental contradiction in Holba&'s thinking (Totality and Autonomy, 81 ff.), but on the other hand he believes that the contradiction could still be solved on a materialistic basis. However, he does not offer such a solution, but instead quotes the emancipatory statements of the materialists (only La Mettrie is considered imperfectly li‹:h, 199). The question, however, is not whether such statements can be made, but whether they can be reconciled with materialistic oncology across the board. Confusing intentions with services is not permitted here. Mens&ing's account of Diderot (94 ff.) is too selective or obcrf1ä&lid1 to be regarded as evidence of a successful synthesis of materialism and ethics. '^ Falvey, Introduction, 87 ff.; Vartanian, Men of Medina, 252 ff. '•• Syst. from Nat., II, 366 Anm. '^ Essay on the reigns of Claudius and Nero, OC, III, 217.

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were to durdisdiaue the internal contradictions of Holbadi's system '*•. All of this should, at least in the short term, make Voltaire's strategic concept right . From the beginning he had defended himself against materialist tendencies and combined his criticism of La Mettrie's oncology with a clear rejection of value nihilism et les ‹:haines de la vertu', s‹:he drives arn 27. 1. 1752 "', and about the same‹:the same time he polemicizes indirectly against La Mettrie's AntiSenéque' in his Poüme sur la loi naturelle " '. In his attitude toward the materialists, Voltaire was guided not only by fundamental considerations, but at least as much by tactical considerations. He absolutely wanted to avoid 'une guerre civile entre les incrédules', and that's why he was ready to make concessions; However , his relations with the circle of Diderot and Holbadi have worsened, especially after d'Alembert left the Encyclopedia, especially since the metaphysical differences were closely connected with politis:den: even of his loyal d'Alembert, si& Voltaire had to put up with the reproach that he maintained too close relations with the 'grands'. Vol taire reacted by continuing to keep his distance from Diderot's materialism "and beyond that Holbadi's attack against Christianity as Zeidien anar diistis‹:der po1itis‹:der Verführung "'. Shortly na‹:h Ers‹:none von Holba‹:Es main work he wrote: gcc maudit systems de la nature a fait un mal irreparable' '* In the same sense he commented on Helvétius' posthumes Plant De l'Homme ”'. The name of Helvétius does not only arouse fears for the future, but also sdimerzli the memories of the past, and not only with Voltaire. The vortex that the Budi De I'Esprit had triggered in the years 1758-1759 indirectly also caused the ban on the encyclopedia, since the theological opponents of the Enlightenment did not fail to lump everything together".

' 8• Palmer, Catholics and Unbelierers, 189 ff., 215 f.; Cro&er, Age of Crisis, 28. ' ®' Perkins, Voltaire and La Mettrie, 105 f.,109.

'^ Letter to Ri&eiien, OC, XXXVII, 363. ' 8• Crowley, Voltaires Poème, 186. '^ Letter to Alembert from 27 July 1770 = OC, XLVII,153. '^' This combination of metaphysics and politics aspects of the dispute has been explained very well by Pappas, Voltaire et la guerre civile philosophique, especially 527 ff.; detailed in: Voltaire and D'Alembert, especially 20 ff., 81 ff. t•• Torrey, Voltaire's Reaction to Diderot,1127 ff. '°° Letter to Mme de Saint-Julien from 15. 12. 1766 = OC, XLIV, 534 f. '°* Letter to Grimm of October 10, 1770 - OC, XLVII, 219, cf. 210 (letter to Chabanon dated September 28, 1770).

°'^ Letter to Alembert from 16. 6.1773 = OC, XLVIII, 399. '•• Smith, Helvétius, 1s0 ff. About the events of the dispute about the Budi of Hel-

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Real violence was probably the popularity that the anti-Enlightenment arguments gained at the time, not least because of the success of Palissot's comedy 'Les Philosophes', which arose during the controversy over Helvétius and attacked him directly.' In its coarseness, Palissot's basic thesis struck a chord with the sensitive nerve of the Enlightenment - and also with Sadie: the sensualist Moral relativism based on the basis can only be interpreted logically and by the people to the effect that everything is permitted if it is only in the interest of the person concerned. The nourishment that Helvétius gave to the verdadit of nihilism, with such tangible consequences, may make it understandable why he became an unpopular martyr among the Enlightenment thinkers. Despite theoretical and political differences from Voltaire (which, incidentally, were due to his reverence for the patriarch (which were not articulated in public), the materialists had to at least give him credit on the question of the tactical advantages of normativism - regardless of its logical and substantive justification, which was tied more to the basic attitude than to the tactics - as was the sharpness of theirs Polemics against La Mettrie attested. From a conceptual structural point of view, it remains important that, just as nihilism was rooted in the materialistic radicalization of the rehabilitation of sensuality, every refutation of it had to bring with it at least a partial return to the secure moral leadership of reason. Without being aware of this To be conscious, Helvétius and Holbach did the same by establishing their ontology, the order of material Reversing being and consciousness, placing their hopes in the one-sided legislator or educator. But that return is a truly symbolic one Act when it takes place openly and with a thinker as sensitive to the big picture as Diderot - and in line with Rousseau, the bitter enemy of materialism. With the deterministic implications of sensualist epistemology in mind, Rousseau, against Helvétius, takes freedom of will and thus the possibility of morality in Sdiutz by asserting the distinction between "sentir" and "juger" as well as the self-activity of the latter "'. If now Diderot says that Rousseau's principles are wrong, but his conclusions are right, while the exact opposite is true for Helvétius, then he vividly presents his own dilemma

rttius and the same po1emis&en Flugs‹3iriften, ibid. 11—91. cf. Keim, Helvetius , 319-423. '•' Freud, Palissot et les Philosophers, insb. 111 ff., 14o f. '°® The Philosophers, II, 1, insb. etc. 441 ff. = pp. 22 ff. '•• Smith, Helvétius, 157 ff. °°° See the detailed text comparison by Sdiinx, La Profession de foi ... et le livre De l'Esprit, 242 ff.; cf. the additions and objections of Masson, Rousseau contre Helv., 104 ff., Hz ff. °°' Rtfutation, OC, II, 316.

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the term, although it only aims to outline the synthesis that it is to achieve or has achieved. For it asks whether Rousseau's conclusions would have been possible without his dualistic principle or whether his sharp distinction between "sentir' and juger" is a principle or conclusion. After all, Diderot, like Rousseau, denies the identification of "sentir" and "juger" even less, and goes a step further when he emphasizes the distinction du physique et du moral ,

"It is also solid, the cell of the animal is sent and the animal is reasoned." However, he never questions the supremacy of nature, because this time he wants to expressly incorporate reason into the nature of mankind and in it he saw the specific difference between humans and animals. His thesis that "sensibilité physique" is a prerequisite, not the goal or motive of actions "'*, aims to relieve reason from the pressure of the drives. If self-love is no longer the only motive for action "', there is room for altruistisdimoralisdie Dispositions in the human psychology are free and thus also for the innate feeling of redit, which precedes and underlies positive legislation "'.

In response to this natural principle, Diderot questions the universality of education and relativizes the influence of the environment on character. Because he knows that the thesis of omnipotent education and that of the arbitrary modifiability of morality belong together. Audi Hol Badi took a stand against Helvétius on this point "', and in doing so he did not merely want to confirm the ontological inviolability of nature, but also wanted to preserve intact those natural dispositions in humanity that were supposed to underpin the 'moral universal'. Holbadi defends ma W. the continuity of nature and morality against their nihilist opposition, which suggested Helvétius' position. Nothing different from Diderot. For him, the rejection of the omnipotence of education also has an additional advantage: the reference to the (extensive) Dependence of spiritual gifts on the causes purement physiques' "' gives him the feeling of staying true to his materialistic basic attitude - i.e. not having to abandon the same attitude because he is strongly committed to raison and natural law in the same text. Diderot's two positions but had been presented in two different contexts, and they turned

”'

place. cit., 303.

'°° place. cit., 312, 323. •°• place. cit., 304 f. ^' place. cit., 304. ’°°

place. cit., 355, 388, 396.

place. cit., 356, 369. ’°'

Mor. Univ. I, 11 Anm.; III, 53 ff.

’•• Refutation, OC, II, 369, 334 ff., 405 f.

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against two 1ogis‹:h heterogeneous aspects of Helvétius' thinking. Whether they can be reconciled with one another remains a problem, the solution of which the unanimous taking of sides is not enough for both of them — on the contrary, it raises the problem in the first place. Diderot believes in theoretical security by including reason by definition in human nature or matter, ie their rooting in the biological nature of the human species assumes "'. However, the dependence of the reason of the individual on his individual biostructure is hardly acknowledged. Diderot Ma‹:lit the bio1ogis‹:he nature or the reason of the genus as the basis of his natural-right considerations and the biological nature or the reason of the individual as the main argument against the omnipotence of education - without thinking of the possibility that the contents of the reason of the individuals could deviate so much from each other precisely because of their biological conditionality that the natural redit suggested by the collective reason no longer had any substantive connection. From the that follows sidi no‹:h ni‹:lit the what, therefore au‹:h relativism is nodi nidit overcome. The importance of this point of view can be seen from the fact that Diderot Even a few years earlier, his skepticism against universal morality had been based on reference to the special biological characteristics of each individual. If we want to base morality on the criterion of the biological nature of the species , he argued at the time, then we must also base this general morality on the biologis ‹:he heterogeneity of individuals and groups into several moralities "'. In general su‹:lit Diderot Helvétius' sensualistis‹:hem determinism dur‹:li to avoid the classification of a multitude of new factors in the chain of causality, so that it can become longer and thus more flexible; the »sentir« is also the last instance for him, but between him and the »agir' there are said to be several motifs immediate' "•. The ambiguity remains, however‹:h, this time on a higher level, Diderot only postpones the answer to the basic question about the relationships between "sentir" and "juger" when he says that the latter has nothing to do with the senses, but only with the brain"': because how behaves si‹:li the ability to judge the possession of the brain or to what extent can its autonomy actually assert itself against material factors? Playing off the brain against the senses is of very little theoretical gain in view of this central aporia. Therefore, the assumption must also appear misleading that Diderot succeeds in solving the problem of moral philosophy or in refuting nihilism on the basis of

•'° place. cit., 312, 323.

"'Salon of 1767, OC, XI, 124.

"• Rtfutation, OC, II, 302. •'• place. cit., 318.

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of a highly developed, differentiated materialism •t •. It is an optical deception to consider the dilution of Diderot's materialism under the pressure of Nihilisnius Vera as a perfection of this same materialism that enables the solution of the value problem. A long struggle in Diderot's thinking finds its tired and actually only temporary solution in this dilution of his materialism - which can certainly not be seen as a rejection of him; because the last word was never spoken.

This inner struggle began with Diderot's transition from deism to atheism, namely the harmony of God, world and humanity that Shaftesbury's admirer envisioned in the Stout est bien' "' with regard to the elementary statement of the madness of the evil one in the world fell apart 't '. Audi the God of the deist Diderot had hardly any points of contact with the "unmensdilidian" God of established Christianity; the paralyzing effect of the unrestricted optimism in the polemics against theology and church "' led to his abandonment . The pessimism raised against Christianity goes hand in hand with the complete subjugation of man to natural causality, i.e. with a deterministic approach, to which Diderot confessed as early as 1756: le mot liberté est un mot vide de sens ' , so there are no objectively praiseworthy or blameworthy actions. The turn of Diderou, this anti-Christian thinker par excellence, must be explained by the increase in polemics against Christianity. The new biology confirmed him in this, but did not prompt him to do so °'. After all, his determinism takes on its darkest contours when dealing with biological and physiological questions, while, conversely, in texts like the Réfutation you can understandably see a departure from pure materialist biologism . In the Elements de Physiology it is stated clearly: Lil n'y a rien de libre dans les operations intel-

"' Thus Perkins treats the arigeblidi dynamisdieri character of Diderot's materialism in relation to La Mettrie's supposed me&anicism as the reason for the difference in the moralphilosophical attitude of the two thinkers (Diderot et la Mettrie, 70 ff., 81 f.). " Venturi, jeunesse de Diderot, 83 ff., 116 ff., 144 ff.; Sdilegel, Shaftesbury and the Frendi Deists, 43 ff. °'° Roger, Deism of young Diderot, 243 f. "' S. o., Chap. VI, Absdin. 5. "' Brief an Landois vom 29. 6. 1756 = OC, XIX, 435 f. 't' Proust, Diderot and the Encyclopedia, 295 ff. "° As Vartanian thinks, From Deist to Atheist, 53 f., 55 f., 6o f. ^*

Mayer, Diderot, 284, 326 f. •^ Roger, Life Sciences, 669 ff.

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lectuelles' "", connection and order of thoughts are just as necessary as the causal processes in lifeless objects "'. There can be no question of the soul's independent activity -". Since the determioist Diderot subsumes vice and virtue under the pursuit of happiness as equally possible modifications of it'^, he must represent a purely utilitarian morality in which redit and injustice function as 'pures affaires de convention''^. The ontological justification of this moral philosophy is that in nature there is no such thing as good and bad, beautiful and ugly, only what is necessary '-'. Diderot rebelled against Christianity as a humanist and moralist. And the paradox of his situation - which was at the same time the paradox of the Enlightenment in toto - consisted in the fact that it was precisely in the pursuit of an anti-Christian humanism that he became a determinist. But the humanist in him continues to regard virtue as the most outrageous thing in this world." Diderot certainly knew that value nihilism had no chance against theology, but for him morality was not just a tactical necessity, but rather a necessity of the heart. He therefore cannot accept the idea that man is inherently evil or a toy in the hands of necessity '•'; rather, his moral state is determined by education and legislation '^. Confidence in human reason shimmers throughout when Diderot considers ignorance to be la mere de toutes nos erreurs' in order to play the role of Enlightenment as the emaricipation of ignorance should be appropriately appreciated "'. Despite all the sympathetic treatment of Hobbes' person and theories in the relevant article in the encyclopedia '^ and despite serious consideration of self-love as a motive for human action, he in no way wants to identify with the anthropology of the disgraced Englishman '^. Nor does he want to give the nominalism of the Hobbesians a view of honesty.

**°

IX, 379.

°•• lock. it., 372. ^• loc. eit., 377, 223 (cf. Reve d'Alembert, OC, II, 175 f.). ^• lock. it., 352. Introd. to the Great Principles, OC, II, 85 Anm., 78. •^ Encyclopedia, Art. Ugliness = OC, XV, 410, cf. Brief an S. Volland vom 31. 7.

1762 = Corr. IV, 84 f. •'° Letter to N ... from the end of 1757 = OC, XIX, 449. ^• Letter to Voltaire from 29 September 1762 = OC, XIX, 464. ^' Letter to S. Volland dated October 26, 1760 = Gorr., III, 195 f. (almost a year later he claims the opposite for the same reason, letter to S. Volland dated September 28th.

1761 = Corr., III, 319 f.). *°° Letter to S. Volland dated November 3, 1760 - OC, XIX, 7. '^^ Letter to S. Volland dated September 22, 1761 Gorr., III, 312 f.

OC, XIV, 94 ff. •^ Thielemann, Diderot and Hobbes, 229ff.

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follow the solution without further ado; With some terminological reservations, he rather gives preference to Grotius. On the other hand, however, he can understand the inner logic of the nihilistic position so well and make it so much his own that that he is not satisfied with simply confronting her, with sovereign naivety, with the traditional natural-law platitudes, which for him were very often problematic or only a refuge in times of need. In the encyclopedia's article 'Droit Naturel' he therefore takes a different path and tries to defeat nihilism with his own weapons or to achieve a harmonization of deterministic and normative views. What can be said and done against someone who, invoking the lack of freedom of their own will, declares that they must harm others in their search for luck? Diderot's answer is: the will of the individual is suspect, the general will infallible, so the former must bow to the latter, or else it deserves to be easily annihilated'.' The general interest retains Ma W. over the particular the absolute priority, but basically it is about a conflict of interests in which of course the interests of the stronger, namely the general public, must prevail; the stronger becomes eo ipso the representative of morality. Natural law has no normative transcendence here, it only forms the (indeterminate in terms of content) epitome of what protects the general interest ^". La Mettrie had basically said the same thing when he asked the criminal to consider the necessity, even reasonableness, of closing him to see the expected annihilation '^. By destroying the idea of natural law at the very moment when he is about to defend it, Diderot allows himself to be constantly vacillating between determinism and morality or, as he says himself, between what his head approved of and what his heart demanded . ', appear solemnly. The vacillation was inevitable, the contradiction insurmountable. Diderot's greatness as a thinker must therefore not be sought in the realization of the impossible , but lies precisely in the fact that he did not possess Rousseau's talent for logical difficulties ignore them but, unlike most scouts, was able to become aware of them and fight them incessantly and headon"'. Even more: he was able to master them, if not logically, at least artistically, that is, objectify them in literature, gain distance from them and thus relieve himself psychologically in artistic creation"'. The first of these great objectivations was Le Neveu du Ra-

"' Enzyklopädie, Art.Juste — OC, XV, 40t f. "' OC, XIV, 298 ff. Cf. Cro&er, Nature and Culture, 56. ^" See above, paragraph n. 3 of this chapter.

°•° Mornet, Diderot, 57. "' Be&er, The Dilemma of Diderot, 63, 71. Fabre, Introduction, 63 ff.

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meau', in which the hero represents all the positions of value nihilism known to us. But it is not the abstract logic of the argument in its consequence, but the essence of its representative in its contradictory nature that gives here and therein lies the artistic achievement — an explanation of nihilism as Diderot's personal problem. As a pure nihilist, however, Diderot would no longer be Diderot, but Rameau, and precisely because of this he can distance himself, as Diderot, from Rameau — but at the same time find spiritual characteristics in him that Diderot himself his own penchant for nihilism: the pathos of truth and analytical power. However, as a nihilist, Diderot cannot appear in the guise of a sad criminal, and Rameau is not a soldier. He must be cynical, since he does not accept noble motives - Nevertheless, because of his will to be honest, he can leave the impression of a moral person; He is incapable of closer personal relationships because he sees the medianisms of self-love at work everywhere nevertheless he comes across as sympathetic and reliable; he has to behave as an oddball, since he has detached himself from the prevailing views - nevertheless he only comes across as ridiculous if you look at it casually and can even claim a higher level of seriousness for himself. Denno‹:h all these positive characteristics do not let any real mendilidie warmth arise. Rameau has something of the coldness of a moralistic monster, of a creature created according to the recipes of materialistic physiology in the laboratory. Therefore he is unassailable in every respect - but in the end he can only be so because he - as ens rationis materialisticae that he is — to present his view of life in a salon or during a walk, not to practice it outside of his narrow personal life. Diderot builds on this in his second major artistic objectification of the problem of nihilism. The fatalist Jacques is much more humane and much more vulnerable than Rameau. Because he has to confront his deterministic theory with practice at every step , he has to act himself - and he is doing it behave willy-nilly as if he believed in free will; He must react positively and negatively, approve and disapprove - as if there were fixed norms and universally applicable standards. Jacques sees his own inconsistency and is annoyed by it, but there is no other way for him to proceed or live. In •Jacques' does not address the philosophical question raised any more than in “Rameau' logisdi enudiieden, but the comparison of the two shows what Diderot was in

extremis to be the A‹:hilles heel of nihilism. He knew, of course, that the practical impracticability of nihilism could not be taken as proof of its logical untenability. —

"° Hill, Le Monstre” in Diderots Thought, 223 ff.

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Particular aspects of the German Enlightenment

1. General remark According to its title, this chapter does not want to offer an exhaustive presentation, but rather a conceptual-structural analysis of some aspects of the German Enlightenment. Everything that can be grasped with the help of the conceptual structures of mental structure and logic that we have worked out so far will not concern us further here. First among them are the various forms of eclecticism and popular philosophy, which are bound to the dualism of swaying, in that asceticism is left aside, but sensuality is extremely cautiously rehabilitated, while deism is encouraged, but anxiously kept close to theism '. Also to be excluded are analogous processes in the field of epistemology, where it is above all English empiricism that is gaining ground, but before the moral-philosophically indispensable self-activity of reason must be avoided, or in the indispensible field of new psychology, where modern insight is found in the role of psychological sensuality or the passions as well as in the interweaving of body life and psydiism even in southern materialistic approaches saws down, but a clear separation between the upper and lower faculties - again with reference to the moral-philosophical implications has the upper hand'. If one only considers the dualist mental structure, one could fall into the temptation of considering the German Enlightenment to be a mere part of a European movement with uniform content, whose program then largely comes from the commonplaces of the (very) moderate ones (at least impressively represented in statistical terms). ) enlightenment ridicule would exist. However, this would impermissibly obscure the information

'

In the moral magazines the popular philosophical positions appear very clearly; one could even claim that the latter are the philosophical sublimation of the mood that carried the moral magazines. On the dualistic moral philosophy in the latter, see Martens, The Message of Virtue, 231 ff., 264 ff. Cf. Wolff, Weltanscll. i.e. German Enlightenment, 69 ff. How Mendelssohn mixed Wolff, Lu&e and Hutcheson together in his moral philosophy, Ammann, Mendelssohn's Early Writings, 350 ff., 372 ff. '

Delicate, Influence of English Philosophy, 88 ff.

° Dessoir, business i.e. newer German Psy&ol. 210 ff., 249 ff., 400 ff.; Günther, Science of Man, 68 ff.

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unity and thus trivialize precisely those aspects of it against the background of which the genius positions of the moderates express their specificity Coloring preserved. The lukewarm rehabilitation of sensuality through German popular philosophy must, in terms of the overall intellectual spectrum, be classified differently than similar initial ideas in France, where the rehabilitation of sensuality in some cases increases to the point of materialism or even nihilism. It is precisely the lack of such approaches that is striking in the German Enlightenment '; There is no such thing as a German Toland, Mandeville or even Hume, and there is no such thing as a German La Mettrie or Hol badi, while at the same time Western freethinking meets with more or less general rejection. However, this can in no way be attributed to the stabilizing effect of popular philosophy in its plastic ambivalence, especially when one considers that the platitudes of the moderates in Western Europe tend to isolate materialism and nihilism, but not to prevent it. Their absence in the German Enlightenment therefore does not simply mean the absence of a moment, ceteris paribus, but rather it is due to the effective presence of other moments that are not present in the Western European Enlightenment and which cannot yet be identified.

The flip side or necessary correlate of the lack of materialism and nihilism in the German Enlightenment can undoubtedly be described as its livelier relationship to religion and the latter even as its specific feature. no'. However, this should not be understood as if Enlightenment and (ecclesiastically organized) religion formed two more or less clearly separated entities which, thanks to mutual concessions, would have found a better modus vivendi with each other than, for example, in France. It is much more a question of an insult that extends to broad and important areas — if by no means all of them. In order to ter-

• Marxist-Leninists who, for obvious reasons, strive to prove a materialist current in the German Enlightenment must appeal to authors who, apart from their intellectual insignificance, are more likely to continue the tradition of the mystical pantheism of the Renaissance than to represent enlightened materialism; see Stiehler (ed.), Gesch. of the pre-marxist. Materialism, passim. The authors of the contributions also have to admit from time to time that Wagner or Lau, for example. B. were not atheists (87 f., 166 ff.). ^ Vartanian, Homme Ma&ine, 95 ff.; Fabian, Reception of Mandeville, 704 ff., 713 ff.; Krauss (ed.), The French. Enlightenment, 21, 24, 31 ff., 102 ff.; Lie tenstein, Gott sched's edition of Bayles Dictionnaire, 50 ff.; Korff, Voltaire in literary Germany, 164 ff., 260 ff., 410 ff.; Mortier, Diderot in Germany, 125 ff., 140 ff., 292 ff.; Schalk, Impact of Diderot's encyclopedia, in: Studies 142 ff.; Naumann, Systems de la Nature in the German Enlightenment, 1st part 66 ff. and 2nd part 81 ff.; Liepe, Freigeist, 15 ff.; Boy, reception, especially 111 ff., 142 ff., 149 ff., 155 ff., 167 ff. ° Holborn, German idealism, 369 f.

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General remark

minologisd sid tbar to make, recommends to put the religious in the place of religion' in the very general sense of the assumption of an ontologically given and also conscious connection of the human being to the transcendent god. Lutheranism at least indirectly suggested and promoted the disintegration of (kirdilidly organised) religion and the religious ', even if it did so in the course of the 17th century ,

If the stabilized Lutheran orthodoxy tried to force the latter under its spell again and thus bring it under control, one could continue to evade it by appealing to Lutheranism itself - that is, without falling into heresy and even less irreligiosity: Pietism is itself in its most extreme anti-Irdilid forms arose on Lutheran soil, and remained at least according to its self-image. In contrast, Catholicism identified Kirdilid controlled and defined religion and (Red te') religiosity in general. However, the anti-theologian Enlightenment thinkers were able to interpret this as a negative confirmation of their own religious beliefs, the supporters of a freer religiosity but only the way to heresy and worship remained open, while for others this same rigid attitude of the church drove the enlightened movement to such a radical level that the not entirely secularized piety of the heart also found no proper place within it could. The bull 'Uni genitus' did not only affect the Jansenists, but condemned other more or less related currents to extensive social ineffectiveness and thus drove them further into warming up. The development in Germany was essentially different, where free religiosity (if it only remained religiosity) did not first have to be legitimized, but could become a reservoir for new reformatory tendencies. By channeling these in a religious sense, the radical trait of free religiosity sidi freilidi strengthened, but their transcendent aspect dulled radicalism to a certain extent. This and psy&o1ogisdi not unpleasant combination could provide the basis for tolerable compromises.

The dilution of Protestantism and religiosity and enlightenment did not simply mean an undermining of the latter by this or the assimilation of the latter against this . It did not arise - or not primarily - from the clearly defined good will or "open mind" of German spirituality, but, firstly, from the aforementioned discrepancy between the religious and the religious, which lay in the anti-papal affect of Lutheranism , and, secondly, from the suitability of the secular teachings of Protestantism (in contrast to the Catholic ones ) for the ideological control or legitimation of civil activity - although it must be noted that Lutheranism is the Abson

7

®

Troeltsdl, Protestantism and the modern world, in: Ges. Schr. IV, 215 ff. Valjaree, Gesdl. the evening Enlightenment, 173, cf. 151, 187.

° Groethu3•sen, Bourgeois approach to the world and life, II, 122 ff., especially 150 ff.

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The change between the spiritual and political spheres had to emphasize that suitability, especially in the eyes of a bourgeoisie that had no politics or did not desire one. Seen in this way, the thesis is correct that the worldview of the German Enlightenment is rooted in the worldly teachings of Protestantism or in contrast to both the sdiolastisdi-speculative sdioul philosophy and to the rococo as the way of life of the nobility, which bourgeois virtues and values (including n& t last of the practical usefulness) opposed to '•. One should also guard against one-sidedness. For Protestantism did not consist only of its worldly teachings, and these in turn did not always put its metaphysical aspects in the shadows. Tellingly, in comparison to English e.g. B. no& always redit conservative German - bourgeois utilitarianism within Wolff's philosophy with social philosophy oncology, or, conversely, he articulated it in pietist & emotional philosophy currents, which are indeed from (Wolf's intellectualist) reason as the bourgeois standard of all things and misunderstood deposed, but they are all the more energetic against the ontological speculations of the (protestant) certainly not inspired by bourgeois Diolasticism was used, whereby the metaphysis gap that arose from its elimination was filled by a new intensification of free-individual religiosity. This is how complicated and contradictory things were before - as we will see in more detail later. If one wanted to stick with sociology, one could blame all of this on the bourgeoisie within a formation that was always predominantly partly classist and partly absolutist, politico-societal. But then it is absolutely necessary to take into account that the issue here is not isolation and ideologically indomitable sectarianism, but rather, since the bourgeoisie wants to remain active within the framework of the existing rules of the game, increased flexibility, including ideology, and thus makes all sorts of ideological combinations possible serve partly to compensate and partly to adjust; It is no less important to note that the ideological laboratory in the Germany of the 1st century vie1fa& oi‹:St the town house, but the parsonage was ". These statements are intended to underline how problematisdi It is to clearly outline a bourgeois ideology based on pure rationalism and utilitarianism and to relate it to certain incorruptible carriers or to clearly demarcate it from the remaining ideological tendencies . Because here the counter-concept, the indispensable negative reference point, such as e.g. B. embodied the catholic church in France. The bourgeois individualism, which found its anthropological and moral-philosophical expression in the Western European Enlightenment, above all in the strongly anti-ascetic theory of self-love

te Wolff, Weltans&. d. deuts&en Aufkl., 14, 24. tt Gerth, citizen. intelligence, 30; Kaiser, From the Enlightenment up to the Srurm and Drang, i8.

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In Germany, it was first and foremost inseparably linked to the freedom of the individual to choose his or her own religious path. If one does not emphasize the difference but rather the commonality, one can say that both the religiously indifferent and the religious individualist belong equally to the Enlightenment. This is precisely why the latter cannot perceive religion and Enlightenment as alternatives. However, this has a very important consequence. The freedom and plasticity of the religious becomes the vagueness of the Enlightenment, but for that very reason it can develop relatively unhindered. In this sense, the Enlightenment in Germany is broader and at the same time fladier than the French With regard to a crucial criterion of our analysis, this means: sensibility is primarily rehabilitated as a dynamic of psydia against the rigidity of the intellect, whereby biological sensibility must be (somewhat) neglected - or else: sensibility is completely rehabilitated and in the same way Breath spiritualizes. Hence the special vitality of German philosophy of feeling and also the possibility of metaphysical syntheses of a special kind.

How forced the reduction of the Enlightenment to bourgeois commonplaces must remain is shown by the tendency of its supporters to describe the Sturm und Drang as an overcoming of the Enlightenment or counter-Enlightenment. " Kantzenbadi, Protest. Christianity, 15. '° Wolff, We1tans&. i.e. German Enlightenment, 229 ff.; He is followed by Be&, German Philosophy, 361 ff. On the contrary, Krauss describes the Sturm-und-Drang movement as the completion of the Enlightenment' (Uber die Konstellation der uts&en Enlightenment, in: Studien, 387). Since he had previously spoken of the uniform bourgeois character of the German Enlightenment' (loc. eit., 313), he should have shown that the Sturm und Drang could only be understood on the basis of bourgeois topoi of pure water . ':hen is. (The same objection can also be raised against Buenzod's statements, which, incidentally, very erroneously assume that the common comparison between the Enlightenment and Sturm und Drang is based on an "opposiiion artificielle entre raison et sensibilité"; the common denominator is found in the principle of bourgeois Individualism , De l'Enkl. au Sturm und Drang, 296, 313.) However, Krauss simply skips over both the consciousness-raising function of Protestant religiosity in the context of the bourgeoisie and the secularization of this religiosity through Sturm und Drang (see below). , because he makes an effort to emphasize the democratic-patriotic aspect of civic worldview and thus to find the analogy to the orthodox Marxist-Leninist S&ema. — Audi Works that appear with philosophical apathy and want to reduce the Enlightenment to their normativist self-image (emancipation of reason, etc.) are no more capable than vulgar Marxism of being able to account for the diversity of intellectually impaired phenomena. A typical example of this is S&neiders', The True Enlightenment, see especially 11 f., 22 f. The author speaks a lot about reason, but he hardly explains why this word was associated with very different contents in the Age of Enlightenment why movements such as Sturm and Drang could have come about, defining the Enlightenment not as reflective reason, but as the effect of feelings.

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It is basically just a new version of that very one-sided - and very old - view of the essence of the Enlightenment, which was in Rousseau

e.g. B. whose opponent or conqueror blew. The misinterpretation does not ultimately result from the aforementioned undervaluation of the constitutional and metaphysical aspects of Protestant religiosity compared to the secular teachings of Protestantism. However, if one keeps an eye on the entire complex in terms of the contradictions of its components and effects as well as the special relevance of the emotional philosophy of the German Enlightenment, then it must be clear that an equally important and unique representative of these aspects, Hamann nämlidi, is one "He was a pioneer of the Sturm und Drang movement." the anthropological pessimism of the old philosophy of feeling, so that the new one can appear under the banner of a confident individualism, within which the enlightened risdi-anti-ascetic rehabilitation of sensuality is carried out to a degree hitherto unknown for the German Enlightenment philosophers: the entire human being should develop and work. So this is no longer or not just the protestant individualism in its closest mixture with the (early) bourgeoisie, but rather the self-confidence and feeling of a young intelligentsia who perceives their emancipation dance in the process of dissolution of the class society and through the glorification of the genius, especially as the artistic and creative personality, theorizes their elitist selfimage. Because of this situation, the prose and narrow-minded world of the bourgeois had to appear unattractive, but on the other hand, the representatives of the movement from the nobility faced criticism; However, since they do not rebel against him in their entirety, but actually gain positive characteristics from them, they behave no differently than the German citizens of the time themselves. Their condescending subjective attitude towards him should therefore not allow them to forget the important objective similarities with him. The secularization of the philosophy of feeling is occurring in Sturm und Drang

The high point, however, was at least two decades earlier due to the appearance of a bourgeois sentimentalism based on Western European models or the (in some cases but constantly increasing) renunciation of the bourgeoisie from the edifice and the turn to profane experiential

'• S. u., Abs‹:In. 2 c u. 3 ac. '^ Pascal, Sturm und Drang, 56 ff. The same mood can also be seen articulated in the moral magazines, see Martens, The Message of Virtue, 370 ff.; Sdiultze, The conflict between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, passim, informs about the intensification of the contrast in the period around 1800¡ cf. Conze, Adel, 25 ff.

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literature." The educational ideal that broke up the class hierarchies was clear long before the middle of the century within the bourgeois Enlightenment , in its (partial) opposition to Protestantism Religiosity has been formulated ". The representatives of the Sturm und Drang movement help the bourgeoisie to become ideologically independent insofar as they create the foundations of a programmatic, indigenous and at the same time universal humanism through the ideal of the development of all the powers of the individual , which eliminates the previous provincial narrowness of (earlier) religiosity and (later) secular worldview of the bourgeoisie with a S&lag. However, the synthesis of citizenship and humanistic education will only flourish on German soil over the course of the century. In the years around 1770, neither the bourgeoisie was able to accept the ideological offer of the new To the fullest use of intelligence, this can force one's own intellectual production into the current bourgeois horizon. Hence the (relative) tension between them.

Nodi must be an aspect of this main current of the German late Enlightenment be mentioned as a specific feature of the German Enlightenment. If its representatives secularize the religious philosophy of feeling and thus replace the religion with humanism or merge it with it, then they are shaping their own thinking under the influence of thought structures of conventional free religiosity. As is the religious philosophy of feeling as something that never lets up If man's conversation with himself and with the metaphysis of his own understanding, then his secularized nadi follower does not want to suppress the transcendent, but rather to transform it in such a way that the traditional-dogmatistic barrier between him and his man is removed. '° Egeling, The Citizen as Reader, 182 ff., 206 ff., 252 ff. About the upper middle class as an audience for the modern Büdler production and the moralistic magazines see Gerth, citizen. Intelligence, 65, and Martens, Bots‹:haft der Virtue, 145 ff. The turn to profane sentimental literature is shown by the fact that after 1750 novels nt&t more violently or unanimously through the moralis ‹:hen newspapers‹:rifts are condemned (Martens, 510 ff.). On the secularization of the philosophy of feeling through the various forms of bourgeois sentimentalism, see Wieser, Der sentimentale Mens, 176 ff. Au‹:h the empirical psychology that existed back then s&on was in the upswing, processed or secularized important elements of the religious philosophy of feeling, see Stemme, Secularization of Pietism, passim. As Bro&dorff (German: he Enlightenment philosophy, 128) aptly notes, many representatives of the Sturm und Drang movement overlooked "the psy":hologistic elaboration of the meaning of feeling... too naedist an idea of the Enlightenment philosophy, for example Sulzer and Mendelssohn . " Wolff, Weltans&. d. German&en Aufkl., 99 ff. ' ® They are "moving towards a humanitarian religion in the border area between deism, pantheism and Christianity ": says Kaiser, From the Enlightenment to the Sturm und Drang, 12.

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falls. By searching for the source of the human power to be unfolded in the primal ground of the world , she designs an optimistic metaphysics through a more or less free combination of motives from Leibniz, Shaftesbury and Spinoza, in which free religiosity crosses all limits so much that believers in the (more) conventional sense had to worry about religion as such. Enlightenment and religious ideas are mixed here to the point of being unrecognizable. Precisely because the religious had become so free and plastic, it was also able to take on the task of accompanying some open discussion of the South European explanation with nihilism. For if nihilism is absent in Germany in a positive form, it is negative on the other hand, namely omnipresent as a visible threat and real danger, and in the fight against it the German late Enlightenment united its forces with those of Western European optimism. In this respect it forms an organic part of the pan-European, and if, for certain reasons, undiluted optimism gains the upper hand in it, this does not mean that a tendency directed against the Western European Enlightenment as such is predominating, but only the enforcement of one of those tendencies that are within were actually possible during the Enlightenment and were therefore anticipated in important respects by thinkers such as Shaftesbury. Accordingly

By combating nihilism, the late German Enlightenment did not appear as a panicked return to theological spiritualism. Your refutation of Nihilisuius is based on a broad affirmation of the general Enlightenment approach to the rehabilitation of sensuality or to the final rejection of (Cartesian) intellectualism. However, the combination of radical optimism with the rehabilitation of sensuality in the appropriate form could only take place within a metaphysical synthesis, which was characterized by the belief that everything is ultimately good or rational.

This synthesis had to achieve two main things. On the one hand, it was necessary to intertwine the spirit as the carrier of the normative and the sensibility as the carrier of the causal in such a way that the latter would not only not be a contradiction of the former, but would rather represent the vehicle for the realization of its postulates. In this way, the enforcement of the normative or the final victory over nihilism should be achieved with complete consideration of the Enlightenment's basic approach to the rehabilitation of sensuality, ie using the most modern intellectual equipment. All of this obviously had to result in a drenching of the causal by the normative or a spiritualization of the sense-living; The fusion of being and ought, which was prefigured in the dominant Enlightenment concept of nature, had to, in other words, become absolute, the ought had to become övimq öv, and since monism forbade a separate principle to explain the emergence of meaning, the latter was so to be saturated with the normative because of its origins. — A second thing also had to be the meta-

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physis, which provide synthesis. As Sdion said, in the Enlightenment the idea of the whole and that of development remained more or less suddenly side by side as long as the obfuscation of being and ought was not radical within a blunt monism that did not retreat from the open reintroduction of the metaphysical took place. The believing whole was seen as a correlate of the supposed that also remained the same and was rooted in it, while the development that was associated with the causally determined movement and change of the sensual appeared correspondingly unsteady and unstable as long as it was connected with that It is immobile as a whole or should not be modified. Development (in nature, in culture, etc.) had to guarantee the realization of what should be, and to do this it had to take place within the predetermined and normatively defined whole in order to gradually bring the deepest character of the latter into reality bring. In other words , development originally has a normative goal, and the norm is inherent in development because the latter takes place within the whole or the ontologized norm. The decisive approaches to a unification of the whole and development appeared for the first time in the historical-philosophical constructions of reading and

Herder, against the background of an ontology in which being and ought merge together beyond recognition. This is the way in which the German late Enlightenment, that is, the dominant current of it (for Kent, as we will explain, is a rather isolated phenomenon), overcomes the logical contradiction in which the Enlightenment was formed because of the irresolvable conflict between the causal and the normative was biased to eliminate sudite.

2. Forms of debate between intellectualism and empiricism in the German early enlightenment

a) Wolff and his opponents The extent to which the German Enlightenment organization is a component of Europe as a whole is shown by the possibility of understanding it in terms of the struggle between intellectualism and empiricism. Your local roots and e.g. T. contrary to brittleness, the features are made and at the same time very clearly noticeable in the special character of their corresponding currents. Their intellectualism primarily serves as the adoption or further development of the sdiolastic realism, while, conversely, their empiricism is not ultimately influenced by the religious

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a great emotional philosophy that opposes the claims of omniscience or the hubris of the intellect. So the paradox occurs that intellectualism, which under the given German circumstances is supposed to articulate the modern or enlightened belief in reason, resorts to sdiolastic ideas, while secular western European empiricism, which is or is oriented towards noinalism and phenomenalism the omniscience of reason, (also) with the help of religious currents, gained entry into Germany. Our analysis of enlightened rationalism has shown that, for a number of (polemic) reasons, belief in reason and the acceptance of its principles had to go hand in hand". The peculiarity of the then development made it clear that one aspect of the enlightened position was not seldom opposed to the other could turn to others, where in sidi each of the two associated with an original & nidit secular-enlightenment (sdiolastisdirealistisdien or religious-feeling-philosophies) position. This doesn't just result in a strange contrast, but also a strange wedisel effect. Although the empiricism of religious, emotional philosophy comes close to that of Western Europe and thus contributes to the modernization of German intellectual life, it does not want to succumb to dangerous nominalism and therefore (in Crusius, for example) has a certain respect for Wolff's ontology "; and on the other hand, the clear rejection of Wolff's ontology or the theory of omnipotence of reason does not necessarily mean a complete appropriation of religious emotional philosophy: Kant's example shows that intellectualism, as a weapon against empiricist skepticism, continues to be maintained in a modernized form The essential restriction of its scope in this latter case is at least a sign that in Germany one is following the general anti-intellectualist trend in one way or another. The strength of the empiricist current in Germany is visible, among other things, in the southern section of Wolffianism, positively in that its triumph was short-lived, and negatively in the fact that this same triumph did not apply easily and not in every case to the specific intellectualists Character of Wolffianism goes back. Particularly for the younger lecturers who contributed to the establishment of Wolffianism as a school philosophy in the universities *, Wolff meant something more than dry syllogism, namely a brother to the cult of tradition and a liberating modernization in the sense of faith the power of reason, the visibly rational structure of the world (Wolff had exploited miracles, albeit via the detour of the miraculum restitutionis), and the autonomy of the

'• S. o., Chap. IV, Absdine. 2b; Chap. V, Absdin. 2b; Chap. VI, Abs‹bn. 5. • Tonelli, Weakness of Reason, 226 ff., 231. •' Lewis, Hist. d. Wolffis en Philosophie, I, 332 ff.; III, 160 ff.

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moral truths etc.^; the very cautious legitimation of the G1ü&The demand for happiness - always in connection with moral activity ^ as well as the emphasis on the

—

practical usefulness of knowledge, which even resulted in an equation of perfection and usefulness, made Wolffianism even more modern and attractive as a moderate bourgeois ideology". The persecution of Wolff ^, the Otherwise, the spread of his writings and ideas benefited, on the other hand, had to act as a visible confirmation of his progressive attitude.Another advantage or modern aspect of Wolffianism was the effort to take into account the more recent results of the natural sciences in the construction of the system and at the same time to incorporate mechanicism into it to fit into a broader framework in such a way that it could not have slipped into any atheism; this endeavor was all the more important (at least in psychological terms) as it sought to fill the troubling void left by the victories of both Cartesianism and Newtonianism in the had torn down the wall of theism based on scholastic doctrine.

As we know, the usual solution that offered itself to those who wanted to represent the causal-medianicist explanation of nature while retaining redit-believing theism was " clean dualism." In this respect , Wolff is first in line with Descartes; , at least in the question of the body-soul relationship, his refuge in pre-established harmony.

It would be expected that the mathematician Wolff would be particularly amenable to intellectualist dualism. The peculiarity or anadironism of his thinking does not lie here, but in the attempt to fuse his mathematics and his scholastic training within a unified intellectual structure. But he doesn't want to do this as a mere scholastic, but primarily as a mathematician, no matter how vague his understanding of mathematics may be. Namely, he wants Aristotelian empiricism

"How Wolff arrives at the final formulation of the principle of moral autonomy by deriving morality from the natura mentis' is shown by Campo, Wolff, II, 504 ff.; cf. Joesten, Wolff's foundation of the practical Phil., 26 ff. •° op. cit., 67 f.; cf. Wolff, Weltans‹:hd deutsöien Aufkl., 101 ff. " Merker, Illuminismo tedesco, 89; cf. Be&, Early German Philos. 274 f.; Ludovici, Hist. d. Wolffis&en Philos., I, 134 ff. •° Die Dokumente findet man bei Ludovici, Hist. d. Wolffis‹:hen Philos. III, 98 ff. See Wolff's mechanicalism in its anti-materialist function Philipp, Becoming of the Enlightenment, 129 ff. "The development of Wolff in this sense s‹:hildert Campo, Wolff, I, 268 ff., 285 ff.; cf. Bissinger, Knowledge of God, 116 ff. ^ Campo (Wolff, I, lo9 ff.) has shown what insurmountable obstacles the implementation of Wolff's mathematical approach had to encounter, not least because of the lack of clarity in his concept of mathematics. cf. Röd, Geom. Geist. and Naturre‹:ht, 123 f. '°

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eradicate the traditional s&olastis&en attitude of mind and elevate their syllogistics to the status of the modern mathematis‹:Iren method "; mathema tis‹:lie and philosophis‹:lie methodology are now to be identis‹:li. He does not deny the importance of empirical fors‹ "Mung nodi the relative cognitive value of the lower faculties", but the empiricism as a whole must be intellectualized in order to be able to function fruitfully within the substantiated knowledge, which proceeds deductively and thereby comes to conclusions whose truth criterion is the absence of any logical logic Contradiction is nasty. Contradictionlessness or unclouded thinkability shows the possible at all, the knowledge of which is the mathematically dissyllogistic philosophy". Laws of the world. We do not need to concern ourselves with the details in this context. It is important for mental health that Wolff, in his efforts to modernize sdiolastics in the age of mathematics and thus to grant the original antisdiolastic medianistic world view the s‹:Iiolastic, antimaterialistic, unwittingly confirmed the concerns and arguments of those many Enlighteners who used to lump s‹:Iiolastis‹:lie syllogistics and mathematisdie methodology together and reject both as expressions of the same abstract intellectualism In order to substantiate an equally modern scientific approach as mathematics, he had no idea that the prevailing Enlightenment current would soon take action against mathematics and sdiolastics with the same fury ; he didn't know that siliastics and syllogistic are simply identified and therefore also be

^ Wundt, Deuts&e S&ulphilos., 131 ff., 151 f. The syncresis of Catholic theology and Lutheran elements in Wolff emphasizes Sdiöffler, Deutsdies Geistleben, 200 ff. °° In his effort to emphasize the "modern" aspect in the German Enlightenment, Merker exaggerates the role of experience compared to the intellectualist component in Wolff (Illuminismo tedesco, 83 ff.). the accommodation of empiricism in Wolff's system (Early German Philosophy, 267 f.). Campo, Wolff, I, 98 f. argues in a similar sense. The difficulties of an intellectualist in a time in which empiricism is on the rise, while Mathematics is correspondingly degraded, this is also indirectly expressed in Wolff's and his Sdiüler demarcation against extreme mathematicism, see Tonelli, The dispute over the mathematical method, 53 f.

•' Lüthje attributes the ambiguity of Wolff's concept of possibility to the fact that this originally referred only to the experience-based possibility (Wolffs Philosophy Concept, 56). This must, as Lüthje ibid. remarked, an ambiguity of the concept of philosophy na& si& pull or now create dogmatismo unstable', as si& Campo expresses (Wolff, I, 193 ff.). cf. the account of Be&s, Early German Philosophy, 263 ff.

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Efforts to clean up or modernize the South East region would by no means be harmful, but would only find it all the more displeasing. His peculiar combination of SouthEastern Studies and mathematics did the latter a disservice in the long run, and intellectualism in general, without helping the former either. Therefore, those outside the circle also became his faithful ones Aspects of his thought that were positively received by his followers were largely forgotten in the late German Enlightenment. The empiricist current in Germany does not form a fringe opinion or a mere reaction against Wolff, but rather an independent phenomenon that precedes the temporary adoption of Wolffianisuius and thus even marks the beginning of the German Enlightenment. It was largely represented by the first generation of German Enlightenment thinkers and was then pushed back by Wolffianism, only to become popular again in the third generation to come forward, but this time within a broader metaphysical framework: this explains why the empiricists of the first generation could not be direct teachers and models of the third S '. In the outstanding personality of the German Enlightenment, Thomasius, which began before 1200, we encounter epistemological empiricism as part of a thoroughly modern ideological attitude. However, original insights into details are not Thomasius' forte; despite violent polemics against sdiolastic logic, he remains attached to its content ", and his thesis that the senses are the beginning of all human knowledge ^ forms an adoption of Aristotle's axiom nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu" and became durdi Lo&e confirms rather than suggests". It is all the more striking that, as a result, views are developed which represent the antipodes of the Aristotelian and South-Eastern tendencies that were still dominant in the universities at the time. Like Western European empiricism in general, Thomasius' empiricism is not an isolated epistemological position, but is bound to a worldview-related, substantive shift in cognitive interests : it means the exclusion of speculative metaphysics and the primacy of anthropology In order to recognize the truth, Thomasius writes, knowledge of the essence of reason is required, and this in turn presupposes knowledge of what the whole animal is' ' 7

.

With it

°' Cf. Wundt, German Scientific Philosophy, 122 f. °°

Petersen, Ges. i.e. Aristotle. Phil., 386 f.; Wundt (Deutsche Sciiulph., 41 f.) finds clear approaches to Tliomasius' efforts in the German philosophy of the 17th century. century. What remains crucial, however, is the global shift that is noticeable through Thomasius.

^* Introduction to the theory of reason, VI, $25 (= p. 156).

°° Wolf, Great Reciitsdenker, 396; Wundt, Deutsdie S&ulphil., 31, note.

°° S. o., Kap. V, Abs&n. 2 b. ^ 7 Introduction to the Doctrine of Reason, III, $ 1 (= p. 95); Thomasius' ban.

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a first step is taken towards that psychologization of logic that largely characterizes the Enlightenment ^; understandably, in Thomasius too it goes hand in hand with a nominalistic approach. "The words apply ex arbitrio hominum, not ex natura', from which it follows, 'that man's thoughts without relation to anything else in and for themselves can equally be neither true nor false'". The consequences of this for universals and Syllogistics are obvious; Thomasius vigorously denies that the latter could lead to the discovery of new truths, and the epistemological arguments are accompanied by the expression of his contempt for book wisdom and the call for independent thinking, which is averse to any authority. ". Thomasius adopts another typically enlightened position " when he lumps Cartesian intellectualism and mathematicism together with scholastic syllogistic and fights both from an empiricist position, while at the same time fully appreciating Descartes' importance for the emancipation of new temporal thinking ^.

These are the epistemological and epistemological consequences of starting from the whole human being. The moral-philosophical ones weigh no less heavily. Thomasius also appears to be groundbreaking here, although he does not bring to light any original findings in this area, but focuses largely on the various affect theories of the last century supports "; on the outside, his doctrine of virtue appears to be a free mixture of Stoic, Epicurean and Christian elements. What is important is that the latter are largely secularized in that the Christian topos of love - it constitutes the essence of human beings " - is given, on the one hand, a natural law (ange borne socialitas) "and, on the other hand, a eudaemonistic" and a decidedly erotic-anti-ascetic "coloring. Thomasius' However, the concept remains

^ S. o., Cap. V, Abs‹:hn. 3 ab. °° Introduction to the doctrine of reason V, $$ 42, 45 (= pp. 146, 147). ••

on eit., XII $$ 1-30 (= pp. 265 ff.).

^' Exercise of reason. I, $87 (= p. 42); II, $ 137 (= p. 140 f.) etc. etc. •- S. o., Chap. IV, Abs&n. 3 b. •° Red, Geom. Geist u. Naturredit, l5l ff.,160 f. "His introduction to the moral theory was published eight times in German and once in Latin between 1692 and 1726. The introduction to the theory of reason went through five German and two Latin editions from 1691 to 1719. '° Information about them is provided by S':hneiders, Natural Law and Love Ethics, 183 ff., Cf. oh, chap. II,

Absd n. 3 b. ^^ A1. zur Sittenl., II, $72 (= p. 88). location et., ”

$$ 74-79 (= pp. 89-91).

^• place cit., $ 4 (= S. 58). ••

op. cit., IV, $$ 34 ff. (= S. 172 ff.); V, $$ 9 ff. (= S. 261 ff.).

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not free from half-measures and ambiguities, but it is based on an unmistakable tendency towards the rehabilitation of sensuality. Even if rational love is distinguished from unreasonable love, it does not mean the strict control of emotion by reason, but rather an innate rationality of emotion; because even sensible love remains 'Desire' or 'work of the will'. Thomasius' view is expressed even more clearly in an anti-Cartesian or Lo&e-inspired phrase, in which he denies that the essence of man ... exists solely in thought. Because the inclination and impulse of the will is a much nobler power...than the thinking of the mind'.” Thomasius' Volun Tarism thus results from the rehabilitation of (psydic) sensuality and forms the necessary flip side of an anti-intellectualist attitude, as is usual in the Enlightenment. This bond between voluntarism and anti-intellectualism solidifies and deepens after Thomasius' turn to pietism In the Pietist perspective, it is no longer the case that the healthy love affect automatically expresses itself in reason, but rather that the power of the intellect is expressed through that of the blind will or the suffering on which human sinfulness is based, is annihilated. Given the fact that the rationality of the monkey was by no means understood as the mastery of the intellect, the change in the thought structure remains minimal, although the earlier optimistic anthropology is now transformed into a pessimistic one: like us As we know and as we will also see with examples from late German enlightenment, it often happens that the same thought structure is sometimes preceded by pessimistic and then optimistic signs or that the former can be replaced by the latter (or vice versa) while maintaining the thought structure. We cannot speculate here about Thomasius' personal reasons for converting to pietism

place; The established permanence of the structure of his anthropological conception may, however, logically explain the possibility of this transition. In addition, the anti-intellectualist anthropology was connected on both sides with similar practical, educational ideas. The degradation of the intellect simultaneously implies a fundamental rejection of Aristotelianism

° S. the excellent analysis of Sdineiders, Naturr. and love ethics, 150 ff., 169 ff. ^' Introduction to Sittenl., IV, $$ 7-8 (= p. 159).

" Exercising morals, III, $ 21 (— p. 81). S. o., Kap. V, Abs&n. 3 b.

Fundam _ _ , 4l.

•^ See above, chap. VI, paragraph &n. 3 b and chap. VII, Absdin. 1;su Absdin. 2b, 3a.

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Ideal of pure theory and a corresponding priority of useful activity, which for its part is supposed to confirm the new primacy of anthropology or concretely human beings" and also seen and valued in their effect of taming psydiologisdi-erbaulidien, idiosyncratic affects Likewise, the common sympathy for a natural religion springs from an anti-intellectualistic attitude, inasmuch as religion is understood as a spontaneous voice of the heart, which is right with the intellectual sophistry of professional theologians, from which they tended only to produce religious divisions and wars have little to do. As one can see, Thomasius' agreement with Pietism concerns above all freely interpretable commonplaces, so that statements about the depth and correctness of his Pietist faith are difficult to examine, although this suggests that Thomasius was associated with Pietist submission philosophical thinking in general from a theological point of view or never unconditionally surrendered to mysticism ”, nevertheless his relatively short association with religious philosophy remains enlightening and promising for the future. This is already visible in Rüdiger's work, which approaches Thomasius precisely during his pietissian phase and explicitly connects his later criticism of Wolff's intellectualism with his religious convictions. Rüdiger does indeed raise the corrupt human reason against the recta ratio from there - and then, like his teacher, he defends the independence of philosophizing against pietist claims of monopoly - but this recta ratio differs fundamentally from the intellect: it is not innate and can be explained empirisdi-genetisdi "; the primacy of the will is also asserted ". Thus, you cross the paths of the religiously inspired anti-intellectualist attitude and the Western European empiricism of Lo&esdier provenance. Accordingly, Rüdiger rejects the innate ideas and even radicalizes Lo&e in a z. T. Condillac's anticipatory manner by replacing reflection with the sensio interna in order to underline the sensual conditionality of even the higher cognitive faculty. For him, however, sensory perception is not only the source of all concepts, but also the criterion of truth; against the traditional adaequatio rei et intellectus he defines truth as the agreement of imagination and sensory perception. •• The specific form that this primacy takes in the religious context of Pietism is very well described by Herrmann, Redit and Pietist. theol. in Thomasius, 41 ff. •' Neisser, Tliomasius 35 f., 46 (cf. 12 ff. about Spener's and Fran&ess; as it were instinct

tive distrust of Tliomasius' belief); Seeberg, Thomasius and Arnold, 340 f. 8

Schepers, Rüdiger's Methodology, 31 f. on. eit., 35, 38, 42. "Wundt, Deutsche Sdiulphilos., 87 f. •' Sdiepers, Rüdigers Methodol., s3 ff.

•

•°

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dung ". This in turn implies the (religiously based) thesis of the unknowability of substances and veritates aeternae, since only recognized substance can be compared with the content of the intellect ", and thus also suggests a methodical reorientation. Rüdiger combats intellectualism's claim to omniscience in both his mathematical and syllogistic versions, equating the two - not unlike the main stream of the Enlightenment. Mathematics is rooted in sensory sensations, since all of its operations can be traced back to an act of counting"; and syllogistics hardly promotes new knowledge, ie causal and final judgments. Rüdiger therefore advocates the replacement of conventional syllogistics with a "synthesis". ', which could become the true ars inveniendi ^. It is particularly remarkable that Rüdiger follows his epistemology tis the refutation of intellectualism with an ontological questioning of the dualism of spirit and matter, in which he merges physics and metaphysics with one another. He wants substance with forces or wealth originally equipped, it should be extended (i.e. material) and encompass the spirit, which is also extended. However, this is not a matter of materialism, but rather of a colorful construction teeming with spiritualist and vitalist elements, which is reminiscent of the natural philosophy of the Renaissance and clearly opposes both Aristotelian physics and Cartesian physics. It is not she herself, but the monist tendency expressed in her in her connection with Rüdiger's anthropological and epistemological convictions that is interesting to us. From the same point of view, Thomasius' cosmologisdi-meta physisdie speculations, which are based on H. More's spiritualist monism, could also be interesting ^, can't just be interpreted as a personal cricket.

AE Hoffmann further develops the basic positions of his teacher Rüdiger by putting them at the service of a systematic polemic against the currently flourishing Wolffianism. Here too, the empiricist starting point (no innate ideas, origin of knowledge from sensory perception) leads to a criticism of Wolff's theory of truth and the ontology associated with it. For Hoffmann, truth does not lie in mere contradiction.

•' Dadurdl he turns against Wolff's formal definition of truth, see Zart, Influence of the English Philos., 54. •^ Sdlepers, Rüdigers Methodol., 72 ff.

•' Cassirer, Erkenntnisproblem, II°, 526. ^ Merker, German Enlightenment, ll0 ff.,118 ff. •^ Sdlepers, Rüdigers Methodol., 67; Wundt, Deuts&e S&ulphil., 244. •'

on one., 92; cf. Petersen, Gesdl. d. Aristotle. Philos., 416 f.

•• Neisser, Thomas, 50 f. °° Wundt, Deutsdle Sdiulphil., 252; Be&, Early German Philos., 301.

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lack of effervescence of thought, but in the consistency of thought and object. The rigid, impersonal objectivity of logic in Wolff is broken by Hoffmann by pointing out that the reason for logic is to be found in the subject itself Hoffmann wants to discover the principles of this in experience itself or to derive it from it; on the other hand, he believes he can evade psydologism because he tries just as hard to read them off of things ". However, this does not mean a concession to Wolff. Because for Hoffmann, metaphysics (in the new Enlightenment sense

This term 7 ') only has as its object what is real and approximately knowable, not what is possible and completely intellectually comprehensible. His objections to mathematics are also framed accordingly within the framework of a clear comparison of philosophical and mathematical procedures. Not only does the latter leave out a genetic and healthy consideration (we remember how closely this empiricist epistemology is linked 7 '), but it also cannot provide any ars inveniendi; Mathematics is not arbitrary, but it still deals with abstract concepts

contains nothing more than what can be found in the original definition, while in philosophy the individual comes into its own, which does not represent a mere repetition or reproduction of the abstract general. 7

A little later, prominent Enlightenment philosophers in France argued no differently. It is

'.

paradoxical that data here is so tenaciously asserted by medical science and natural philosophy against the quantitative one. This is not simply a remnant of Aristotelianism or the natural philosophy of the Renaissance, but a genuine example of Enlightenment anti-intellectualism. After a few years, Mendelssohn wrote mathematics Although the highest evidence has it, it is only quantitative, while metaphysics, which deals with qualities, requires much more of the 'testimony of the senses'. Now one could argue from the inapplicability of mathematics Metaphysics was said to be incapable of clear knowledge and therefore to be eliminated: a thought that should not fail to have an influence on Kant

7

’.

All of these thought motifs were taken up and deepened by Hoffmann's Sdiüler Crusius (as we see, an unbroken line of intellectual and personal inspiration leads from Thomasius to Crusius). Dem intellectualistise en Mo 7• Wundt, Deuts&e S‹:hulphil., 250, 253. '*

Be&, Early German Philos., 302 ff. 7° S. o., Kap. V, Abs‹:Ein. 3 a. *° S. above, chap. IV, paragraph‹:A. 4, chap. V, Para‹:A. 1. '• Tonelli, Mathem. Method, 56. 7 see above, chap. V, Para‹:A. 2 a.

7fl Tonelli, Mathem. Methode, 61, 63, 64 ff.

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Wolff's nism, Crusius contrasted with a thoroughly thought-out dualism, which directly or indirectly helped experience in knowledge and will or drive in anthropology and morality to their autonomy by separating their areas from those of the intellect and thus freeing them from the imperative access of the last teren withdrawn. This was not an abatement, but rather a considerable limitation of the intellect, which was articulated in the fundamental refusal to establish a necessary relationship between the objectively existing structure of things and the mental comprehension of them, or even to recognize the relationship as dependent on this. A separation of epistemology and ontology is the important consequence of this basic attitude. Logical and actual necessity do not coincide, uncontradictory thinking and cognition are not identical”—and since, on the other hand, the effort of thinking for logical unity and non-contradiction is not underestimated, but downright necessary or inevitable (that is, as a direct outflow of the essence of operating thinking ) is considered, "then all these considerations amount to the thesis that there are deeper aspects of being that must forever elude the grasp of this so-definitive way of thinking. Between this position of Crusius and intellectualism there is therefore a part

wise or negative agreement: Crusius admits the primarily logical character of mental operations, but he sees this more as a straits than an invincible power; the logically proceeding thinking remains indisputable, but only within one or its area, which is anything but all-encompassing”. Ultimately, Crusius' sub is also based on this position The relationship between philosophy and mathematics. The validity of mathematical propositions is not in itself disputed, but their ability to go beyond knowledge that can be gained through the mere proposition of contradiction is disputed •°. The same applies to philosophy, even if it is on a higher level: it can leave behind the mere principle of contradiction, but the knowledge of the basic essence must forever be denied it. The assertion of the omnipotence of the intellect now takes place in two ways. In epistemological terms, the origin of thoughts

" S. Crusius' criticism and supplementation of the principle of contradiction and the doctrine of reason (draft $$ 13-16, 34-38 = p. 23 ff., 54 ff.) as well as his refutation of the ontological proof of God (draft, $ 235 - p. 436 ff.). Cf. Weg $$ 258-262 = S. 467 ff. "

Way § 259 (= p. 468: the,... establishment of concepts follows the essence of the understanding') and §§ 571 ff. (= p. 99s ff.: analytic and synthetic methods as well as 'some general rules of meditation' ). cf. Draft $233 ( p. 432: reliable knowledge does not have to be complete) and $ 287 (= p. 533: "In the nature of our minds lie certain marks of truth"). *° Draft $$ 12-16, 56 (— p. 22 ff., 99 ff.), cf. Weg $ 259-60 (= p. 467 ff.).

•• away § i0 (= p. i9 f.), cf. draft $$ 1is-i1 (= p. i88 ff.).

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emphasized from experience ". It is in fact a huge upgrade of the latter if it is assumed that certain things must remain unrecognized because they are inaccessible to experience or to the emerging knowledge. Our knowledge of the basic forces or All that is said about the basic nature of things is "symbolisdi", that is, it is based on the determination or logistical comprehension of effects and relations and not on the immediate outcome of what is given ontisdi. ^ This is precisely what consists in the role recognition of the independence of the latter Crusius' second hard battle against intellectualism, insofar as the latter did not want to recognize the reality of the irrational or, through logic, the means of the incomprehensible. The irrational (in this sense) is now being rehabilitated ontologically and to the extent that Crusius nodi always sees conceivability as Accepting the criterion of reality, he understands it rather as a majority of interacting principles and not as a mere formal logic operation. In Crusius, the separation of epistemology and ontology corresponds to the distinction between being and ought in moral philosophy's intention. According to Crusius' basic dualist theory, this does not mean the domination of blind desire in moral action, but precisely because of the assumed original connection between will and freedom, from which an expansion of the concept of spirit in the voluntarist sense results " - a separation of moral and physical causes of the same from one another, taking into account the fact that the morals can only become effective through the physicals in practice ®'. Material and formal become in ethics

so theoretisdi cleanly separated •*, with the necessity of their union or mutual complementarity is emphasized in practice. This autonomy

®' Weg $$ 64, 257 ( = p. 111 f., 466 f.).

8° path $$ 184—186 (— 347 ff.); cf. Draft §$ 102, 258 (= pp. 175, 485). About basic forces or basic beings, see draft §$ 70 ff. ( = p. 125 ff.). Crusius also assumes the "pundirect subsistence" of force in the simple substance (draft $ III = p. 186). ^ Heimsoeth, Crusius, 42 (cf. draft $444 = p. 908 ff.); Following Wundt (Kant as a metaphysician, 58, 73), Heimsoeth (15 ff.) sees the essential moment of Crusius' approach in the oncological rehabilitation of the irrational. °• Instruction $155 (= p. 195). • Draft $454 (= p. 933). 8° Instruction $$ 2-3 (= p. 4 f.); cf. the analysis of Crusius' concept of freedom in Benden, Cousins, 79 ff. ^* Instructions §§ 43 ff. (= p. 54 ff.). ^ Instruction $177 (= p. 221). ^° Benden, Cousins, 153 f., 166.

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The development of willing in humanity results, as did Hoffmann, from the thesis of the incompatibility of the wrongful reason or causality with freedom and is accompanied by an analogous upgrading of the divine will. In doing so, the rejection of intellectualism is mixed with Crusius' religious faith, a process whose reasons and consequences have often troubled us. As mentioned, there was no direct influence of the thinkers who fought against intellectualism in its sdiolastic or Wolffian form during the first and second generations of the German Enlightenment on the leading representatives of the late Enlightenment in Germany, which was not least due to their intellectual isolation Despite Kant's enthusiasm for him and his eager but free interpretation of his work. This fact must be satisfactorily explained if we want to better understand the specifics of the German late Enlightenment, that is, its monistic approach, intellectually sound. The special needs of the polemic against Wolff forced the empiricist current in Germany to adopt a dualist position that was unacceptable to the dominant tradition of the late German Enlightenment. This was neither due to a logical division of the dualism mentioned nor because it neglected the ethical postulates of the Enlightenment (quite the contrary: in order to be able to defend them, he fought Wolffianism in this way and not through an extreme empiricism, which is painful In material terms, monism could have changed the situation), but simply because of the intensity of the monist attitude, especially in 1770, which could not be satisfied with any dualism, so finely thought and logically consolidated it was also its modite. Now intellectualism was not qua monism, but combated as the suppression of the Sinnlidi living ; and the anti-intellectualist dualism in turn became more of a dualist attitude

The anti-intellectualist approach is condemned and praised. This simultaneous, if not uniform, rejection of both currents of the German Enlightenment that had previously served was only consistent, since it was necessary to reconcile monism and the rehabilitation of meaningfulness But not in the sense of nihilism, but precisely in the absolute, ie ontologically gedaditen escalation of the fight against it. We will be able to understand this constellation better if we understand the meaning

examine or differentiate more closely between monism and dualism. Intellectualism is based on a dualistic assumption, in this respect He adopted the Cartesianis separation of res cogitans and res extensa in order to keep the independence of the former intact. But he transforms it into monism by intellectualizing or logifying empiricism, indeed by revealing its essence in the logic, in order to be able to subject it to the mastery of the intellect and at the same time to absolutely tame this mastery: it is •• Draft $$ 307 ff. (= p. 583 ff.); cf. Wundt, Kant as a metaphysician, 59, 62 f.

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only safe if the intellect is the only reality or if it alone can bring reality into being, at least philosophically. On the other hand, radical dualism only applies against the monolithic approach of intellectualism, but not against its more or less fundamental starting point. The Cartesian moment lives to one degree or another both in the monist intellectualism and in the radical dualism mus continue (we speak s&on of the partial or negative agreement between Crusius and Wolff) — and precisely this commonality with Wolff made the approach of Crusius and Kant unusable for the German late Enlightenment (of course : the radical Dualism of Crusius and Kant has nothing to do with that dualism which we have portrayed as a wavering attitude towards the unification of spirit and sensuality and as the at least quantitatively dominant current of Enlightenment in general). Dennodi carefully noted and exploited the antiintellectualist aspect of radical dualism. As Jacobi's later appeal to Kant shows , "the third generation of the German Enlightenment inherited the doctrine of the unknowability of things as such, mainly the welcome and longoverdue acknowledgment of the absolute power of the intellect, as claimed within the framework of Wolffian monism. Furthermore, the confrontation with Wolff, even from the point of view of radical dualism, clarifies1i‹:Ute the central importance of the question of the relationships between spirit and meaning1i‹:h. The spiritual liveliness of the Enlightenment in general lies not least in the fact that it directly addressed this fundamental question of philosophy. The most intensive phase of the German Enlightenment is at the time of the realization that the answer to this question depends on fundamental decisions. How urgently and close it was around 1770 is shown symbolically by Kant's original plan to give the first critique the title "The Limits of Sensibility and Reason".

To complete our picture, we should recall those tendencies that explain the internal process of dissolution of Wolffianism under the direct and indirect pressure of a fundamentally anti-intellectualist age. This primarily refers to Baumgarten and its Sdiüler ". Baumgarten

•' Kondylis, Origin of Dialectics, 157. °' Letter to M. Herz dated June 7, 1771 = AA, X, 117. "

This is not the place to discuss the (conceptually and structurally not very productive) preliminary ideas of Baumgarten's aesthetics. The necessary information can be found in Bäumler, Irrationality Problem, 66 ff. (about König, Gottsdied and the Sdiweizers), 188 ff. (Wolff's doctrine of the analogue of rationality) ¡ Stein, Entst. i.e. newer aesthetics, 271 ff. (about the Swiss); Wolff, Weltansdi. i.e. deutsdien Aufkl., 142 ff. (about Gotts&ed and the Swiss); About Bilfinger's early demand for a kind of logic of the lower cognitive faculties, which possibly influenced the Swiss, see Bergmann, justification for this. German aesthetics, 2.

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represents a highly symptomatic case in that it completely endorses Wolff's epistemology or priority of accommodation and, without breaking Wolff's strict hierarchy, asserts its lower levels in such a way that it is endangered as a whole. Despite his philosophical presuppositions, Baumgarten helps moments to become independent that he only saw as being treated insufficiently (if not unfairly) because they were given new emphasis in other contemporary movements, which were actually the opposite of the one he followed himself . . It can be doubted that Baumgarten was fully aware of his ambiguous position, otherwise he could have avoided this back and forth in his argument. But it is not this side of his work that interests us here

In the broad mental health perspective, neither his palinodia nor his lack of awareness of the extent and consequences of the task to be accomplished count, but only the fact that he hired a soldier in the first place. At a time when the word "aesthetic" still had its original meaning, the design of an aesthetica had to be a highly significant process in itself; he implied the philosophical emancipation of .

the sense-lidia, as it is actually expressed in the pointed connection of the cognition with the adjective "sensitiva": if the knowledge is sinnlidi and still remains knowledge in the proper sense, then eo ipso becomes the omnimadit of the Intelleku is questioned , especially since Baumgarten emphasizes that he wants to talk about sensible knowledge as soldler (qua talis).

The famous definition of the goal of aesthetics, which is alluded to here ", contains another word that points to the tendential autonomization of sensory knowledge, namely the word pedectio': if sensory knowledge as such is capable of perfection, then it is It is no longer the epitome of the incurably indolent and dead, but has its own dynamics and potential for development In the context of this appreciation of meaning in epistemological terms, Baumgarten's explanation must be understood that the facultates inferiores are the conditio sine qua non of height ren cognitive ability; it is mere prejudice that the puld "with severe understanding and reasoning skills" zuwider sein müsse ". Der-

°• This is shown by the influence of a sensualist like Du Bos on him, see Riemann, Die Aesthetics Baumgartens, 76 ff. It was precisely the independence of Baumgarten's aesthetic interests that made such an influence possible‹:h, cf. Stein, Entst. i.e. newer fisth., 346: "One gives up the view that Baumgarten's aesthetics arose as the filling of a gap in a philosophical school system.' °’ For this see the very precise and differentiated interpretation of Schweizer, Aesthetics as a philosophy of sensory knowledge, passim. °' Aesthetics is the end of the perfection of sensitive knowledge, as such', Aesthetics § 14 (= S. s)" on. eit., $41 (- S. 1*).

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The same idea appears in the Prolegomena, where Baumgarten defends his theoretical undertaking against intellectualist objections. The sinnlidie con fusio, we read here, is not just "mater erroris", but at the same time conditio sine qua non inveniendae veritatis, because "natura non facit saltum ex obscuri tate in distinctionem". It seems here at the moment as if Baumgarten tends to replace Wolff's clean separation of the faculties from one another with the explanation given in the empiricist Enlightenment historisdi-genetis (which here would actually be more attributable to the influence of Leibniz's "lex continui"), with the ideal of a harmonious cooperation of the cognitive faculties in front of him. After all, he speaks against the ptyrannis and for the mere empire of the upper over the lower, while shortly before he says with regard to the possibility of their coexistence: "unius positio non est alterius exclusio" 1 ' t . On the basis of these assumptions, Baumgarten now manages to work out the similarities between aesthetics and accommodation in a tribute to 1

Cicero, which leads to the renaming of that truth, pquae Hitherto logic has only been said, in "aestheticological truth" hinaus läu}$ t0z, Offensively, in this most remarkable approximation or combination of 2isthetisdiem and Logisdiem, there are at least unconscious motives at work that indicate the abandonment of a basic position of intellectualism, namely in the sense of the direction represented by Crusius. Immediately beforehand, dodi Baumgarten makes the following consideration: objective truth can only be called the metaphysisdie; the logical truth is the representa tio objective verorum in data anima', and as such it is referred to as subjective "'. The objective truth must therefore be modified or subjectified so that it can become human knowledge; thawing the perspective of the subject - but this does not only have a logical but also an esthetic perspective, and the objective metaphysical truth can, as Baumgarten versed, appear in both. The logical knowledge is therefore on the same level as the esthetic, in the sense that both forms of subjectification of the metaphysis are objective and as such stand under it.Two things are iterated here: a binding of knowledge to the subject and its nature, and a detachment of logisdien from ontologisdien.It seems as if the former , precisely because it must be connected with the subject or the finite bearer of knowledge, is not able to fully grasp the latter. From the discrepancy of

••

on. cit., $7 (= S.3).

•• S. u., Abs‹:En. 3 a.m.

'°° Aesthetica, $ 12 (= S.5). "'°P-ci'., $8 (= p. 3). on. cit., $$ 426, 427 (= S. 271).

t•' '^

on. cit., $424 (= S. 269 f.).

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Logisdiem and ontologisdiem becomes the thing an sidi in the sense of Crusius. However, the Wolffian Baumgarten never mentions this, and it is questionable whether he even thought about it; the inner logic of his position forces him to repeatedly emphasize the limits of human knowledge. Even where he speaks of the superiority of the purely logical truth over the aesthetics, he considers the former insofar as it is the true grasp of the metaphysis objective, as only accessible to an omniscient person, in order to look lovingly at the Gap between the humanly attainable logic and metaphysics. The latter is abstraction, loss of living substance: Quid enim est abstractio, si iactura non esti' "' If these approaches remained at least externally within the framework of Wolffianism, the thinking of a direct follower of Baumgarten like Meier showed where they led. Because Meier, who hardly hides his admiration for Wolffians like Gotudied, takes over Wolff's disciplines and cognitive faculties only in order to put them into practice to turn your head. He admits that the essence of all things consists in mere possibility, to add that the knowledge of this essence cannot be felt in its abstractness ' °': the more abstract concepts are, the less they contain in sidi '*, Abstraction causes imperfection because it obscures the idea that it is something evil in itself. Meier leaves no doubt as to what he would choose if he only had to choose between the abstract knowledge of the possible and the intuitive knowledge of the actual. Nodi more: according to his view, the doctrine of reason presupposes aesthetics because our first concepts are sensuous "•, because confused cognition precedes clear ones"' . In this way, the psydiologisdi-genetic treatment gains the upper hand over the logical ones."' and declares sidi au& for Bacon's experimental method "'. 'Lower cognition' remains for him, however

'^'

on. eit., § 557 (= S. 360). ’°^

on. eit., § 560 (= S. 363); el. §§ 562—563 (= S. 364 f.). '°°

Bergmann, justification d. germany xsth., 128 ff.

"' Beginnings, $52 (= I, 91 f.). '° 8

'^

on. eit., $127 (= I, 273).

on. eit., $$312, 313 (= I,114, 115).

"°

on. eit., $$5.15 (= I.8.25). "'

on. eit., $21 (= I, 34). "'

op. et., $352 (= I, 206). For information on the position of psychology in Meier's system, see

Summer, basics, 50 f. "°

tender, influence d. english Phil., 82 f. "• Beginning reasons, $339 (= II, 169). op. eit., "’

$$ 35s ff.(= II, 213 ff.).

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sinnlidie "', which is why the aesthetics is called the logic of the lower cognitive powers' "'. However, this is no reason for unconditional surrender to the “higher powers of knowledge”. Meier finds their products, mathematics and metaphysics, incurably phäßlidi'" 8 and since, as I said, they don't appear very rich in content, he hardly feels it as a loss that sensible knowledge can indeed achieve clarity, but not the clarity of the doctrine of reason Knowledge remains "'. ,

It is not the clarification of the meaning, but rather the sensualization of the abstract and clear that is Meier's concern: 'one must always see the higher and general concepts as parts of more specific and lower concepts'. He accepts Wolff's distinction between symbolic and contemplative concepts Knowledge — to give preference to the latter '”. Of course, all of this should apply to the area of aesthetics and only to this area; the shift in point of view is nevertheless unmistakable. Because oncology is simply perceived as irrelevant and quite cold if it is not treated with open irony. A new spirit is blowing here, which can also be felt in the unmistakably anti-ascetic attitude. This attitude supports Meier's investigations into the nature and effect of suffering, which proceed from the enlightened position that suffering is not passive, as its name suggests, but rather shows the soul in all its activity. With Meier, anti-intellectualism appears in a very mo In its secular form, it does not come from religious emotional philosophy, but rather arises from the encounter of a worldly-minded Wolffian with the leading Western European current. However, this is an indirect indication of the secularizing effect of Wolffianism but also that because of this effect Wolffianism qua intellectualism could not last long: because the secular main current of the age was anti-intellectualism. Meier's approach, which also significantly influenced popular philosophy, at least made it clear that the remaining

"^

on eit., $254 (— II, 4).

"'

on. eit., $2 (= I, 5). "8

on. eit., $121 (= I, 260).

"' loc. eit. (= I, 259). "'

P. eit., $$ 23, 91 (= I, 38 f., 18sf.). "-'

on. eit., § 128 (= I, 275).

"’

on. eit., $181 (= I, 429). "° S. e.g. op. eit., $ 17 (= I, 29): »A woman is ... nowhere sidierer for

all the danger of dealing with an algebraist and metaphysician.” '•• t

op. eit., $ 22 (= I, 35 ff.).

-• S. o., Chap. VI, Absdin. 3 c.

'-°• Of the emotional movements, $ 34 = p. 38 f.

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gens no longer so robust religious philosophy of feeling—even before the Sturei und Drang secular anti-intellectualistism had its competitors. He was therefore able to fall back on the latter in his secularization of the religious philosophy of feeling, in order to now merge the two traditions with one another .

b) The anti-intellectualistic effect of religious currents and the wolffianistic inspired reform theology.

Opposites and points of contact Even more important than the philosophical criticism of Wolffian intellectualism is the militant anti-intellectualism of the religiously oriented emotional or Existential philosophy, although, as I said, one must be careful not to derive it from this in its entirety. The religious philosophy of feeling and existence, which appeared in Germany primarily in the form of pietism, was certainly a European invention (which is why European influences, namely Catholic-mystic influences, were not lacking on the new Protestant religiosity "' ), which largely shared the intellectual fate of the Enlightenment as a whole. This was, of course, due to the character of Enlightenment rationalism, which, as we know, was consistently compatible with such tendencies, as well as the fact that in these there was also a strong desire was at work to put an end to the age of religious wars and, at the same time, to put an end to the theological rigidity of established Christianity, which was responsible for it. An essential demand in Spener's Pia desideria is the elimination of theological disputes and the turning of dead theological knowledge into concrete , diristlid, enlightened practice. The ideal is the harmonious community of believers, based on immediately obvious metaphysical and ethical ideas . ) seems to be denied by this, then Pietiseius, on the other hand, is allowed to do so in important ways

'*° Wieser, sentiment. Menscia, 77 ff., 117 f. About Fenelon and its influence 88 ff., 289 ff., 297 ff. Cf. Sdunidt, Pietism, 26 f. "® Gusdorf, Dien, 58 ff.; about Dutch Pietism and its direct influence on the northern German areas see Rits‹:Bl, Gesch. d. Pietismus, I, 101 ff., 36z ff. "• Kantzenbach, Protest. Christianity, 36 ff.; Schmidt, Pietism, 40, 85; Holl, Be Interpretation of the Great Wars, 12 f., 19 ff., 29 ff., 39, 43 ff. '°° Ritschl, Ges. i.e. Pietism, II, 125 ff.; Hirs&, Ges. i.e. evangelical Theol., II, 92, 112, 173 ff. '•' Kraus, Gesdl. the hist.-crit. Exploring the OT, 8 f.

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Points appealed to Luther '^. Because of its general reformist intention, it could also be interpreted in a social-revolutionary sense, especially since the memory of the Anabaptists had not died Goals in mind, which si‹fi in central points with those of the intellectualist oriented newer religious directions De&ten. Also the representatives of the natural or rational religion in the 17th century wanted to present that common denominator existing in its simplicity, the bloody fights in order to make the interpretation of the Budutaben superfluous and a generally acceptable version

of the true spirit of Christianity. The intellectualist and emotionally oriented trends within the budding enlightened religion are therefore allied in the fight against 'diledite' Christianity. If we want to focus on the very big line of mental health, we can put forward the thesis that there is the same (cerebral) unity between the two with regard to the common enemy as there is between the mathematical-intellectualist and the empiricist rejection of the conventional worldview. This analogy can be completed by establishing that the relationships between the above-mentioned religious traditions took the same course at the same time as those between mathematics, mathematics and empiricism within Enlightenment natural science and philosophy in general: the initial alliance was followed by open opposition, as soon as the common enemy is lost sight of

became. Structurally, the religion of nature or reason, which is based on constants that can be defined a priori, follows the mathematical model of nature, while currents such as Pietism represent a radical empiricism, ie the rejection of any abstract generality and the fundamental connection to the concrete individual or to individual experience . Also from the side of Pietism, as well as from that of the radical Enlightenment empiricism, the equation: Intellectualism = sdiolastis the syllogistic is more or less self-evident It is related to the fact that the intellect is declared incapable of comprehending the true spirit of Christianity, which is why, despite the intention of the Enlightenment, it must give rise to new disagreements and disputes and thus indirectly promote atheism.

'•• S&midt, Pietism, 16 ff. '°° op. eit., 123 ff., especially 130 ff.; cf. Ritsdil, Gesdi. i.e. Pietism, I, 401. '°* On the decline of sdiolastism, which became noticeable just at the time of the emergence of pietism, see Wundt, Deutsdie Sdiulmetaphysik, 1S2 ff., and Petersen, Gesdi. i.e. Aristotle. Philos., 324 ff.

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Against the arrogance of the intellect the modest knowledge of experience seems to be the surest antidote.

In order to understand these accusations, we must remember the special situation in exegetical Bereidi at that time. As is well known, the question of exegetism was brought to the fore during the Reformation, which opened the door to the intensity of true faith in the direct interpretation of the Bible as a spiritual act that was free of tradition and authority and at the same time at least implicitly opposed to the same Exegetism's approach was promoted in two respects by the gradual assertion of the rationalist approach to the world. The anti-authoritarian (specifically: anti-Catholic and anti-Catholic) interpretation of the Bible should be an act of reason in the sense of the new freedom of thought, especially since this had the same opponent. On the other hand The new exegetical attitude fit the situation that was characterized by the collapse of the traditional world view; it was now a thankless task to search in the Bible for the supports of a cosmology that existed within a complete intellectual construction such as that of Thomism would have undisputed space. By treating the Bible as a source of edification or as a starting point or orientation framework for the discovery of true personal religiosity, modern natural science remained unchallenged in its practice, which was generally welcomed as a positive rapprochement or mutual complementation of both areas despite much resistance from conservative Protestants against what they saw as a threat to religion posed by the advancement of natural science. But the practical result of the Protestant exegetical approach was the fragmentation of the Reformation movement into a multitude of more or less hostile sects, each of which insisted on the external rigor of its own biblical interpretation. The common fight against Catholicism was not enough to maintain Protestant unity, and it also confirmed the prophecies of the counter-reformers that the new movement would destroy the church as a soldier. The zealous interpretation and criticism of the Bible

evoked endless disputations that must have reminded one of the s&olastisdia: the autonomous ratio in theology brought about anardy and chaos, as Bayle skeptically noted at the time. As a reaction against this state of affairs (which was supposed to be a product of the new theological intellectualism, just as the religious wars were interpreted as a result of the old one) and against the systematic development of the theological Lutheran orthodoxy

'^ HirS‹:h, Ges‹:h. d. evangel. Theol., II, 104 f., 94 ff. '°^ '°'

'° ®

Kraus, Ges‹:hd hist.-crit. Exploration of the OT, sff. op. eit., 66 ff. op. it., 28 ff.

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the religious appeal to the certainty of the mind and the heart - although it soon became clear that the content-specific interpretation of the latter was bound to give rise to at least as many divisions and controversies. The pietistic version of the nature of the Enlightenment '°' was the objective sadilage in the full understanding that Enlightenmentist brutalism in general did not require a confession to the primacy of the intellect rather the opposite was the case. Did the rational primarily mean the natural-existential and were heart and reason under certain conditions (content lidien) Presuppositions are indistinguishable from one another, so pietism was allowed to be "true" Enlightenment, as did the non-religious, emotional and sophistry currents of that time. Here as there, one sees the Enlightenment in the radicalization of empiricism through the elimination of all mediating intellectual authorities: thus empiricism becomes a belief in the reality of what is grasped or given in absolute immediacy or intuitively. He therefore refers primarily to the inner experience as the most immediate. From this empiricist Sidit, the reality of their contents is believed just as absolutely as the truth of sensory perceptions (it is not by chance that later philosophers of feeling connected their position with this 'total realism' in epistemology "'.) In this way the id comes to the fore, dealing with the world becomes dealing with oneself, and thus the existential intensity reaches a climax. And since the religious experience is perceived as the core of inner experience in general, the investigation of the Idi must be identical with the investigation of the ways of God. Only within the absolute immediacy of inner experience is God alive and tangible. It becomes the highest level of the elevation of the Idi, which therefore experiences its true possibilities at the very moment in which it loses its existence or becomes one out of the object of its experience (Sidi and God) - which is actually the non plus ultra At the same time, the irreplaceable gain is empiricized, that is, with the complete expression of the abstractions of the intellect, which represents knowledge. The soul tastes the living spirit in an almost sensual way; it enjoys God and is in contact with him. Significantly, the language of Pietism has the vocabulary of Goethe's time

'°• Of course, the Pietists themselves understood their problem as a problem of the (first emerging) Enlightenment—by the way, a word that appears much later (Stuke, Enlightenment, 247 ff.). The objective similarities can only be determined on the basis of a retrospective, ideal-typical analysis. The semasiological relationship between the words Enlightenment, Lumieres, Enlightenment and expressions such as lumen (naturale or divinum), Enlightenment, etc. is, however, nothing less than coincidental. The Pietis section also made use of the light metaphor (Langen , Wortschatz, 44, 45, 250, 377, 416, 476). '•° So Jacobi and Hemsterhuis, see Kondylis, Origin of Dialectics, 131, 143 ff.

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shaped. Expressions such as 'enjoyment of God' (whereby the verb 'enjoy' has the double meaning of 'participation' and 'appropriation') or the phrases 'God sdime&en', God eat', God drink', which refer to the Lord's Supper, often appear in the literature, as well as formulations in which the learned thinking activity - in analogy to Spinoza's summo bono frui', 'vita rationali frui' etc. - is placed in connection with existentially deeply felt enjoyment and contrasted with merely reflexive thinking "'. The extent of the sense-making Christ and the forms of his worship among the Pietists around Zinzendorf are known '^.

The sensualization and enjoyment of the spiritual within the existential intensity compensates for the deprivations required by dire morality. Asceticism itself thus gains a somewhat anti-ascetic aspect, and the free development of the subject no longer stands in the way. Nad pieti stisdiem understanding, the human being remains a willless plaything in the hands of God "', but in reality pietistis is self-denial the redit production of one's own activity with reference to the almighty will of God. By interpreting his behavior as if he were self-denying, the pietist If the theory had acted, the theory's lack of will is subtly transformed into a joy of action and decision. The Calvinist's sense of self even experiences an increase in the Pietist's desire for the methodical way of living, although on the other hand it has to be abated because of the inner conflict that Pietist's sentimentalism brings with it In fact, this conflict often becomes a compulsory exercise and a theoretical topic that is not taken seriously in practice, just like the feeling of worthiness. Pietistic anti-intellectualism ultimately aims at the emancipation of the forces of the I&, and in this it shows itself - regardless of whether consciously or not - in its connection with general Enlightenment intentions. Equally enlightened is his concern to eliminate the intellectual mediating instances or To complement the obstacles in the development of psychic sensuality by eliminating those obstacles that tend to put the intellectualistic attitude to practical activity outside. For the Pietists, as for most enlighteners, intellectualism, if it wants to be active in practice, shows itself by being unrealistic or by prioritizing and following sterile speculative principles: it thus separates knowledge and life, theology and religion. This is now contrasted with the concrete concern for the Christian, the proof of faith through good works, the practical orientation of education, the brotherhood within the faith community, etc. '•' Langen, Worud atz, 248 ff., 296 ff.; Binder, 'enjoyment', 72 ff.

'*-” Rits&1, Gesdl. i.e. Pietism, III, 4o4 ff.; Sdlmidt, Pietism, 93 ff.; Langen, Wortschatz , 289 f. '•°

on. cit., 210 ff. '•• Günther, Psyd ol. i.e. Pietism, 163 ff.

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"'. The dynamization of the inner life goes hand in hand with that of the outer life, and it is perceived as incompatible with all manifestations of intellectualism, from syllogistics and Latin to theologically flawless but cold 'sermon'".

In this context, where it is mainly about the ideal type and the elaboration of conceptual structures, the distortions and compromises of the pietist's basic position are of no interest, which resulted from the various arrangements, sometimes with orthodoxy, sometimes with the rationalist (intellectual) theological traditions. This often happened, as was to be expected, since Pietism had a common aspect with the Christian religion and also shared Orthodoxy's distrust of the latter from its own perspective. When choosing the respective ally, the local constellation of forces and mental attitude were decisive, the diversity of which from place to place had also created the diversity of manifestations of the Pietist movement in the various regions of Germany early on. After all, the split of the radical wing showed Under Zinzendorf, the willingness to adapt was not unlimited and the original spirit of the movement as a whole was to a certain extent always alive and capable of innovation. Of importance for the intellectual life of the late German Enlightenment is, among other things, the recourse of radical pietists to thinkers like approximately J. Böhme as well as their inclination towards pantheistic constructions, which in a roundabout way approximated Spinoza's Kabbalah. However, these were peripheral ideas - sometimes even symptoms of dissolution. Be that as it may, although pietism had risen and declined as an ideology and movement by the time the rise of Wolffianism began, it nevertheless contributed to combating the intellectualist current in large part. His direct confrontation with it could not be avoided since a number of theologians tried to apply Wolff's philosophical principles to their own discipline and thus 'brought the so-called neology into being'. Formally, this approach consisted of the deductive-apodictistic formulation of religious truths, and in terms of content it was more or less linked to Wolff's theses that revelation is not allowed to follow reason

"* Biber Fran&e's practical activity in this sense and its significance for the For the shaping of the Prussian character see Schmidt, Pietismus, 76 ff., 143. "'On the pietistic turning away from the artificialities of baroque oratory, see Sperber , Influence of Pietism on Language, 500 ff.; on the new style in the Kantzenbach sermon, Protest. Christianity, 86 ff. and Holl, Significance of the great wars, 55 ff. '•' Ritschl, Gesch. d. Piet., II, 249 f., 256, 424 ff.; 497 ff.; Hirsch, Gesch. d. evangel. Theol., II, 394 ff. "'

op. et., II, 226 ff., 307 ff.

'•• Louis, Hist. d. Wolff. Philos., I, 166 ff.; Aner, Theol. d. Lessingzeit, 144; Barth, protest. Thcol., 13S ff. (cf. the restrictive remark on p. 142).

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contradict, even if they exceed this, and God himself is bound to the (morali sdie) ratio or moralisthe truths could also exist independently of God and provide the basis of a natural religion "'. It was therefore to be expected that Wolffianism would follow Western European Deism in Germany would directly or indirectly pave the way "'. However, his influence on theology was neither limited to this nor did it begin with it. Whether and in which sense Gottsdied is apostrophized as the first neologist may remain an open question here. In the overall perspective of mental health, someone like S. Baurngarten (a brother of the aesthetician) is more likely to emerge as a typical figure, precisely because he is both Wants to be a continuator of Halle's (moderate) pietistic tradition as a loyal student of Wolff's: the objectively existing points of contact between pietism and intellectualist reform theology are expressed in Baumgarten's project on sdiaulidi. However, one could not go far in this riding. For Baumgarten, like neology in general, must adopt Wolff's principle of the submission of the will to reason: this is the basis of their intellectualism, which refers both to men and to God, since on both levels the primacy of the Reason (which in its separation from the will is intellect) is asserted. However, the Wolffian theologians did not want to replace God with reason; from pietistic reasons this was secondary. If God becomes more or less the factotum of reason, the once so lively conversational partner whom the I':h encountered on its wandering into its own labyrinth and from whom it expected a final answer to its personalistic questions withers away. A God who speaks the language of reason speaks to everyone at the same time and thus becomes impersonal. His commandments are generally understandable, so they must be registered through the intellect, ie the ability of the impersonal -general, and no longer arise from enlightenment or existential intensity; the unity in God's will

'^° Hirsd›, Gesd›. d. evangel. Theol., II, 76 ff., 83 ff.

'^' Indirectly through S. Baumgarten's distinction between atheism and deism with fundamentally benevolent treatment of the latter (Kantzenbadl, Protest. Christ., 98ff., 112ff.); directly through the work of Lüdke, the translator of Tindal (Led›ler, Engl. Deismus, 447 ff.). Aner's claim is misleading that neology is different from deism in that it does not reject revelation (Theol. d. Lessing Zeit, 180). For not all deists have rejected revelation, only demanded its submission to reason: that is also the decisive point. On the other hand, Aner himself admits that neologists like Lüdke had come to a rationalistic version of the content of revelation (354). '•° So on. eit., 195 ff. *^^ If it is sung, Protest. Christ., 80, 103. '•• Hirsdi, Ges&i. d. the gospel. Theol., II, 374 ff.

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there must be no exaltation, no warm application of psychic sensuality. In short: a God who is identical with reason can only general, that is, issuing abstract commandments and thus only affecting the intellect. This voice of God means the suppression of the most living and individual, rather than the inner experience - just as the concrete qualities of nature are verified through the mathematical formulas. In addition, the neological effort to remove from religion and theology everything that was based on superstition, according to the pietists' view, amounted to the same disregard or mistreatment of psychic sensuality: nothing remained except the commandments of reason, nothing that touched the soul and made it move could set. The rationalistic (intellectualistic) current in theology wants to subject God and humanity to the lordship of the abstract. The reaction against it was great - and we have to interpret it as a symptom of enlightened anti-intellectualism in general in order to be able to understand it to this extent in terms of intellectual history. Because the Pietists were by no means alone. Not only did they sometimes join forces with orthodoxy against the neologists, but also the peculiar partisanship of such thinkers as Lessing for orthodoxy was not actually aimed at the advantages of the latter, but rather at that anti-intellectualistic-emancipatory aspect that orthodoxy shares with the To share pietism as a representative of immediate religious experience. The special strength of the religious philosophy of feeling in Germany made such combinations possible. It is shown symbolically by the fact that fanaticism and superstition are not fundamentally identified here; Rather, there is a tendency to evaluate fanaticism - in the anti-intellectualistic sense of religious enthusiasm and elevation positively. According to Pietist's view, sin and atonement or deeper self-knowledge form the two poles around which the spiritual life of the religious-moral person revolves with ever increasing intensity. This is an essential point for understanding the background of the controversy between Pietists (and Orthodox) on the one hand and neologists on the other. The former insist on the doctrine of original sin because they see the feeling of guilt and the sudie na atonement and redemption as the indispensable means for achieving the existential intensity in religious experience. The appreciation of psychological senselessness or suffering in all its diversity - from despair and remorse to relief and gratitude explains this, one might say, pietistic joy in sin. The

'" S. u., Absdin. 3 b. The early relationships of Hegel and Hölderlin to Storr's orthodox theology show how relevant this constellation was in the 1990s (Kondylis, Emergence of Dialectic, 170 ff.). '^ Conze-Reinhart, Fanaticism, 312 ff.¡ cf. Sperber, Influence of Pietism on Spradie, 514.

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The radical empiricism of this point of view becomes visible in turn through the reference to the often unconscious effect of the mathematical-deductive in the thinking of neologists, which is, however, largely detached from Wolff's narrow mathematical definition and rarely joins in with their position thanks to the appeal to reason and human dignity had given them a liveliness that was essentially different from the pietistic one, but for many was no less "'. The deductive or the prioritization of the general is unmistakable in their way of thinking , as the rejection of the doctrine of original sin shows when we look at it structurally: the transformation of man through the fall from an image of God into a pitiful mortal is seen just as much as a disruptive factor from the point of view of the rational religion as miracles or coincidences from the perspective of natural science. When the neologians downplay original sin or keep silent about it (the criticism of Augustine and the sympathetic treatment of Pelagianism gained considerable ground in their circles), they have in mind the image of a constant and calculable human nature, which readily adapts to could be connected to the equally immutable principles of reason. Also with a view to gaining an authority that would be regarded as the epitome of what is reasonable and would thus serve as a starting point for the deductive finding of the individual moral norms, the neologists treated the sociohistorical sensuality. They separated the essence of Christianity from the historical Manifestations (or of all cases of sin) of the same and projected the ideal of the rational religion into the Urdiristtum, whereby freely lidi motives such as the enlightened study of the unspoilt nature played a part etc. By proceeding in this way, the neologists, like all intellectualists of the Century, not least the suspicion of nihilism in mind . that orthodox and pietists the anthropology of pessimists and skeptics and also largely shared their thesis that religion is a product of passion and not reason, although they drew fundamentally different conclusions from it . Neology's reservations against its religious opponents are also mistrust of the inner moral orientation power

'^'

To conclude from this that neology is not intellectualistic, as Aner does (Theol. d. Lessingzeit, 151), means a confusion of motivation and thought form. As I said, its intellectualism is based on the Wolffian primacy of reason over will. "'

on eit., 158 ff., ‹f. 329. '•' Following the trend of the century, (the) neologists are also active in historis& (significantly, the moderates among them do this above all), but they prefer the interpretation of already published sources to the publication of new ones; with the tendency to secularization in their business dealings (eliminating miracles, etc.) they are paired with, on the other hand, enlightened complacency towards earlier times (op. eit., 331 ff.).

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Sensibility that is not dispelled by any ecstatic belief. In this constellation we recognize the general features of the moral-philosophical debate of the century. The negative correspondence between the religious philosophy of feeling and the contemporary skepticism regarding the rehabilitation of psychological sensuality emerges clearly in Hainann. He summarizes the results of his recent discussion of Hume in two points. First: The ultimate fruit of all world wisdom is the remark of human ignorance and stupidity'; For Hainann, this is a mental "Idstein" and at the same time a millstone that destroys all of his [Hume's] sophistry: from the side of Hamann's basic attitude, the powerlessness of the intellect is only compatible with religion, but not with possibly atheistic skepticism - and that is also so, but only if the certainty of salvation or the God-given meaning of the world is corauigeseizi. Second, Hamann agrees with Hume's thesis that religion rises and falls with the belief in miracles; "Hume may have said this with a scornful or profound expression: but this is orthodoxy and a testimony to the truth in the mouth of an enemy and persecutor of it." (it was precisely this arbitrary reversal that was advocated by those who did not want to give up the intellect, or at least not completely '•'), whereby the diversity of the basic attitude makes the agreement on the Tatsadien appear to be quite secondary; the Tatsadien stand with them In other words, entirely within the framework of the basic attitude. In Hume, Hamann finds the philosophical confirmation of the position taken by pietism and secular-sensualist movements that suffering is the real engine of spiritual life in general or the voice of nature or God in humanity "' . In the Aesthetica in nuce, this conviction is formulated repeatedly and succinctly: A philosopher... presents Möndian laws - suffering alone gives abstractions as well as hypotheses, hands, feet, wings, etc.' '•°; nature works through the senses and passions. Whoever mutilates their tools, how may he feel?' '*. The emergence of sin from suffering is not an argument against the vital, even uplifting function of the latter:

.If the sufferings are members of dishonour, they cease because of it, to be weapons of the Mannheim?' "' Like the 'natural use of the senses of

'°° Letter to Lindner dated July 3, 1759 = Briefwedisel, I, 355 f. '•' See above, chap. VI, paragraph &n. 3 b. *^'

Unger, Hamann, I, 139 ff. Unger continues Hamann's rehabilitation of sensibility

audi in connection with the peculiarities of his personality. '^ SW, II, 208.

*' Iocch„206. * 1oc. ch., 208.

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the unnatural use of abstractions', then logic is also strictly distinguished from existential certainty, i.e. from belief: What one believes therefore does not necessarily have to be proven, and a proposition can still be proved so irrevocably without being believed for that reason ... Faith is not a work of reason and therefore cannot be subject to any attack by reason” '•*. Behind the separation of faith and reason is the abstention of making the former unassailable, and this is also what the reference to the biases of the latter serves. The intellect is powerless because it is powerless towards God: and it is so because God's essence does not consist in the intellect. A God = intellect would, according to Hamann, be just as distant from the world and from humanity like the abstraction of concrete existence. The meaning of the supremacy of the The deeper steps of human existence thus appear in a new light. The intellect cannot gain the upper hand in him or open up the secrets of existence because man lives in nature and health, which in turn are penetrated by God "': the enlightenment is the ""

The rooting of humanity's existence in nature and health is rediscovered by Hamann in the religious sense, and since God is present in these, it serves in its entire anti-intellectualistic consequence the approach of humanity to God: "As nature gave us, ours to open eyes; so the intelligence, our ears. To dissect a body and an event down to its first elements means to want to catch God's inviolable being, his eternal power and deity. The connection of the existential intensity of the God-seeking Idi with the consideration of nature in its concreteness (= Divinity) understandably brings Hamann close to the natural science-based irism, because the iriathematicsthe methodology is based on world-based reasons, that is, from the amazement of the miracle

'^ Socrat. Denkwürd., SW, II, 73 f. On Hamann's partly redacted, partly arbitrary transformation of Hume's epistemological theory of belief into a redaction of religious belief, see Swain, Hamann and the Philos. of Hume, esp. 347 ff. cf. Metzke, Hamann's position, 75 ff. *^° On the condescension of God as the basis of Hamann's understanding of nature and history, see the good analysis by Founder, Figure and Gesdiichte, 21 ff., 78 ff., 85 ff., 91 f. *^ ® The Enlightenment origin of this view must be particularly emphasized here, since Hamann is usually portrayed as the great opponent of the Enlightenment (if not entirely, then only with regard to his idea of tolerance or his free conception of religiosity - that is, with regard to pure Normative positions, for example in Alexander, Hamann, 198 f.: that is ridiculous, but not sufficient. In both the older and also in the newer literature about Hamann, the false conception of the alleged intellectualist Enlightenment usually serves as a benchmark , against which Hamann's performance is measured. '°° Socrat. Memorable, SW, II, 64.

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of the concrete, must remain alien. The great exponent of this approach in natural science was Hamann Bacon (my Euthyphro'), who is much mentioned and quoted. , and its distribution in Deuudiland is therefore regarded as Abel ' 7 '. Hamann also wants to see history treated as purely empirically as nature: "I'm surprised that no one has dared as much about history as Bacon has done for physics."' Such a history ‹:hubetra&tation would be a continuation or supplement of that natural science, which understands nature and human beings as a sensual revelation' of divine glory ”': because the qBudi of creation' and the

“Confederation officers” fulfill the same function. The essence of Gesdiidite is revelation, and the Ges‹:hi‹:hubu‹:h par excellence the Bible, since it tells all the stages and phases of revelation, as it culminates in the first incarnation of Christ '7 ' .

Here, however, we do not want to further elaborate on Hamann's Christocentric view of history, but rather point out once again the logical connection between his anti-intellectualism and the thesis of the rooting of man in history. Man is affected by knowledge, that is, by revelation and tradition, because and in that he is nature, that is, a sensual being that establishes itself in connection with the environment through senses and passions. In view of this rootedness, which is not only necessary but also beneficial because it corresponds to human nature, there can be no question of pure reason: “The stamina and menstrua of our reason are therefore revelations and traditions in the truest understanding that we take as our property, transform into our juices and strengths, and '. The never-ending thereby become true to our destiny' ' 7 conversation with nature and stories or revelation (an ultimately unavoidable conversation, since man is nature and sight and as a

' 7° Esth. in nuce, SW, II, 197 note 3, cf. 206. "' on Descartes, SW, IV, 223. "° Versu& on an academic question, SW, II, 124. ' 7 • Socratic Memorable, SW, II, 65. ' 7^ Aesth. in nuce, SW, II, 198.

' 7 • lock. it., 204. "• loc. cit., 213. '^

Biber Hamann's extensive and content-free concept of reality, which with this Thesis is related, see Metzke, Hamann's position, 78 ff. About the different ones

Forms of abstractions', against which this concept of reality is directed, see. Alexander, Hamann, 71—119. " ® Philol. Ideas, SW, III, 39. about Hamann's epistemologythe criticism of

Kant in its connection with his philosophy of language, see Simon, Reason and Author s&aft, esp. l•t7 ff., 158 ff. and Baudler, Seeing in Words, 179 ff.

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image of God ( finding God in it) sets the decisive sins of existence in motion and leads to the fulfillment of the human destiny. The path is personal, ie it opens only through the greatest increase in inner experience and innate powers. But he is not lonely, since his own existential intensity results in insight into the original strengthening of the self with God and the environment or fellow human beings: God and my nephew are therefore part of my self-knowledge, my selflove. The uniqueness experienced of the personal situation is therefore only the downside and in a certain sense also the prerequisite of devotion to the ontological blood related on all levels.Therefore Hamann sees in his position the Ga rantie for the preservation of the ('true') autonomy of the person. The one with Rü&The ideal of autonomy, designed for the thinking activity of the individual, actually arises, like every abstraction, from empty hope, because in doing so the metaphysis, the connection of the human being, which is at the same time the connection to nature and health, is completely left out of it. Against Kant, who wants to free the human being from his own immaturity (for Hamann a contradiction in se, because "incompetence is not a guilt") and thus counts himself among the class of guardians, and who therefore has to give himself a reputation against immature readers wants', Hamann claims that true enlightenment consists in an exit of the underage people from a completely self-conducted guardianship. The Lord's furdition is the beginning of wisdom, because it is also the beginning of self-knowledge and self-love in the above sense. The public use of reason and freedom is nothing but a naditis, a horny naditisdi. The private use is the daily bread' "' , because autonomy is formed in the silent and patient inner struggle with the full commitment of the individual, who is rooted in nature and health. Because autonomy

means existential fulfillment in God's presence, its worst enemy is the belief that it will be achieved through clearly formulated universal principles or through the practice of what has been said. Principles and ideas are essentially abstract, that is, they stand beyond concrete humanity and actually arise from the transfer of the attitude that creates the abstract idea of God to morality and politics. Just as morality that wants to be purely human and allows the sources of existential intensity to dry up through detachment from God or from nature and revelation, so too is the abstract God the product of the intellect, which wants to bind him to his own principles. As Hamann writes with regard to the neologists: 'The object of your prayers and andadit is not God, but a mere figurative word, like your general human reason, which you deify through a more than poetic license to a real person, etc.' "'

"" Bro&en, SW, I, 302. '^ Letter to Kraus dated December 18, 1784 = letter exchange, V, 291 f. ‘ ®‘

Neue Apologie, SW, III, 106.

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3. The monistic approach of the German late Enlightenment

a) The rediscovery of Leibniz in its verse dilution with Shaftesbury's and Spinoza's influence Just as the religious philosophy of feeling adopted leitmotifs of skepticism with reversed precedents, so did the late German Enlightenment, consciously or unconsciously (sometimes even as part of a rejection of pietism, etc.). Structures of thought in the religious philosophy of feeling, which served as building blocks of a structure of thought based on various world-changing assumptions. This became the motif of existential intensity or autonomy as a development of metaphysically rooted forces almost commonplace; Goethe, who calls to mind the influence of the Hamanns‹3ien S‹3iften on the generation growing up around 1770, believes he can summarize their nature in the following maxim: »Everything that man undertakes to achieve ... must come to an end all the united forces spring from' "'. The pessimistic anthropology or the doctrine of original sin was nevertheless rejected with equanimity. If it promoted the mobilization of psychic sensuality among the Pietists and Hamann, on the one hand it supported the demand for antiasceticism Morality, which was unmistakable despite socially conditioned prudery or fear of immoralism, and on the other hand, it neglected the purely socially healthy dimension nadi sidi, even if, as with Hamann, the revelation expressly referred to the story as a whole: Here, too, the constant confrontation of the sinful and struggling individual with the spiritual revelation was more in mind than the concrete activity of entire peoples in space and time. From this perspective, biological and social-physical sensibility very often came into play

'"-" Di&tung u. Truth, XII = SW 24, 81. Of course, this does not mean that the influence of the theology of salvation on the social philosophy of the late German Enlightenment was small. Kaiser has impressively shown that organic thinking motifs and ways of speaking (wad stum, wholeness, etc.) are part of the mystic and pietic tradition in Herder, for example. B. live on and that this tradition also had a significant state theory and national aspect (Pietism and Patriotism, especially 32 ff., 70 ff., 139 ff., 160 ff.). With regard to Lessing's and Herder's philosophies of business, one must take into account the role that the engagement with sociology and historical knowledge of the Western European Enlightenment plays in them. The ideas of sacred theology are brought to bear here in order to neutralize the skeptical consequences of the unconditional rehabilitation of social-social sensuality - but this rehabilitation is taken seriously and has an effect - both positive and negative. as an autonomous catalyst of social-philosophical thinking (cf. and note 286).

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In short, what was bound to give rise to considerable difficulties with regard to combating nihilism through an all-encompassing and optimistic metaphysics. In order to lead to the final victory and not essentially represent a mere renewal of old controversies between theologians and atheists, the fight against skepticism and nihilism had to be carried out with the most modern weapons; In other words, the enlightened rehabilitation of sensuality had to be accepted to the full extent and calmly on all levels, because the new metaphysics had to absorb and process not only the areas of being, but also the areas and advances of contemporary knowledge. And not just all-encompassing in this one two respects, but also emancipatory-antiascetic in the modern age It had to mean one way or another if it did not want to be dismissed as a reaction of conventional character or as a narrow-minded collapse of the intellectual horizon for the sake of the Panic preservation of moral values. As far as the anthropological attitude that prevailed in the German late Enlightenment is concerned, it did not result from the mere encounter between the insights of the religious philosophy of feeling into the dynamics of inner life and the neological rejection of the doctrine of original sin, although both did not fail to have their complementary effect: indirect Influences should not be underestimated, even when they stem from overall positions that are more likely to be opposed than followed in decisive executions—as was the case with religious sentiment philosophy for its pessimistic aspects and neology for its intellectualism. The elements that are fruitful in the sense of the new direction are now classified into a whole, which, however,arises as a coherent expression of a unified basic attitude and not from the mere summation of the elements mentioned, scattered in various previous currents. This process was The presence of intellectually trained Western European models made it much easier, which largely corresponded to the new needs; the models did not give rise to the needs in the first place, as sometimes appears from the philologist's perspective, but rather helped them to be articulated and thus reinforced them, made them spiritually relevant and capable of independent development. These were primarily the Shaftesbury districts

'^ In K1opsto& as a representative figure of the transitional period around 1750, you find a groundbreaking mix or accentuation of moments that flow into the German late Enlightenment: here you cross neology or rational religion and pietism as well as the diristical idea of God with a harmonious world view of Leibniz's inspiration, in which even slight nuances of pantheistry become noticeable, while at the same time the feeling of sin recedes from a feeling of exaltation or nature. S. Kaiser, Klopsto&, Chap. II and III, pp. 28 ff., 123 ff. and Murat, KlopstO&, 98 ff., 117 ff., 223 ff. Cf. Kantzenbadi, protest. Christ., 177 f.

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and Rousseau. The details of this influence and the statements of leading representatives of the late German Enlightenment about Shaftesbury and Rousseau are well known enough and therefore do not need to be recounted anew. From the basis of our question it should be emphasized that in both '8' there is a fundamental principle of optimism Anthropology was combined with a high diet of inner experience or psy':listen sensuality and at the same time with a joyful, anti-ascetic attitude - an ensemble that rounded off religious emotional philosophy and neology with a difference. If Shaftesbury's influence was overall considered deeper and more powerful This is because these motifs emerged for him within a distinct metaphysical framework. The connection of optimistic anthropology with the corresponding ontology already showed the way in which nihilism could be defeated. The intellectual and temporal parallelism is therefore particularly remarkable of the influence of Shaftesbury with the rediscovery of Leibniz, whereby the following constellation results: as Shaftesbury's ontology merges with that of Leibniz and thus becomes more sophisticated and convincing in philosophical terms, at the same time the metaphysis and foundation of the metaphysics primarily represented by Shaftesbury deepens opti mistisdien anthropology, whereby the diristlidi-traditional aspect of Leibniz's anthropology (and morality) becomes irrelevant in the overall result. In other words: since Leibniz provides the conceptual means for the metaphysical underpinning of optimistic anthropology, he does not need to be expressly corrected by Shaftesbury in moral-anthropological terms; It is therefore received all the more informally, and in its verse fusion with Shaftesbury it contributes all the more powerfully to the development of the spiritual world

'•• Mornet, Influence de Rousseau, 59 ff.; Benrubi, Rousseau et le mouvement philos., 99 ff.; Buck, Rousseau and German Romanticism, 4 ff.; Süßenberger, Rousseau in the judgment of German journalism, especially 85 ff. ¡ Trousson, Rousseau dans la presse périodique, pas sinn; Guthke, Early Gesdi. i.e. Rousseauism, especially 391 ff. 1^^ The common points of Shaftesbury and Rousseau, which also explain their joint effect, are worked out by Sdilegel (Shaftesbury and the Frendi Deists, 99-129). About Shaftesbury's influence, as it is treated in older literature, see Walzel, Shaftesbury and the German intellectual life, especially 420 f., 427 f. '•' This madit was noticed in 1760 by the public. In 1763 the Theodicy appeared in Gottsdied's edition (the Beck edition followed in 1771), in 1765 Raspe published the Nouveaux Essais for the first time, and in 1768 Dutens sedis published the volume edition of the Collected Sdiriften. The complete (three-volume) German edition Shaftesbury's fonts were published in 1776-9, see the bibliography of the German translations in Weiser, Shaftesbury, 557 ff. Particularly interesting for our context (cf. above, note 184) is the fact that Oetinger was also Shaftesbury's translator emerged or sought a theological interpretation of the Englishman.

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the German late Enlightenment. However, the basis of this confusion was not the commonality of both thinkers in the treatment of individual questions from a technical and philosophical point of view, but rather the radically optimistic and unifying or monistic basic attitude - which in turn exposes the priority of the "basic attitude" factor in the thinking style of those who have the said called verse fusion. The enthusiasm for Rousseau, however, related to the normative content of his concept of nature in general, but Rousseau's educational concern, which for some was his decisive advantage, emphasized very clearly the primary connection between the concept of nature and the concept of humanity, whereby the normative -optimistic aspect of the former was easily transferred to the latter, resulting in an ontological-anthropological mixture that could be easily integrated into the worldview shaped by Leibniz and Shaftesbury. Rousseau has an emancipatory effect in two senses. The image of man emerging from the hands of nature suggests the elimination of all convention and tradition, that is, all ties '^; and the legend surrounding Rousseau's personality served, on the other hand, to create new models of individual behavior, which did not remain without a practical influence, especially on the younger generation. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm for Rousseau's work and personality was not that strong blind, in order to simply overlook those moments of his thinking that were incompatible with the concerns of the late German Enlightenment. What was perceived as Rousseau's hostility to culture was rejected outright and from the outset." Shaftesbury's influence is deeper in this respect too

'^ Therefore, the - not just intellectual life, but also (petty) bourgeois life Reaction against Rousseau was often violent. One of their weapons was to point out Rousseau's unpredictable character, which could easily be portrayed as madness (Süßenberger, Rousseau im Uneil d. German Publ., 205 ff.). The most loyal Rousseau followers were initially to be found in the circles of the young - and large part of the youth - free-weaving intelligentsia: "Rousseau's anti thesis of individual and society was felt by them with peculiar force" (Pascal , Sturm und Drang, 304).

"'On the legend uni Rousseau see Süßenberger, Rousseau in judgment etc., 21 ff., 159 ff. (between exorcism and hagiography'); Trousson, Rousseau et son oeuvre dans la presse, (2nd part) , 257 ff.; about Christoph Kaufmann's lived Rousseauism as an extreme but "characteristic" example from the time of the Sturm und Drang movement, see Mu‹:h . J•s•**d afld Zeitgeist, 31 ff .; about the Rousseau reception and -Legend about the young S‹:hiller, Hölderlin and Hegel, see. Condylis, formation of the Dialectic, 33, note, 39, 68 f., 80; cf. Voisine, Nouv. Héloise" et Gtntration de Werther', esp. 123 ff. '^

Trousson, Rousseau et son oeuvre dans la presse (Part 1), 291 ff.; Guthke, Früh gesdl. d. Rousseauism,

385 f.; Tuba&, Perfectibility, 146 ff.; Fester, Rousseau and die deuts‹:he Ges‹:hi&uphil., passim.

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because his conviction in the natural sociability of man and society as a selfevident and irreplaceable space for the development of the individual's powers was much more attractive than Rousseau's in the perspective of the emerging bourgeois educational ideal This attitude towards the cultural whole, which was entirely in line with the general Enlightenment approach, had a decisive influence on the intellectual form of the German late Enlightenment. The unconditional Rehabilitation of socially healthy meaning within a metaphysical framework made business philosophy an indispensable component of the budding monistic worldview - a process that reached its great heights before Hegel in Leasing and Herder.

In order to be able to grasp the reception of Leibniz by the leading representatives of the late German Enlightenment in its deeper intellectual dimension, a brief reminder of the originally ambiguous physiognomy of his thinking is required. The genetic analysis of a thought is not always a prerequisite for understanding its effects. In this case, however, it is by and large the case that the aspect of Leibnizian thought that structurally most strongly promoted the unification philosophy that was emerging stood in contradiction to that aspect in the development of this thought that did not or did not meet the needs of unification philosophy could not satisfy to the same extent as the former and was therefore set aside. What is meant here is the separation of spirit and sensuality undertaken at the price of the artificial construction of the preestablished harmony on the one hand and the teleologis‹:je union of the two on the other. This dichotomy of Leibniz die philosophy, which appears in several forms (mathematics vs metaphysics, medianicism vs teleology, optimal statisdie whole vs development idea), can be explained, just as in other cases we have encountered, from Leibnizen's polemical abstentions, that is, from the fact that he has two opponents in mind at the same time, whereby fighting one of them is at least a partial way back acceptance of the argument used against the other person he demands. As s&on remarks, the logical consequence of the priority of the world response in thinking under given circumstances is overtaken by the pole mis‹:den — and the priority of the world response in Leibniz can hardly be doubted, especially since it lets sidi sdion purely dironologisdi determine : for this ingenium praecox, central worldans‹:haulid theses such as the concept of harmony precede any approach to the systematic development of a

'•' Here one follows not only Shaftesbury, but the British school in general , whose social philosophical representatives one reads carefully: Ferguson's influence ‹:her Essay on the History of Civil Sociery ers&ien z. B. in Garves deuts&er Dbersetzung

in 1768, barely a year after the original was published.

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own metaphysics "'. Leibniz wants to substantiate certain teachings that he sees as indispensable and the ideal prerequisite for morality and the goodness of science and of science as a whole price fall together '^. This attitude is concretized in two large, complementary undertakings. One is the defense of the dogmas of the "first religion" (from the immortality of the soul to transsubstantiation), but with a focus on certain moral results takes place and thus amounts to the attempt to interpret or reform Christianity in the sense of moral theses and expectations and in this way to put an end to the fight between its wings "'. The second consists in the refutation of contemporary atheism - that "rnonstrum atheismi, a quo nihil praeter anardiiam universalem atque eversionem societatis humanae t ". Since God guarantees freedom and morality, expectari potest' the consistent determinism eo ipso must mean atheism.

The difference between Descartes' theism and pantheism Spinoza's claim to common determinism is therefore irrelevant and even misleading. From the spirit of concern for God, morality t ". Time and freedom are lumped together with Descartes and Spinoza. Throughout his life, Leibniz portrays Spinoza as the most consistent Cartesian for polemical rather than logical reasons, which of course aims at discrediting Cartesianism. This The obfuscation of the differences between Descartes and Spinoza, however convenient it may have been for Leibniz, has now been erased. Because Leibniz makes the accusation of determinism or fatalism in general, he misses the fact that he is hitting Descartes in a completely different way than Spinoza. For in Descartes determinism arises because res cogitans and res extensa are not only separated from each other, but also equally treated substances '°', which seems to imply the complete autonomization of mere medianism. As a substance, matter is indestructible and takes

"° On Leibniz's early conception of the world see Friedmann, Leibniz et Spinoza, 29 ff. Kabitz had already emphasized against Couturat, Russel and Cassirer that it was impossible to derive Leibniz's system from purely logical premises; the cheological-metaphysical component predominates even in his earliest preoccupation with scientific questions (Philos. des Jungen Leibniz, 2, 55). Ahnli & Heimsoeth, Leibniz' We1tans‹:hauung, 366 f., 370 ff. Cf. Jalambert's comments directed against Bruns&vicg, Theorie leibnizienne de la substance, 44 ff. '•• See the conceptually and psychologically excellent presentation by Friedmann, Leibniz et Spinoza, 233 ff., 191 ff. '•• S. o., Kap. II, Anm. 310. "° Conze, Leibniz, 48 f. ' Friedmann, Leibniz and Spinoza, 117 ff. '°' Princ Phil., LII = AT, VIII, 24 f.

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continuously new forms - a doctrine that Leibniz considers particularly "dangerous," especially since, applied to the other substance, it would mean that there is no immortality of the personal life, but only one of the modifiable substantial soul. If Cartesian determinism derives from the separation between the substantia corporea and mens, and thus from the expulsion of the soul from nature, Spinozist die, conversely, derives from the absolute union of the two within the framework of the One Substance, subjecting both to the same necessity . Despite his polemical equation of Descartes and Spinoza, dodi Leibniz objectively faces two views of the essence of determinism and of the substantial value of the res cogitans and must therefore, nolens volens, summon up two constructs of thought in order to be able to oppose both views equally, with the contradiction of these constructions to each other remains unconscious to the extent that he equates the two versions of determinism. He contrasts the Spinozist one substance with the multiplicity of substances or monads (in this he sees the 'destruction of Spinozism' "') and at the same time the separation of soul and body, which is emphasized rather than abolished by the preestablished harmony. The substantially autonomous one cartesianisdien res extensa, however, he encounters it in the opposite way, because here it is important to ensoul matter, ie to unite it with the soul - it doesn't matter whether this union is in the spirit of the soul or is understood panpsydiistisdi or not '°' Leibniz thus questions the Cartesian equation of matter and extension (which, incidentally, the materialists also had to do) "' and replaces the constant of the magnitude of motion, on which Descartes based the median the immutability of the laws of nature, with the constant of the Force, whereby the focus shifts accordingly from medianics to teleology, since force mediates teleologically between form and matter and thus forms the soul or enteledie of the latter. The Doctrine of the Substantial Form is renewed "'. One cannot claim that this refutation of Cartesianism is Spinozism in the sense of following Spinoza's teachings in detail. As an opponent of Descartes, Leibniz resorts to s&olastics "• on the one hand and the natural

'•® Phil. Sdir., IV, 275, 300, 334, 340. The difficulties of Cartesianism with the direct transsubstantiation dogma were obviously an early reason for Leibniz' criticism of the Cartesian theory of extension or movement, see. Nason, Leibniz's Atta&, 451 ff. *"" Letter to Bourguet from December 1714 Phil. Sdir., III, 575. “'On Leibniz' panpsydiism see Jalambert, Theory Leibn. de la subst. 42 ff. '°' S. our analysis in Chap. IV, par. 4 a. '°• Syst. Nouveau, Phil. S&r., IV, 478 f. '°° Both on the s&olastic oncology as audl on the sdiolastic&e logic, s.

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Philosophy of the Renaissance "' on the other hand, back. Nevertheless, one must notice a strong Spinozist aspect in Leibniz if one uses the word Spinozism to represent what Leibniz did not want to read in it, namely the radical anti-Cartesian approach to the unification of res cogitans and res extensa in monistisdiem framework. In this sense, Spinozism is objectively given in Leibniz, and one does not need to make it dependent on Leibniz's respective subjective attitude towards Spinoza's work and person." If Leibniz wants to combat Spinozism through the multiplicity of substances, he must, on the other hand, incapacitate Cartesianism through the dynamic unification of the two separate substances . The dynamic of unification is now thought of differently by Leibniz than by Spinoza, and in addition he adheres to a more flexible framework that facilitates the separation or unification of soul and body depending on need, while Spinoza takes a binding position on this issue . The unification approach itself remains common. the union, in turn, draws its dynamism from the dialectic of the relationships between soul and body, regardless of whether these are as separate substances or as

Modes of the same substance are considered. What is important, then, is that within the framework of this mental construction, res cogitans and res extensa have to be largely obscured by Leibniz, even if only through spiritualization of the latter (which should therefore cease to be merely extensa), while the construction of pre-established harmony is such Obscurity is excluded in purely logical terms. In a certain sense, one can assume that the difference between the unification aspect of Leibniz's thought and Spinozism lies more in the number of substances than in the nature of the substance in general (this impression, after all, decisively influenced the reception of Leibniz through the late German Enlightenment). . This is precisely why Leibniz had to attach so much importance to the diversity of substances at sidi; As he continues to create new divisions in order to avoid monism of a purely Spinozist style, he indirectly comes into contact with Descartes, which he only remains unconscious of because, as I said, he equates Spinoza and Descartes and is therefore no longer able to see that that in view

Kabitz, Philos. i.e. young Leibniz, 15, 19, 49 f., 78; Belaval, Leibniz critique de Des cartres, 163 f.; Jalambert, love theory. de la subst., 74 ff. Leibniz rejects Aristotelianism "adapted to the new world view" and Boyle's conception of nature, see Nobis, Meaning of the Leibniz dirift De ipsa Natura, 537 (cf. above Chapter IV, paragraph 3b, 4a). ^°* Friedmann, Leibniz et Spinoza, 263 ff. "The question of the relationship between the two philosophers in the years 1676-1679 thus becomes rather irrelevant in terms of intellectual knowledge, one can even say that Stein (Leibniz and Spinoza, esp. 47 ff., 73 ff.) overestimated its importance and the warmth of Leibniz's feelings for Spinoza at that time.

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on the serious differences mentioned between the two thinkers, every step away from one had to be a step towards the other. Just as Descartes recognized only God as the actual substance and nevertheless called audi res cogitans and res extensa that way in order to be able to justify their complete independence from each other metaphysisdi, so with Leibniz only the Monas Monadum, ie God, has that absolute selfsufficiency that the deserves the name of the substance. The other monads are said to be from God, even if they can neither be created nor destroyed in this way, and thus they serve to live between time and eternity. It also remains unclear how the monads have substantiality to the same extent as God can be said to exist if the latter does not have any of the imperfections that occur in the former (e.g. unclear and indistinct ideas). If the monads were riditous, that is, incomplete substances, then God would be superfluous, and vice versa: God is If they are superior to the other monads in certain respects, then these should be viewed as imperfect modifications of the one in their perfect substance. Leibniz is thus involved in the same ambiguities that, in his own opinion, made Descartes the forerunner of Spinoza, which in turn the G-. My characteristics of his anti-Cartesianism with the general tendency towards unification of Spinozism are negative but clearly demonstrated. Leibniz may have used the teleological idea both against Descartes and against Spinoza, but he could not unify his own point of view and make it independent or independent of his respective polemics against the rebels. The character of teleology is determined by the framework in which it is supposed to operate. Within the construction of the pre-established harmony, it is in reality a teleology imposed from outside, that is, by God as the two-way acting world reason; in relation to the individual substance, it is in turn an innate and independent creation which coincides with the unification tendency and structure . Another difference is perhaps even bigger. Within the former thought construction, the goal associated with divine teleology is realized from the beginning, that is, through the act of creation. Since God cannot create any other world than the best, his work is eo ipso the realization of all conceivable possibilities, not only in physical terms (uninterrupted chain of beings), but also in moral and normative terms. This world is static and isolated, otherwise God would not be perfect and the principle of the wrong reason would be in question.

Within the construction of thought tending toward dynamic unification, however, teleology appears as ever decreasing and yet always

•°° Princ. Phil., LI = AT, VIII, 24. '•' Monad., $6; Main of Nature $2 = Phil. Mr. VI, 607, 598.

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unfinished process, a kind of creatio continua that immortalizes life in its ever-changing diversity. The use of teleology to explain the development and transformation of life and the entire creative activity of nature suggests a dynamic, still"®open world view, which, in contrast to the original, existing best of all worlds teleologis‹:h tends towards the best. As has been aptly noted, Leibniz actually proposes two views, one of which could be called "optimism" in the specific sense of the always-present realization of the optimum, but the other could be called meliorism "'. Their common teleological tip, although essentially different in the individual, should be opposed to the equally common, although essentially different in the individual, determinism of Descartes and Turn Spinoza.

However, this undertaking hardly seems to have succeeded. The optimistic construction stands in total dependence on the rationally divine principles of its creation, and rebellion against its necessity would therefore be a questioning of the principles that necessarily brought about this necessity: more strictly can Also the Spinozist': he determinism can't be "'. The situation is no different in the melioristic construction, except that here the determinism is in the form of determination of the development possibilities of the substance through its original essence or its concept appears (‹:haque substance doit exprimer des apresent tous ses estats futurs" "') - despite all theological casuistry that Leibniz offers for the nadi point of the thesis that Adam had e.g. B. acted completely freely, although the course of his actions was fixed from the outset (he is actually more consistent when he tends to limit human freedom to ignorance of the future "'). In order to be able to explain the apparent paradox that Leibniz in combating determinism we cannot do without determinism, we must remember our previous remarks on the polemical meaning of the concept of necessity - '• If determinism is in the spirit of norms and a fundamentally optimistic world view, then it is good', because it means the sdion ontologisdi unavoidable realization of those norms — while on the contrary the rejected (for Leibniz: the spinozist‹:he or cartesianisdie) determinism must appear from sdieulidi because it dares to appear without normative precedents. Precisely because it is about the norms and their effective defense (that is, undertaken using modern intellectual means), God is also identified with them "' Monad. $$ 74, 75 = Phil. Sdir., VI, 619 f. "° Lorejojr, Great Chain of Being, 256 ff. °'• Op. cit., 168 ff.; cf. Belaval, Leibniz criticizes Descanes, 451. -‘* Brief an Boyle rom Herbst 1702, Phil. S&r., III, 66.

•'• Theodizee, I, $ 58 = Phil. Sdir., VI, 134. •'• S. o., Ch. II, Abs&n. 2 b.

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or subject to reason. Ni‹:St coincidentally, in the controversy with Clarke, Leibniz took the field under the banner of determinism by rejecting the manus emendatrix: he needs a God who can be completely manipulated because he has the moral values and, in his opinion, the teachings or meta I don't want to cast doubt on physical truths even hypothetically. His version of the religion of reason, which is supposed to end the confessional struggle, is based on these: the deterministisdimathematicsthe world view is, as noted in another context, its great pattern. The perfect whole (that is, the "optimististhe" model in contrast to melioristisdien) fulfills, on the other hand, the ideological function of the idea of the whole in general. Within it, those partial aspects that contradict the normative view underlying the whole are eliminated or rendered irrelevant by being interpreted and evaluated in the light of that view. If the whole is good by definition, then Abel is mortal - that is, "mortal" is everything that contradicts the basic attitude, which therefore does not want to embody anything less than the truth of being; What speaks against it is subjected to the meaning of the whole, which represents the epitome of the basic attitude "'. This should make this latter and the normativity associated with it irrefutable. It is now obvious which of the two mental constructions that Leibniz offered in his double polemic (despite his personal impressions) was the monist one that had the most essential influence on the ontology of the German late Enlightenment. Not Spinoza's opponent, but Descartes' opponent, was honored as expected, that is, in the sense of the entire Enlightenment anti-Cartesianism. Leibniz and Spinoza are viewed by friends and foes and by Herder and Jacobi as at least parallel philosophical phenomena "' - and it is known how often the accusation of Spinozism had previously been leveled against Leibniz "'. Apart from any influence on individual questions, the most important aspect of Leibniz's reception is this

•'• S.o. Container. II, Absd n. 2 b. °'

This is the meaning of the unification of being in the time of norms or

Gottes, wie sie bei Leibniz erfolgt. Na& zwei Formulaierungen Jalaberts: To the identity of the One and of the Being is added the identity of the Being and of the Value' oder: "The identity of the Being and of the Value implies 1' identity of value and Unity' (Leibniz, phil. of unity, 454, 455). Biber Leibnizens Identifizierung von Sein und Einheit su in diesem Absdinitt. •'® Kondylis, Origin of the Dialectic, 161, 555. The necessary information about the spread of Spinozism in Germany can be found in the two dissertations by Bä& and Krakauer as well as in the works of Ron Grunwald and Altkir& (see Literaturverzeidinis); cf. Baumgardt, Spinoza and German Spinozism, passim. All of these fonts have, if any, only informational value. "’ Stein, Leibniz u. Spinoza, 1 ff.

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see that he provided structures that could be autonomized and freely transferred; näm1i‹:tt si&t they could only be detached from their original content-related context, but also actually question it. So e.g. For example, the structure of the monad is widely held to be exemplary and transferred to the universe in its interdependence with God (corresponding to the teleological interdependence of soul and body). Multiplicity of substances to bring the metaphysical power of the Spinocistic one substance. One substance just means a larger union than many, and that counts now; the extent of the union should by no means lag behind its intensity. On the other hand, however, the pioneers of the new ontology have a clear conscience because, as I said, they give the one substance monadisd e structural features, i.e. spiritualize the matter through (specifically normatively conceived) teleology and thus the anticipated consequences of the (sdilediten ', not believing to avoid the 'true' Spinozism. Determinism (without normative antecedents) and fatalism are as unacceptable to them as they were to Leibniz—and moreover they are identical with pessimism (in Spinozist Stoicism an attractive solution is not seen for a moment); the appropriation of Leibniz's decisive optimism and the development of a radical theodicy "' is therefore considered by them to be the most effective antidote to the direct or indirect adoption of Spinozist motives for unification, quite independently of their mitigation by Leibniz's teleology. That's how big it is Significance of omens This function of the optimistic attitude, which was seen as a downright logical refutation of materialism (since materialism = fatalism = pessimism, optimism is a co ipso argument against materialism: it may seem paradoxical, but that was the predominantly at the end norma tivistis the automatic thinking), contributed decisively to giving preference to Leibniz over Spinoza, especially since the optimism soon increased to an almost apocalyptic mood.

As far as the Cartesianizing side of Leibniz's thinking is concerned, the programmatic separation of soul and matter and thus also the construction of the pre-established harmony, which was based on that separation, is gradually being pushed aside. The idea of harmony is retained at sid, but at the same time translated into the language of dynamic union. In other words, the idea of the whole is not ultimately held on to because of its aforementioned ideological suitability, but at the same time its statistical character is deprived, which results in the following constellation:

" 8 about theodicy in Germany during the time between Leibniz and the late Enlightenment see Wegener, Problem of Theodicey, 49 ff., 56 ff., 69 ff., 79 ff., Kremer, Problem of Theodicey, t03 ff . , t42 onwards

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The optimist model is conceived with a focus on the structures of the meliorist model, namely on the dynamics of unification. In this roundabout way, the idea of the whole is intertwined - programmatically and consciously - with that of development within a single construction. Another interpretation is also important. From the model of pre-established harmony, which turned against occasionalism and at the same time against the Calvinistic-Cartesian voluntaristic God, the thesis is adopted that God does not intervene continuously and arbitrarily in world affairs. But since harmony is now understood as union, this thesis does not find confirmation of the rational character of the Creator, but a further argument for the elimination of the traditional personal God, which is no longer so urgently needed when spirit and sense are not ontologically separated or do not require any artificial harmonization. The harmonization is a teleology from the outside, but now one insists on the innate teleology or on the original interweaving of spirit and sensuality. Demenupredien God becomes entangled with the world, as it were as an entelechy of the latter: the limitation of his personality through the attachment to the verités de raison thus benefited his depersonalization in the sense of an essentially different conception (Clarke's fears were therefore not so unfounded). However, to the extent that one attempts to preserve the independence of God or the spirit from moral considerations, one becomes entangled in the same difficulties that arose in Leibniz's determination of the relationships between the substantiality of the monads and that of God. This ambiguity adheres to the ontological constructions of the German late Enlightenment up to the development of consistent monism after 1795. These explanations make it clear that the rediscovery of Leibniz by the German late Enlightenment was not simply the adoption and processing of Leibniz's aspects of Wolffianism. There is no doubt that this promoted the dissemination of certain Leibnizian platitudes, and that was not entirely "' stand in unimportant. The turn to Leibniz after 1760 nevertheless signified a new beginning, which followed the decline of Tolffianism as a whole and not its split into two wings. By giving up static harmony before dynamic union, Wolffianism loses all charm; his concept of harmony is dismissed as a mechanism that only represents the flip side of intellectualism or the sharp separation of res cogitans and res extensa, which results in the complete de-spiritualization of the latter. Wolff's refusal to assume monads with soul or imagination (giving a new lease of life to atomism and mechanism),

^'^ What is meant here is Freili& Hölderlin's unification philosophy, see Kondylis, Emergence of Dialectics, 318 ff.

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is perceived as an obstacle on the way to unification, especially since this takes place during the spiritualization of matter. Also against Wolff is the tendency to intertwine possibility and reality or verités de raison and verités de fait to the same extent as this happened with regard to spirit and sensuality or God and world. The separation between possibility and reality should, moreover, correspond to the difference between external teleology (God creates everything for the sake of man) and innate teleological dynamics of unification; if that separation falls, Wolff's 'naive' teleology must also disappear. External guarantees, even divine ones, are superfluous if God, ie teleology and the urge to unite, are placed in the things themselves. This is the new ontology underpinning the doctrine of the best world or fall is good'. One finds a likeminded person in Leibniz above all when he describes the general liveliness in the world in an almost lyrical tone"' or when he understands unity as the ontological feature of being par excellence: ce qui n'est pas ve ritablement un estre , n'est pas non plus veritablement un estre' (it is not by chance that this sentence, which Spinoza would have liked to have agreed, goes to a Cartesian) "'. A significant contribution to the ontological consolidation of unity was made by Leibniz's thesis, which has become central to unification philosophy, that the part of the whole simultaneously forms its type: the monad is supposed to reflect the universe in its individual, unique way"'. The individual and the Universals are thus (above all after the relinquishment of the ontological independence of the monad) understood in their unity, whereby the union with the whole represents the prerequisite for the development of the individuality in contrast to determininism, which from the point of view of the new oncology is just that "Smothering the individual through the whole is supposed to mean. In this way, the notion arises that freedom consists in the development of innate powers. And since the individual is supposed to be the type of the whole - i.e. it must also have all the components of the whole - his Development in union with the whole understood as all-round development Spirit and sensuality are, in other words, equally present in the individuality thus conceived, and their mutual union is only deepened by the union of the individuality with the whole. This is how Leibniz' statements about the inseparability of soul and body are normally interpreted '-'. One now proceeds a step further, in that the monad is no longer associated with a soul or a body, but simply with both

'°° Monad. $69 = Phil. Str., VI, 618 f. *" Letter to Arnauld from April 1687, Phil. Str. II, 97 (Blockings by Leibniz).

Monad. $57 = Phil. Str. VI, 616. °'°Monad. $72 = Phil. Str. VI, 619.

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comprehensive, complete individuality, whereby the concept of the organism gains the status of the ontological type. (Leibniz had actually done this trick himself: "Monadem completam seu substantiam singularem voco non tam animam, quam ipsum animal ant analogum, anima vel forma et corpore organico praeditum." ^') The completion of monism in the sense of a solid union serves as the best possible combat against materialism while affirming Enlightenment antiCartesianism and the rehabilitation of sensuality. The Mate But rialism was also very much monism, and in the same way, in the fight against Cartesianism, it had dynamized matter by placing the roots of spirit in it. The danger arising from this fundamental structural similarity should now be neutralized by ensuring that the new monistic construction is given completely different precedents than the materialistic one - precedents that are defined in a value-optimistic manner and that, as soldiers, come from the Reidi of the spirit. The whole is under the agide of the spirit (spridi: the basic attitude), although within the same spirit and sensibility are possibly evaporated - in order to achieve that function together and on the basis of a teleology that should ultimately realize the goals of the spirit or the basic attitude to fulfill what is prescribed to them by the above-mentioned examples. Even under the agitation of the spirit, the new monism cannot eliminate all points of contact with materialism. Because in view of the accepted confusion between spirit and sensibility, the spirit can no longer be treated as pure intellect. Since monism generally opposes the separation of res cogitans and res extensa, antimateria 1istis&e monism is just as antiinte11ektua1istis& like materialistisdie. It must therefore understand the concept of spirit to be essentially more comprehensive than that of pure intellect in order to be able to be monism at all. However, this contamination of the intellect (at least from the side of the intellectualists) gave rise to materialism, as the reception of the anti-Cartesian Leibniz had shown through Diderot. This spiritual and philosophical connection has been summarized as follows: As long as the essence of the spirit consists in being only a negation of material things, these cannot be subsumed in its reality. The spirit must be given a predicate, which makes it possible for its concept to be subsumed into the material things (or these are defined in such a way that they are part of that concept). For this reason the spirit is here composed and willingly befriended by the gods of the enemy in order to overcome him all the more steadfastly. From the earlier point of view this is seen as a contamination of his

Letter to Bernoulli from 30. 9. 1698 = Math. S‹:Er., III, 542. S. o., Kap. IV, Absdui. 4 a.m.

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Essence ersd have to' ^'. Even the most astute contemporaries had noticed that these were basically the omens. So one regrets the reversal of the same from the side of materialistic monism (about the Leibnizians s‹:trieb La Mettrie: Ils ont plutöt spiritualisé la matiere, que materialisé 1'ame' "'), while in radically dualistic he Per It is spectively scoffed at that the character of monism is determined by precedents rather than by binding structures (this is how one could read Kanu's remark: "Leibniz intellectualized the earthly phenomena, just as Lobe had . . . sensitized . . . the concepts of the understanding ' "•). The inevitable affinity with materialism qua monism was also felt by the representatives of the new oncology, and the resulting uneasiness was reflected in the above-mentioned experiment, with all the union of the independence of per sönli‹:dem to preserve God and spiritual principle. But that could only shake a 1ogis‹:des Sd and result in half measures. The impact of Leibniz in a more nuanced sense is also noticeable in the field of psychology. In view of the general enlightenment appreciation of anthropology and psychology, the attempt was understandable to measure the value of metaphysis-inspired approaches not ultimately by the needs of these disciplines. In Germany, as well as in England and France, the conviction is continually gaining ground that psychology and anthropology are the basic knowledge whose results are binding not only for epistemology, but also for history, political theory and moral philosophy should. The upgrading or autonomization of this field also meant a reduction in logic and metaphysics in the sense of philosophy and thus also a direct challenge to the traditional world view associated with them. The inethodisd enud eidung was here at the same time a contentli&e; The autonomization of psychology and anthropology automatically meant rejection of syllogistics etc. and a turn to Sinnli‹:hEmpiris‹:den in the broadest sense. Two ideas dominate the new doctrine of the soul, each to a different degree: the new pagan role of the psyd is the sensuality or the suffering and the deception of the psych and body . Under the new circumstances , the fight against materialism and immoralism is more likely to be achieved through the Assertion of the innate in humans because through systematized and consistent ’°^

Erdmann, Versu&, II, 1, 7 f. Cf. Dessoir, Ges&. der Neue Deutsche Psy&o logie, 451: The equality of body and soul can now be interpreted either uiateria1istis& or spiritualistisdi, either the soul somehow led back to the body or the body somehow understood as spiritual. The monistic tendencies in both systems, which were so different, brought them so close together that the materialistic tendencies, ineradicable in most philosophers, dared to emerge even among the followers of Leibniz.' •°7 Man Madiine, Oeurres, I, 286.

"^ Kr. dr Vern. B 327 = AA, III, 221.

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sequential rejection of Monisinus carried out as so1‹fiem. The spread of the doctrine of the substantial unity of the soul can therefore be seen as the lasting ver The service of Tolffianism must be considered with regard to the late German Enlightenment, as much as the content of this teaching takes into account the psychological “The sensuality and the dilution of body and soul were modified so that one no longer felt committed to Wolffianism. Many doubted that the fundamental force in which all fortunes are rooted was the vis re praesentativa, but most assumed the existence of a fundamental force. If the spirits are about their definition as well as about the hierarchy

of wealth, this dispute related directly or indirectly to the burning question of the value of the intellect, which had obvious moral and philosophical implications. Solid considerations further dictate a more or less clear separation between upper and lower faculties, the laws of association being applied to the latter, while the former are granted the ability to think purely logically. The distinction between the active and passive parts of the Soul persists even where the common origin of thinking and feeling from one primal force, as modifications of which the two basic faculties originally exist, is most clearly emphasized. Nevertheless, the unification approach developed its own logic early on, which ultimately favored the appreciation of meaningfulness in general. This was shown by sidi sdion's attempt to use the broad framework of Leibniz-Wolff's theory of ideas to accommodate the empiricism that was breaking through from all sides, initially in its Lodte form. In Leibniz's theory of imagination, in which all mental modifications are brought into one concept, there was an opportunity for a coordination of thinking and feeling, which historically made possible a unification of this Leibniz's theory with Loes's derivation of concepts from sensory sensations has.' "' This process began with the consideration of sensation as a type of complete knowledge and soon developed into the thesis of the possibility of a 'sensible thinking' alongside a 'thinking feeling': this is what Sulzer said in Versudi

Dessoir, Ges&. i.e. more recent German Psy&ol., 391 ff. The reluctance against Lu&e's epistemology and psy&ology in Germany emphasized by Fis&er (Lodte in the German Enlightenment, 439 f.) can be explained precisely by this&. Fisher, however, sees that Lu&e was able to become effective through the paradoxical detour of its merger with Leibniz (see below). So e.g. B. in Eberhard, who wants to present thinking and feeling in a mutual influence on the basis of the original basic power of the soul, but at the same time emphasizes the distinction between passive and active part of the soul with express reference to the problem of freedom of will (General. Theory of thinking and feeling, 17, 36 f.). ••' Summer, Basics, 69.

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press to be spoken of as the aesthetic phenomenon from his Leibniz-Wolff position "'. From the perspective of the emerging unification philosophy, the position of the Nouveaux Essais was suitable for bringing the sometimes contradictory concerns of the nifty materialistisdi being perfect and ni‹fit intellectualistisdi predominant psychological ridding under a common denominator and all on once to be philosophically gratified - ie to represent the thesis of the unity of the soul, which is indispensable for a philosophy of unification, in such a way that the danger of materialism does not arise through half measures and new separations, but in a genuinely monistic way, namely through deepening the view of the dynamic unified whole could be banished. Deepening here meant abandoning the difference between a passive one and an active part of the soul, to which even the proponents of the unity thesis adhered, namely in the sense of rejecting all passivity. This bold maneuver was intended to achieve two things. On the one hand, it implied a clear appreciation of sensuality, whose supposed passivity now appeared to be merely a lower degree of activity; this accounted for the apparently unstoppable progress of empiricism and modernized one's own argumentation. On the other hand, however, the valued sensuality was provided with the properties of the spirit or spiritualized, whereby the soul as a whole with the additional help of the innate was placed under the 2igide of morality in the broadest sense, ie the spiritual principle. The revaluation of sensuality could mean no gain for materialism from this Si‹fit; on the contrary, it should deprive it of its own ground, namely sensuality itself. Exactly the same strategy, as we saw, was applied at the ontological level. Therefore traditional intellectualism had to be sacrificed in the struggle against materialism, both here and there. The nisi intellectus ipse' was not used to revive intellectualism in one form or another (Kant being the exception here), but on the contrary to its final overthrow.

The aforementioned tendency to unify Leibnizs‹fier with Lo&es‹fien Positions were thus almost reinforced by the effect of the Nouveaua Essais. This was actually not only obvious because of the power of Enlightenment empiricism, but also because of Leibniz's way of arguing. In order to be able to assert against Locke that the soul always thinks, Leibniz expands the concept of thinking by equating it with the concept of activity to a large extent. But the lower faculty is just as active as that

••• on. eit., 203.

It is highly 'characteristis' - with regard to the possibility discussed Li&keit, Leibniz's and Lu&e's positions were admittedly suggested by —, here that it Lcibniz von der Lo&e's conception of uneasiness , Nouv. Essais, II, XX $ 6 Phil. S‹:hr., V, 151, cf. II, III § 9 = p. 101.

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upper. The petites perceptions keep the soul constantly unaware of what it

,

even if she is

is. The innate activity or vis repraesentativa is therefore detached from the concept of consciousness, and this should be the answer to Lo&e who, in his refutation of Cartesianism, must presuppose the identity of the conscious and the innate. As you can see, Leibniz refutes Lo&e by changing the level of questioning from the conscious to the unconscious. He only partially agrees with Loée's thesis, while on the other hand he agrees with him because of the appreciation of the lower assets. Namely, he saves what is innate by abandoning its intellectualistic conception. But if the lower faculties fulfill such significant functions, the intellect as a soldier loses its specific value and thus intellectual knowledge loses its qualitative superiority over empirical knowledge. For if, given the windowlessness of the monad and its ability to reflect the universe in sidi, all ideas are innate, they could simply be viewed as the product of inner experience . The innate would then be the spiritualized empiricism, and the difference would only lie in the foreshadowing. Nadi a successful formulation: Since with Leibniz all ideas are innate, the distinction between empiricism and supposedly original knowledge disappears completely. For Lo&e, the mind is completely empty at the beginning of 11-31; according to Leibniz it contains the universe. ...

Lo&e allows all and every knowledge to come from outside, Leibniz none at all. The result of these extremes is, as so often, pretty much the same. Suppose one admits to Leibniz that what we call external experience is in fact internal development: then Leibniz must in turn admit that there are no other specific knowledge apart from empirical knowledge. Basically, Sonad only saved Leibniz the fool from the innate ideas.' "' This "thing" was completely sufficient for the representatives of the emerging unification philosophy, since they were not interested in the end of intellectualism, but in the rescue of the innate, for reasons of moral philosophy. The connection of the innate with the unconscious This even seemed to be an advantage to them, since it demonstrated the all-round rooting of human existence in being, whereby the unity of existence itself was understood as the necessary way of that rooting. Activity and unity are therefore laws of human existence and being At the same time, the ontological justification of psychology and anthropology within the framework of unification philosophy is based on this. For its part, Leibniz's lex continui offered a welcome opportunity, and genetics, epistemology and psychology offered Lockesdier

^• Nov. Essays, II, III $$ 11 ff. = Phil. S&r., V,103 ff. ^• Long, Ges&. i.e. Material, I, 394 f.; cf. Sommer, Grundzüge, 45: The abolition of the principle difference between outer and inner experience through the mediation of the monadological theory of ideas is the most important result of the coincidence of Locke's and Leibniz's teachings.'

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To connect provenance with the (metaphysical) view of the unchanging, if au& dynamic nature of the soul, which meant a further step towards the interweaving of the idea of development with the idea of the whole. The monistic construction is strengthened in all these detours.

b) Lessing The two most important monistic approaches inspired by the rediscovered Leibniz are represented by Lessing and Herder. In the latter case, the approach to unification is more self-evident, more mature and articulated in a rather long-winded manner. Lessing, on the other hand, who grew up under the dominance of Wolffianism, himself at various times represented the members of the opposition that he sought to resolve in a certain phase of his intellectual development within the framework of a synthesis. In other words: not only the unification approach, but also the moments or positions to be united (and still in the state of their independence) are represented by him, even embodied (there is a certain similarity between him in terms of his style of thinking). and Diderot). Yet his actions are ones of continuity; They are not due to a lack of principles, but rather to his striving to grasp the common, free denominator of positions that are in themselves contradictory and to look for satisfactory solutions, now in this direction and then in that direction, with his eristic need for mobility of his thinking. With regard to the renewal efforts in theology, the common denominator was the conflict with orthodoxy in the sense of the authority of a revelation interpreted by ecclesiastical authorities and the demand for independent or reasonable insight into the nature and necessity of faith. These leitmotifs determine Lessing's intellectual starting point. As it says in the letter to the father of May 30, 1749 , the better Christian is not the one who has the principles of Christian doctrine in his memory and often without understanding them in his mouth, goes to church and all the customs participates because they are ordinary... The Christian religion is not a work that one should accept from one's parents on the basis of loyalty and faith' ^'.

A distinction is thus made between bad and good religion; as the character of Theophan in Freigeist is supposed to make clear, priests and Christianity are by no means identical. It was now natural that the boy, partly educated and partly tormented by Wolffianism, would seek the realization of his religious ideal in a decidedly antiintellectualist movement. And there this on ^° SS, XVII, l8. ^' In the 'Congratulatory Speech on the Commencement of the 1743rd Year', SS, XIV, 13s ff., you will find traces of this education.

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The need for self-knowledge and confirmation is based on a completely modern conception, so Lessing's early pietism is strongly influenced by individualism and is linked to the Socratic demand for self-knowledge (Haniann is anticipated here): "Turn your eyes into yourself ! In the end are the unexplored depths in which you can profitably lose yourself. Also in connection with the figure of Socrates, the pietistis‹:je ideal of reducing learning to virtue is gerad t '^. Anti-intellectualism understandably appears in the form of the rejection of Newton and mathematical methodology; "Few numbers associated with numbers, which are supposed to unravel the secrets of nature, do not impress Lessing in the least." ,

modern-day rationalism (see what he says about the liberator Descartes sd '"). Lessing is particularly disturbed by the "composition of theology and worldly wisdom" in which neither one values the other, in that the latter forces faith through evidence, and the latter is supposed to support the evidence through faith This perspective together. Their common essence is, as it was in the youth

"Religion" is called "the damned wisdom" and the "proud sense" that "knows more than he lets on" and ignores the real question : "What is man?" His luck? The earth on which he wanders?' ”'. Completely in the spirit of the re'•® Thoughts about the Moravian people, SS, XIV, 156. ^° place cit., 155. *• place cit., 155, 157. '*' loc. eit., 156. °'°

°^

place. cit., 160. First Canto, vv 35-38, 47 (= SS, I, 257 f.). Sdion i= •Young scholars” focuses on the complaint

against budige scholarship and wisdom. Even Spartacus accuses a consul in the same fragment: 'You have relegated human understanding to the classroom - in order to be able to insult it' (III, 171). This early attitude of Lessing also later determines his position in important aesthetic and philosophical questions in the form of the rejection of Wolffianism. In the preface to Laocoon we read: We have Germans in systematic books no defect at all. We know how to derive everything we want from a few accepted word explanations in the sweetest order, despite of a nation in the world.' (IX, 5) The philosophical principles on which the theory of the nature of the fable is based are: The resulting knowledge is clear from itself. The symbolism derives its clarity from the impending one.' And: The universal only exists in the particular, and can only be clearly known in the particular' (VI I, 143). The subtle separation of Leibniz from the narrow-mindedness and pettiness of the student (Wolff) is obviously based on similar considerations, in a context where Leibniz's ability to reconcile philosophy's "cold-bloodedness" with the riditious use of well-understood enthusiasm is praised (XVI, 300).

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The young Lessing now took the religious philosophy of feeling a step further by deriving materialism, atheism and fatalism from that spirit, or hating nothing but faith/And loving nothing as reasons' '*. A view that abolishes freedom by identifying soul and brain does not know the concepts of good and evil. Lessing will never change the assessment of materialism based on this basis; If it is not repeated later on, it is only because it is taken for granted. However, selfunderstandings that have never been discussed determine the character of thinking no less than individual conscious objectives. Lessing soon turned away from his initial pietistic sympathies in order to appear for almost twenty years (ie from 1752-3 to about 1770) as a defender of the religion of nature or reason and opponent of the "Sdi-warmth". famous rescues' from the year 1754. So he praised Cardano because he knew how to distinguish between the medical forms and essence of Christianity and took care not to assume his reasonableness from his merely physical success, especially because of the Besd Affenheit des mensd lid en Herzens“ 'a beloved cricket can go as far as the truth in all its splendor'. Rather, Cardano claimed that the entire teaching of Christ contains nothing that conflicts with morality and natural world wisdom, or that cannot be brought into harmony with them. His mistake lies in underestimating the rational aspects of non-district religions Leasing now wants to assert this with reference to natural religion, in which he even puts a harsh criticism of diristlide practice into the mouth of a Mohammedan: Christians would symbolize the divine, with faith being replaced by superstition and the "veneration of holy phantasms" instead of righteousness there should be bliss after death" 7 .

The concept of natural religion is developed in ideal-typical purity in the two drafts "On the Origin of Revealed Religion" and "On the Mode of Propagation and Spread of the Christian Religion", which were created in the years 1763-64 must. In the latter, the Ur Christianity said, this would at least have shown Aron outside the great and shabby approach of the natural religion, practicing tolerance against the heretics, etc.; From this essence of Christianity, just as in the salvation of Cardan, a distinction is made between the way in which it was spread, which took place through completely natural means - not excluding fanaticism and seduction, •*• Poems about human happiness, vv l—2 (= SS, I, 237). ^• loc. cit., vv 30-34 = p. 238. In a short review of La Mettrie's Art de jouir, Leasing says that this book should actually have been titled "Pornevtik", cf. the Na‹:hri‹:ht about the death of La Mettries (SS, IV, 423, 279). °•° SS, V, 321.

" 7 loc. eit., 325 f.

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as leasing clearly indicates ^'. In the first draft, the question of natural religion is adapted purely theoretically. Natural religion is a well-rounded, precisely definable mental structure that is at least logically ahead of all positive religions; the priority could be understood audi dironologisdi if Leasing bu‹:hstäblidi means his assertion that positive religions only arise in the state of 'civil':den connection', which follows that of the 'natural freedom of man' as the bearer of natural religion. Positive religions are sanctioned not merely by their content, but by external factors - such as the reputation of their founder and constitute modifications of natural religions insofar as they give their rational core the effective form demanded by the "natural and contingent nature" of a state. In this function positive religions are true; they become false to the extent that they grow and repress the essence in them.

Lessing's explanation of the disintegration of natural religion into several (equally entitled) positive religions is very revealing with regard to this whole structure of thought. The geographic and geographical diversity of the States was just mentioned as a reason; but the difference suits her ahead of the crowd. Every person is connected to the measure of his strengths of the natural religion, but this measure is "varied for every person", from which the positivity arises, as the religious consensus in a society is opposite to that diaotis "The diversity must ultimately be based on generally respected conventions." :ht. Formally seen, natural religion corresponds to a natural law, and therefore constants and consistency are just as important to it

— which, moreover, the Pietist opponents of natural religion very well suspected when they advocated the rights of the individual. Using Grotius as an example, we have already discussed the structural connection between mathernatisdi natural knowledge model and nature redit: it can therefore be seen as confirmation of our interpretation if in this draft the relationship between natural redit and positive re‹:st is assessed in the same way like the one between natural religion and positive religions. The same Sidit also makes it understandable that he forgets his previous rejection of mathematics in order to praise it in this context as an indispensable preliminary philosophical exercise that "accustoms our mind to order and clearly precise concepts and teaches it what demonstration is; skipping these... means the straight one

°' ®

^°

SS, XIV, 317, 319, 331.

SS, XIV, 312 f. *•• ibid.

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"To take the path to the 'Sdiwärmerei'". In this middle phase of Lessing's intellectual development, the initial demand takes a turn towards the Idi nadi and nadi, while the omissions against the "Sdiwärmerei" become increasingly clearer. In the 49th of the letters, the latest literature concerning' (August 2, 1759) he brings the polemic against the religious philosophy of feeling to its public climax. In addition to the independence of moral reason (one can also act like a monkey for 'mere reasons of reason', religion only increases the reasons sold en action), Leasing here also defends the talk of theoretisdi, sidi theologisdi. He calls the way of the religious philosophers of feeling about God a "state of feeling, with which nothing is connected as indistinct ideas that give the name of thinking He doesn't deserve it, and he wants to make the touchstone of all feeling about God precisely that kind of theological thinking, which the feeling writer he quotes describes with the following words: "a cold, metaphysical kind that almost impresses God only as an object of a science, and philosophizes about it just as calmly as if it were developing the concepts of time or space" "^. Böhme is mentioned here as a warmer par excellence (in the "Rescue of the I nepti religiosi" he "had, however, not really gotten away significantly" ), and aud Shaftesbury's enthusiasm is not a true contagious disease of the soul for Leasing at this time. " 7

.

If we want to ask the question based on the considerations, Lessing's brother caused or substantiated with the philosophy of feeling, then we must first of all turn to that expression of the "rescue of the Cardan" about the consciousness of the human being in the "heart" always reminding what it actually isn't capable of 'Truth' to be distinguished from 'cricket'. Lost sid the Christian in the

By contemplating his own id and simmering in God in it, he can most certainly—despite imaginary, even paranoid firmness—gain a subjective certainty that rests on the evidence provided by the accidental world of the id. This is not an effective defense against aberration for the individual , while for Christianity as a whole it means fragmentation into innumerable individual worlds. From this comes chaos, and sooner or later chaos will in turn lead to relativism and skepticism. The demonstrated truth of the religion or the rational or natural religion should Prevent this danger in particular, just like the mathematical procedure in ^'

Reproduction and dispersal, SS, XIV, 316.

'^'

SS, VIII, 129 f. °^° place eit., 132. '^ loc. cit., 131. ^° lock. it., 133. ”^

SS, V, 348 F.

••7 Reproduction and Spread, SS, XIV, 329. °•* SS, V, 321.

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philosophy should be met with skepticism. In his review of Beausobre's book 'Le Pyrrhonisme raisonable', Lessing mentions, precisely with a view to combating skepticism, that Leibniz's greatest concern was to make the metaphysical truths as certain as the mathematical ones did. Objections to a solemn plan would betray misology; the misology and misanthropy come from one source' ”'. From the mathematical rigor in philosophy, Lessing promises a consolidation of that kind of determinism which, provided with radically optimistic precedents, is intended to prove the inevitability or objective connection of the normative.

This is shown in the treatise "Pope a Metaphysician" from 1755, written together with Mendelssohn. From the perspective of the fight against the "Southern warming" it is clearly understandable that the content of the matter is different , alternative position with Pope's theses, reflections on the logical limits of did tion are advanced. The did ter remains caught up in the 'meaningful speech' which is ultimately incompatible with a 'system of metaphysical truths' which is based on a deductive-syllogistic procedure.' The further investigation implies that the did teristic freedoms Pope's lies correspond to his thinking. The principle 'Of all possible systems God must have created the best' is of course admitted, but at the same time attributed to Leibniz, whereby Pope is accused of a wrong interpretation of the same. Well, of his (and Malebrandie's) In my opinion, imperfections or Abel would also really exist in the best world; it is in God's hands to eliminate them; but this would require divine advice sd lusses ad hoc, which, however, has to be omitted because God only works through general laws , whose unpleasant by-products must be accepted in spite of the obvious usefulness of these laws. Nad Leibniz abstains from God's intervention in individual cases, because he cannot intervene or because his voluntaristic intervention would disturb the whole best world order. The nonintervention is therefore only a necessary consequence of the fact that the world order is really the best, since the common evils do not contradict the meaning of the whole, but actually contribute to its perfection Freedom denied (a divine faculty of freedom is an 'empty cricket'; the assumption that something is good because God willed it basically means nothing.) The desolation of the divine helplessness, to alleviate Abel and to intervene directly, but is at the same time compensated for by a radical optimism: there is no Abel, everything is fine. Pope is said to have lacked this optimism

•• Berl. privileged Zeit, August 28, 1755 SS, VII, S0 f. SS, VI, 414, 416. ••' lock. et., 422, 429 f., 431. lock et., 439, 412.

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(that's why he wrote 'all is right' and not 'all is good' '^), which prevented him from being a consistent determinist. Just as determinism is intended to (logically) underpin the irrefutability of the normative, radical normativism or optimism is also intended to support this determinism (psychologically). The resulting metaphysical structure has as little to do with the pietistic conception of God as the religion of reason, which structurally corresponds to it, has anything to do with the individualism of the religious philosophy of feeling. In the desire to make the normative logically binding, we can inherit the first reason for Lessing's early departure from pietism. The second refers, as I believe, to his discomfort with what he perceived as the cultural hostility of this current. How Lessing thought about this question is clearly shown in his discussion of Rousseau's first discourse. (In Rousseau, however, the general emancipatory aspect is very much appreciated; he is the bold, worldly one who does not look at any prejudices, but goes straight towards the truth, etc.* "') Rousseauism and (extreme) pietism were Qua philosophies of feeling are quite related in this respect; both focused fundamentally on the individual inner life to the exclusion of the cultural whole, and

In their efforts to help the innate powers of humanity (regardless of how these were defined) to develop or deepen, they tended to despise at least those cultural inventions that are linked to social conventions (theater) or to the 'intellect' ( theory (the sciences) seem to be most closely connected. For the defenders of culture, this was understandably cause for great concern, and Lessing may often have thought in the same way as Herder later: ... a Herrnhutist spirit in the pulpits, which made learning a sin and lack of religion and philosophy the origin of the corrupting power can introduce the spirit of burning libraries '''.

I shall now turn to the final phase of Lessing's development, which is directly relevant to the unification approach in general. The two ••° lock. it., 426. '^ It makes it easy to imagine the content of the anti-Candide that Lessing planned to write and in which Mendelssohn's Beridit (Morning Hours XV) was ultimately directed to the best and the most lived belief of wise should be found'. The type of determinism described here was not a shortLessing's. Seventeen years after this treatise, he had the philosophizing Countess Orsina say in Emilia Galotti: “The word coincidence is blasphemy. Nothing under the sun is accidental.' (IV, 3 = SS, II, 428)

’^ April 1751, SS, IV, 387 ff., insb. 394 f., cf. V, 64 f. In the short review of the second Discours, written in 1755 , SS, VII, 38. ••* Journal of my journey, SW, IV, 411.

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The preceding phases, however inconvenient their duration and intensity may have been, are of great interest insofar as they bring to expression in almost ideal-typical purity the opposing Enlightenment basic currents. The fact that they do it in the language of philosophy of religion does not have to result in a clouding of sadness and no narrowing of the intellectual horizon, if we only keep in mind the parallelism of the structures. Lessing is a highly representative figure because he represented opposing positions and because he tried to arrive at a synthesis the objective concern of the late German Enlightenment was the most significant, especially since its atmosphere was not as self-evident for Lessing as it was for Herder or Goethe. or natural religion are independent structures, and an attempt at mediation should not be necessary at first glance. He will be at the moment when Lessing, without fundamentally abandoning the religion of reason, moderates his intellectualism considerably. I suspect the reasons for this. 3i on the one hand in the influence of the Nouveaux Essais, which Lessing even wanted to translate, and on the other hand in that change of mood on the eve of the Sturm und Drang movement, which must have touched such a sensitive observer as Lessing. At least that's what a draft from the fall of 1776 suggests

(With regard to the fragment dispute, this date is important: it was precisely at that time that Lessing wrote about Reimaru's " Oppositions" which had been published in the first days of 1777 ). In contrast to the 49th literary letter from 1759, Lessing here carefully distinguishes between south-warming and enthusiasm in order to emphasize the speculative fruitfulness and even indispensability of the latter. What does the philosopher actually do? "He seeks to elucidate the dark, lively feelings which he had during his enthusiasm, when he had become cold again, into clear ideas" (this is Leibniz's spradie, which sparks our conjecture about the influence of the Nouveaux Essais; in this

•^ Because of this statement, Lessing is not disparaged as a thinker, on the contrary: he becomes the inventory of an entire age. My interpretation states, by means of this periodization, in which temporal and conceptual&-structural things go hand in hand, to avoid the common dead end of Lessing research, which arises from the futile attempt to gain a uniform picture of Lessing as far as possible, whereby, in the absence of a sidier mentally-diidatlidaer orientation, heterogeneous things are brought together, with the result that one texts are overemphasized, others are overstated or destroyed or quoted in a way that distorts the meaning. Equally misleading, however, is to point to a tidersprudi in Les sing's thought as a whole without realizing that each member of this contradiction forms an inherently coherent concept. The task of the research is then to find the common denominator that enables Lessing's transition from one member of the contradiction to the other (cf. in general the good methodological considerations of Wessell, Das widersp&lidie Wesen, esp. 188, 191 ff.) .

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Incidentally, the draft is based on the sdion quoted ^' comparison of Leibniz and Wolff). Philosophers are therefore anti-enthusiastic, even anti-intellectual, because "they, the philosophers, would lose the most if there were no more enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts at all." pietistic motifs (see below) do not go back to his early youth, but rather it fused with the sentiments of the 1960's religious and patristic studies and took the form of a new appraisal of positive religion, namely its ability to educate the still unreasonable through the mobilization of psychic sensuality through revelation and revealed teachings. In the letter to Mendelssohn of January 9, 1771, si‹:h clearly expresses the changed assessment of orthodoxy at the beginning of the 1970s . Leasing is concerned that in throwing away certain prejudices I've thrown away a little too much, which I'll have to repeat. That I partly don't

sdion did, only the furd prevented me from dumping all the rubbish back into the house. The last sentence (as well as the letter to the brother dated April 8th, 1773 ) shows this Lessing's always-existing distance from orthodoxy was extremely clear, but the rapprochement that took place was sufficient to create, while at the same time holding on to reason as the ultimate ideal, the intellectual tension that ultimately led to a failure to mediate within a synthetic philosophy So now Leasing is discovering the educational sense or the inner logic of the old religious system, despite obvious deficiencies: I don't know a thing in the world on whom I would have shown and practiced the intellect more than on him ', he wrote to his brother on February 2, 1774 "'. In the same letter he accuses the neologists of having torn down the barrier between philosophy and theology, which ensured the independence of both. In the past twenty years, Leasing has been a advocate for the separation of theology and philosophy occurred because it promised the autonomization of reason. But if he rejects the avoidance of both right now, it is because he primarily advocates the submission of theology to a silky or intellectual philosophy, which only pushes aside and forgets the metaphysical and educational mystery hidden in religion — but could neither explain nor respect. From the opposite point of view, he himself supports the above-mentioned avoidance, namely by saying that

••• S. o., Anm. 243.

^' About an early task....., SS, XVI, 297, 299. •" SS, XVII, 365. °'° SS, XVIII, 83. *'° SS, XVIII, 102. ^' place. cit., 101.

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recognition of the reasonableness of the revelation. The positive religion contains the rational one; So the rational can work outside of, and even thanks to, its merger with the positive. This is one of Lessing's main arguments against Reimarus: "Revealed religion in the least does not presuppose a rational religion: rather it includes it in itself." In view of this fact, Lessing poses the (rhetorical) question "whether the uniformity of the type of proof in textbooks for children and common people is not more convenient and useful than a precise separation of the reasonable and revealed doctrines " . The mixture ultimately becomes a voluntary "capture of reason under the obedience of faith" when reason recognizes its limits. To do this, however, it must first judge for itself whether the revelation is real or not, which in turn implies that positive religion has a rational side or function that can serve as a standard for reason. Because not because of what exceeds its powers, reason can decide, but vice versa: as soon as it grasps what is rational in positive religion, it is convinced that the inedible is a holy mystery and not just nonsense.

What is comprehensible or reasonable now refers openly to the postulates of that reasonable religion, which, as I said, is contained in the positive one. The ideal of the religion of reason is therefore not abandoned, but is reinterpreted to the extent that the concept of reason is transformed into intellectualism because of the new attitude - which is completely in harmony with the essence of Enlightenment rationalism. Reason now serves as a call to independence and existential intensity, to the simplicity and directness of faith in its direct practical relationship to life. The demand for a separation between budista and spirit therefore comes to the fore and supports Lessing's position in the fragment dispute. It contains that common denominator of all attempts at religious renewal, which had made the young Lessing's rapid transition from his pietistic sympathies to the religion of reason so easy. Thus, Lessing feels superior to all parties and can play off aspects of one against aspects of the other: despite a new evaluation of enthusiasm and individual experience, he maintains the bond with the religious philosophy of feeling the religion of reason as well as the cultural and educational merit of orthodoxy ; Despite all recognition of the latter, he accuses the representatives of orthodoxy of sterile adherence to the letter, and his plea for the freedom of biblical criticism and for the further degradation of the Budlstaben is only the flip side of his rejection of the intellectual treatment of scripture and religion by the neologists. The juxtaposition of spirit and

•'° Opposites, SS, XII, 434. "• loc. cit., 432 f.

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Budistaben (this pair of terms corresponds to two others in Lessing's debates : religion vs. the Bible and Christianity vs. theology) wants to make the former independent of the historical-philological attacks against the latter; The defense of the letter (durdi Goeze) is said to be just as irrelevant with regard to Sadie as its refutation (durdi Reimarus). Lessing can therefore use the same arguments against orthodoxy and neology (against Goeze he only defends those theses that he defends in the "Opposites" against Reimarus), and from the basis of his new conception of the meaning of psychological sensibility, both accuse them of paying homage to the cold understanding the same thing by bringing into being a new sdiolastism in the form of a historisdi-philological exegeticism in defense of the Budista staff, which rivals the old one in terms of its dreary and sad effect: "No; the sdiolastism has such deep wounds in the dogmatics of religion never told you what history and exegetics now tell you every day.' '”

'Not for the gospel, but for its dogmatics', each of its representatives fights'. This boils down to a belief in authority: in the end every iota of the script is believed because it was written by evangelists and apostles ^'. Playful in this way orthodoxy uses its possibilities, which it possesses in contrast to neology: to warm the heart of the Christian and to deepen the true faith (these possibilities Les speaks to the 'true' orthodoxy, distinguishing between the 'orthodoxist' and the orthodox Distinguishes: pThe orthodox steps on my side' ^'). Leasing contrasts all this with two things: on the one hand, the thesis that accidental truths of reason can never become proof of necessary truths of reason"', and on the other hand an expansion of the concept of truths of reason in an anti-intellectualist sense. Reason refers to the inner truth', which by no means requires 'hermeneutis&en' '• ; it arises from the direct understanding of the quintessence of Christianity, namely love as a practical activity and confirmation of the truth of faith. Reason and feeling fall together here in the sense of Enlightenment rationalism; Lessing states that “he whose heart is more Christian,

^' Aner's assertion is therefore false, the rationalist Lessing fights orthodoxy and neology at the same time because both adhered to the concept of revelation (Theologie der Lessingzeit, 343). cf. against it, kantzenba&, protest. Christ., 158. °' ®

Duplik, SS, XIII, 32. °'° lock. go., 27. '^ Axiomata, SS, XIII, 127. ^ t Duplik, SS, XIII, 27.

Proof of Spirit and Power, SS, XIII, 5. ° Axiomata, SS, XIII, 128. Testament J *annis, SS, XIII, 14.

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as the head, si‹:h turn utterly to these objections [of Bible criticism] ni‹:fit; because he juhle what others si& content to think ' •. The educational text is created in the concrete, highly representative intellectual constellation of the fragment dispute and is intended to achieve Lessing's double polemic goal with a dialogue. Against the Orthodoaie, Lessing advocates the realization of the ideal of reason, completely independently of the connection of reason to historical events, while at the same time, against the Neologists, he asserts the cultural function of the Orthodoaie, which is precisely through sensemaking or contamination of concepts of reason in order to influence the psychological sensuality (nodi) not of rational people. Since Leasing has two opponents and neither wants to give up the victory of reason nor deny the educational significance of its sensemaking, there is no other logical way out for him than to demonstrate that the ideal of reason is not fit against positive revelation, but rather through it she durdi sets. The task thus posed structurally encompasses, despite the translation of the central concepts into the language of the theological dispute, the main problem of the Enlightenment philosophy of theory, namely the resolution of the conflict between the causal and the normative. The causal or the meaningful condition meant relativity of cultures, which was incompatible with the stability of the intellectually understood norm and prevented its realization. For Lessing, Ahnlidi means the perpetuation of the pure positivity, which arises from the effects of sensuality in the explained sense, the eternal absence of the ideal of reason. Left alone and on its own, positivity can only produce relative, fundamentally consistent cultural forms or religions. Then reason remains an unrealized should in the afterlife, which sometimes rebels indignantly against what exists - precisely because it has no points of contact with it, that is, it lacks any tangible support in reality . This is the dualistic perspective of intellectualist normativism, which changes as soon as one considers the connection between spirit and sensibility in the form of the provisional sensualization of the idea of reason or the diversion of ought and healthy being. If positive religion in itself is the opposite of the ideal of reason and, left alone, can never lead to it, it does so if it contains reason in sidi. Reason here is that objectively given aspect of positivity that, as soldiers, undermines them in the long term without their knowledge and against their apostasy, by forcing them to fulfill tasks that will help the ideal of reason or the unclouded norm to win. Reason therefore exists and works before its sitiable implementation. To educate the zunädist sinnlidi

• Axiomata, SS, XIII, 123, Lessing's suspensions. cf. location eit., 132, 134, $13: Defense of feelings against the distrust of orthodox hermeneutics; in the 4th Anti Goeze (= SS, XIII, 164) “enlightenment” as a prerequisite for bliss.

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In order to promote conditioned humanity, it has to open itself up, but without being completely absorbed in this spiritualization: it stands within it as a secret force that drives forward, and at the same time it remains as a norm that has yet to be realized, thereby enabling the overcoming of the existing historical concepts form in which it is sensualized, and the transition to a higher level, etc With regard to the positions of Lessing's two theological opponents, this view means the following: the orthodox belief in revelation represents reason in a certain phase of its development, which will sooner or later be outdated. The mistake of the Orthodox lies in their desire to narrow down this phase and goes back to their ignorance of the ideal of reason. The mistake of the neologists lies in the denial of the fact that reason has made sense and must also make sense. The wrong one This position results from the narrow intellectualistic conception of the essence of reason while neglecting the stories or the sensible dimension of man, who first of all has to be educated by the sensible means made available by positive revelation"' (it is not by chance that the first fifty-three appear Paragraphs of the educational writing first in the "Contrasts" to Reimarus). With Rüdtsidit on his double polemics, Lessing must therefore adhere to the principle that reason exists first and foremost in its meanings and works without their knowledge (if they had this knowledge, they would themselves being reason and abolishing oneself) in overcoming it, because in spite of everything it remains something more than any interpretation of it: it forms its objective meaning, its inner logic or its teleology.

The secret presence of reason in every phase of human development can be determined only retrospectively, that is, after the ideal of reason has been finally established or at least with an eye on it as the goal of history. If there were no a priori certainty of this implementation, the standpoint of orthodoxy would be irrefutable, and the only possible reaction against it would be to use the weapon of intellectualistically understood, rigid and uncompromising reason; Gesckidite would then stand not in the sign of an ascending continuity, but rather of a Manidiaean struggle between Lidite and darkness. This is precisely what is intended to be avoided through teleological consideration. Leibniz had used them to abolish the Cartesian separation between res cogitans and res ex tensa, without making any concessions to blind sensuality or materialism. The same thing now happens at the level of the philosophy of health for the sake of the unification of those opposites that correspond between res cogitans and res extensa or spirit and sensuality: here the normative and the causal (that is, the sensually conditioned) should be combined with one another.

* ®°

Education, $$ 16, 17 = SS, XIII, 418.

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(again without making fundamental concessions to the blind sense1i‹fiality, which this time appears as positivity), which at the same time means the unification of the idea of the whole, which is under the sign of the norm, with the idea of development as a succession sinn1i‹ fi conditional and relative to si‹fi cultural structure "' na‹fi si‹fi pulls.

Lessing is completely clear about the central importance of the teleological thought for his overall conception, and, what is highly significant with regard to the future philosophy of unification, he knows how to underpin it with an apocalyptic mood and certainty by clicking on that

triadis‹fie ges‹fiidiuphi1osophis‹fie scheme by J • 'm from Floris goes back‹:k. The certainty is itself based on the need for the te1eo1ogis Conviction gained through thought that this is precisely what should help the norm or reason to implement what it is contradicting—namely positive revelation or sensuous conditionality. The norm is therefore irrefutable and invincible in every respect. The determinism of freedom, or for the sake of freedom, is revived to find its final home in later constructions of this type. You should therefore report any future logical difficulties to Lessing. They ask the following questions: Tel'fien's purpose is to distance oneself from the respective religious one

*^ Leasing always keeps in mind the historical determination of peoples working in the spirit of Providence ($$ 23, 54). His early contact with the "pragmatist" historiography of the Enlightenment must be particularly emphasized here (see, for example, the review of L'Esprit des Nations from 1753, V, 143 f.: To speak properly one has no other than physical primordial sadia "Why the nations suffer from suffering, talents and physical skills are so poor; because what is called morally, the primordial sadia, is not a consequence of physical.") Science in general is highly valued: without science one remains an inexperienced child ', says a review from 1751 (IV, 332 f.) - Lessing's encounter with the Western European philosophy of health is of the greatest adversity for our context, precisely at the time when he turned away from the one-dimensional religion of reason and orthodoxy begins to be appreciated in its social function ; It is known in what enthusiastic tone he spoke of Ferguson's essay in the letter to Mendelssohn of January 9, 1771 (XVII, 364). It is precisely the sociological-historical view of the idiot in its connection with the belief in the future that strengthens the mind in Leasing, that he would perhaps have treated too much stupidity as rubbish - and without reason, as the possibility of this connection in Ferguson shows . Lessing now feels in a position to bring about the same synthesis more easily or at a higher level: he is not just based on optimism about progress, but rather from a radical theodicy (the importance of reading Ferguson is already clear to Leisegang, Lessings Weltansdl., 114 ff., highlighted

become). ^’

Education, § 82'

"'

§§ 85-89 — S. 433 f.

SS, XIII, 433. op. cit.,

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Orthodoxy, given its admitted educational function, and on the basis of what objective criteria should one decide whether it is time to declare it obsolete? What position should you take towards those who know about your unreason and reason? As can be seen, these questions shift the conflict between the causal and the normative to another level, ie to that of action theory or moral philosophy. Les Sing understood the dilemma logically and apparently experienced it first hand. For he remarks in relation to the mystics of the 13th and 14th centuries: “The enthusiast often gives very correct insight into the future: but he just can't wait for that future. He wants this future to be accelerated; and desires that it be hastened by him. What nature takes thousands of years to do should mature in the moments of its existence.' "'If Leasing defends Reimarus' right to criticize the Bible, it is because he starts from the belief that humanity is on the threshold of the new eternal gospel and needs the letter no more or at least less than before. On the other hand, he does not deny that orthodoxy is still responsible for the education and discipline of very many people and, moreover, contains aspects that are beyond any intellectual criticism. That is why he also accuses Reimarus of the following: Sentences without which Christianity cannot exist ... and sentences which are only used to better connect them ... are one thing to him' "'. But he himself dares not make any binding detailed statement as to what is in the script 'spirit' and what in it is 'mere budist', and this reflects his necessarily ambiguous position. Even after he has reached the reconciling insights of the educational text, he holds on to the ideal of the religion of reason, not only with regard to its future implementation according to his development-historical scheme, but with regard to the polemics against orthodoxy to which he cannot do without because he fears, with Redit, that a soldier's silence is not simply an insight into the objective function of orthodoxy, but rather as an agreement with its subjective point of view or could be interpreted with their self-understanding. Anyone who has seen or survived the course of history is necessarily in contrast to those who objectively represent the current phase of development, but without knowing that it is only a temporary phase. However, the person who knows not only knows that it is temporary, but also that it is unavoidable and is therefore at least psychologically in a dilemma because he has to leave the fulfillment of current historical tasks, based on his own assumptions, to those who are not as far-sighted as him he. So if Lessing on

^°

on. eit., $90 = S.434. °°° Opposites, SS, XII, 438.

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If he thinks of the necessity of the present phase, then he puts the realization of the ideal of reason in the future, but if he considers its temporary character, then he becomes just like the fanatic of the thirteenth century impatient and puts his criticism in the name of the existing towards the untroubled ideal of reason. The character of the propagated rational religion is different in each of the two cases. In the first case, the mature reason sprouts, which sees itself not as a mere contrast to sensuality or the necessary sensualization of the ideal, but as its unconstrained overcoming in the third age of the world. In the second case, on the contrary, reason announces itself in its direct polemical opposition to the positive, which has little left for the educational significance of orthodoxy"': this is exactly what the call to return to the simplicity of primitive Christianity implied. This point of view made it sidi Lessing nodi 1780 as his own by advocating the thesis that the religion of Christ and the Christian religion are two completely different things' ^'; it is not by chance that he stresses the same thing outright in the polemic against Goeze: Who will finally bring us a Christianity like you [ Luther] would teach it now; as Christ himself would teach it!' "'. This also results in the different point of view of the educational writing from that of Nathan. In this, all positive religions are edited with regard to the religion of reason or humanity, which hie et nunc is opposed to the nodi always flourishing orthodoxy, while they follow one another in the development perspective of the educational writing -

In other words: in Nathan, Judaism and Christianity are parallel phenomena whose dogmatic differences are not of particular interest — the Einbe The development of Mohammedanism makes this indifference even more noticeable while in educational writing Christianity is clearly superior to Jewry. Nathan's religion of humanity means neither the abolition nor the overcoming of the positive religions, but only the neutralization of their purely positive aspects and the merging of their rational cores with one another; it exists alongside the positive ones, which are condemned and opposed to the extent that they threaten to overthrow the rational with the positive (Patriardi, Daja). In the field of education, the religion of reason prevails after the positive religions have exhausted their educational role and left the educational stage. The point of the theory of the three ages is that the parabola of the ring is almost the opposite. Leasing leaves no doubt that reason in science means the same as divine providence '^. God directs the development of two...

'°' S. the fine analysis by Thieli&e, Revelation, Reason and Existence, 64 ff., 123 ff. ••' Die Religion Christi, SS, XVI, 518 f. ••° SS, XIII, 102. '^ Education, $91 = SS, XIII, 434.

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moderately, thereby making its presence known in the world. The belief that God is present even where the devil would be more likely to be present (God has a hand in everything, except our errors?' ^') comes from a belief that Lessing himself did not see radically enough in Pope thought: everything is fine. From a historical-philosophical perspective, this amounts to the thesis that in positive revelation reason exists as an entity. But since the future confidence in the philosophy of history is gained by relying on God, an ontological expansion of the philosophy of history is obvious, because the question of how God is active in history relates directly to the question of his nature. Is the “everything is good” to be understood merely in the dualistic sense that everything individual is controlled by the external teleology of a God who is strictly transcendent in relation to the world in order to fulfill the divine plans? Some of Lessing's formulations give the impression that he thinks in such an anthropomorphic way ("if it hadn't pleased God...', for which God used a completely natural means...' '*). Nevertheless, his spontaneous monistic concern is unmistakable, to deepen God's relationship to the world as much as possible in order to ontologically consolidate the determinism of freedom. The fulfillment of the plan

Providence is then not merely the result of the sovereign divine absidency (we remember Lessing's rejection of the voluntaristic God), but a necessary outflow of the divine being. Now that the nature of God is thought of not least in terms of phases, details, sensual connections, etc. of the plan of providence, it emerges from its rigid simplicity in order to encompass all this diversity and thus precisely the fulfillment of the plan mentioned to promote ontologically. The unity of God does not have to be a transcendental unity that does not exclude some kind of majority. But God is not absorbed in this majority. Since it is part of his nature to have a complete conception of himself, which is 'as necessarily real as he is,' he duplicates himself and thus begets a son from eternity. This includes all the perfections of the Father, but at the same time it is independent, and within its scope the plan of Providence takes place, the completion of which allows the individual imperfections to disappear in the perfection of the whole. This interpretation suggests Lessing's formulation that God thinks of his Son as the independent scope of all his [God's] perfections, against and in which every imperfection of the individual disappears', especially since in this paragraph

^• op. eit., preliminary report = SS, XIII, 4t5. "’ It is Leisegang's merit that he worked out the close relationship between ontology and Gesdiidits philosophie in Lessing (Lessings Weltansdi., t29). His view that Lessing's overall thinking can be unified from this point of view (sz BS 96) nevertheless remains false. °°' Education, $$ 7, 34 = SS, XI II, 417, 423.

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in which the transition of humanity from moral incapacity to morality and moral happiness - i.e. the fulfillment of the plan of Providence - is discussed '••. Now we can perhaps better understand the deeper connection between ontology and philosophy. The bridge that will be built by the Son between transcendence and immanence on the ontological level springs from the between reason and revelation in science. The positive revelation, insofar as it contains reason, is at the same time the revelation of God in the absolute sense, although this must remain hidden from the sensually affected person with reference to the current phase of his education, which requires heteronomy or transcendence. (The positive teachings can only be understood in their rational, ie esoteric, sense at the dawn of the age of the new Gospel.) As the careful distinction between God and Son shows, Lessing also guards against revelation in the absolute sense to exhaust themselves completely in health or in nature. So he doesn't become a Spinozist, but the unification approach automatically brings him close to that free Spinozism, which bases the radically optimistic attitude on the ontologically meant divinity of the world, while at the same time not based on moral considerations on the personality of God t or didn't want to completely disappear. Because of its vagueness in content, free Spinozism could be put together from different materials and achieved in various detours. Lessing represented him himself when he knew little of Spinoza, and even when he expressly rejected him. In the fragment "The Christianity of Reason" from 1753, in which Leibniz-Wolff's and Aristotle's ideas are fused with motifs from the natural philosophy of the Renaissance, the approach to free Spinozism is not noticeable. With God, it says here, imagination, will and action are one. In order to avoid identifying God and the world, Lessing adds that God can think in two ways: either all at once or distributedly. In the former case he creates a son who is an identical image of God, in the latter the world arises in which the distributed perfections follow one another without any gaps (chain of beings). The entrenched beings form “uniformly constrained gods”; They are similar to God "like parts of the whole."

In this it is said that there is a single idea or doubling of God. ^"

on. cit., $$73.75 = SS, XIII, 430 f. on. cit., $72 = SS, XIII, 430. ••• $$ 3-4 = SS, XIV, 175. °" on. cit., $8 = SS, XIV, 176. •°° on. cit., $16 = SS, XIV, 177. ^° on. cit., $22 = SS, XIV, 178.

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sprodien, which creates the Son and thus obviously also the world: God's relationship to the world becomes partly closer. On the other hand, in the fragment of t753 it was the case that the Son and the world had something in common in that they both came from the same essential characteristic of God, as he himself imagines.) The defense of the personality of God later takes the form of a sharp contrast between Leibniz and Spinoza. Spinoza is the thinker of absolute identity; Body and soul are for him 'one and the same single thing', and therefore there is also no problem with him of harmonizing the two, which poses for Leibniz, who clings to their ontological difference and therefore even then cannot be a Spinozist , if he wants to use the expressions Spinozist: that is the thesis of the draft

»Durdi Spinoza Leibniz only got on the trail of the predetermined harmony' from the year t763 '°'. Sdion t755 knew Leasing the cosmological dimension of the mind-body problem, since Pope was a metaphysician!' The claim is rejected that Spinoza considered God to be the soul of the world, i.e. different from it (Spinoza is described here as a “called heresy” and his system as dangerous). In the year 1773, Leasing appears again in the idea of religion, that is, in the denial of pantheism, the soul of Leibniz's philosophy. What is important for us, however, is that at this time, despite everything, Leasing insists on the belief that a world other than God can exist There is no such thing as God's ex definition, as shown in the small essay "On the Reality of Things Apart from God", which must have been written in the year 1763. Here, as in "Christianity of Reason", we identify thinking and thinking in God , which amounts to the fact that God's concept of a thing contains everything that can be found in the reality of the thing apart from God: "thus both realities are one, and everything that is supposed to exist apart from God exists in God." Leasing does not accept that there is an archetype in God that corresponds to a thing outside of him, while on the other hand he says that the things in God are sufficiently different from him. This Sdiema illustrates Lessing's two-sided attitude, which, as shown, has been modified several times. One of these modifications is encountered in the educational script. I should end this excursus, which is long enough given the diversity of Lessing's thinking, by pointing out two points that

°°' SS, XIV, 294-296. °°• SS, VI, 437. '°' Andreas Wissowatius's objections, SS, XII, 94. '°' SS, XIV, 292 f. It was not without reason that Herder quoted this draft in full at the end of 'Gott' (XVI, 579 f.), namely to show that Lessing had no s's heart for Spinoza's system ”. However, Herder can only tremble with Spinozism here because he, too, freely interprets this concept (s, next paragraph).

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Leibniz's role in the development of the first structures of unification philosophy in the late German Enlightenment is clearly demonstrated. a) We have seen that in Leibniz optimism and meliorism coexist. Given the attempt made in the educational paper to connect the idea of the whole with that of development, it is extremely interesting to know that Leibnitz takes very close note of the parallel existence of the two models and of the educational task that results from this had taken. He draws on the two hypotheses of the perfection of the world, both the uniform and the wavy, and describes their supposed harmonization achieved by Leibniz as follows: “For the whole could at every moment have the perfection to which it is, according to the other hypothesis, only ever approaching without ever achieving it; and I don't see why it shouldn't have been the choice for eternal wisdom. But Leibniz does not only admit the possibility that the infinite number of finite beings can be brought into the most perfect connection of which they are capable, but also saves it from the accusation of always being the same; in which he shows that if the same degree of total perfection remained, then the individual perfections would change incessantly. The connection between these theses and Lessing's interpretation and defense of the doctrine of eternal punishment does not need to be discussed here. After all, the theory of palingenesis put forward in the educational draft shows that Messing was not prepared to let his apocalyptic optimism be clouded by adopting an orthodox position on this question. b) The same mood simmers in Dafi's draft more than five senses for the human being can be' from the year 1780 durdi, in which, by the way, the palingenesis or metempsydiosis theory is linked up again "'. The basic features of Leibniz's soul theory serve as an opportunity for Lessing to complete his meliorist view through genetic points. Although the soul is a simple being (the idea of a unified whole is never revealed), it acquires its ideas nadi and nadi'; "If nature does not make a leap anywhere, then the soul will have passed through all the lower levels before it has arrived at the one in which it currently finds itself." From this it is concluded that the soul is perfected ad infinitum through the acquisition of new ones senses, but without having to change their nature. The genetic treatment and the emphasis on the role of the senses (they are the 'order' and the measure' by which the acquisition of ideas is determined) are taken from Leibniz.

°°®

Leibniz on eternal punishments = SS, XI, 478, 476 (from 1773 ).

•• §§ 94 ff. °'° SS, XVI, 525. °" loc. eit., 522.

SS, XIII, 435 f.

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menen lex continui certainly testify to the aforementioned merging of verses between Leibniz and Lo&e upon the downfall of Wolffianism. But what is even more interesting is the obvious parallelism between the genetic view of knowledge while adhering to soul unity and the development perspective in the study of human service. As education progresses, the collective consciousness gradually and gradually acquires a certain order, just as the individual gradually acquires its imagination. Clear and distinct ideas stand at the end of a development, which takes place within the framework of a whole, namely innate and only gradually discovered possibilities. So we are already in the Herdersdier circle of questions.

c) Herder Durdi Herder, the monist approach of the German Enlightenment reached its most mature expression, at least by 1795. For Herder, the demand for unification is simply self-evident - and also self-evident is its anti-intellectualist point, which is sharpened by a generous and almost joyful rehabilitation of sensuality on all levels. In other words, Herder is free of all the inhibitions that the spirit of Wolffian intellectualism was able to maintain in the most diverse forms in the thinking of the previous generation. In concrete terms, this means: With a strike, Herder is slaying both Wolff and a polemic against him a la Crusius. He grows up on the threshold of a new phase and only looks ahead without paying much attention to the old conflicts in detail. That's why he represents - rather, embodies - the new current with his fiaracteristic sovereignty and informality. With regard to the thinking of Hölderlin's generation, his great merit is that by distilling and succinctly formulating the unification tendency, he created common ground on which the younger people could continue to build without having to resort to the sources again and without having to do so from the beginning in philo sophis, having to lose the controversies; Hölderlin's generation did not necessarily have to rediscover Leibniz, because they had ready-made models that they could build on in order to initially satisfy their apocalyptic desiderata.

Herder was able to formulate the new trend so clearly because, as I said, he was completely lost in it. The basic features of his mental attitude are formed sidi rasdi and without s‹fimerzlidie actions; If he later vacillates between divergent theoretical possibilities (humanity ideal vs. historicism, type and extent of God's interference in health), this happens because of objectively given ambiguities in his standpoint and not because of a change in it. Lessing's restlessness, even his torment, is missing here, and in its place comes the large-scale effort to shape the fundamental and fixed situation on all sides, which is otherwise sdion

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can be reconstructed based on the early scriptures in terms of content and sources. Hamann's strong influence on the young Herder is an eloquent indication of the spiritually healthy significance of religious emotional philosophy, namely that the anti-intellectualism it triggered could, under certain circumstances, be offset by the rehabilitation of sensuality in the broad Enlightenment sense, which was even represented by materialists; In order to avoid skepticism etc., of course the precedents had to be radically changed. This is what Hamann had done with Hume, and Herder, who was to use this strategy to an even greater extent than Hamann, was familiar with and agreed with his reception of Hume. In 1766 he summarized the Natural History of Religion in fifteen Paragraphs together, and he notes the crucial role of suffering in the emergence of religion as well as the fundamental difference between merely "speculative curiosity" and the feeling of life. From this philosophical philosophy of feeling, Herder now assesses both the contemporary philosophy and the task of it

philosophy in general. Although in a review from the year 1772, which, incidentally, includes an extensive quotation from Hamann's Socrates, the ideas about the complete independence of reason and faith from one another, he describes the systems of philosophy without exception as "fictions" and "doctrines". In no way does he advocate the abolition of philosophy, but rather that it become simple, direct and useful. “You philosopher and you plebeian! Make a covenant to become useful!', it says in a future-ready phrase. On this point, of course, logic and all the 'sad remnants of the Aristotelian leaven' are completely unbreathable and are treated accordingly by Herder, whereby, of course, logic and mathematics are seen as symptoms of the same disease; "only weaker philosophy" expresses itself mathematically, and in philosophy too, the age of mathematics should follow that of physics, just as Newton followed Descartes "'. This assessment of the mathematical methodology, whose intellectual

°'° about Herder and Hamann see Haym, Herder I, 54 ff., 137 ff., 494 ff. and II, 387 ff. ¡ on Herder and Hume, I, 287, 323. •'° SW, XXXII, 193 ; cf. Journal, SW, IV, 356 ff. (Hume is mentioned in this context mentioned on p. 361). Herder later repeatedly uses these theses to prove that religion is not a product of priestly deceit, see also Eine Philosophie, SW, V, 486, and above all the oldest document, SW, VI, 284 f., 307 etc. "• SW, V, 461 f. °'• How philosophy can become more general and useful for the good of the people (written in 1765), SW, XXXII, 51, 49, 37 f., 32 f. The typical Enlightenment contrast between Descartes and Newton can also be found in the Ideas' ,SW, XIII, 22.

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historical background as we know it, Herder remained faithful throughout his life "'; he did, however, have in mind Wolff, of whose evidence in words' he says could only produce 'arbitrary definitions' and 'disgustingly repeated demonstrations'".

Our previous assessment of Baumgarten's approach is confirmed by the way in which it was taken up by the young Herder"'. Herder does see the Kersten mistake' in Baumgarten's aesthetics in "that everything is too much a priori and as if from thin air and thus loses itself in the air of general sentences, etc.' "', but behind the Wolffian shell he sees true vitality, which already becomes clear through the emphasis on the concept of sensory knowledge. Here Herder recalls the poetic streak of the young Baumgarten as well as the fact that Baumgarten became a Wolffian at a time when this philosophy was still a promising heresy for restless spirits of the lower powers, went with his own ingenuity to look for everything that was poetic in sensuality, in imagination, ... in feeling and in passion, which is all the more valuable than in this one My entire feeling for the beautiful and the good lies in the dark. The human soul lies before Baumgarten's " sensual" aspect

di in its most effective and living part, like a vast ocean ...: I place yourself there, O philosopher of feeling, as if on a high rock in the middle of the waves. Now look down into the dark abyss of the human soul, where the feelings of the animal become the feelings of a human, etc.' "'. The last sentence of this quote shows the critical point at which the insight into the meaning of psychological sensuality comes through

*'• S. e.g. B. "God", SW, ).

Also in Germany the rejection of Wolffianism (even before Herder) was a prerequisite for the historical approach (see Reill, Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism, p6 ff., 6S ff.). °' 7 About Wolff's writings, SW, XXXII, 157. °' ® f.lber Herder's respect for Baumgarten's work, see Haym, Herder, I, 41, 172 ff., 251. °t°

Von Baumgarten's way of thinking in his writings, SW, XXXII, 191.

°•° loc. et., 183 f. Cf. our explanations about the reasons for the spread of the Wolffianism in this chapter. Absdln. 2 a.

°°' place. cit., 185.

°'° loc. et., 186; Herder's suspension. The frequent and emphatic use of the words 'sinnli' and 'sensuousness' is striking in most of Herder's writings. A For Herder, the main shortcoming of Wolffianism is that it has no understanding of the 'darkest regions' of the soul (Uber Wolffs Sdriften, SW, XXXII, 157).

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which is expanded into the interweaving of psychological and biological sensuality. This important step is undertaken in the monistic absidity, the intrinsically unitary soul in its unity with all dimensions of the through the to treat nature that is pervaded by the same principles and thus to explain and increase its liveliness: “The principle alone: Imitate nature! usually leads to dead relationships; but the principle: Feel the sensual perfection! likewise gathers the rays of all nature into my soul, and is nothing but the application of that oracle: O men':h! get to know didi yourself!" '^ The s&on of pietism and of Self-knowledge brought to honor Hamann thus takes on a new meaning and is connected to a different anthropology. However, the inclusion in Herder's consideration of the deeper parts of the economy that lie beyond the limits of the conscious at the same time results in a highly significant method. Since the perfection of the aesthetic or moral creation or norm as a soldier is never in doubt , while on the other hand its roots in a "dark foundation" are asserted, the path must be taken conceptually that connects root and summit - otherwise one must of the two theses mentioned, presented by Herder at the same time, are omitted. The genetic treatment must therefore gain the upper hand over the purely descriptive one, or: the descriptive can only take place after the completion of the genetics, where it has to incorporate the results and the flexibility of the latter in sidi '-". It lies on the Hand that the method is the difference accompaniment to the diversity in the ontological basic attitude. For Herder, descriptive method and intellectualism are one and the same, since the latter treats the ontological, moral, etc. quantities as entia rationis, which are not

°'°

Von Baumgartens Denkart, SW, XXXII, 188. °°• This attitude explains why S& Herder always contained a fundamental polemic against Locke . Quite the opposite, in his epistemological treatise he uses formulations that are direct inspiration of pleasure (nll our thinking has arisen from and through& sensation, carries au&, despite all distillation, still the traces of it', On Recognizing etc., 2nd attempt& , VIII, 233 f.), and even tries to reconcile Leibniz's and Luise's conception of innate ideas: there was too much argument about this question because — they didn't understand each other. According to Herder, the dispute is now to be settled by the Annalune, not this or that idea in detail is innate, but rather the power to recognize the image of the deity or the spark of God in us

(1st version, VIII, 247 f., cf. later in the Ideas", XIII, 308). What is gained dadur& theore tisdi is unclear, but Herder's desire to hold fast to empiricism without endangering morality becomes clear The attempt at mediation between Leibniz and Lu&e (nodi 1801 it says in the Adrastea' that Leibniz is “Supplementary” Lo&e was, XXIII, 132). Elber him cf. the good comments from Haym, Herder, II, 667 f.

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The monistic approach of the Spätau March Gesd id te can have. This results in the convenient 'tabulated method', which is reduced to

classifications, divisions and empty names. By rejecting the statistical ontology and methodology of intellectualism through his rehabilitation of sensibility, Herder contrasts this superficial approach with the "completely philosophical language" which should actually be the speech of the gods - of the gods. who watched how the things of the world were formed, which the beings inherited in their state of becoming and developing, and thus every name of Sadie was geae tisd:i and materially created' •••. If we place next to the genetic treatment and the rehabilitation of sensuality the concept of the being that remains constant despite all evolution and the unshakable belief in the norm, then this results in Herder's merging of the idea of the whole with the idea of development - a darkening, the two fundamental needs of his basic attitude: on the one hand, the Enlightenment, empiricism, and knowledge-based thinking is taken seriously and, on the other hand, the normative is strengthened by the fact that it is embedded in the depth of the sense-making itself. If the meaning is understood in this way or provided with solid dimensions, then deepening into it in accordance with the demands of the Enlightenment knowledge does not mean strengthening, but rather the refutation of all materialism and all skepticism. Spirit and matter, being and should, causal and normative, whole and development are now brought together more closely and serve to underpin the basic attitude described in its double aspect.

This fundamental structure determines - as we will show later Herder's thinking on the anthropological, cosinological and physical level. However, it emerges early on from the considerations and questions analyzed here. This is how we find them, for example: B. in the fourth »Kritisdien Wäldd en«, published in 1769, in a developed form. In order to substantiate his thesis of the presence of a predisposition in human beings for the perception of the beautiful, Herder starts here from the assumption that we are like animal-like spirits". that is, our soul has “more specific strengths for a sensual creature than for a pure spirit”; The large number of their sensory organs and the large volume of their influxes show the great mass of sensory life in the sensible soul. At the beginning of its development, man is only a covering and sensitive plant, and even when he becomes an animal, there is still no feeling attached to him other than the dark idea of his ego...; In it, however, lie the concepts of the entire universe; All of man's ideas, etc., develop from it.' "'. At-

°°^

From Baumgarten's way of thinking, SW, XXXII, 182.

°°° loc. et., 180; Herder's suspensions. °•' SW, IV, 27 f. °^ lock. it., 28 f.

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Finally, the development or ramification of this all-round innate or immanent is described and it is shown how certain stages must run through until the human being can come to clear and distinct ideas (in this case: to the aesthetic body). It is not only the necessity of its development (the pure intellect should be immobile) that lies in the sensual condition of the soul, but also its immense diversity, since each individual soul is affected differently by the respective different environment. The diversity of health and values gives the impression that there is no such thing as a connection. But Herder is not ready to admit 'that everything in nature is a chaos of individual disharmonious moods that cannot be harmonized'. For he remembers that the modifications of development can never obliterate the original all-encompassing disposition; "as soon as a deviation can be explained, the main rule is redefined and strengthened by it" '^. The purpose of the whole construction, in which the whole and development or the normative and the causal are merged with one another, is obvious: the relative or sensible condition should be interpreted in such a way that no relativism and no skepticism can arise from it. In this phase of the Enlightenment it was obviously too late to oppose the relative with the mere steadfastness of the intellect or to simply dismiss it and deny it dead. The rehabilitation of sensuality was an unstoppable process, and Herder's crucial insight is that under these circumstances the normative could no longer simply be saved against sensuality, but through its "abolition" within a new metaphysics.

As previously indicated, the young Herder includes the factor "sensuousness" in his considerations to a much greater extent than could be explained by the influence of Hamann's philosophy of feeling, in which above all the psy‹:hisdie sensuality or the inner struggle and the personal experiences on the Su‹:je na& Gott came to the fore. However, Herder shows no inclination to combine Hamann's assessment of the role of the passions, which he fully accepts, with ideas such as those of the doctrine of original sin and the corresponding psychic diet. His anthropology is optimistic, and that is why his rehabilitation of sensuality can be so far-reaching. His literary sources are in this regard: St Win&e1mann and especially Shaftesbury. The former finds the ideal balance or the complete mutual penetration of spirit and sensuality in the works of Greek art. The paganistic joie de vivre, which more or less belongs to this tradition, naturally points to a completely different anthropological direction than the doctrine of original sin. As is well known, Herder realized that the needs of his historical construction soon had to distance himself from Win‹:ke1mann's absolutization of grie‹:hisdier norms. In

place. cit., 38 f.

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In his early days, however, Win&elmann's image of grace was very important

contributed significantly to the formation of his conception of the intertwining of mind and sensuality *'. His treatise on Baumgarten, in which, as we know, aesthetics in the original sense of the word (and Herder understands it that way "') comes into its own, ends with the demand for 'griediisdiem feeling', griediisdier aesthetics' and Hellenizing'. Win&elmann's leitmotifs could now easily be brought under a common denominator with Shaftesbury's Platonism (the word very often meant only the griediisdie beauty or spiritualized sensuality par excellence. The advantage of the Englishman was of course the all-round nature of his thinking, namely in the metaphysi "The anchoring of those values that Greek culture is supposed to embody. The radically optimistic oncology is reflected here in an analogously conceived anthropology, and this connection must have corresponded to Herder's innermost ideas and desires. Shaftesbury's was only within the framework of this optimistic anthropology Reinforcement of aesthetics with morality is possible, which Herder unashamedly adopts

Herden's simultaneous zealous harassment of Leibniz provides clear evidence of his early concern to classify his aesthetic, moral, anthropological, etc. views into a coherent metaphysical framework and thus to give them a final justification: the polemisdi-ideo logis, the function of the idea We are aware of the whole, which is governed by principles that are ultimately identical with the basic normative attitude and whose ontology constitutes confirmation. From this point of view, it should not be at all strange if Herder emphasizes at the beginning of his "Truths from Leibniz" (1769) the thesis that the universe is a whole whose all parts are extremely connected and that Qin is only this individual it is, sidi sdii&et' "'. Since intellectualism (Wolff) does not want to accept the imaginative power of all elements, it leaves the unity of the whole split into a living and a dead part. The theory of small ideas, on the contrary, asserted unity in two respects: on the one hand, because it presents each individual as the aggregate of the universe, and on the other hand, because it conceives of the universe as an ascending gradation of individuals possessing different degrees of clear ideas . 'So the present is full of the future, and full of the past: ant wo‹a n6vr': everything fits together, and God reads in the smallest of substances the whole sequence of things in the world.' »Nature never takes a leap. About Herder's relationships with Win&elmann see Haym, Herder, I, 140, 195 f.,

II, 74 ff. ^' Von Baumgarten's way of thinking, SW, XXXII, 192.

°•° 4. Crit. Grove, SW, IV, 35 f. SW, 32, 211.

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Always from the small to the large, and vice versa through the mediocre in the stages, such as parts. If we think of the two conceptions of the unity of the universe together, then again, in analogy to Leibniz's concepts, the interweaving of the idea of the whole results with the idea of development, which allows Herder, at the end of the passage just quoted, to consider each individual once as a part and once as a stage of the whole ^'. Under these circumstances, the solemn court praise of individuality (as Herder undertakes when distinguishing it from mathematical "uniformity") does not mean a questioning of the idea of the whole, but rather its enrichment through the idea of development: for development has only as a development The succession of individually recognizable structures makes sense, but since each of them is intended to contain the whole both as a structure and as a law, their diversity does not become chaos, just as development does not result in a simple movement into this or that direction, but rather a two-way progression. In the theory of small ideas, Herder also finds confirmation of his views about the dark foundation of the soul, in which the sensible and the spiritual can no longer be distinguished from one another. His adherence to the fundamental ontological heterogeneity of thought and matter is particularly striking: this does not follow at all from this " 7 . Here we sense the fear that the unification approach could eventually be interpreted in a materialistic sense. In order to be absolutely sure, Herder does not completely abandon the dualistic argument, although his main strategy for combating materialism lies in the establishment of an inverted monism or in the complete spiritualization of matter. The reason for this s‹fi vacillation is actually not logical, but only psy‹fiologis‹fi; for after the development of the consistent philosophy of identity by the Nacii Kantians, this ambiguity falls away completely. But as long as the new monisti s&e construction is no& lo&er, its proponents nt&t dare to simply quash the ontological independence of thought together with that of matter, even though they factually undermine it in order to remind them again in an ed manner when the danger or the accusation of materialism thaws on their horizon.

This back and forth determines the world view of the early Sdiiller and its Ver

honor in the Tübinger Stift *••. Au& Herder will never liberate si& from it, which is why he si& will also guard against radically eliminating the personal God . Leibniz does not only appear attractive because he

•^ lock. it., 215. Other the central importance of this double consideration for the later slide lectik s. Kondylis, Enutehung der Dialektik, 494, Anm., 590 f. "Truths from Leibniz, SW, XXXII, 216. ^ 7 place. cit., 217.

•°" Kondylis, Origin of dialectics, I. Chap.

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structures available, but also because oian can point to his nisi intellectus ipse at any time in order to silence those who tremble behind the unification approach of Spinozism and materialism. Herder also understands the innate ideas, that is, those that do not depend on any sense, as a weapon against skepticism in theory ^' and in morality, which, like arithmetic, needs proof ^°. However , his effort not to succumb to a new intellectualism is again visible (it is significant that he used the word intellect in Leibniz's well-known formula "Soul" replaces "') and to redo the necessity of the innate also from the side of the unification approach, whereby the innate and the unconscious, as in Leibniz, coincide and the anti-intellectualism is given a new lead in the fight against the Loesdie empiricism ^'. It is due to this strong predominance of the monistic and at the same time antiintellectualistic tendency that the ontological heterogeneity of thinking and matter is only remembered in an emergency, and that otherwise those aspects of Leibniz's philosophy are taken into account which are primarily considered a bulwark against Spinozism. The absolute self-sufficiency or windowlessness of the monadsubstances unnecessarily fragments the unity or simplicity of being, according to Herder's view, and moreover makes it difficult to explain the multiplicity and the change in each individual monad itself. The monads should therefore have a relation to one another by their nature, ie be communicable. If the 'reason for the connection' is not immanent, then 'a deus ex oiadiina must be called' which would have to contain it: but it is a tidersprudi if the reason for the connection cannot be found in those to be connected themselves. "It seems to me that the world would unhappily fade and multiply if the reason for its connection and all its changes is in every monas," is the result of these considerations^'. From the deepening of the union ("simpler"), Herder versed in a veritable swearing of diversity ("much fadier"), which would result from the expanded sphere of activity and influence of the individual substance. The appreciation of the latter means how said, the elimination of the deux ex ma‹:hina, but since the same revaluation occurs at the same time through the deepening of the union, it implies an increase in the presence of the divinity in the universe (because: dismembered being, conversely, draws the intervention of divine tion outside nadi sidi. Herder insists on the independence of God and, indeoi he this with the

°'° Truths from Leibniz, SW, XXXII, 212, 219. ^° place cit., 221 f. °" loc. cit., 224. *° lock. it., 214. on Leibniz's principles, SW, XXXII, 225. °•• place. cit., 227.

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Wanting to combine the thesis just mentioned, he arrives at that panentheist structure which he advocates in his mature writings. God therefore belongs to the world: as the world belongs to God'; the world has existed forever'; no God is possible without a world: just like no world without God' : all this would mean pure and not just free Spinozism if Herder had not added that God does not form the universe but its center, and that besides the most perfect being . . . others are necessary'. Spinoza was actually not an atheist because he only believed that everything existed in God, although he only thought of the center of the universe, which he called God and the world, and not of it as a whole. In fact, it is difficult for anyone to understand why someone can overlook a whole in order to concentrate on its center right from the start and beyond. After all, the rescue of Spinoza, even in this dubious detour, clearly expresses Herder's concerns. Although he wants to deepen the ontology of unification as much as possible, although he does not shy away from distancing himself from Leibniz, on the other hand he does not dare to draw the final conclusions across the board, even if the mess to do so is all too great. The personal God in this or that version, as well as the recognition of the independence of reason in an emergency, is still always perceived as a guarantee for the binding nature of certain values. From solThe unification philosophy was only released by Hölderlin in 1794.

When Herder questions the deus ex mad ina, he naturally has the entire construction of pre-established harmony in mind. Given the structural parallelism of the cosmological and anthropological levels in his thinking, this criticism is reported in the presentation of his epistemology in the treatise On the recognition and feeling of the human soul. There is "nothing to say" about the "unnatural poverty" of the pre-established harmony, and even the reason that might have led Leibniz to it is anyone's guess, it says here. In the first version of the Sdrift, this construction is presented as the accidental product of a "witty mind" and not of a philosopher who was aware of his system: Leibniz's "true" system is therefore elsewhere . Herder's counterconcept is based on two assumptions. The unity of soul and body is necessary for the establishment of a connection between the soul and the world (Herder therefore makes direct use of his thesis of the communicability of monads): The soul, given its divine nature, has, since it is impregnated, Senses are necessary, which represent to her the universe according to her divine nature.' The soul needs the senses

°•• Principles of Philosophy, SW, XXXII, 228. ^• ibid. ••' SW, VIII, 176.

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not only because of their limitations, but also because of their godliness! If it were not rooted in the divine, its connection with the world would not be such a natural requirement. This idea already echoes the second assumption that supports Herder's rejection of pre-established harmony. If the unity of soul and body arises from and serves the divine nature and purpose of the soul, then it means ensoulment of the body and not a degradation of the soul. In other words, unity is about the soul. The passage just quoted is continued as follows: In the intention of the soul, the body is not a body: it is its kingdom: an aggregate of the darkly imaginative forces from which it collects its image, its clear thought... I find the reason for the aggregate of the body no other than in the soul: and in the body the reason why the soul forms itself from such and such formulas pure universe that lies within her, we‹:ket. In short, the body is a symbol, a phenomenon of the soul in relation to the universe.' ^' Herder believes that he can eliminate the pre-established harmony and its dualism if there is the possibility of a monistic conception with simultaneous spiritualization of matter in order to dispel the suspicion of materialism, and he cannot understand why Leibniz, whose monadology offers the aforementioned possibility provides, would like to keep dualism *'. In the monadology Herder finds the len continui as the dynamism of the flip side and confirmation of the idea of a unified whole in general. The theses: In general, nothing is separated in nature' and: The inner human being with all its dark forces, stimuli and drives is only one' belong together'. The stimulus establishes the connection to the outer world, the senses process it inside, and the nerve structure' ('tender silver bonds, through which the Creator weaves the inner and outer world, and in us heart and head, thinking and willing, senses and all limbs' ^') transmits the results of that processing of the imagination, which "not only the bond and basis of all finer soul forces, but also the knot of interconnection

°•• place. cit., 249 f. ^° The spiritualization of matter is such a strong inspiration for Herden's feeling in his monistic undertaking that he even takes up ideas that could be interpreted through materialistic means without hesitation, e.g. what he said about Edie's physiognomy in the broadest sense, i.e. the psy&o1ogisd e physiology' says: it is the most important part of world wisdom... Without all mysticism and in the sweetest philosophical sense, the inner man is indwelling in the outward expression through 'h and through'' (loc. cit ., 250); it is enough to recall the theories that

C. Lombroso m L'uomo delinquente' developed under the influence of the vulgar materialism of the second half of the last • century in order to make clear what Herder's psychological physiology can mean, given only the precedents ^° place cit., 178. °^' place. cit., 190.

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hanges between mind and body' be ^'. If drives, feelings and thinking emerge directly from it, then the seed of all passion and enterprise lies already in the abyss of attraction and such dark forces in people and animals (these forces are even called the deepest sanctuary within us). "'). For Herder, such a definition means that meaning is spiritualized in all its diversity; "A mental bond" that "does not depend on any mechanics" links the stimulus with the external world (it is intended to clarify why the body is attracted or repelled by something), and there is also a certain spiritual bond between the senses and the necessary bridge *' to their corresponding objects. The rule of reason, that is, "of the monarchy who thinks and wills in us," is based on the fact that "our whole body, in its many parts, has so many different forms, only one realm of indestructible, more intimate, but less bright and seems to be a dark force that stands in the most precise bond with reason. He then asks the question: What is more natural than that it [reason] dominates the one without which it would not be what it is? ' One could, however, reply that a truly indisputable rule cannot be based on the ruler's dependence on his subjects, as Herder suggests here.In this dubious argument lies his aporia: in addition to the intellectualistic view of the nature of the spirit, he has audi whose intellectualistically intended rule over sensuality (the spiritualization of sensuality is - at least in this phase of the German late Enlightenment - not a return to intellectualism, but an attempt to replace it without succumbing to materialism), but without the declared goal of that To want to question the ruler's power, namely morality and freedom. Those who support the "birth of our reason" as portrayed by Herder

"To consider it indecent and to revere reason as a unique, eternal, independent, infallible oracle" are criticized with the same emphasis as the humanistic ideals are defended. Under these circumstances, Herder must redefine morality and freedom, that is, based on his anti-intellectualist position, in order to be able to prove their independence from intellectualism or their compatibility with its rejection. We have already seen what constructions Enlightenment anti-intellectualism generally made available for such a purpose: the existential concept of knowledge and the interweaving of freedom and necessity. In both, the monistic approach is expressed in the fact that

°°-* So in their Ideen', SW, XIII, 307 f. On knowing, SW, VIII, 179. ^• lock. it., 182. ^• lock. et., 174, 186. • • loc. et., 192; my blockings. ^°

°^* lock. it., 198.

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the division into intellectual and existential sizes is abolished. Here, knowledge and morality are forms of existential intensity and not of conscious overcoming of an immediate, existential given that is considered unreliable as soldiers. Nadi monistisdi-anti-intellectualist ansidit must arise from a supposed overcoming (which can only be forced or fictitious) that mastery of the general or Gedadite over the particular or existentially living, which is found in the division of the human being into mind and body and of the universe in God and the world. Herder made use of this scale of thought (whose origins in the central Enlightenment approach, as we have reconstructed it, must be kept in mind) in order to present his treatise in a highly informative manner, namely by exposing the final logical consequences of his previous statements granted. With regard to the rooting of reason in the dark foundation of the soul, the complete unity of knowing and willing is asserted. They form "only one energy of the soul", so mere speculation must be co ipso "distribution" - and "whoever shares eternally will never fully possess" ^'. Since the existential concept of knowledge appears here within the framework of an optimistic anthropology and ontology, it can be assumed without further ado that 'true knowledge and good willing are one and the same': only if everything is good can true knowledge of being exist in the ex definitione Unity of knowing and willing co ipso means an activity of good will. Like the theoretical, so also the practical is the intensification of the existential (which is why the conventional distinction between the two must also be omitted)—except that in the latter the optimistic-di-normative precedents of the existential appear equally tangibly. And just as the existential increases in true cognition and no theoretical abstraction is tolerated above one's own head (love is the noblest cognition'), so one also needs to let one's good will not be guided by any moral or freedom rule : “It is very difficult to know about freedom when we serve every stimulus, every activity , as a sufficient cause for us. It is mostly a pathetic deception with these sufficient reasons, where the general always seems true, and the particular detail of the specific case is a lie. You are a slave to medianism (but this is disguised in the lidite celestial reason) and you think you are free.' If good will and true cognition are the voice of being itself, and if that being represents the deepest and supreme necessity (determinism of freedom), then freedom (i.e., existential intensity or unfolding of innate powers in the form of true cognition and good will) and necessity as well as the general and the particular coincide. Freedom is the knowledge of one's own necessary rooting in the good being and acting on the basis of this insight: It is truly the first germ of freedom, feeling that one cannot be free and on which bonds

lock it., 199.

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are you liable? The strongest, freest men feel this most deeply and strive further; Mad slaves born for dungeons, they sneer, and remain lying in the mud full of high honors. Luther, with his Bu‹:h de servo arbitrio, was and is understood by very few' ^'. — The logis‹:je belonging together of monistis‹:the approach, existential concept of knowledge and interrelationship of freedom and necessity, as presented here by Herder to the first Once it is clearly presented in the late German Enlightenment, it must be precisely stated that it is just too basic for the philosophy of unification that developed later. Herder's epistemological-anthropological considerations are ultimately based on the radically optimistic ontology of 'everything is good'. This dependence of epistemology on the ontologis‹:den basic attitude, which we previously pointed out as a general phenomenon in modern philosophy, is expressed by Herder in several formulations (e.g.: In every smallest part of the infinite‹ The truth, wisdom, goodness of the whole reigns supreme: in every knowledge, as in every feeling, the image of God is reflected, etc.''°). When it comes to believing in the presence of God in all depths and corners of being, Herder evaluates the "dark ground" decisively without having to worry, a rehabilitation of sensuality to such an extent could drive him into the arms of materialism because of the reinterpretation of the concept of reason that it demands. For Herder, the open recourse to a metaphysics is the effective medicine against skepticism‹:je mal du siécle, and accordingly he sees the origin‹:je of this latter in the absence of (»true') metaphysis‹:den as the source of firm normative orientation. The Frenchman knows nothing of the real in metaphysics', he remarks (what the word 'Frenchman' stands for in Herder is well known) and rejects outright':finet in this context La Ro':hefoucauld's 'degrading, humiliating' etc. Conception of the human being in all its rigors from °•'. Since optimistis‹:je oncology not only supports Herder's epistemology and anthropology, but also his Ges‹:hi‹:hu philosophy and thus his entire thinking, his active participation in the pantheism dispute dur‹:Haus is understandable‹:h: free Spinozism was, in his eyes, the best way to underpin this optimi stis‹:je oncology. In doing so, he had in mind a combination of the optimistis:the signs of Shaftesbury and Leibniz with a deepening of the unification approach based on the ideas of spinozistis; no‹:h while he was writing down the different versions of “Knowing and Sensing” he had wanted to title his planned metaphysis‹:je treatise “Spinoza, Shaftesbury, Leibniz' ^'.

°^" loc. eit., 201 f.; Herd emphases. •• lock. it., 246. ^' Journal, SW, IV, 416. °°° Gott, SW, XVI, 403. For the young and late Herder, Shafts-

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With reference to this combination, he now follows up his early criticism of Leibniz in the conversation “God”. It recalls the definition of substance as that which has the origin of its existence in itself', in order to conclude that there can only be one substance, namely God. Thus the substantial independence of the monads is finally abolished and in this important point Spinoza is given preference over Leibniz: the former's insistence on the thesis of the one substance should actually be regarded as philosophical self-evidence and not as blasphemy. Again the 'forced hypothesis of pre-established harmony' is rejected, but this time it is emphasized that it is a Cartesianism left over from Leibniz's thinking, and there are good reasons for this because of the argumentative strategy pursued. Namely, Herder wants to give the impression that Leibniz's error is a consequence of the same dualistic Cartesianism as audi that error of Spinoza, who included this in the verdadit of materialism or atheism. The dualism and not the monistic approach of Spinoza is actually dangerous: Herder argues with regard to those who want to understand materialism primarily qua monism. In order to defend the unification approach in this way, Herder now undertakes a far-fetched interpretation of Spinoza, who won the extension

bury simply and directly the sound core of Leibniz's philosophy. Like it in the "Letters concerning the study of theology" means: I could almost say that in him one sees all the flowers of Leibniz's philosophy (without the game hypotheses of the same) blooming in their latest bloom, yes, that a new Plato in him speaks” (X, 305). On the other hand, in Herder's thinking, Shaftesbury combines with Spinoza (cf. Haym, Herder, II, 268 ff.) - and, like Leibniz, serves to dilute Spinoza's monism or determinism. What is also interesting for our context is the discussion about Goethe's Spinozism, which, however, can hardly be separated from Herder's. See Dilthey, From the time of Spinozastu dien Goethe (Ges. S‹:hr., II, 391 ff.), who particularly emphasized Shaftesbury's influence. In contrast, above all, Lindner, who wants to reject the bourgeois attempt to create idealistic Neoplatonists from Herder and Goethe; His comments about the "transformation of Spinozism" through Leibniz's influence are very important (problem of Spinozism, esp. 89 ff.). Bolla':her makes Lindner's basic thesis essentially his own (Goethe and Spinoza, 1 ff., 125 ff.), but he rejects his Marxist-Leninist attitude (160 ff.). Bolla‹:her's analysis, however, falls short of Lindner's in that it hardly takes the role of Leibniz (and Shaftesbury) into account and simultaneously presents Spinoza's modification in the 18th century as a given. On the other hand, Lindner does not see this role in the moderation of Spinozism with regard to the suspicion of nihilism, but in overcoming the pstati5d1-me‹:hanizistis‹:hen' character of Spinozism, so that s‹:hlassen li& Goethe and Herder can become budding dialectical materialists.

°^ Gotc, SW, XVI, 44o ff. ••• lock. it., 459 f.

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to the individuality of God by at the same time stopping at the Cartesianist separation between res cogitans and res extensa, in which the latter is presented as dead, that is, spiritless. In this respect Spinoza created his God from space or . from what should be dead matter, his Cartesianian dualism is worthy. Spinoza must therefore be corrected by the assumption that his one substance is in reality that "primordial force of all forces" which, as a deity, exists "in infinite powers on an infinite scale Sages reveal' ^'. Leibniz was the first to see that force was the "middle term between spirit and matter". : he therefore welcomes the development from which materialism arose from the Enlightenment. What is significant, after all, is Herder's endeavor to know that this is in accordance with natural science, where metaphysics builds air.)

Herder must therefore find Spinoza's system flawed in the sense mentioned, in order to be able to supplement it with the concept of force to avoid unpleasant consequences while retaining the monistic approach. Had he wanted to recognize that Spinoza's matter was so At the same time, he would have had to admit that the reproach that consistent monism inevitably leads to "bad" Spinozism, i.e. to fatalism, etc. , justified or that Spinozism and thus the unification approach as a soldier is incurably dangerous '^. The decisive role of these ulterior motives is shown when Herder sets the neuralgic task, the new, from which combination of Spinozist monism with Leibniz's concept of force to provide the structures created with optimisticnormative signs, viz

to consider the one primal force as both the wisest wisdom and infinite goodness. If Spinoza's God is blind, that is, does not act teleologically, it is because the Cartesian Spinoza, in his inability to abolish the separation of spirit and extension organisdi, connected these two with one another through a third external1i&, which he called Madit. This suddenly The introduced measure must remain just as blind as matter in its separation from spirit. But if the union of spirit and matter is through force

••• Come on. it., 446 ff.

°^ lock. et., 453, 45t. °°* lock. it., 450 f. °°• Herder's misinterpretation of Spinoza on this important point was also noted by contemporaries. Heydenrei & sdirieb: “But if one completely accuses Spinoza of having such an unfruitful concept of matter, then one completely misunderstands his principles.” Just as much , one misunderstands Spinoza's system when one claims that he separated matter and spirit separately... Spinoza was certainly not a dualist (Nature and God nad› Spinoza, 2t8, 220).

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is produced and if that is why the power of the spirit or the teleology is contained in sidi, then it is not only the worst, but also the wisest power and the infinite goodness ^'. Spinoza's God would have measured blindly, etc., not the union, but stopping at the separation . After our analysis of the nature and function of the determinism of freedom, it must now be understandable that Herder does not intend to replace Spinozist determinism with divine voluntarism, but only to give it normative precedents. The concept is: union creates the determinism of freedom, separation creates the blind determinism of fate. In the determinism of freedom, Herder inherits the common denominator of Leibniz and Spinoza: Clarke had long since done that on the other side . This structurally and logistically loose Spinozism always allows Herder to assert the desirable penetration of the universe by the wisest and kindest primal force, namely by the ontologized normative. According to his own statement, he is thinking of Leibniz, Shaftesbury and Plato when he writes: "In God's kingdom there is no evil that is reality [Shaftes burys 'real ill']. All evil is a nidits.' By taking the detour of the metaphysics thesis, "that opposites themselves help and promote one another" since everything exists in God's likeness, Herder now connects the optimist ontology of the case is good with the directly relevant statement, including the errors the people are good for an intelligent spirit ^'. As with Lessing, here too the conception of the heterogony of two serves to justify the determinism of freedom in health; the optiniististhe ontology is thus completed gesdiidiuphilosophisdi. The durification of the normative is actually only absolutely necessary if

it itself is promoted by what is meant to run directly counter to it: mistakes, blind suffering, meaningful conditions, etc. The entire construction is supported by the ontological rooting of the normative or by the limine expression of evil. The ideologisdiweltandiaulithe function of metaphysics (Herder knew very well what he was doing when he took it against the French in South Africa) is expressed very clearly here. Only by relying on metaphysical authorities can something be solemnly affirmed that would be simply absurd without them, namely that one works for good even when one does evil. In the metaphysical interpretation

°•• Gott, SW, XIV, 479 f. •'° place. cit., 485. °" loc. cit., 570 f. Litt aptly remarks (Liberation of the Gesdiiditl. Consciousness, 137 ff.) that in Herder the negative or evil is not a mere privation, but a necessary condition for the implementation and effect of the positive. The reason for this, however, is that Herder's theodicy is nodi more radical than Leibniz's, in which evil and privation are equated (Theod., $ 153 = Phil. Sdir., VI, 201).

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This assertion implicitly distinguishes two levels from each other, of which the immediately visible is supposed to be subject to the indistinguishable and authoritative: the evil committed is tangible and sometimes unconscious, the promotion of good thereby brought about, on the other hand, is unconscious and anchored in the plan of the universe. The determinism of freedom coincides with this plan and is supposed to be completely different from that determinism which is understood as mere causality free of any teleology. The presence of the unseen level in the visible (of metaphysics in physics) corresponds to that of teleology in the merely causal. Herder's sharp rejection of autarkic medianicism and the appeal to force etc. serves precisely to gain the determinism of freedom or teleological determinism.

Herder is prepared to conscientiously pursue any empirically ascertainable causality, but on the condition that it is seen in the context of teleological causality or that the first of the two levels mentioned remains subject to the second. If this is certain, then he speaks of the application of mathematically proven laws of nature to human affairs or of the natural laws of an enlightening reason, etc. In this perspective, history forms a part of nature animated by the normative - whereby it is a matter of adopting and metaphysically enhancing the Enlightenment concept of nature. As Herder writes: »To whom the name “nature” belongs through the deserts of our age [Holbadi!] has become meaningless and low, think instead of that omnipotent power, goodness and wisdom and name in his soul the indistinguishable being that no earthly language is able to name The same teleologis& thought lawfulness prevails in nature and history: »The God whom I study in history must be the same who is in nature: for man is only a small part of the

whole, and its whole, like the whole of the worm, is intimately interwoven with the tissue it inhabits. Natural laws must therefore apply in her, which lie in the nature of Sadie and which the deity is so little inclined to override that she is in her high power in the very laws that she herself founded

°" Ideen, SW, XIV, 225 ff., 217. °^ on eit., XIII, 10. ° "Litt emphasized that a fundamental change in the concept of God was necessary in order to create space for the individual content of the Gesciaiciate, so that the traditional salvation-theological conception of history could be overcome in a non-atheistic way (liberation of the historical consciousness. , 82), but want to find the forerunner of Herder's God in Hamann. Antoni remarks that the turning from the general-universal to the concrete-national, which took place within historicism, weakened the old transcendence (Lotta, 166).

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revealed with an unchanging, wise and kind beauty' ^'. In nature it is the case that the dispute serves the preservation of the whole and that contradictions lead to one goal' ^'; Voltaire's pessimistic reflections on the occasion of the Lisbon earthquake are therefore "unphilosophical thinking." Now that Herder programmatically unites the idea of the whole with the idea of development (there is, however, not just one connection, but an ascending series of forces in the indistinguishable tear of creation' °"), so he summarizes the story "fite not only as a side, but also as a higher level of the divine natural whole. The bearer and the prerequisite of the Gedii‹fite, the human being, appears after ac)i a development in nature, its inorganic and organic levels " finally they all unite in the form of man, insofar as this could grasp them' '^ Whole and development thus unite in nature in general, and since the part is at the same time a type of the whole, they open up the same thing every stage of development, which in itself forms a microcosm. Thus, for example, animal organisms emerge from a 'prototype' and develop teleologisdi in order to attain that 'one type' that nature 'everywhere aimed for ' . ' Also the Gedii‹fite can therefore due to this construction not only as part or level of divine nature, but also be treated as an independent (if also equally divine) Whole, whose idea is with the idea of development on one of these levels to connect in its own way. Like nature with the elemental force, the business begins with the human being, or: in nature the elemental force represents the whole to be developed, in the business this dynamic, unfoldable whole is the human being .

Given the described early development of the fundamental structures in Herder's thinking, it is not strange that this is a preliminary stage of the The text »Au‹fi a Philosophy ...' is introduced with the following words:

•The further we get in investigation of the oldest Ges‹file‹fit, the more simplified is the mensdilidie Ges‹file‹fit in all its sprouts to the origin of a ' ^ ' . Also in the 'Ideas' the medical-philosophical part in the narrower sense is preceded by the explanation of the basic anthropological concepts*', which here, however, follow the weakening of the natural development rooted and completed in the elemental force. As the whole to be unfolded, human nature is a constant, for the solidity of the whole

°'• Ideen, SW, XIV, 244, cf. XIII, l4 f. °'° Op. et., XIII, 60 f., 70; XIV, 213 f. °"

on eit., XIII, 24.

°'® lock. it., 169. °'• lock. it., 167. °"° loc. cit., 66, 126. •' SW, XXXII, 235; Herder's suspension. ^' In IV. Bn&t; These explanations are taken up again and expanded in 15 Buh.

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determines the stability of teleologically conceived development; The teleological guarantees in every single phase of development that the relative form achieved will not be lost in its own relativity, but that it will serve the absolute meaning of the whole. The content is different of course anthropology with the intended normative goal of stories. Mensdi is for “reasonable activity”, for “finer senses”, for art, language, for finer drives and therefore for freedom”, for humanity and religion “educated” or “organized” ••'^. The spiritualization of matter through the force on the level of oncology enupridit on the level of history the saturation of the human being with the normative, in the form of a disposition, the development and perfection of which is certain, indeed unavoidable. In trying to connect the whole and development in history, Herder is faced with the task of having to define stages of development as structures that are inherently relative and prima facie have no points of contact with one another. Eskimos and Romans, Chinese and Arabs have their roots in very different environments and represent correspondingly deviant cultures. To make heterogeneous things successive and therefore coherent or In order to understand and represent relatives, Herder must have a common denominator. This is the metaphysically defined whole, whose parts or stages are the cultural structures that can be empirically researched and appear heterogeneous from an empirical point of view (the mechanism of two levels, the visible and the invisible, also works here). The whole stands in the part as its normative meaning and at the same time as that secret teleology that drives and directs development after it has set it in motion in the first place *•. Only the metaphysical conviction of the omnipresence of the normative or teleological, that is, of the completion of development in the sense of the character of the whole, enables Herder to give justice to the peculiarities of every culture. In other words: his metaphysical scheme gives him the necessary support to emphasize the roots of cultures in the respective geographical and social history sensuality, without succumbing to relativism and the

°®••Ideen, SW, XIV, 207 ff. "^ Under these circumstances, however, Herder can deal with a strictly causal Not satisfied with the concept of development. He also knows a teleological one who refers to the outer teleology or the guiding activity of the personal God, Above all, he has in mind an organic one, which means an internalization of teleology so that it merges with mechanical causality. S. Stadelmann, historian. Sense in Herder, 68 ff. Cf. Barnard's good comments on 'teleological causation' in Herder (Herder's Soc. and Polit. Thought, 51 ff., 114 ff.). •^' Herder has his views on this most beautifully in the 116th letter to

Promotion of humanity formulated, SW, XVI II, 246 ff.

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To have to lose skepticism *" just as he was able, on the basis of the same metaphysics, to fearlessly acknowledge the rooting of reason in psychic sensuality or the kinship of humanity with the higher animals. Durdi the courageous rehabilitation of sensuality in the area of Herder wants to neutralize or anticipate the skepticism and arguments in this regard; he is serious about the idea that not by tacitly ignoring the meaningful factor, the obvious relevance of which would otherwise lead to a solid attitude as partly ignorant and partly heudlerisdi, but only by subordinating it to a metaphysis-given sense of Gesdiidite can skepticism ultimately be countered. As I said: the normative is only objectively irrefutable if even the contradictory serves it in reality. The natural sense-sense in Gesdiidite is therefore not there the opposite, but the vehicle of the spiritual-normative: In the entire analogy of nature, when did the deity act differently than through nature? and is it therefore not a deity, or is it not just a deity that works in all its works in such a lavish, uniform, and irreverent way? — Let all human passions play on a humane heavenly place! in every age play them according to age! so in every part of the world, in every nation!' ^'. It is precisely with a focus on a long-term and more effective fight against skepticism that Herder wants to differentiate himself from the view that would assume a straightforward implementation of reason, completely independent of the cultural milieu, etc. Those who have made Lyon the general ongoing improvement of the world novels and, for this purpose, have "increased or established facts and diminished or diluted counterfactuals" are therefore rejected in the same style as those who promote vices and virtues like climates... people see the customs and inclinations like leaves of fate ... sidi umsdilagen" and propagate "doubt in a hundred forms" ^'.

However, because of this double polemic, one should in no way assume that Herder would hesitate with the choice if he had to stubbornly decide between skeptical historicism and timeless morality. Later, his polemics against abstract moralism were at least satisfactory, and he repeatedly and deliberately used formulations that served to balance historical relativism with reference to the consistent content of morality or the ideal of humanity ( one goes like this: .What is pure understanding and cheap morality, above are Socrates and Confucius,

°^ My &e has already pointed out that Herder was only able to overcome the relativistic treatment or skepticism associated with the rehabilitation of the individual with the help of metaphysics, Emergence of Historicism, 397, 407. °^ Audi a philosophy, SW, V, 521. ° ®* loc. cit., 511 f. Cf. Herder's review of Millar's Budle on the Stands, SW, V, 452 ff.

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Zoroaster, Plato and Cicero agree: despite their thousand-fold differences, they have all worked towards one point on which our entire race rests . If Herder, despite the inviolability of the normative, gives in to his sensitive historical inclination with a clear conscience, it is because, based on his metaphysics, he feels theorized strongly enough to underpin the normative in this way, nodi more thoroughly. The historicist approach, for its part, ultimately arises from the rehabilitation of sensuality, which creates the framework for understanding mental health or cultural structures in their emergence and development within a very concrete environment and that means: to grasp in their individuality. It is therefore closely related to that Enlightenment tendency from which skepticism or nihilism arose. If Herder is unable to see the origin of his own historicism, then his anti-intellectualism is responsible for it but this time in the form of the philosophy of feeling, from whose point of view the Skepticism cannot be the result of a heart that is identical with "true" reason, but only of a cold mind. The philosopher of emotions Herder can therefore lump "abstract" moralism and skepticism into the same bucket of intellectualism, whereby he is subject to the same optical illusion as Rousseau *'. However, it is not this deception that counts from the perspective of mental health, but rather his largescale attempt to achieve a meta-physically based unification of the visually developed general and the particular perceived as a type of the whole, while simultaneously rejecting the abstract general and the in itself only relative particular in the interweaving of the whole and development or of the normative and teleologically conceived causality in a highly future-oriented way.

^® Ideas, SW, XIV, 230. The constant dispute between historical relativism and normative judgments in Herder is illustrated by Stadelmann, Historian. Sinn in Herder, 22 ff., cf. 117 ff., who summarizes the overall situation in an apt formulation: it is difficult to decide whether Herder was an optimist for advancement against his better judgment or a relativist against his will" (65). Den Wiese also notes the lasting conflict between “enlightened universalism” and “organizationalhistorical consideration of peoples” in Herder , Herder, 88 f. ^° The Rousseauian tones of Herder's initial rejection of our philosophical, cold European world" (Also a Philos., SW, V, 484) are clearly audible. Ursprüngli‹:h ma‹:ht Herder also owns Rousseau's historical philosophy, whereby the nostalgic glorification of the state of nature is his turn to the past and thus to the past generally promotes. S. Wolff's treatise, Der Junge Herder und Rousseau's development idea, esp. 760 ff., z94 ff., 810 ff. Despite noting this early influence, Wolft points out to Redit that historicism and antiRousseauism are practicable in Herder's case. are (769).

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d) Kant, the Nadikantians and the legacy of the Enlightenment Neither a genetic presentation of Kanu's work nor a philosophical analysis of it in the narrower sense can be undertaken here. Rather, the aim is to determine the structural and intellectual position of Kant's mature critical view from the perspective of the question posed in this work. But this is not an easy task, especially since there are still living prejudices. Kant was long regarded as the destroyer of metaphysics and the initiator of the "Copernican turn", whereby he was contrasted with the great systems of rationalism and in his demarcation against them the same was understood. Since one started from a highly abstract view of the Enlightenment or ignored its anti-intellectualist character, one could not or did not want to accept that the "rationalist systems" were long dead and that they were too Copernican had already made the turn (as the new definition of the concept of metaphysics proves) when Kant entered the stage. In reality, Kant was forced, with some delay, by the concrete German situation that stood in the time of the struggle between Wolffianism and antiWolfianism. T. To rediscover ideas that were commonplace for the Western European Enlightenment. The thorough confrontation with "dogmatism" only became necessary because of its longevity in Germany, where the ontology had been transformed into Wolffianism, while elsewhere the rejection of dogmatism was so self-evident that it was no longer necessary. pledged

felt the need to justify it in great detail. By the way, this can be easily proven: Kant's main argument against 'dogmatism', namely the doctrine of the limits of reason or the unknowability of the thing in itself, has been an Enlightenment topos since Lo&e (and Newton), which was colored in Deuudiland pietistis‹:h ••'. This statement should not and cannot diminish Kant as a thinker, but rather pave the way for understanding the specific aspects of his work in the overall spectrum of the Enlightenment. They emerge from the fact that, although Kant adopts the skeptical position with regard to metaphysics' claim to omniscience, he is under no circumstances prepared to take the skeptical path everything in ethics. Now, however, moral philosophy was relativism—both as utilitarianism and as nihilism

°°° See above, chap. V, Section 3 a.

°•' Tonelli, Bornes de l'entendement humain, esp. 410 ff. Kant's investigation of the problem of causality also has a long prehistory in the Enlightenment, see Tonelli, Beginnings of Kante's Criticism, passim.

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- inseparably linked to the empiricist epistemology - which in turn had delivered the decisive blows against metaphysics' claims to omniscience. Given this constellation, Kant found himself in the paradoxical position of having to appropriate the results of empiricism but having to refute empiricism itself. Since epistemology skepticism was not allowed to become moral philosophy skepticism or agnosticism with regard to good and evil, it had to rely exclusively on the thesis of the limits of theoretical knowledge, but it did At the same time, carefully distance yourself from the empiricism that previously supported that thesis. Since Kant's problem was to still escape skepticism while taking into account the destruction of metaphysics by modern ideology or Enlightenment philosophy, he dared to marry intellectualist and skeptical positions that were radically new was. If his only authoritative goal had been the destruction of metaphysics, the knowledge theorizing and empiricism of Loesdier or Humesdier provenance would have been completely sufficient for him. But Kant takes on the logical burden of bringing together (consequences of) skepticism and (starting positions of) intellectualism because he also keeps normative goals in mind. The thesis about the limits of knowledge would have been more natural or understandable given empiricist presuppositions, but the justification of a non-utilitarian moral philosophy would have been much more difficult. Precisely because the presence of a girl's autonomous intellect seems rather difficult with the thesis about the limits of knowledge as redlt rhymes, at least as a replacement or as a willingness to operate this same intellect, the possibility of firm and certain knowledge within the limits mentioned is put aside. Thus Kant's paths differ from those of skepticism and also - as far as the materials and building blocks of his philosophy are concerned - from those of the Western European Enlightenment. Intellectualist tendencies certainly existed within it (Reid's and Beattie's experiments even largely anticipate Kant's synthesis of skepticism and intellectualism), but Kant draws the relevant ideas primarily from the German language: hulphilosophie, which, as we have already noted ^', even in its anti-Wolffisdian version shared some assumptions, at least negatively, with Wolffianism "'. Kant's two-sided philosophical undertaking is logically supported by& a programmatic rejection of monism, ie through a well-considered multidimensional system of thought, which is based on clear, principled separations. All of these, in turn, are based on the fundamental distinction between the intelligible and the sensitive, or — to use moral philosophy — between the two •^ See above, Section 2a in this chapter. °•° Kant's deviation from skepticism because of his belief in the possibility of certain knowledge and his relationship to the German school tradition are emphasized by Tonelli, Kant and the ancient Skeptics, 110 f.

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Should and be. This fundamental question shows Kant to be the most radical opponent of the Enlightenment in the vast majority of its manifestations. Because their main concern was to somehow unite reason and sensuality or ought and being through the normativist concept of nature." From the perspective of the usual naive view of the "rationalist" Enlightenment, however, one can hardly imagine that Kant found himself in an irreconcilable way In contrast to the (main current of) Enlightenment, Kant himself knew very well that the above-mentioned basic distinctions of his philosophy were directed against the common opinion of the age. Against this he argues, "that the consistent connection of all original ideas in one In the context of nature, it is an irreducible law, which would necessarily overthrow all freedom if one wanted to stubbornly adhere to the reality of phenomena. Therefore, even those who follow the common opinion in this regard have never reached this point

able to unite nature and freedom' "'. A continuation or application of this idea is Kant's thesis that the reason for the binding nature of the moral law has to do with human nature or the circumstances in the world in which it is situated', not to do the slightest thing "'. The strong anthropological and sociological orientation of Enlightenment moral philosophy is known enough to us to be able to appreciate the contradiction of Kant's position to it in its entirety. Now the normativist conception of nature and humanity of the Western European Enlightenment experienced a metaphysical increase in the German late Enlightenment or.

Justification, which in turn was accompanied by a strengthening of the anti-intellectualist tendency. Kant therefore had to side with his criticism of the mainstream of the Western European Enlightenment with a reckoning with the mainstream of the late German Enlightenment. In his statements about the milling of all previous attempts in theodicy, as well as in his remarks about Herder's ideas, the rejection of the above-mentioned metaphysical increase in Enlightenment normativism was expressed. Such Texts prove his objective philosophical isolation within the German late Enlightenment, which showed itself in various forms: in Herder and Hamann's polemics, in Goethe's distance and, last but not least, in the reinterpretations of Schiller and the post-Kantians. However, reinterpretations became unavoidable precisely because of Kant's enormous impact, and this again contrasts strangely with his intellectual solo effort and requires special exploration.

°•• S. o., Chap. V, Absdin. 4. ° 8 • Kr. d. r. V., B, 565 AA, III, 365 f. ° ®° Grundl. e.g. With. d. Sitten, AA, IV, 389. °•' See above, chap. VI, Section 3.

°°^ AA, VIII, insb. 263 f. °•• AA, VIII, insb. 54 f.

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clarification. One should not, however, overlook the fact that the unusual intellectual quality that first appeared so ceremoniously in Kanu's directories was bound to draw general attention to it in a time of intense ferment and communication (scholarly journals and newspapers). However, additional conditions were necessary for this. In Germany e.g. B. a work that could fulfill the same function in intellectual life as Lo&e's essay in England (and partly also in France); But such works are important precisely in the time of fermentation , because they form crystallization and reference points around which intellectual life revolves and are made more supra-sidiary - and generally more fruitful through the formation of parties. The innate inconsistency of the effect of a classic work would explain why Kant's work, even in its creation, primarily served to reinforce the anti-Kantist and monist tendencies, which were by far the stronger in Germany towards the end of the 18th century, were adequately articulated with the help of the terminology of philosophy developed by Kant. There were not a few Kantians in the strict sense, but they hardly had any influence on later development , and among them were certainly not the most militant or original or to find arbitrary spirits; Incidentally, they mainly came either from the class of Crusius, and therefore they understood Kant primarily in the light of the old, for the younger generation not so explosive disputes with Wolff etc., or from orthodox diristlid circles, which were not only impotent in theory Reason, but also radical evil. If for our concepts, which arose under very different circumstances, the irreconcilable separation of being and ought or causal and normative does not rarely form the logical gateway to the strictly scientific attitude or to absolute skepticism or nihilism, then for Kant this was the most solid means of laying the foundation of morals. The biggest opponent of the Enlightenment when it came to the question of the misunderstanding of nature and freedom was also the sadistic Enlightenment philosopher when it came to moral pathos. However, he took note of the results of the empiricist refutation of metaphysics too precisely and attentively to be able to simply ontologize this pathos. The reluctance of the empiricists, which is often presumptuously understood but determined by systematic reasons, to arrive at a morality that is not merely... Kant was convinced of the moral danger of their teachings. On the other hand, these fundamental texts such as the refutation of the ontological proof of God testify to how precisely Kant knew the sophistry medianisms of the style of thinking that underlay the constant attempts of the Enlightenment thinkers to somehow combine empiricism, sensualism and moral attitudes. This double polemic and resentment had to lead to the consensus that there was no other way for a logically consistent justification of morality than the clear separation of is and ought.

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Furthermore, there were positive reasons for Kant to make this separation, which arose from his own worldview. As a supporter and representative of medianinist natural knowledge, he believes in natural causality (which, incidentally, he has to defend against Hume's epistemological skepticism in order to prove the possibility of natural knowledge), and he also has an extremely pessimistic view of humanity. External nature is therefore meaningless because it is strictly causal, while human nature is unreliable in its moral sense. Kant could have succumbed to the temptation of justifying his moral philosophy in a similar way to Shaftesbury or Rousseau if he had wanted to start from an optimistic anthropology. Because he does not do this, he must also share the distrust of the intellectualists (which had already been voiced before him) against the moral philosophy and the suitability of the philosophy of feeling. Both the senselessness of external nature and the dangerousness of human life thus made the sharp separation of the intelligent and the sensitive or

Ought and being become a normative obligation. Kant's agreement with The skepticism was not limited to the thesis of the limits of knowledge, but extended to anthropology that was directly relevant to moral philosophy. In both areas, therefore, it does not become accidental through the reference to the a priori nature of the intelligible—regardless of whether it is knowledge or as a moral law — compensated. The difficulties and inconsistencies that the separation of the intelligible and the sensitive or should and is must bring with it when carrying out Kant's approach to epistemology and moral philosophy are of no interest here. What is more important is a brief reference to the fact that Kant himself In his moral concern, he undertook certain steps to indirectly bridge the separation, which can often be interpreted in the sense of skepticism or even nihilism, with a view to settling on the normative. What is immediately striking is the persistence with which Kant is careful in everything Distinguishing regulative and constitutive principles emphasizes the legitimacy of the former. Given the insurmountable limits of theoretical reason, it is not easy to see where this legitimacy is based or where the boundary between the need of reason and sentiment runs exactly and on the basis of white content criteria can be drawn at all. The call for the adoption of regulative principles was entirely understandable, as long as one applied it to metaphysics and misunderstood the constitutive principles, but next to the Kantian statement of their mere intelligibility it sounds downright strange. The intention remains unmistakable, however, to provide thought with a guiding star so that under no circumstances does it get lost in the labyrinth of skepticism. This

••• See above, chap. V, Section 3 b.

'°' See the analyzes by Topits‹:h, Prerequisites of Transcendental Phil., especially 56 ff., 73 ff., 83 ff., 94 ff. and passim.

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However, less can happen when it comes to the question of norms, which is why the primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason is asserted. There At the same time, Kant says that reason is only one that must be differentiated only in its application '°', so the primacy of practical reason amounts to the prohibition of theory from coming to insights that contradict the normative needs could get in the way of practical ones. As a result of the separation between being and ought, Kant had to locate freedom and morality exclusively within reason and, beyond that, within reason give such a structure that it can only be understood in terms of the idea of freedom. However, the unification of reason under the aegis of the practical or the ought makes its separation from being, if not reversible, at least irrelevant, especially since it opens the way to a redefinition of being itself. Fidite will build on this unity. Kant's concern for safeguarding the normative is ultimately responsible for the discrepancy between his moral philosophy and his philosophy of history. His morality is namely individualistic (this has nothing to do with the universality of the moral law, but means that the individual acts out of his own insight and responsibility) and demands the clear and conscious supremacy of reason over others sensuality. In the Ges‹:hichts In philosophy, on the contrary, the focus is on the genre, and reason in history is in no way separated from historical meaning, but rather the reason comes to a breaking point through this; The goal of history, like that of morality, is the realization of the postulates of reason, but in contrast to morality, history contains the forces and means themselves that lead to reason They are not necessarily rational, in essence they are even necessarily unreasonable. Therefore, it is more difficult to see what meaning the moral action according to the categorical imperative could have when reason is involved in events no such action is required in order to achieve its goals (if this action does not have a necessary meaning, then it must be explained why the thinking has a rational meaning at all goal, that is, should have a connection with morality), and especially when expressly asserted becomes that 'those natural dispositions which are aimed at the use of his [man's] reason should develop fully' only in the genus, but not in the individual '°'. So is the action of the individual necessarily incomplete as long as the species has not yet reached its full development? Doesn't absolute autonomy in moral action hic et nunc then actually become self-deception? The list of faces exists yes, in that they see the passions, the inclinations, the sensual nature

*°° basic e.g. Metaph. d. manners, preface = AA, IV, 391. •°° Idea for a general. Ges&., AA, VIII, 18.

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of humanity (and even its strong anti-social tendency '^) to lead humanity into the realm of freedom, without the movement there being conscious of humanity itself. At the level of science and the species, reason does not lie outside of sensuality, but rather within it; it is, in effect, its secret, advancing and guiding force. Under these circumstances it should be understandable why Kant is done with in his Ges‹f idiuphilosophisdien treatise he used the concept of nature as the 'common opinion' of the time demanded; “ Nature has a plan” and an “final absidit”, “nature knows better (than man) what is good for his species” etc. etc.: the realization of the rational goal lies in nature itself, which as a result the unity of being and ought must be understood if it is to achieve what is expected of it. In this regard, Kant moves within the framework of the well-known Gesdiidiuphilo Sophisdien approach of the Enlightenment, which is based on teleology. Knowledge should have a telos in the double sense of the word (as an end and goal), and all knowledge creations should serve to achieve it; Thus, the bridge between reason and sensibility is built in the story and the skepticism that results from the rehabilitation of sensibility is eliminated. But all of this can only be asserted with reference to the goal that has been established from the outset, and therefore the philosophy of health must take on an esdiatological character. Accordingly, Kant speaks of "Chi1iasm" that philosophy could also have - but from a person who is nothing less than sdiwarmerisdi (but no chiliasm has so far described itself as sdiwarmerisdi!). For Herder whose Ge Kant takes his fifth philosophy into consideration without being aware of his own closeness to it - these and similar theses were allowed in the sense of the 'common opinion' on the question of the relationship between nature and freedom, which he openly advocated. Kant, however, inconsistently fell victim to a way of thinking whose sophistis the mef anisms he himself had revealed. The Enlightenment in him came into play in his philosophy of philosophy in both respects, that is, both in the belief in the rational goal and also in the confusion between reason and sensibility or should and is in the concept of nature. His knowledge of theoretical presuppositions prevented him from taking a step, but the need for reason triumphed in him, and at least as a philosopher of science he himself tasted the sweet forbidden fruit, namely the elevation of the regulative to the constitutive.

It is therefore not surprising that the young Sdielling (in the system of transcendental idealism) and then the late Hegel placed the basic ideas of Kant's philosophy of health alongside the heritage of philosophy of health

•• lock. go., 21. ••* lock. go., 27.

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Particular aspects of German reconnaissance

Lessings and Herders may have adopted their own, although (and - given the discrepancy in Kanu thinking - because) they are hostile to Kantian morality: because the approach of the Nad Kantians aims at the entanglement of being and should or Freedom and necessity - i.e. on the elimination of the Kantian separation between the regulative and the constitutive "'. Since they are animated by a partly ecstatic, partly promethean attitude to life and can have little understanding for the pessimistic aspects of Kanu's thinking, so that motivation and function of those separations do not need to be introduced to them without further ado - then they find it inconceivable that Kant, despite all the primacy of the normative, refuses to give it a final and unshakable, ie ontological and anthropological, basis. They therefore considered Canoe separations as separations in his philosophy, which could be eliminated without difficulty by perfecting it. Kant does not set up an oncology, but only a metaphysics of practice or for the sake of practice, but the ontological approach is with the Nadikantians (also with Fi&te , insofar as the I& creates the world) in the foreground. This fundamental difference between Kant and the Nadikantians remains, even if it could be shown that the Nadikantians ultimately ontologized Kant's postulates, and did so in a similar way to Kant's motivation The Nadikantians' undertakings will not be justified if the thesis is correct that all traditional oncology is without any ontologization of practical and moral postulates. The importance of the ultra-rational factor "worldly and fundamental attitude" within the perspective of the ontologization of the practice is obvious, and it is only inconsistent if one recognizes the primacy of the practical postulates in the design of oncology without them. At the same time, we are prepared to accept that the resulting philosophy is primarily a rationalization of such a basic attitude. Kant was consciously aware of this medianism, and that is precisely why he wanted to avoid setting up an ontology: because of his view of the meaninglessness of external nature and the evil of human nature, he was able to put into practice moral postulates that are not because of, but in spite of of the nature of the world should not be derived from an ontological principle, which had to be the basis of a completely different world than the one he envisaged in order to generate such postulates from his stock and to ensure their implementation a priori. At the same time, however, Kant could not avoid placing the very thing he was resisting at the center of his thinking, because the more he rejected the establishment of an oncology, the more he had to maintain the primacy of it

••° The evidence for these statements about the relationship of the Nadicantians to Kant can be found in: Kondylis, The Origin of Dialectics, passim.

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Emphasize practicals in order to support his theory of freedom - that is, the more he had to pay attention to the factor of "basic attitude" (confidence in his own basic attitude, in that he, as a philosopher, chose the primacy of the practical, and s': leaving the basic attitude of every individual human being, who should be autonomous and free in his decision-making ) the upper hand, so that the Nad Kantians were even able to accuse him of subjectivism. These madmen made it simple: due to the direct ontological underpinning of the practical postulates, they easily presented their philosophy as a strictly objective structure and therefore (since the practical postulates existed from the beginning anyway ‹:ted to be sd›serven) want to significantly moderate the nadldrü&1i‹:rien primacy of the practice‹:rien in favor of theo retis‹:rien. But this theorizing was only the disguise of the same practice that Kant was forced to present because of his worldview. Now the rationalization of the basic attitude had become such a natural and self-understood or unconscious process that there was no need to talk about the primacy of the basic attitude. There was often talk of “Ma&t” and “Mad›tsprü‹:rien”, but these supposedly came from absolute reason or the absolute idea and not from the needs of practice or the basic attitude of the philosopher . The confusion of the Kantian boundary between the regulative and the constitutive took place among the Na‹:iikantians in part divergent and in part complementary forms. Fid›te radicalizes the primacy of practical or normative reason to such an extent that the task of creating a world is now assigned to it. The thing about sid' is as bad as it should be, says Fi‹:iite. Although he hardly includes external nature in his considerations and thus s‹:ii thinks he is staying true to the transcendental ideal, he does‹:ii undertake restructurings within the realm of reason, which s‹:ii lead to the overthrow of the two-world theory bring about. Fidlte does not understand their meaning for the Kantian doctrine of freedom - what connects him with the other Nad'kantians and therefore he does not acknowledge a meaningful word any more than the other ones: Are first statements things in themselves , then freedom cannot be saved' "'. By assiduously entrusting practical reason with the —,first creation of the world ex nihilo, or treating the world as a free positing of free I‹: ii , if he must eliminate the rei‹:ii of necessity, if not, then at least do‹:ii through the activity of the I‹:ii durdilödern; parallel to this, the Kantian d›e distinction between The unification of reason in the term of practice thus leads to a merging of the world and reason - again in the term of practice , which is identified by Fidlte with the normative without further 1ogisd›e mediation (ie dur& Enu‹:iieidung) If Fi‹:iite uses the word »a11es

•°' Kr. d. r. V., B 564 = AA, III, 365.

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Particular aspects of German reconnaissance

Being is knowledge', he means precisely this fusion of verses, this absorption of the world into reason, which is equivalent to shaping the world according to the (practical) postulates of reason. Since reason is no longer the one link of the two-world theory, but rather coincides with being, within its subject and object, regulative and constitutive elements, they prove to be ontologically related by blood. Transcendental philosophy becomes ontology - without wanting to compromise on the claim that to be "true" transcendental philosophy. However, the further development of the monistic tendency of the German late Enlightenment, represented by Durdi Hölderlin (whom Sidi at least since 1799 Sd›elling ansdiloß), also achieved the same formal structure, within which Sidi, as already mentioned, carried out a metaphysical increase in the Enlightenment's normativist concept of nature, resulting in a radical theodicy (if it is good') emerged. Here the original, ontologically determined togetherness of subject and object, of the regulative and constitutive, is asserted, whereby the Kantian separations and the Kantian concept of freedom associated with them must be cast aside. We know that that tendency was anti-intellectualistic. In their further development or philosophical treatment by Hölderlin and Schelling, their anti-intellectualism asserts itself in the form of the thesis that being or the thing in itself does not allow thinking to grasp it, thinking is a product of finiteness, even finiteness, a product of the falling away from it immemorial being. The agreement with Kant regarding the limits of reason, or the entire anti-intellectualist attitude of the German late Enlightenment, which continued to exist despite enormous other differences, is now reflected in the fight of Hölderlin and Sdielling against Fidite's transformation of ontology into transcendental philosophy, of being into knowledge - or vice versa , if you like.

In his rejection of the mature Hegelian philosophy, the late Sdielling does exactly the same thing, namely, he attacks the late Hegel with the same arguments which he used in his youth against Fidite. For Hegel, who followed Hölderlin and Sdielling at least until 1802, later falls back on Fidites in the plication reidies 'Being is knowledge' and adopts a position that is intended to render the conflict between transcendental philosophy and oncology irrelevant. The allencompassing character of reason results not (only) from the absolute extension of the radicalized practices, but from the inclusion of the entire wealth of the dialectically grasped determinations of the ov in their areas. It is true that the fiditesdie 'subjectivism' is to be overcome, but on the other hand it is retained in a very essential sense, namely by defining the substance as a subject. The decision that the absolute is recognizable, which for Hegel after 1802 is the conditio sine qua non for the elimination of the thing in itself and thus of all Kantian divisions, made this definition unavoidable. The substance can only be fully known if it is homologous and homogeneous to the subject or

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if it has the structures of the subject. Absolute subjectification of substance therefore means absolute knowledge of it. By deciding in favor of the recognizability of the absolute, Hegel believes that he is adopting the new-time principle of thought and freedom, which is why he also pairs his philosophical reorientation with the social-theoretical legitimation of the new bourgeois society. However, since he did this more because of the radical nature of his theodicy (this world is not forsaken by God, it says in the preface to his main work on social philosophy) and the theory derived from it of reconciliation with the Sdii&sa1 than because of a 'progressive' attitude in the liberal or At the same time, he wants to distance himself from modern-day hubris — in its mathematical and scientific nature as well as in its political and democratic form. At this point, too, the influence of Fidite's Promethean attitude (which, admittedly, derives from the effect of the effect and can hardly be distinguished from mystical teachings), becomes visible, namely in the doctrine of the incarnation of God. Durdi they will re-introduce the postulates of practical reason into the foundation of the world, which is (substantial, not accidental) Subject is interwoven, so that its unfolding can be construed as the progressive materialization and concretization of those postulates. Again, however, Hegel wants to keep the hubris in check by bringing God and man together under the condition that the concept of man takes on board all ontological determinations of substance, so that by definition man cannot oppose God or substance . The adherence to some anti-intellectualistic thought motifs in Hegel's late philosophy also goes against hubris or the 'since enlightenment of understanding'. The absolute can indeed be recognized, but only through a higher, heightened thinking, which looks down quite literally on the mere understanding. Despite this lasting memory of the time in which he, along with Hölderlin and Sdielling, fought reason because it assumed the unknowability of the Absolute, Hegel was classified as an abstract intellectualist and condemned - by a generation that was ready to read and applaud the deification of man and the human body, i.e. the elimination of old transcendence, from his teachings, but who, for obvious polemic reasons, wanted to carry it out under materialistic circumstances. The fact that Sdielling's critique of Hegel was able to influence the intellectually growing generation around 1840 - despite all their skepticism about the theosophical flights of fancy of the old man - is a fine example of the direct, albeit late, effect of anti-intellectualistic traditions originally at home in the Enlightenment were quite independent of whether and to what extent they were connected with analogous currents of religious origin. In order to be able to judge the effect of the Enlightenment in general, it is absolutely necessary to examine the Enlightenment itself - both in its diversity and audi in

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Special aspects of the German Enlightenment

its main approach, namely the rehabilitation of sensuality - to be carefully distinguished from the various one-dimensional views of the Enlightenment that arose in later times and were conceptualized in polarizing terms. The fact e.g. B. that someone turns against the humaflistÿ ideals of the Enlightenment cannot eo ipso mean that he has nothing to do intellectually with the Enlightenment (Nietzsdie's case speaks eloquently for this: he campaigns against the normativism of the Enlightenment, his genealogy of morality or its interpretations of human relationships and feelings with regard to the medianisms of self-love can be almost completely reconstructed using enlightenment materials). Likewise, the fact that someone confuses rationalism and intellectualism with each other and, by fighting the 'sedid understanding' (as a faculty of knowledge), also thinks that he is hitting the rationalist 'enlightenment' (as the epitome of in these positions), should not be interpreted as meaning that Anyone who so fundamentally misunderstands the mental health constellation could not possibly owe anything to the Enlightenment. The legend of the intellectualist Enlightenment on the one hand and the normativist view of the Enlightenment on the other, which reduces its essence to certain moralistic and emancipatory positions, are in fact the two greatest obstacles in the attempt to trace the intellectually healthy effects of the Enlightenment. If, on the other hand, we place the rehabilitation of sensuality or the tendency to the dissolution of first the intellect and then of the spirit in general, which is now reaching its ultimate conclusion, at the center of our discussion, then we will see the important development of the 19th century. and 20th century in a new lidit. To give an example: The priority of pollen and practice over thought and theory, as established in different ways by Sdiopenhauer, Stirner, Marx and Nietz, only forms the anthropological deepening and concretization of Enlightenment leitmotifs. The concept of ideology, which has become central, could only be developed on the basis of the insight into both the material conditionality and also into the practical, tworational orientation of the spirit, which is in the direction of pollen or striving for madness. This same insight went hand in hand with the discovery of the cultural whole in which the individual is rooted, and thus paved the way for modern social and human science, while at the same time giving a boost to the biology and deep psychology of our century, in turn to seek their own confirmation.

The consequences of all this for a justification of norms that was not merely utilitarian or self-defeating is sufficiently well known in the present. At least in this sense, the Enlightenment is more alive today than ever, especially in the liberal West. But it no longer exists in the form of the original

••• S. Kap. And, Arim. t0.

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not the synthesis we strive for, but in its entire conflict, namely as the irremediable breakdown of the causal and the normative. The Enlightenment of the 18th century was generally able to forget or repress this inherent dichotomy because it ignored both causality and (here) could use normative against theological opponents. The old adversary is missing today, and all that remains is the awareness of the dichotomy, which has meanwhile become ever more unpleasant. People alleviate it by continuing to play conventional philo sophisthe games of thought or even new ones, e.g. B. spradi analytisdie come up with. Others think with longing of the supposed pre-Enlightenment or pre-industrial idyll, and along the way they discover — Incidentally, entirely in the spirit of Enlightenment primitivism and exoticism - the deep wisdom of European customs. And the humble never tire of protesting that they cannot discern the truth, from which they— Making a virtue out of necessity — deriving the demand for tolerance and openness in society, as if such a justified demand could also be binding on those who do not consider themselves ignorant. Contrary to these and similar positions and desires, however, it can be assumed that, as has often been the case in previous works, this time those who are neither nostalgic nor tolerant nor particularly fine thinkers will bring the crisis to an end in their own way.

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abbreviations

= Academy edition, see Kant AfBG = Ardiiv for terminology AfGPh = Archive for Gesdiidite of Philosophy AfK = Arckiv for Kulturgeckidite

AfPh = Arckiv for philosophy

AJJ

= Annals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

AHES

= Archive for History of Exact Sciences = American Historical Review

AHR

AHRV = Historical Annals of the French Revolution AS = Annals of Science AT

= Adam-Tannery, s. Descartes

CHM

DHS

— World History Notebooks = Eighteenth Century

dvj

= German quarterly dirift for literary knowledge and

EG

= German Studies

mental health THAT ONE

= English Works, s. Hobbes

GCFI

= Critical Journal of Italian Philosophy

GRM

= Germanisdi-Romanisthe monthly dirift

GW

= Collected Works

HZ

= Historisdie Zeitsdirift J urnal of the History of Ideas

JHI JHPh

JPh KS

J urnal of the History of Philosophy J urnal of Philosophy =

Lace-Studying

MEW = Marx-Engels, Werke MLR = Modern Language Review MPh

Mr

= Modern Philology = Neue kirdilidie Zeitsdirift

OC

= Complete works

OL

= Latin opera

PhJb

= Philosophisdies yearbook of the Görres-Gesellsdiaft

PhRe

= Philosophical Review

PhRu

= Philosophical roundtable

PL

= Patrologia Latina

PMLA = Publications of the Modern Language Association of America PP = Past and Present PSQ

= The Political Science Quarterly

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abbreviations RF

= Romanesque research

RFNS

= Journal of Neoscholastic Philosophy

RGSPA = General Review of Pure and Applied Sciences = Review of Literary History of France RHLF RHMC = Journal of Modern and Contemporary History RHS = Journal of History of Science

RiFi RIPh

= International Review of Philosophy

RJb

= Romanistic yearbook:

RMM RPh RR RThPh SPh SS

SW ThG VS ZfdPh

NDT

— Journal of Philosophy

= Review of Metaphysics and Morals

= Philosophical Review — Romanic Review = Review of Theology and Philosophy = Studies in Philology — Sämtli‹:de S‹: riften = All works = theology and faith = Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century = Journal for deuu‹:de philology = magazine for politics

ZfphF

= Journal for philosophical research

ZfVS

— Journal of International Psychology and Linguistics

651

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List of quoted works

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Index of Names (Italic page numbers mean: The standard word is in a footnote.)

Aaron 256, 287, 388 Abel 130, 133 Adam 193 Addison

252, 253 f., 326, 437, 547, 549, 551, 553, 554, 583 612, 6t6 Armstrong 13 Arnault t95

242 Agrippa v . Nettesheim t37, 143 Albertus

To 456 Astruc 286

Alembert 28, 114, 229, 233, 234, 242, 252, 255, 256, 294 f., 296, 302 f., 307, 309, 310 f., 3t7, 321, 415, 464, 470, 474, #82, 486, 488, 48S, 529

Alexander 573, 574 Algarotti 24t

Atkinson 339 354, 355

Attridge 340 Audra 241 Augustin(ism) 12, 13, 14, 43, 62, 89, 182, 4t3, 57t Averroes or Averroism, 60, 60, 61, 62, 64, 67, 83, 86

Allen, DC 127, 236 Allen, J.

Altkirdi 586

Bacon 11,74, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 128, t29, 229 f., 261, 296 f., 306, 310, 439, 505, 56t, 574 Brook 586

Altmann 537

Barthlein 16

Anderson 278

Bäumker 390

André 193

Baumler 313, 558

Andrea Cesalpino 83

Baillet 176, 181

Other 568, 569, 571, 605

Baird 406

Angermann 42P

Baku 214 Balbi 140

129 Alquié 179 Althusser 411

Angers 134, 145 Anthony 632

Balguy 400—40t, 402, 406, 497

Appleton 356

Courtship 214, 255

Arendt 121

Barber 268, 473, 476

Argens 224, 418 Aristotle or Aristotelianism 12, 13, 16, 17, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65-66, 67, 72 ff., 82 ff., 87 f., 89, 94, t04, t05, 107, 108, 109 f., 127, 132, 144, t53, t57, 160, 180, t86, t89, 195, 204, 210, 219, 237, 250 f.,

Barnard 634 Barny 33 Baron 82, 122, 466 Barriers 341 Barth 568 Bartley 47

Baruzzi J/6

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694

Index of Names

Threshers 318, 320 Baudler JZ#

Baumgardt J86 Baumgarten, A. 519 Baumgarten, A. G. 558—561, 569, 617 Baumgarten, S. 569 Bayle 117, 251, 297, 351, 356, 368, 370, 383, 407, 412, 413, 435 f., 473, 475, 493, 515, 565 Beattie 638 Beaumont 371 Beausobre 600 Beccaria 226

Boehme, J. 565, 599 Boehme, K. 35 Boemus 135 Boerhaave 282, 283, 286, 286, AZ5 Bohatec 195 Boileau 313, 317 Bolinbroke QJJ, 241 Bollacher 629 Bulbs 480 Bonaventura /2, 13, 43 Bonhoeffer 58 Bonnet 252, 278 f., 383 f. Bordeaux 286

Beck 541, 547, 548, US, JJ4 Becker 353, 362, 369, 479, 485, 535 Belaval 2J, 297, 441, 583, 585 from me 556 Benrubi IZ8

Borkenau 112

Bentham 385, 410

Bouyssy 480

Bentley 220

Boyle 229, 234, 239, 244, 253 f., 258, 269,

Bergerac 191

Bossuet 195, 255, 431, 442, 445, 4#Z, 468 Bouillier 192, 193, 194, 195, 211 Boutroux 106

360 I., 5B 3 Brahe

Berkeley 254, 287, 586, 389

105, 238 Brancolini 480

Berlin 4#4

Braun 158

Bernal 112

Bredvold 237, 346, 478

Berthier 256 181 for Beru

Brissot 29, 30 Bros 431

Bessc 2Z

Brockdorff 543

Bergmann JI8, 561

Beyer 172, 256

Brown, F. i42

She was 481

Brown, H. 121, 257

Car fingerprint 558

Billicsisch 408

Brown, J 397 Brumfitt 444, 445

Binder J6Z

Brunet 222, 233, 2J6, 2Z4, 293, 308 Brunetie

Bissinger J4Z Black 430

re 172, 465, 466 Bruno 74, 77

Blake 229

—80, 81, 105, 109, 110, 112, 122, 128, 135, 26# Brunschvicg 146, 22a,

Blanchet 182

268, 453, 581 Bryson 42J Buck 578 Buckle

Bloch 230

306 Buckley, G. 130, 131,

B!umenberg 44, 6, 133 Boas, G. 2/ Boas, M. 134, 22s, 228 Bodin 136 Boehm 35

147 Buckley, M. 3ZJ Bucnzod 14/

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Index of Names Buffon 225, 252, 274—275, 277, 278, 280, 284, 291, 298, 308

Collingwood // 1 Collins, Anth. 373, 384, 393, 410

Buhr 13

Collins, Ardis Z/ Comte 465, 468

Bur‹khardt 49 Burgelin 336 Buridan 108 Burke 30, 34, 322 Burr 46 Burtt 95, 97’, 217 219, 295, 376 Bury 463, 466 Busson 191, 193 195, 238, 285

Butler 402—406, 407, 498 Butterfield 96, 97, 104, 227

Condillac 228, 232, 234, 255, 262, 287, 288, 289, 293, 294, 298 f., 302, 310, 329, 383, 384, 412, 519, 552 Condorcet 351, 463—465, 467, 480, 484 f.

Conze 429, 542, 570, 581 Cornford 96 Corsano 132 Cotes 220

Callot 134, 282, 285

Couturat 581

Calvin 202, 395, 567, 588

Cross 442

Campanella //4, 122, 131

Crocker 21, 26, 26#, 355, 381 382,

Field 547, 548

413, 414, 415, 418, #20, #Z3, #Z8, 493, 535 Crombie 90, 91, 96 108, 22a

Camus 515 Cardano 76—77, 82, 92, 136, 439, 597 Carlsson 404

Cartaud de la Villate 316 Casini 149, 213, 270 Cassirer 9, 2i, 31, 70, 74, 82, 83, 87, s2, 96, 101, 103, 114 / 22, 128, 184, 197, 205, 211, 2/2, 287, 292, 293, 313 , 343, 553, 581 Castaneda 140 Charbonnel 130, 195

Croquette /#6 Crowley 529 Crusius 546, 554-557, 558, 560, 561, 615, 640 Cudworth 198, 201—205, 402 Culwerwel 198 humming 521, 523

Chinard 355, 356

Days 449, 451, 460, 464, 465 Darnton #82, 483 David of Dinant 64

Chrysipp /I

Goodbye 414, #1Z

Cicero 11, 12, /2, 13, 87, 312, 560, 636

Delaunay 28J Close 58

Clarke, G. /2i

Delon 23

Charron 144—145, 250

Clarke, S. 220, 260, 377, 400 403, 586,

Delvaille 449, 457, 465, 466

588, 631 Clavelin 103 109

Democritus 208

Cobban 26, 30

Deprun 219, 170 Derham 243, 244

Cohen 228, 22s, 307 Cole 134 Colie 137, 208, 368 Colish 133

Denzer 167, 168

Desaguliers 240 Descartes or Cartesianism 10, 7 /, 29, 98, 720, 121, 122, 128,

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Index of Names

696

172—196, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211 f., 214, 216 f., 218, 219, 221,

Duncan-jones 404 Dynnik 83

222, 226 f., 230, 231, 232, 233, 23.