The Human Vocation in German Philosophy: Critical Essays and 18th Century Sources 9781350166073, 9781350166103, 9781350166080

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The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

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Bloomsbury Studies in Modern German Philosophy Series Editors: Courtney D. Fugate, Florida State University, USA Anne Pollok, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany Editorial Board: Desmond Hogan (Princeton University, USA) Ursula Goldenbaum (Emory University, USA) Robert Clewis (Gwynedd Mercy University, USA) Paul Guyer (Brown University, USA) Brandon Look (University of Kentucky, USA) Eric Watkins (University of California, San Diego, USA) Corey W. Dyck (University of Western Ontario, Canada) Stefanie Buchenau (University of Paris, France) Paola Rumore (University of Turin, Italy) Heiner Klemme (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany) Central and previously overlooked ideas and thinkers from the German Enlightenment Era are showcased in this series. Expanding research into areas that have been neglected particularly in English-language scholarship, it covers the work of lesser-known authors, previously untranslated texts, and issues that have suffered an undeserved life on the margins of current philosophicalhistorical discussion about eighteenth-century German thought. By opening itself to a broad range of subjects and placing the role of women during this period center stage, the series not only advances our understanding of the German Enlightenment and its connection with the pan-European debates, but also contributes to debates about the reception of Newtonian science and the impact of Leibnizian, Kantian, and Wolffian philosophies. Featuring edited collections and single-authored works, and overseen by an esteemed Editorial Board, the goal is to enrich current debates in the history of philosophy and to correct common misconceptions. Titles in the series include: Tetens’s Writings on Method, Language, and Anthropology, Edited by Courtney D. Fugate, Curtis Sommerlatte, and Scott Stapleford Kant’s Rational Religion and the Radical Enlightenment, By Anna Tomaszewska ii

The Human Vocation in German Philosophy Critical Essays and 18th Century Sources Translations by Anne Pollok and Courtney D. Fugate

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC, and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Anne Pollok, Courtney D. Fugate, and Contributors 2023 English language translations © Anne Pollok and Courtney D. Fugate 2023 Anne Pollok and Courtney D. Fugate have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xiii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Louise Dugdale Cover Photo by Guang Niu / Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

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Figure 1.1. Johann Joachim Spalding (1796) by Anton Graff (1736–1813). Photo courtesy of Cabinet of Prints and Drawings of the State Museums in Berlin – Prussian Cultural Heritage. Photographer: Volker-H. Cutter.

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Anne Pollok To my family Courtney D. Fugate To my mother and father, you were my sunshine

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Contents Notes on Contributors Note on the Translations and Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Table of Contents for the Academy Edition of Kant’s Writings (AA) Introduction: Defining the Dynamics of Being: How the Bestimmungsfrage Became a Driving Force in German Enlightenment and Beyond Anne Pollok Part One Translations 1

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Johann Joachim Spalding: Contemplation on the Vocation of the Human Being (1748) translated by Courtney Fugate

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Thomas Abbt and Moses Mendelssohn: Doubt and Oracle on the Human Vocation, plus Excerpts from Their Correspondence (1756–1766) translated by Anne Pollok

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Part Two Essays 3

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The Place of The Human Being in the World: Johann Joachim Spalding, Religion, and Philosophy as a Way of Life Laura Anna Macor

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Between Spalding and Fichte: The Vocation of the Human Being in Mendelssohn and Kant Günter Zöller

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Reinhard Brandt: Excerpt from the Human Vocation in Kant translated by Courtney Fugate and Anne Pollok

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Kant on the Human Vocation Allen Wood

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Understanding the Vocation of the Human Being Through the Kantian Sublime Giulia Milli

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Contents

“It Will be Well”: Isaak Iselin on the Self-realization of Humanity in History Ansgar Lyssy

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Whose Vocation? Which Human?: A.W. Rehberg on the Human Vocation and Political Theory Michael Gregory

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10 Religious Anthropology and Pluralism: Herder on the Bildung of Humanity Niels Wildschut

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11 The Doctrine of Palingenesis in Fichte’s Vocation of the Human Being David W. Wood

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12 The Vocation of Philosophy: Hegel on “Speculative” Science and the Human Good Brady Bowman

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Bibliography Index

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Notes on Contributors Brady Bowman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests focus on early modern rationalism and classical German philosophy, with an equal emphasis on themes in practical and theoretical philosophy. He is the author of Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity (2013) as well as numerous articles on Hegel, Kant, Jacobi, Schelling, and other figures of the period. Reinhard Brandt is Professor Emeritus at Philipps-Universität Marburg, where he has lived and taught since 1972. From 1987 to 2002, Brandt served as the director of the Marburger research group for the continuation of the Academy Edition of Immanuel Kant’s Works, for which he meticulously edited important volumes such as Lectures on Anthropology and on Physical Geography. Brandt’s works center on issues in aesthetics, philosophy of law, and philosophy of animals, in particular during the Enlightenment and Antiquity. He is a member of various academies in Germany, and has also published many articles in Italian, and for the general public in the FAZ and other venues. Courtney D. Fugate is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University, USA. He is the author of The Teleology of Reason: A Study of the Structure of Kant’s Critical Philosophy (2013), editor of the Cambridge Critical Guide to Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics (2019), and Kant and Baumgarten on Metaphysics (2018). His two most recent books are Baumgarten’s “Elements of First Practical Philosophy”: With Kant’s “Reflections on Moral Philosophy” (with John Hymers, 2020) and The Philosophical Writings of Johann Nicolaus Tetens. Volume 1: Tetens’s Writings on Method, Language, and Anthropology (with Curtis Sommerlatte and Scott Stapleford, 2022). Michael Gregory is a Doctoral Candidate at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. He is writing a dissertation on Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend and its relation to Kant’s natural law republicanism. In addition, he writes on figures surrounding the development of Kant’s political philosophy, including Gottfried Achenwall (see his recent “Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend, Achenwall and the Role of the State,” 2021)  and August Rehberg (“Kant and Rehberg on Political Theory and

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Practice,” forthcoming). Mike also works on twentieth-century Kantians, such as Ernst Cassirer (“History, Freedom and Normativity in Cassirer,” 2021).  Ansgar Lyssy is currently researcher at the University of Heidelberg, working on a project on causality in Hegel, funded by a grant from the Thyssen Foundation. In 2020, he finished his Habilitationsschrift at LMU Munich, a yet unpublished monograph titled Humankind and Humanity in Kant. This research was funded by a grant from the German Research Foundation. Notable publications include Kausalität und Teleologie bei G. W. Leibniz, Stuttgart: Franz-Steiner (Studia Leibnitiana, Special Issue No. 48, 2016); three anthologies on Kant and the philosophy of the eighteenth century, and several papers on Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and other related thinkers. Laura Anna Macor is Associate Professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Verona. She was previously a Humboldt Fellow at the KU EichstättIngolstadt, a Marie-Curie Fellow at the University of Oxford, and Assistant Professor at the University of Florence. She is interested in German philosophy, with a special focus on the Enlightenment and early Idealism, which she deals with from an interdisciplinary perspective, open particularly to literature, theology, and the history of language. Her publications include Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1748–1800), Eine Begriffsgeschichte (2013), and the co-edited volume Hegel y Hölderlin, una amistad estelar (2021). Giulia Milli is a PhD student at the University of Genova, within the Northwestern Italian Philosophy Consortium (FINO). She graduated from the University of Pavia with a bachelors thesis on the relationship between disinterestedness and interest in Kantian aesthetic judgment, and with a masters thesis on the Kantian sublime; she carried out part of the research for the masters thesis at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, as a visiting student. Her PhD project concerns the issue of feeling in Kant through an aestheticanthropological lens; the project aims to show the connection between feeling and the Bestimmung des Menschen in Kantian thought. She published a previous article on the Kantian sublime: Una lettura antropologica del sublime kantiano (2020). Anne Pollok is Research Assistant at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz. After her appointment as Lecturer for the Thinking Matters Program (former Introduction to the Humanities) at Stanford University, she earned tenure and promotion in 2019 at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of Facetten des Menschen. Zur Anthropologie Moses Mendelssohns (2010), as well as

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numerous articles on the human vocation in the eighteenth century, mainly focusing on Schiller, Mendelssohn, and Kant. She also works on Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy and culture and the self-formation of woman intellectuals in the eighteenth/nineteenth century (latest publication: “A Wunderblume and Her Friends: How Bettina Brentano-von Arnim Develops Individuality Through Dialogue,” 2021). Niels Wildschut was a doctoral fellow in the research project “The Emergence of Relativism” at the University of Vienna, and received his PhD in the history of philosophy in 2020.  He published “Proteus and the Pyrrhonists. Historical Change and the Universal in Herder’s Early Works” (2018) and “Analogy, Empathy, Incommensurability: Herder’s Conception of Historical Understanding” (2020), and is the co-editor of The Emergence of Relativism. German Thought from the Enlightenment to National Socialism (2019). He currently works as a political risk analyst and leads public policy research projects.  Allen Wood is the Ruth Norman Halls Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington. His interests are in the history of modern philosophy, especially Kant and German idealism, and in ethics and social philosophy. Wood has held regular professorships at Cornell University, Yale University, and Stanford University, as well as various visiting appointments at Oxford, the University of Michigan, and the University of California/San Diego, and affiliations with Freie Universität Berlin and the Rheinische-Friedrich-WilhelmsUniversität Bonn. Among his most important publications are his (together with Paul Guyer) for the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, as well as Kant and Religion (2020), Fichte’s Ethical Thought (2016), The Free Development of Each (2014), and Kantian Ethics (2008), among many others, which are translated into many languages. Günter Zöller is Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus) at the University of Munich. He studied at the University of Bonn, the École normale supérieure, Paris, and Brown University. He has been a Visiting Professor at Princeton University, Seoul National University, Emory University, McGill University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Bologna, and Huanzhong University of Science and Technology. Recent book publications include: Res Publica: Plato’s “Republic” in Classical  German Philosophy (2015); The Cambridge Companion to Fichte, coedited with David James (2016), Philosophy of the 19th Century: From Kant to Nietzsche (2018), and Hegel’s Philosophy: An Introduction (2020).

Note on the Translations and Acknowledgments This volume contains the first contemporary translation of Spalding’s Betrachtung über die Bestimmung des Menschen in its first version from 1748, as well as an extended translation of Abbt’s and Mendelssohn’s epistolary discussion around the Doubts and the Oracle, which preceded Mendelssohn’s famous Phädon (first 1767); the letters are rendered in English here for the first time.1

A. Spalding’s Vocation The translation of Spalding’s work is accompanied by an exact facing-page edition of the original first edition, which has been compared throughout with modern editions of the same text. The decision to retain original spelling and punctuation was based upon two considerations. Firstly, there currently exists no modern edition of this kind, and hence anyone desiring to check more recent editions against the original would have to read the text in Fraktur. Secondly, current spelling and editorial practice sometimes hide distinctions or ambiguities inherent in eighteenth-century German (for example, between the adjective “wohl” and the adverb “wol,” as Timmermann has pointed out). The page numbers in the margins of the German text are those of the first edition.

B. Mendelssohn and Abbt The translation of the discussion between Mendelssohn and Abbt is based on the Jubiläumsausgabe edition of Mendelssohn’s writings (JA 5/1:617–37: Doubts and Oracle, the letters from JA 11 and 12/1). Both Mendelssohn and Abbt had a real knack for words and tones, and hence the translator sought to preserve them as 1

Anne Pollok’s translation of Abbt’s Doubts and Mendelssohn’s Oracle can also be found here: “Thomas Abbt and Moses Mendelssohn: Doubts and Oracle regarding the vocation of man,” in: The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 39.1 (2018), 229–61. The present translation is a hopefully improved version of this previous attempt; the letters that precede the published Doubts and Oracle offer a better impression of the complexity of the respective positions.

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Note on the Translations and Acknowledgments

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much as possible. Abbt in particular seemed to have aimed at an apt imitation of Spalding’s writing style. Some of his direct quotes from the original are rather vague—for clarity, the missing nouns or parts of sentences that were left out in the respective “quote” are provided in brackets. Some metaphors and a number of sentence structures employed are awkward or rather colloquial, but were deliberately kept as they are indeed awkward in the original; in particular, the letters were not quite written for a general public and should not be artificially brushed up as if they were. This translation is not meant to correct Abbt’s and Mendelssohn’s German but rather to give the reader an authentic impression of their language and style. Note that Abbt in particular (or maybe the typesetter—the undervalued source of creative punctuation in the eighteenth century) used commas, semicolons, hyphens, and colons every once in a while (and too often without good reason) as periods—a confusing feature that is here cautiously aligned with modern usage. Terms that allow for multiple translations and might offer various connotations in the sentences wherein they function (or which I indeed translated in different ways, such as “Weltgebäude” or “Bestimmung”) are referenced in the German original in the footnotes. Whenever Abbt or Mendelssohn quote (very liberally) from Spalding’s work (in the 7th edition) I referenced the respective passages in the 1748 edition in its English version in this volume. Obviously, incomplete sentences were completed; the added portions are in brackets as well. All footnotes are from the translator.

C. Reinhard Brandt’s Work For the translation of Reinhard Brandt’s text we relied on the Meiner edition from 2007. Most footnotes contain Brandt’s own commentaries; further references by the editors are given in brackets. We surely hope that this translation will help to make more readers aware of Brandt’s work; he was Anne Pollok’s first (delightfully ironical) academic teacher of philosophy, and will never be forgotten in this capacity.

D. Acknowledgments We sincerely thank all contributors to this volume for their work and their intellectual curiosity. It has been so very good to work with you! Our thanks also to the editorial team at Bloomsbury, in particular Colleen Coalter, who has been with us every step of the way.

Abbreviations Unless indicated below, all editions are cited by (Abbreviation vol.:page).

AA

Kant, Immanuel (1900–), Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Akademieausgabe, Königliche Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), Berlin: de Gruyter. Unless otherwise noted, translations are from the Cambridge Kant Edition. When applicable cited vol.: page.line(s).

A/B

Kant, Immanuel, Critik der reinen Vernunft (1st edition 1781/2nd edition 1787).

AVW

Abbt, Thomas (1780–1), Vermischte Werke, Friedrich Nicolai (ed.), Berlin und Stettin; reprint 1978, Hildesheim: Olms Verlag.

FGA

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1962–2012), Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Reinhard Lauth et al. (eds.), StuttgartBad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog. Cited section, vol.: page.

FHA

Herder, Johann Gottfried (1985–2000), Werke in zehn Bänden, 10 vols., Günter Arnold et.al. (ed.), Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag.

GW

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1968–), Gesammelte Werke, Hamburg: Meiner Verlag.

JA

Mendelssohn, Moses (1929–1932, 1971–), Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe, Ismar Elbogen, Julius Guttmann, Eugen Mittwoch, Alexander Altmann, Eva J. Engel (eds.), Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog.

SpKA

Johann Joachim Spalding (2001–2013), Kritische Ausgabe, Albrecht Beutel (ed.), Division I: Schriften, vols. 1–6/2; Division II: Predigten, vols. 1–6, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Cited division, vol.: page.

StA

Hölderlin, Friedrich (1943–85), Sämtliche Werke. Stuttgarter HölderlinAusgabe, Friedrich Beissner, Adolf Beck (eds.), Stuttgart: Cotta.

TWA

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1969–71), Werke in zwanzig Bänden: Theorie-Werkausgabe, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

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Table of Contents for the Academy Edition of Kant’s Writings (AA) Volume 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10–12 14–20 21–2 23

Contents Pre-Critical Writings Pre-Critical Writings Critique of Pure Reason (1787) Critique of Pure Reason (1781) (pp. 1–252), Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (pp. 253–384), Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (pp. 385–464), Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (pp. 465–566) Critique of Practical Reason (pp. 1–164), Critique of the Power of Judgment (pp. 165–486) Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone (pp. 1–202), The Metaphysics of Morals (p. 203–494) Conflict of the Faculties (pp. 1–116), Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (pp. 117–334) Shorter Writings after 1781 Logic (pp. 1–150), Physical Geography (pp. 151–436), Pedagogy (pp. 437–500) Correspondence Literary Remains, including Reflections Opus Postumum Preparatory Studies and Notes

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Introduction: Defining the Dynamics of Being: How the Bestimmungsfrage Became a Driving Force in the German Enlightenment and Beyond Anne Pollok

“Quid sumus et quidnam victuri gignimur”?1 A man, seen from behind, more or less featureless, stands at the misty shore of a body of water, looking out. In the background: a bridge, obscured in fog (or is it smog?). On the one hand, Guang Niu’s photograph that we chose as the cover for this volume shows the perpetual human hope for a genuine connection with one another, the building of bridges that should help us avoid loneliness; on the other hand, this very bridge, being shrouded in mist, also reminds us of the havoc we wreck on this earth, rendering those attempts at reaching others even more fragile. To be sure, some of these associations would be foreign to the philosophers translated and discussed in this volume. However, what we still share with their attempts to define the human vocation is a common human condition and, further, a common human need for the means to cope with said condition. We, Courtney Fugate and Anne Pollok, as editors of this volume, hope to keep an important discussion going,2 a discussion focused on the issue of who we are 1

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“Who are we? Born for which kind of life”? This line from Persius’ Satires (Satire 3, line 67) served as a motto for Spalding’s Bestimmung des Menschen, is mentioned by Abbt in his Doubts concerning the Human Vocation, and was subsequently taken up by countless others, more prominently among those being Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Antiquissimi de prima malorum humanorum origine philosophematis (his dissertation from 1792, see HKA I/1, 61, see Brandt 2007, p. 10 and Macor 2015, pp. 137–8). Important previous research was done by Hinske 1999 for Kant’s conception of the human vocation; both Pollok 2010 and Macor 2013 revisited the discussion between Abbt and Mendelssohn and stressed its importance; Macor in particular also deepened our understanding of Spalding’s contribution, as well as Albrecht Beutel’s excellent critical edition of Spalding’s works, Georg Raatz (2014), Aufklärung als Selbstdeutung: eine genetisch-systematische Rekonstruktion von Johann Joachim Spaldings Bestimmung des Menschen, Tübingen: Mohr, and Grazyna Jurewicz (2018),

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and what we should be, a discussion that, in part, was launched in the second half of the eighteenth century among a few thinkers in Germany. In contrast to the discussion of the Bestimmung des Menschen in those eighteenth-century German-speaking lands, referencing this topic in the anglophone world immediately presents us with two deep-seated problems of translation, which are indicative of the conceptual depth of this issue, namely, how to translate “Bestimmung” and how to translate “des Menschen.” And, since this series is devoted to translating important discussions in German-speaking lands of the modern era, we will start with this problem.

I “Man” or “Human Being”? Let us, for simplicity’s sake, tackle the second question first, as it is reflective of more contemporary concerns. Usually, “Mensch” has been translated with “man,” blissfully oblivious to all things gender. Today, we can and should translate “Mensch,” not with just one part of it, “man” as in the German Mann (male), but as recte “human being,” as inelegant as it may sound in certain phrases. However, for capturing the spirit of the Enlightenment discussion, neither “human being,” nor even “humanity”—which is perhaps even more saturated with contemporary associations—are adequate. It is true that a discussion concerning the latter began in the Enlightenment, with Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and, most prominently, Johann Gottfried Herder, who authored Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–91) and Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität (1793–97), among other titles containing a reference to “Menschheit” (for further information on this, see the chapters in this volume by A. Wood, Lyssy, and Wildschut). “Humanity,” however, is too wide and at the same time too closely associated with normative elements to serve as the perfect translation of “des Menschen” in this context. When we look at the phrase “Bestimmung des Menschen,”

Moses Mendelssohn über die Bestimmung des Menschen: eine deutsch-jüdische Begriffsgeschichte, Hannover: Wehrhahn. Jannidis 2002 explored the eighteenth-century usage of the phrase “Bestimmung des Menschen,” whereas Di Giovanni 2005 highlighted the role of it in the conception of freedom (from or through religion) in the Enlightenment. Whereas Fichte’s considerations of the human vocation are well reflected both in the anglophone and German discussion, and Herder’s philosophy also gains more and more attention, some additional work on less noted figures such as Thomas Abbt, Isaak Iselin, and August Wilhelm Rehberg still needs to be done. May this volume be just the beginning.

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the mention of “Mensch” combines both descriptive and normative elements. Hence, we chose the much neater human vocation (and not humane vocation, which would rather capture the humanistic aspect of Humanität), and occasionally vocation of the human being.3 Turning back to the first question, concerning the translation (and scope) of the term “Bestimmung,” in what follows, I will try to portray the richness of the German term, as well as its career as a characteristic aspect of German philosophy of the second half of the eighteenth century.4 As we shall see, it refers to the definition of the human being, its nature, but also encapsulates the issue of the human vocation, or a task or calling that a human being, or even all of humanity has to follow or realize. “Bestimmung” has thus both a descriptive and a visionary dimension; it captures the essential trajectory of the individual as well as the “human race” as a whole.

II Bestimmung as Definition: Human Nature On the one hand, “Bestimmung” refers to definition. In order to know what a certain thing is, we need to define its constitutive elements. Accordingly, in order to define the human being, we need to figure out what sets us apart from inorganic stuff, plants, and animals—a task as old as philosophy. This is the question regarding so-called “human nature.” Definitions of what it is to be human range from as broad as “being part of the living world,” i.e., being organic, to more specific suggestions, such as being a “rational animal,” a “symbolic animal,” a “homo faber,” or even a “homo ludens.” Apart from serving to delineate what the most essential features of human beings are, these attempts to define humanity also reveal of the prominent philosophical discussions of their respective times. For present purposes, it is indicative that the discussion of the definition of the human being in eighteenth-century Germany includes issues of rationality, morality, and faith (or its striking absence). 3

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A corresponding volume on the Vocation of Woman is planned. There were countless such pamphlets and books from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards, some of them going through two or more editions. Among those works are essays that justify the status quo, but also more progressive attempts, such as Amalia Holst’s Über die Bestimmung des Weibes zur höheren Geistesbildung (1802, recently translated by Andrew Holst for Oxford University Press) or Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel’s Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (1792). Very interesting with regard to the phrase is Jannidis 2002 (see also D’Alessandro 1999, pp. 21–2). Further remarks on this issue are found in Hinske 1999, Pollok 2010, ch. I, 1, and in particular in Macor 2013.

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The attempt at a definition thus quickly moves to a determination of our specific abilities, all of which share the feature of not being part of what we bring into the world, ready-made, but rather what we have to develop and bring to perfection through our own efforts. Thus, the question concerning the definition of human “nature” is quickly transformed into the question concerning the human task of being, and human perfectibility. As Johann Joachim Spalding writes in his Meditation on the Vocation of the Human Being from 1748, the very book that launches the debate on this issue: “It is, for once at least, worth the effort to get to know why I am here and what, rationally, I ought to be” (SpKA I 1:5, see here p. 21). Nearly all thinkers assumed that human beings came into this world with defects, but that they ought to develop their abilities and hence become more perfect. For this reason, A. Wood stresses in his essay the option to translate “Bestimmung” with “Entschlossenheit”: a resolution or steadfast purpose (see here A. Wood, p. 164).

III Bestimmung as “Vocation” or “Determination” The human being’s Bestimmung is not captured by naming a set of qualities, but by delineating the dynamic features of its perfectibility in relation to human rational, moral, and religious capacities. By the determination of these capacities, philosophical reflection considers the human call (vocation) to perfection, to the continual development of human capacities in light of a certain goal, but also in relation to their practical application in a profession (Beruf, see here Zöller 125– 6). For most of the eighteenth century, this goal is situated beyond the material world and oriented by a respective faith; most texts discussed in this volume are situated within a Judeo-Christian, protestant framework. However, perfectibility in this time-period must also be understood within the framework of Leibnizian rationalism and metaphysics: development towards perfection here means attaining a progressively clearer, more distinct, and ultimately exhaustive determination of a certain set of qualities, which also brings with it a higher degree of “reality” itself. We can even say, in a sense, that perfection is the decisive term for German philosophy of the eighteenth century, in particular for the socalled “Leibnizian-Wolffian” version of rationalism. With “perfection,” Leibniz himself marks the multitude and diversity of the affirmative features in a thing, the expressions of its potency and the harmonious interplay of its different aspects in a single unity, bound together by a maximum of universally valid laws.

Introduction

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Christian Wolff defines it accordingly: “perfectio est consensus in varietate, seu plurimum a se invicem differentium in uno” (“Perfection is the consensus in one of a variety or of many things that are internally differentiated,” see Philosophia prima, sive ontologia (1730, § 503). For human beings, perfection is a goal, something to be attained. We find this stress on the dynamic element of perfection, for instance, in Christan Garve’s Overview of the Most Prominent Principles of Moral Theory (Übersicht der vornehmsten Principien der Sittenlehre, 1798),5 where he reformulates Wolff ’s definition of perfection as “the conformity of the manifold present in a thing into one” (“die Uebereinstimmung des in einem Dinge vorhandenen Mannigfaltigen zu Einem,” Garve 1986, pp. 178–9). In a footnote he further remarks: I use the expression which is common among Wolffians even though it remains a bit obscure. It should indicate the conformity of parts to reach a shared final aim, or to support the activity of a certain main part, or to produce a certain form, or all of the above at the same time. Perhaps the indeterminacy of the expression is the best indicator for the worth of the definition. Garve 1986, p. 179, emphasis added

Moses Mendelssohn likewise stresses this richness in significance in his Letters on Sentiments (1755; see remark l, in later editions remark r). Whereas Leibniz sometimes defines the perfection of the soul by the level of clarity and distinctness in its perceptions, Wolff stresses the “shared striving to sustain” a level of perfection (Theologia naturalis, vol. 2, § 15). Mendelssohn aims to combine these two views in order to conceptualize simple, but at the same time dynamically complex beings; a move that we can already identify in Leibniz’s notion of the monad and its striving towards ever clearer and more distinct perceptions. This also connects the notion of perfection to that of happiness, as it is the state of eudaimonia that is reached as more and more perceptions become clear and distinct.6 In the Second Discourse and the Emile, Rousseau introduced the notion of perfectibilité to the German discussion. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Mendelssohn, Samuel Heinrich Reimarus, and Johannes Nikolaus Tetens, among others, adopted it from this more pedagogical line of thought (and not so much from 5

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Garve also stresses that perfection only pertains to humans and animals, which “as living and rational creatures are conscious of themselves” (Garve 1986, p. 178). We need to pay closer attention to the principles that keep things together (not to a static order of things in one moment in time), and thus be aware of the dynamics, rather than the “facts.” See Monadology, §§ 10–19.

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Leibniz, as Hornig 1980, p. 224 points out).7 But needless to say, it was a Leibnizian understanding of Rousseau that these thinkers advanced. According to this view, human beings come into this world with a set of capacities that need to be developed and thus brought to fruition. The goal was not only perfection, but also agency, self-efficacy, and maturity, all of which point to the normative dimension of the term (see Pollok 2010, pp. 64–6). The problem was just that this normative dimension needed, but lacked, an accepted foundation. This dynamic notion of perfection, borrowed from Leibniz and enriched by ideas coming from Rousseau, was being employed at a time in which Leibnizian and Wolffian metaphysics was quickly losing its foothold; and this is partly why nearly all the authors discussed in this volume seek to establish a new framework for what is essentially the same concept. But instead of a consensus, the period witnessed a fierce debate and a competition of differing visions, such that it comes almost as an afterthought when Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel complains much later: “Indeed perfectibility is somewhat indeterminate [etwas Bestimmungsloses] like changeability as such; it is without aim or goal, without measure for change: the better, the more perfect, at which it aims, is something rather indeterminate” (TWA 7:447). In discussions concerning the human vocation, the two poles that frame this dynamic definition, namely human nature and the human vocation itself (one indicating the starting point, the other the goal of human development), stand in powerful tension with one another. What is particularly troublesome is the inclusion of human beings in nature, i.e. all what exists on this earth, and at the same time the exceptional position of humanity as the one entity that supersedes “mere nature.” How and in what ways could and should the trajectory of human nature be deflected or overruled in view of its divine or supersensible vocation? This question transcends human experience; the principles by which our perfection could be understood go beyond what a Psychologia empirica can offer. The dilemma seems clear: either we allow metaphysics to limit the lessons of experience, or we side with experience but are then forced to give up on attaining certainty of our final vocation. But feisty as philosophers are, they sought to have it both ways.

7

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1766,3 17724), Die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion. For him, perfection is not a property or attribute, not even as potential, but as an effective power of the soul (see Hornig 1980, p. 226). Johann Nikolaus Tetens in his Philosophical Essays on Human Nature and its Development (Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung, 1777) characterizes human perfectibility as a “power over oneself,” a form of autonomous agency that is the marker of the human soul (Hornig 1980, p. 227).

Introduction

7

Thinkers such as Herder already assume that human beings are not a “vessel for an absolute, independent, unchanging happiness, as the philosopher defines it,” but that our image of it “changes with every situation and location” (Himmelsstriche, FHA 4:38). Ultimately, the answer to the question regarding the final aim of humanity rests on the respective theory of the human constitution. Human beings as sensible beings seek their ultimate happiness in pleasure; as rational beings, they seek it in the cognition of the true and good, or in ultimate virtue. But however the ultimate goal is formulated, it has repercussions on the formulation of the meaning of human existence on earth or within a limited domain of possible experience. What we can make of ourselves within our lifespan might not be enough to fulfill what we conceive of as our actual vocation as the bearer of divine perfection. This inevitably leads to the need for a theodicy, since it is patent that not all human beings are going to reach their final aim of happiness (in whichever form) in this life, and that many will not even reach a moderately happy existence in accordance with their virtue or worthiness. Formulating a final aim towards which we direct our actions is of little use if it does not in fact help us reach said aim. Also, once individual happiness is at stake, no guarantee of the merely general happiness of mankind will suffice; a human being’s capacity for perfection, so wonderfully entailed in our perfectibility, calls for its fulfillment, not for its deferral onto others, or onto such an abstract notion as “humanity.” If we cannot become deserving of happiness (and actually become happy at some point), then we might very well lose the incentive to strive for that aim. For this very reason, most attempts at explaining the human vocation examined in this volume contain their own version of, and argument for, personal immortality.

IV The Human Being and Humanity as a Whole As dissatisfying as any referral to the concept of “humanity as such” may be, the concept of determination, or vocation even, brings with it this further dimension of “human nature:” the common or shared dimension of Menschheit, that is, humanity, as a collective term that is at once descriptive and open-ended, but also normative as a constitutive way of being. Not all of the philosophers discussed here assume personal immortality, and for them, the idea of a continuation of the human task within humanity as a whole is of central importance.

8

The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

Can the individual fulfill its vocation or is this possible only for humanity as a whole? Is significant progress towards perfection in any way possible for me or just for me as part of humanity? According to Leibniz’s grand theory presented in his Monadology, or Rousseau’s Discourses, an individual is rarely understood through and by itself alone, but rather almost always with reference to others. Human beings are deficient in that they do not come into this world already formed, and in that they might very well end up in less than perfect condition. We lack certain instincts and we are dependent upon an appropriate environment—an environment that must contain other human beings who care for us, provide for us, and speak to us. Human beings are in need of society, and hence their own personal happiness is intimately entangled with the happiness of others. In the same way, one’s possible personal perfection is not limited to oneself, but lies, at least in part, in what one transfers to the next generation. But does this dependence also indicate that mankind is going through a similar course of perfectibility—that the human vocation is also the goal for all mankind, understood as a collective reality? This brings with it the questions of our development in history, whether it does or should have a direction and, if so, what that direction might be. Human perfectibility, paired with human freedom, also indicates the possibility of human corruptibility, as Rousseau diagnosed it in the First Discourse. This complicates the issue further, since now human development, no matter whether it be on the individual or the collective level, does not necessitate an upward direction towards perfection. It could very well also lead to corruption and decline. Whenever human beings develop together, they are bound to make mistakes—which might amount not to progress, but to a regress into a deeper state of chaos and corruption. Is it only the individual immortal soul that could ever reach the goal of perfection? The essays on Kant and Mendelssohn in this volume (A. Wood, Milli, Wildschut, Zöller, and Brandt) will examine how these authors addressed such issues.

V Initiating the Debate: Spalding Despite all the theoretical and fundamental conceptualization that preceded, it was undoubtedly Johann Joachim Spalding who gave the discussion its name. The distinctive combination of descriptive and normative elements in his account from 1748 had a profoundly stirring effect on philosophers of the

Introduction

9

middle- and late-eighteenth century, making the Bestimmung des Menschen a “basic idea” of the Enlightenment.8 Spalding’s work of the same title went through several editions,9 expanding in length with each of them while being widely discussed and copied throughout the period. As one scholar has noted, this work indeed reflects the self-image of the German Enlightenment (D’Alessandro 1999, p. 22). As yet another describes the book: The formula of the human vocation in the title is at the very latest in 1800 so conventionalized that we can describe the reader’s expectations thus: prototypically, this title indicates a text for an educated audience of independent thinkers. The work calls upon one specific field, and that is the determination [Festlegung] of the goal in life of one human being in accordance with our knowledge of human nature as such. Deduced from this are reflections about morality, pedagogy, and religion. The meaning thus determined is cloaked in an aura of special relevance and importance. Five aspects are associated with this title: human nature; progress of culture; humans and society; immortality; and humanity’s ultimate goals: happiness, virtue, humaneness, or formation of individuality. Jannidis 2002, p. 87

Spalding’s pious “essay” (Aufsatz), as he himself calls it,10 is a reflection on the mode and end of our being. In a monologue—later dubbed an “act of existential reassurance [existentielle Selbstverständigung]”11—the text’s narrator recasts the way towards certainty of himself and his true essence (SpKA I, 1:193). Even though Spalding later felt compelled to link his argumentation more explicitly to his Christian faith,12 large portions of his general argument rest on empirical evidence and introspection, with the idea being that anyone can become certain of their vocation by this same method.

8

9

10

11 12

Macor 2015, p. 128, with further references, prominent among those of course Hinske 1999, p. 3 and Beutel, Albrecht 2014, p. 75. Beutel in SpKA I, 1:xxv–vii, and Macor 2015, pp. 128–9 count eleven legal editions, and twenty-nine (!) editions and translations in total during Spalding’s lifetime. A very important string of editions for Spalding’s reception in Germany is the reprint of the fourth edition from 1752 in Friedrich Christian Oetinger’s The Truth of Sensus Communis in the first edition from 1754 and the second from 1781 (see Macor 2015, p. 135): this paved the way for Hegel’s and Hölderin’s reading of Spalding. See Johann Joachim Spalding (1804), Lebensbeschreibung, ed. Georg Ludwig Spalding, 21, Halle: Waisenhaus. Beutel in SpKA I, 1:xxxi. Johann Melchior Goeze persuaded Spalding to declare, in an appendix to the third edition of his work, that his philosophy was not opposed to Christian revelation but rather complemented it (see Johann Joachim Spalding (1749), Betrachtung über die Bestimmung des Menschen, pp. 26–32, Berlin: Johann Jacob Weitbrecht). His main argument: if religion had not been revealed to the world, we would not know anything about nature either.

10

The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

The narrator ponders the reason for his existence and to what end he should live. The quasi-Platonic13 “ladder of pleasures” that he encounters ascends from sensual pleasure to the “pleasure of the spirit” (SpKA I, 1:65, here 29), all the way up to the active practice of virtue (79, here 31). Only in the latter activity does the narrator, however, become aware of the connection among all beings and his particular perfection within the common good (87, here 39). This allows him to overcome the limitations of individuality and it reveals his connection to the divine and true religion (135, here 43), which ultimately guarantees the individual’s eternal ascent to ultimate perfection (167, here 51). For this purpose, Spalding brings the main strands of the then-prominent, so-called Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy in Germany together with the ideas of Francis Hutcheson and Shaftesbury.14 After all, it is not so much a strict exercise in ratiocination favored by the rationalists, but an exploration of the human moral (and religious) sense as discussed by Hutcheson and Shaftesbury that leads the “I” towards answers. Shaftesbury in particular wanted to move away from any form of Schulphilosophie towards a philosophy concerned for the place of human beings within nature—not fighting against, but embracing their being and allowing them to put into words and theories what they already felt within themselves. Only a philosophy that is genuinely concerned for its addressees, i.e., human beings, can actually tell them anything about their end; and this is exactly what Spalding set out to do. In a similar vein, Spalding attempts to showcase the two pillars of divine consolation for us, as we become aware that our earthly happiness and our ability to fulfill our higher vocation is in danger of being cut short at any moment. a) Per his argument, the perpetual capacity for perfection is not a human weakness, but represents our particular promise. The necessity of our improvement indicates the possibility of its fulfillment—granted that there is a just and good God. In Spalding’s argumentation this necessity provides the ground for rational faith. This he combines with the assumption of the unity of the soul; it is not only the center of all reasoning, feeling, and willing, but it is as a unifying force also outside of time, not subject to it. Death, in this reading, stops being an absolute limit and becomes rather a change on the phenomenal level. 13 14

See, for instance, Symposium 210A–211D. Although Hinske 1994, pp. 138–9, Altmann 1982, pp. 99–100, and Riedel 1985, p. 167 stress the Leibnizean influence, Tonelli 1974 and Schollmeier 1967, pp. 16–18, as well as Adler 1994a, pp. 126 and 128–9, Sauder 1981, p. 153, and Heinz 1992, p. 264, Schwaiger 1999, pp. 8–10 pay heed to the influence by Shaftesbury. Spalding was well-read in British philosophy, in particular Shaftesbury, whom he also translated (Beutel in SpKA I, 1:xxviii).

Introduction

11

Of course, this move aggravated his critics. Not without reason, Johann Melchior Goeze points out a major flaw in Spalding’s argument: he infers the real, even the necessary from the possible, when he reasons that our need for immortality is its proof (Goeze 1748, p. 9, cit. in Beutel in SpKA I, 1:xxxix, versus the closing remarks in Spalding 1748, p. 25, here 57). This latter aspect is brought one step further with the argument for justice: b) With reference to a distributive right in the afterlife, the danger of worldly misgivings and misfortunes are sought to be neutralized. If we cannot fulfill our vocation in this life, it is no matter, as we will have time to do so after death. If we suffered evil—or even: committed it—there is no need to despair: it will be set right again in an afterlife, as God is good and would not permit wrongdoings to persist. Very clearly Spalding is here a representative of a theory of compensation in which any bad deed on this earth is thought to be balanced out by a retributive force in the afterlife (see, for instance, SpKA I, 1, 21, here 49). The argumentation brings the theory of redistribution and the theory of perfectibility together: if we can cognize both God and the good life, so Spalding, then we should also be justified in thinking that a reasonable order of the world is real—and even that any seeming disruption of this order is ultimately going to reinforce said order through a proper punishment and redistribution in the afterlife. In this view, misfortune cannot be but a test. Not only Abbt, who planned a review of the seventh edition from 1763, was irked by the heavy undertones of the human need for vengeance in this justification. Also, it seems to weaken the moral worth of a good deed if it was done for an expected reward, and not for its own sake. Spalding’s argumentation is not, however, a reflection of Leibnizian rational religion (even though he characterizes God’s actions as “according to the strictest rules and following the most noble purposes”, SpKA I, 1, 22, here 51). For him, not any rational conception of God, but revelation is the highest expression and ultimate aim of his little reflection. The ultimate hope rests in divine revelation, as he already stresses in the first addition (Anhang), published as a reply to Goeze in the third edition from 1749,15 as well as in the third section on “religion:” our soul shall concentrate on revelation, as any other path leads into darkness. Even if Spalding in the first edition considers the possibility that the proofs won’t hold (SpKA I, 1, 24–5, here 57), he quickly asserts that “it is way too

15

See Beutel in SpKA I, 1:xlvi, Spalding 1749, Anhang 1, p. 202.

12

The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

important to me that these ideas should be true.” Interestingly, this is no longer contained in the seventh edition from 1763—the edition that sparked the discussion between Abbt and Mendelssohn (see Spalding 7/1763, 55). But even then Spalding references the “all sweetening idea” (ibid., 56) of divine revelation, which reconciles us with the idea of death. Maybe the editor of the critical edition, Albrecht Beutel, goes a bit too far when he calls this a “regulative idea . . . of transcendental relevance” (see Beutel in SpKA I, 1:xxxiv and xlii, see also Pollok 2010, ch. I.1, p. 77). Ultimately, Spalding did not require a firm theological or philosophical proof, but rather wanted to draw out what a soul already obscurely felt. The main weight of his argument in the Vocation rests on the human ability to find the ultimate proof within oneself. This is much closer to the common sense philosophy Spalding was so invested in translating than in any proto-Kantian undertaking. This only changes in the last version of this book from 1794, which manifests the influence of Kant’s critical philosophy on Spalding’s notion of the human vocation in theoretical as well as practical regard (see Macor 2013, §39, pp. 304– 10). Reason, as Spalding states now in an addition to the section “Pleasures of Spirit” (Vergnügen des Geistes), is only limited by itself; it cannot offer us perfect insight, but enables a true expansion of our soul. In the section on “virtue,” Spalding remains faithful to his earlier adoption of Shaftesbury’s moral sense philosophy, but gives it a decidedly Kantian flavor: our insight into our duty is immediate through practical reason; the moral law is sharply distinguished from rules of prudence. Spalding still keeps morality and feeling close together, as the “I” can become conscious of its moral superiority and bask in the positive emotion coming from this insight—but at the same time he stresses that this feeling must not be the ground for morality as such. Spalding’s work proved to be immensely influential—not only by providing a memorable phrase (see Jannidis 2002), but also by provoking considerations of human Bildung, human historicity, and the earthly but also metaphysical telos of humanity in general. For many of these debates, though, it is not adequate to consider Spalding as the sole influence, but rather as having captured the “tenor of the time.” We also need to take a further contribution to the discussion into consideration—Thomas Abbt’s and Moses Mendelssohn’s debate concerning the human vocation and its influence on Mendelssohn’s Phädon, which in turn influenced Kant’s reflections on one of the ideas of pure reason, namely, immortality.

Introduction

13

VI The Existential Potential of the Debate This little debate16 is a true gem among the late Enlightenment discussion of the human vocation (and, concomitantly, an updated version of Leibniz’s theodicy). In a letter to Mendelssohn on February 20, 1764, Abbt laments the bad state of his contemporaries’ philosophies of mankind, especially in light of Spalding’s work (see JA 12/1:36, here p. 64). The ensuing discussion between Abbt and Mendelssohn culminated in the published exchange in the Doubts and Oracle Concerning the Human Vocation (see here ch. 2, pp. 68–90). These two essays were originally published anonymously in 1764 under the pretense of being two parts of a book published in Schinznach, 1763.17 They also re-appeared under the names of both Abbt and Mendelssohn in an edition of the Phädon published in Amsterdam in 1767,18 and later in the third volume of Abbt’s Vermischte Werke.19 In his Doubts, Abbt spells out his disagreement with Spalding most succinctly, concentrating on the latter’s consolatory argument for further perfection beyond the death of the individual (see JA 5/1:625–6, 628, here pp. 77–9). What, Abbt asks, allows us to view ourselves as the ultimate aim of perfection, as self-sufficient units of worth—especially, if it could just as well be the case that we are either part of a haphazard conglomeration of accidents or part of an overall plan that includes us as mere means and not ends (JA 5/1:626– 7, here 78)? In the letters to Mendelssohn that follow the public debate, we can see Abbt’s unwavering focus upon the individual as an end in herself. He never tires of asking Spalding (and Mendelssohn) to what end each one of us, rather than “man in general,” is destined. Mendelssohn’s first answer in the Oracle— which was essentially, “just look more closely, and you will see”! (JA 5/1:630, here 83)—did nothing to alleviate Abbt’s concerns. For Mendelssohn, the fundamental openness of the individual’s progression towards perfection itself is the answer, rather than something to be questioned. In his letters (and his Phädon), he thus attempts to use Abbt’s questions to formulate an ultimate limit case for philosophy according to which the question regarding someone’s individual destiny is no

16

17

18

19

See Pollok 2010, pp. 70–2 where I discuss the literature around 1765; ultimately, we can see that Mendelssohn’s and Abbt’s discussion gave the publications with the same title an undeniable push. The two essays were published consecutively in Briefe, die neueste Litteratur betreffend, ed. Friedrich Nicolai, Moses Mendelssohn, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (Berlin: Nicolai, 1764), 5–60. The full title is: Phädon, or On the Immortality of the Soul, In Addition with the Doubts and the Oracle Concerning the Human Vocation, Amsterdam 1767. See Thomas Abbt, Freundschaftliche Correspondenz, in AVW 3:174–200, and 208–22.

14

The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

longer philosophical. Observations of the sort: “we do not quite know how such and such works” do not lead to conclusions such as: “we cannot know how it works” (see JA 12/1:92, here 102). Ultimately, all Mendelssohn asks for is an assurance that the world is ordered rationally according to the principle of sufficient reason; in contrast, Abbt desires an answer that goes well beyond any human capacity of comprehension. It is indeed a shame that Abbt did not live to reply to Mendelssohn’s further attempts at an answer to the question of the vocation of man in his Phädon, which Mendelssohn devoted to his then-deceased friend (JA 3/1:7), whose premature death in 1766 at the age of twenty-seven was one of the great losses for eighteenth-century philosophy. It would have been thrilling to read Abbt’s reviews of both the Phädon and Mendelssohn’s later Remarks on Abbt’s Amicable Correspondence (1782), where Mendelssohn, again, favors an optimistic selflimitation in fundamental questions20—reviews that would have quite possibly been furious. In the latter text, Mendelssohn wrote: But what if one wants to know in sufficient detail in which particular form we will continue, in what region, with what kind of ethereal body, and with what kind of senses and extremities [Gliedmaßen] we will live and thrive [leben und weben]? At this stage, humble reason steps back, a finger on her mouth [mit dem Finger auf dem Munde]. . . . Not even revelation can give us further instruction in this regard, since then she would have to speak a language we cannot understand, and presuppose basic ideas [Grundideen] that we do not have.21

Mendelssohn’s writings are expressions of this limitation of the scope of reason. But he did not advocate keeping quiet and guarding reason’s borders. Instead, he aimed to explicate the knowledge that we can grasp to build a more certain foundation for our dealings with the world. The wonderful assurance of the soul’s personal immortality that Mendelssohn sought to prove in his Phädon was highly praised, but also heavily criticized, most prominently in the second edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Instead of this being a metaphysical truth, it is reduced to an (though practically necessary) idea of reason.22 But what the discussion between Spalding and his readers, as well as between Abbt and Mendelssohn, also shows is the importance and concomitant fragility of philosophical communication. Overall, works concerning the human vocation 20

21 22

For a reflection on the continuation of the discussion of the question concerning the vocation of man in Johann Gottfried Herder, see Pollok 2010, chapter V.2, Pollok 2018, Beiser 2011a, and here Wildschut. JA 6/1:42–3. See on this Guyer 2020, in particular chapter I 4. and 5.

Introduction

15

were generally seen as Popularphilosophie, targeting a wider audience and hence not engaging in all-too-intricate philosophical arguments. Those were reserved for other books, and hence also for a much more limited audience. This might be part of the reason as to why Mendelssohn’s concept of the human vocation remained more widely available than Kant’s demanding alternative, and also why On the Human Vocation became one of Fichte’s most successful works (see here D. Wood).

VII The Aftermath We could say that in the wake of Kant’s critical project, as well as of the counterEnlightenment that would give birth to Romanticism and Idealism, the philosophical debate concerning the Bestimmung des Menschen as conceived by Spalding and other figures of the period came to an end. As Jannidis notes, this is not necessarily the end of the popular debate: many of the relevant works see a second or third edition, retaining the interest of a wider audience. Particularly popular are those that offer advice for the education of girls, offering a firm definition and determination of their abilities and options; although, overall, these attempts seem mostly aimed at keeping a status quo.23 But, even in “philosophy proper,” the task to spell out the meaning and direction of human life was not abolished. Philosophers such as Herder (see here Wildschut), Schiller (see Pollok 2019 and 2020), Kant (see here A. Wood, Zöller, and Milli), Fichte (see here D. Wood), and Hegel (see here Bowman) continue the discussion concerning the human vocation under fundamentally new conceptions of its framework and in contradistinction to Spalding’s metaphysical and practical consolations. Schiller aims highest, as he formulates our vocation as becoming similar, or equivalent even, to God: “God-likeness [Gottgleichheit] is the vocation of man” (Schiller, Nationalausgabe vol. 20, p. 10). Kant is more modest: Ultimately, it is the final aim of all of humanity to aspire to divine perfection—a task to which we ought to devote all human reasoning and acting.

23

See Angelika Feurer (1789), Die Bestimmung des Weibes zur Hausfrau, Mutter und Gattin, Braunschweig: Campe, Wilhelmine Halberstadt (1808, 1825, 1827), Briefe über Moralität, Würde und Bestimmung des Weibes. Jungen Frauenzimmern geweiht, Kassel, Hamburg, Christian von Bomhard (1815), Symposion von der Würde der weiblichen Natur und Bestimmung. Deutschen Frauen und Jungfrauen gewidmet, Bamberg, Johann Chr. Sommer (1794, 1807), Über innere und äußere Bestimmung des Jünglings, nebst einer Abhandlung über die Bestimmung des Mädchens, Halberstadt.

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In their discussion of Enlightenment in 1784, Mendelssohn and Kant distinguish between the roles of human beings as human beings and as citizens;24 a distinction Fichte then takes up in his Vocation of the Scholar (Macor 2015, p. 133, see here D. Wood), and which we can trace well into the discussion of human rights in contrast to national rights. Hegel’s concept of “spirit,” on the other hand, can be understood as taking seriously the idea of the human being as a unique and non-reducible realization of “something authentically divine” (see here Bowman), while arguing against the worth of Popularphilosophie, which Hegel saw represented in Spalding (and, see above, in other such Bestimmungsliteratur). An important development within the discussion is thus the move away from metaphysical or religious questions toward issues in morality (and also history and politics, see here Gregory), whether it pertains to the will of the individual or the will of humanity. The question concerning the human vocation thus pertains not to the individual alone, reasoning by themselves about their individual vocation, but also to the human being as part of “the general connection among rational beings” (see Macor 2013, § 40, p. 312, and here A. Wood, Wildschut, D. Wood, Bowman). The religious vocation might have still reigned in Fichte’s “Atheismusstreit” (Macor 2013, §41), as Spalding was mentioned by Fichte’s assailants as among the “good” philosophers in contrast to the “bad,” i.e., atheist ones following Kantian rigorism, such as Fichte. It is quite telling that Fichte’s subsequent Appeal to the Public (1798) instrumentalizes the very same Spalding, too, suggesting that it was his book that put “a first seed of higher speculation into the youthful soul, and whose works so fittingly characterize the striving for the transcendent, the everlasting” (FGA I.5, pp. 446–7). This also characterizes his own, Fichte’s, work. Despite some skeptical reactions by those who sensed that Fichte rather wanted to downplay the differences between his thoughts and Spalding’s (see Macor 2013, §41, 319), he insisted on the similarities, naming his own reflection on the issue after its famous predecessor. The philosophy of objective divine perfection becomes the philosophy of the subjective, but universal will in its Wechselwirkung with others. The quest for the human vocation also lingers in the development of the German Bildungsroman, as well as in German Romanticism, such as Hölderlin’s Fragments and the Hyperion, or Hegel’s The Positivity of Christian Religion (see Macor 2015, p. 127, and here Bowman). Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion seems to echo Abbt’s existential concerns when the protagonist wonders about our human 24

See Pollok 2010, ch. IV.3, Pollok 2020a, Macor 2015, p. 131.

Introduction

17

vocation, as we stem from nothing, go nowhere, and can believe in nothing. And still, in our decisive departure from merely biological life, human beings aim for the stars, even in light of the possibility of eternal emptiness (see Hyperion, 11th letter, StA 3:45). At times, it is the desire to be one with nature (“To be one with all, that is the life of the god, that is heaven for the human being,” 2nd letter, StA 3:9), which is not just a Spinozistic dream but also represents the ultimate fantasy of the rationalists: the fundamental unity in a life above and beyond this earth. And, similar to Spalding’s argumentation, it is the sheer overabundance of power and force (Kraft) that points us beyond what is possible on earth (8th letter, 3:41). It is noteworthy, though, that Hyperion references these existential questions as “destructive” (StA 3:45). Kant already captured the problematic nature of our quest to understand the human vocation quite well in his Critique of Pure Reason: that our reason is damned to pose questions that it cannot answer. In the end, the fundamental questions (“Who are we”? “To what end are we here”?) had to be reformulated, so that they would not force us against the boundaries of our own thinking (and even our feeling). Hegel’s discussion of the term, as well as Fichte’s ultimate reference to it surely go beyond the limits of this introduction; but this is no matter, as they are discussed in Bowman and D. Wood in this volume; whereas Macor’s contribution ultimately traces Spalding’s influence up to Foucault. All contributions make abundantly clear how fruitful Spalding’s notion of the human vocation is for understanding and discussing the major philosophical tenets in eighteenth century Germany. We hope that this volume will deepen these discussions.

18

Part One

Translations

19

Betrachtung über die Bestimmung des Menschen -RKDQQ-RDFKLP6SDOGLQJ  ³³³TXRG³DGQRV 3HUWLQHQWHWQHVFLUHPDOXPHVWDJLWDPXV³ 







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Quid sumus? et quidnam victuri gignimur?— 







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1

Johann Joachim Spalding: Contemplation on the Vocation of the Human Being (1748) Translated by Courtney D. Fugate

——— quod — ad nos Pertinent et nescire malum est agitamus— Hor.1

Quid sumus? et quidnam victuri gignimur?— Persivs.2

I see that I can spend the brief time I have to live in this world acting according to entirely distinct maxims, whose worth and consequences, due to this same distinctness, can in no way be identical. Now, since I undeniably find within myself a capacity to choose and to prefer one thing over another in my decisions, I must also not proceed blindly in this, but rather seek to make out beforehand, to the best of my abilities, the path that is most certain, respectable, and advantageous for me. Many experiences have already taught me regarding things of lesser importance that the agonizing sense of regret that attends certain actions brought to pass is not within my control; so much the more would I therefore have to reproach myself later, if I did not now most earnestly reflect on the source of my real worth and on the whole state of my life. It is certainly, for once at least, worth the effort to get to know why I am here and what, rationally, I ought to be. The examples provided by human beings around me 1

2

Horace, Satires II.6.72–73: “We discuss things which matter . . . to us and which it is harmful to ignore” (Horace 1999, p. 296). Persius, Satires III.67: “What are we? And what sort of life are we born to live?”

21

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5

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Johann Joachim Spalding

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are no valid guarantee in an endeavor such as this. And even if they could be such, these people depart so infinitely far from one another in their conduct that selecting a guide from among them would involve me in much greater confusions and difficulties than would setting out to discover the correct path all by myself. Indeed, if I should follow one group, then I am certain in every case of being either jeered at or condemned by the others. And I know of nothing that could more strongly counter such annoyances than the certainty that would arise from such an investigation. And I hope that this will, in any case, render me indifferent to criticisms from both parties. I readily comprehend that it is impossible for the common strivings for wealth and honor to agree with the true ends of the human being if they are not regarded merely as means to actual aims and goods. There is so much that is empty and false, so much that rests on mere fantasy in these forms of happiness, that I cannot fail to find myself in a thousand miseries even when I have achieved all my goals in respect to them. However, if my nature were not capable of any actual sensations of pleasure and pain, and if also my fantasies and representations stood constantly under my control, then I would not have any qualms about placing my happiness in fantasies and representations and consequently about giving myself over to an unwavering desire for them. Yet I am too clearly aware that the opposite of this is true. As long, therefore, as something is present in nature that is still more essential, something that can yet stimulate my inclinations, I cannot excuse myself should I further entangle myself in such dreams. More essential than such things is undoubtedly the gratification of the senses. I confess that this exerts a powerful attraction upon me. Should I not indeed be eager to seek it and to enjoy it?— The drive toward gratification, which lies so deeply within my soul, appears to justify this when I entirely abandon myself to that kind of desire. What more would I have than gratification, especially when, to all appearances, I am made for it?—And what do I miss out on in gratification, when I deny myself nothing? This principle, so it appears, is also powerfully supported by experience.

24

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Johann Joachim Spalding

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When I merely imagine the sweet intoxication into which a constant variation of sensible pleasure can lead me throughout the short duration of this life, then it seems to me that there remains nothing further to wish for. Why should I ever begin to quarrel with a desire that arises from within me, when it promises in advance an infallible delight as reward for its fulfillment? Why should I, through fear of the future, bring near what are distant, uncertain, and perhaps even imaginary consequences, only to poison the time that I can meanwhile use to raise new inclinations and to satisfy these in a new way? What is lacking in human beings that are drunk with sensual pleasure? What would I lack if I were to imitate such people? What would I lack if I were to continually occupy my soul with granting it what it requires, and if I were to always link one gratification to another so that no gap between them may torment my soul with disgust, or unsettle it with second thoughts? Nature and society are inexhaustible sources of such pleasure, which will not leave my senses idle if only I wish to dedicate myself to them. These persuasions are strong; but I think that their strength has something savage and intoxicating about it, which does not yet allow my soul to be sufficiently quiet; for this reason, I must once again calmly investigate the matter. What I perceive in some examples of those who proceed according to the previous maxims is already apt to awaken in me a mistrust in this apparent coherence of my judgments. I have seen their pleasure; I have seen their desires satisfied, as it were, at desire’s very birth; I have seen with what swiftness they rush from one delight to another, with what vigilance they grasp on all sides for whatever gratification should sweep past, with what triumphant violence they hold within bounds the depressed and brooding part of their soul. It was a sea of sensual pleasure in which they swam. But this condition exists no longer, and the change is sorrowful. One sighs in the poverty, which, alongside expensive and artificial gratification, also at the same time deprives him of the cheaper and more natural; another languishes in illnesses and pains, which allow him to sense nothing pleas-

26

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Johann Joachim Spalding

27

ant. Both are genuine consequences of the zeal with which they have exercised the great maxim of denying themselves nothing. The memory of the sensual pleasures they have enjoyed, and of the efforts with which they have sought them, fall infinitely short of providing those people with a preponderant state of tranquility. Instead, such things become to them so many furies, which internally tear them apart. This frightens me.—Would I really want to be in their position? Would I even really want to put myself in the likely danger that I could at some point be in their position? Should I then really exist in the world in order to do everything that flatters the sensations of my senses?—It is annoying that in regard to the most desirable matter in the world, namely gratification, bad effects are possible; but I simply cannot change that. Hence, in regard to this rule I must only be concerned about the limitations. I must enjoy the gratification of the senses in such a way that I remain safe from its bad fruits. It is in this that consists the great science upon which the subtlest minds have worked for so long; their single, chief science of life. Obviously, that art is of no small value, which teaches me to extract what is sweet from sensual pleasures, without being pierced by their barbs; and even if this must happen by means of a moderation and abstinence that costs me, yet that price is not too high by which I, at the same time, purchase freedom from disgust as well as subsequent pain. Perhaps I enjoy less pleasure, but it is more sensible and enduring. Here no nagging concerns creep into the heart, which is open only to gratification. In this series of delights there is surely room for thought and circumspection, but not for distress and reproaches and frightful imaginings. I do not suppress my reason; I employ it according to its end and, since I live for sensing, allow it to serve sensations. Then my life, like a gentle stream, flows onwards untroubled, amid nothing but flowers.—And hence a well-regulated hedonist would be what nature would have the human being to be.—

According to this, my new system, I now enjoy for a time the delights of this life with all circumspection and caution.—And nevertheless, there are certain moments when I

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Johann Joachim Spalding

29

feel as if I am lacking something. With all my effort, I cannot avoid disgust and tedium; I become dissatisfied; everything becomes a burden to me, even myself. I distract myself; but I soon perceive that although I can indeed forget my discontent for a short time, I cannot remove it. I escape to my customary gratifications, to the least harmful ones that I know of; however, in these tarnished hours I have, as it were, lost the taste for them; at this moment they are not what can satisfy me; my disgusting soul shoves them away, and remains in its unsteady and desolate confusion. There is an obscure feeling of yearning and a secret emptiness within me, which dashes my spirit and consumes me. Unfortunate me! What then do I want? And how am I to be helped?— It is at least now obvious to me that the pleasant motion of my senses does not fulfill my entire soul; that within it there must exist, as it were, empty abysses that require an entirely different kind of satisfaction. But where do I find this other satisfaction? Where do I find this unknown satiation after which my empty spirit craves with anxiety and restlessness?— When I retreat into myself without the befuddlement of my sensibility, I see well that true improvements, perfections, and advantages regarding my own self are possible within me; that my nature drives me internally to strive after these things, and that the achievement of this endeavor awakens in me a liking in which my soul already finds more tranquility than in the mere tumult of sensuous pleasures. The health, strength, and dexterity of my body themselves deserve my care, even without an immediate regard for the delight that my senses might gain from them. Even more gratifying to me are the merits and powers of my spirit when I get to know them and see them grow. As the manifold faculty of which I am aware increases, I find that I am so improved that I belong in a much higher order of things. Hence, I occupy myself with that faculty not without the sensation of a captivating pleasure. I bring together all, I make use of all, to make my spirit more perfect. I seek to enrich my memory, to clarify my concepts, to sharpen my wit, to broaden and to fortify

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The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

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Johann Joachim Spalding

31

my insight. I never tire of elevating these, my capacities, from one stage to another. I therefore care for myself, for my true advantages, and rejoice in the possession of them. All of this accords with my nature, but it is not yet enough. I see other beings around me and I ask myself regarding them: Do these all exist for my sake? Do they have no other end than what is best for me? Does there exist no other relationship between them and me than that I may draw them to myself as if to the center of things? Am I not indebted to all things and to all other beings themselves? And do I have no other natural end, no other natural desire in my soul, than my own benefit? With this in mind, I apply a renewed attention to myself and to what in various circumstances has raised its voice within me. And there I indisputably discover that there is still something more to which my soul inclines and that is proper to it. To my surprise, I have perceived diverse drives and sensations within myself that I cannot in the least account to the desires for sensuous pleasure or for my own advantage, and which I cannot satisfy with such things. Yet from whence arises that delight in the good qualities and in the happiness of other beings? From whence that stirring liking or disliking in respect to actions that I hold to be decent or shameful? What indeed was it that prevented me from concealing the goods secretly entrusted to me by my benefactor after his death, and so depriving his starving brother of them? What was the reason for the lively gratification with which I released that innocent stranger from the danger into which he had gotten though a false accusation?—No matter whence this arises, I see quite evidently that it does not have its origin in the desire for sensuous pleasure or for my own improvement. Therefore, there must yet exist within me a source of inclinations that is entirely different from this. And if that is no fantasy, or if even if this fantasy is outside of my voluntary power, if it is natural to me and unchangeable, then I must necessarily concern myself with its satisfaction. This is worthy of all my reflection, and even if the advantages and conveniences of my previous philosophy should again be sacrificed.

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The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

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Johann Joachim Spalding

33

Yes, truly, I cannot deny it: I perceive sensations within me in which I forget myself, which have as their end neither myself, insofar as it is me, nor my advantage, insofar as it is mine, but instead something else entirely; sensations of goodness and of order, which my mere will has not created and which my mere will also cannot destroy; original and independent drives of my soul toward what is suitable, toward what is decent, magnanimous and fair, toward beauty, harmony, and perfection as such, and especially toward the operations of intelligent and freely-acting beings. What else am I to make of shame, of this burden some sentiment, which is in fact so essentially distinct from fear? What sort of thing is this regret that is so frequently separate from all concern for harm? From whence arises the great difference in indignation with respect to the very same injury inflicted on me by an animal, a child, a mentally ill person, or, on the other hand, by a person of good intelligence based on intent and evilness; if there were not imprinted on my spirit a natural concept of what is decent and shameful, beautiful and ugly, right and wrong? Perhaps, from the very start, this natural sensation has been suppressed by the intoxicating power of sensuality that immediately encircled and overwhelmed me in the world; however, since that time a more precise and deeper-penetrating attentiveness quickly showed me that this was a lack, an actual deformity in my nature, regardless of whatever may have been its cause. And, on the contrary, even when I am able to reach the point, by means of certain acquired skills, that these peculiar drives no longer stir so strongly within my soul, that they no longer speak so loudly against the sovereign power of other sensuous and self-interested inclinations, I become conscious that bringing them under this yoke has cost me something; just as the nature of a tree does not yield and submit to the will of the gardener without force. As long as I have not reached that point, I constantly feel this clear difference in my desires, namely, that some aim purely at myself, but others at what is generally best, or at what is good and beautiful in itself; though all of them –

34

The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

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Johann Joachim Spalding

35

those of the one genus as well as those of the other—have in common that their fulfillment brings with it pleasure. And in this way, the presumption entirely falls away that those drives of right and kindness could be a prejudice, an effect on me of education. For, if that were possible, then I know not why my desires for the gratifications of the senses and for what is best for me should not likewise be a prejudice, an effect of education. As surely as I long to feel something agreeable, or to partake of some advantage, I also prefer to attain it without harm to any stranger, and innocently, rather than otherwise. Here I find the origin of what is noble and beautiful in actions; the true and great difference between the decent and the useful. A deed can be advantageous to me; for this reason, it can be called prudent and rational; but it is impossible for it to be called a noble or a beautiful deed, if it does not have as its proper end what is best for another or what is generally best. The entire world has this concept and employs it even in the most ordinary instances in human life. Hence, there surely exists within me a kind of inclination, a source of actions, which is essentially different from my self-love, and yet belongs just as essentially to my nature. I find this principle to be of such power that it often makes itself master over my entire soul, that it, so to say, consumes all other sentiments and alone fills me with either pleasure or agony. When I cast an eye inwardly and perceive rectitude in my sentiments, order in my desires, harmony in my actions; when I see that everything is true in my mind, that everything in it is determined in accordance with the essential relations of things, then this sight awakens in me an ecstasy that triumphs over all sensuous displeasure. But, on the other hand, the liveliest delights of the senses are incapable of satisfying me when I—tortured by the vision of an inward disorder—seek in vain to flee myself and to hide under an endless host of bodily amusements from the persecutions of an internal accusation.

36

The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

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Johann Joachim Spalding

37

Now, since I cannot deny this original constitution of my nature, I would manifestly contradict it if I were to direct my intentions toward nothing further than myself, than my pleasure and my advantage. When I consider it unmutilated and undistorted, I henceforth see where my nature leads, my entire nature; and I want to follow where it leads me. I want to seek my pleasure and my benefit; but I do not want to seek it alone, since I cannot place in it my entire end and my true worth. This body, which I carry with me, should be maintained, and that is the reasonable end toward which the implanted desire for sensual pleasure directs me. I myself am a part of the whole, and within it I am closest to myself; I can benefit no one else as immediately and easily as myself; this is why that drive is so useful to me, which especially prompts me to attend to what primarily I can procure. I know also that the pains and tribulations that assail my sensuousness always, at the same time, weaken my higher gratification to some degree; that is why I want to be careful to obey this voice of nature, which bids me to avoid them. Nevertheless, this is still constantly to be my main concern, namely, that I should neither suppress nor ignore the higher and nobler drives of my soul; these drives, of which I know distinctly enough that they must govern fairly. I will strive so that the inclination for goodness that is implanted in me becomes ever more strengthened and is satisfied in every possible manner. The happiness of the human race, which stirs me so agreeably, shall invariably be an object of my most earnest endeavors, and my own happiness. When I see the innocent defended, the miserable helped, the distressed rescued, then I will entirely abandon myself to the gratification that such things elicit in me, and credit this tenderness of my soul as an honor, since it is so deeply and essentially grounded in my nature. How could I

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wish to be happy, and yet remain insensitive to the affairs of those people who wish for it just as much as I? No! There is a legislator within me who requires something entirely different and whom I must obey. Justice toward all human beings, uprightness in the whole of my conduct, thankfulness toward fatherland and benefactors, magnanimity even toward enemies, and a general love in the most expansive sense of the word. These natural and immediate outpourings of an internal rectitude, in which consist the health and ornament of my spirit, these shall be my most pleasant and steady occupation. I shall accustom myself to view good, fortune, beauty, and order with pleasure wherever I see them. Although I am most clearly aware how variously the things of the world correlate with one another, and relate to one another, and in what kind of relations I myself stand in respect to other beings, it shall be my unremitting concern that my sentiments, inclinations, and actions should harmonize most precisely with these relations. I cannot make a human being who was my benefactor not to have been my benefactor; I cannot make a being that is better and more excellent than I to be equal or worse than I. How nonsensical would it not be, if I were to deny the former my gratitude and the latter my esteem? Or if I were, in this way, to contradict the unchangeable essences of things and to rebel against the very highest law of truth? In such manner, I have recognized the enteral rules of right and order. I have recognized that it falls not to me to change the connections of things among one another from which those rules arise, nor even my sentiments regarding them. There is hence no other path for me, if I do not want to condemn myself, than that I conduct myself as befits those connections. My worth and my happiness shall now consist in that the sovereign pronouncements of truth alone guide my actions, unintoxicated by the tumult of passions and self-interested desires; that the pure sentiment of what is appropriate should

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constitute my properly highest obligation, and hence that generally, in every moment of my life, I should be that to which my nature and the universal nature of things determines me. By this means, a balance, a serenity, and a calm is brought to my soul, one which is far above the attacks of external adversities. Of course, I am not secure against the troublesome accidents that so variously accompany human life; but I am, in this case, secure from the agonies of shame and regret, which always make these accidents most troublesome. Any evil that I should perhaps encounter at most penetrates no further than my body, and never extends its destruction into my soul as long as I approve of myself in a state of calm contemplation, as long as I can say to myself: I do what I ought to do; I am what I ought to be. This alone is an inexhaustible source of equanimity and of peace, which in its stillness is of greater worth than all the clamor of sensuous amusements. Even if the feeling of this lofty delight was initially weak in me, from the very start I also found it irrefutably right and true; and afterward the more that I exercised my taste in respect to truth, beauty, and order, the finer this sensitive capacity of my spirit became and the more stirring this pleasure. I bring this constitution of my soul with me into every circumstance in which fate places me. And then, whatever else in the world I might be, I am yet internally happy, since I am righteous.

However, even beyond this the entirety of nature serves to increase my gratification. Ever since I stopped carelessly ignoring any trace of beauty or regularity, I find it infinitely plentiful in everything that I see around me. Everything is order; everything is proportion; everything is consequently a new object of liking, of love, and of joy. How very indifferent, how contemptible is that blinding shimmer of reputation and glory compared to the vibrant luster of the authentically beautiful world, compared to the impressions of cheerfulness, of calm, and of the admiration of a green meadow, of a rushing stream, of the pleasant terror of the night, or of the majestic scene of the innumerable worlds! Even the near-

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est and most common formations of nature stir me with a thousand-fold delights when I sense them with a soul that is disposed to peace and to admiration and that does not bear within itself, in its own perversity, the most natural seeds of discontent. This, my soul, encompasses the entirety of nature with a higher kind of love than that which arises from the senses; for which reason, its satisfaction is also not limited to these narrow and wavering boundaries. I lose myself in pleasure amid the contemplation of this universal beauty of which I endeavor to be a non-blemishing part. But whilst I pursue these thoughts ever further, which lead me to such heights, I encounter a concept that carries me away to a still more sublime admiration.—Beings that are so beautiful already within their limitations; worlds that have so much rectitude in their parts and in their combination; a whole full of order, from the tiniest particle of dust to the immeasurable expanse, full of regularity in all its laws, in bodies as well as in spirits; a whole that is so manifold and yet, by means of the most precise connection, is one; this provides me with the representation of a model of perfections, of an original beauty, of a first and universal source of order.—What a thought!—Is there then something upon which depends everything that I have so far admired? Is there then something from which all parts of nature receive their agreements, their relations, and their charm? An intellect that thinks for the whole, that arranges and steers the whole? A spirit that communicates existence, duration, powers, and beauty to all things through its incomprehensible emanations?—Here my astonished soul expands to the infinite. It seems to me that I sense, and with a rapturous shudder, the actuality of this supreme spirit.—Truly, he animates me, he works within me! What would I be without him? What would I be capable of? I, who knows most clearly that I did not exist at some point and that I did not give my activity to myself?— And what consequently would be the appropriate sentiments in me towards this being in which all my concepts of excellence join? Admiration, reverence, and the deepest adoration is still not yet sufficient to express the relationship

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in which I stand toward an infinite spirit. However, since I can render only so little to him, I will render it to him all the more sincerely. I will not make myself party to such a monstrous and loathsome distortion as to think of the origin of things with indifference and contempt. I am terrified by my smallness within immeasurable nature and compared to the still more immeasurable divinity. This solar system is a grain of sand. This earth is a particle of dust, a point. And I, upon this earth—what am I?—The only thing that makes me to be something despite this is that I can sense this order and can rise within it up to the beginning of all order. I am determined to such a height and I will always seek to approach it ever closer. I will not stop before I have pursued beauty to its first source. There, at that moment, my soul shall rest. There it shall be gratified with all of its capacities, satisfied with all of its drives, sated with the divine light, and enraptured in the veneration and adoration of the supreme and universal perfection, having forgotten itself and everything lower.— With this, I now also know undoubtedly that this intellect that governs all could have no other intention than that all things may be good in their own kinds and in the whole. All laws that he placed into them are directed toward this. The movements of bodies and the original drives of intelligent beings aim at it. The great sentiment of good and evil, of right and wrong, which I have known within myself, arises from nothing less than from the one who extends his mighty influence over all. It is hence a divine voice, it is the voice of eternal truth that speaks within me. Now, seeing that I possess such a venerable teacher and legislator in my conscience, I am surely, for this reason, that much more obligated to pay attention to and to obey his speech, which can be heard unceasingly in the deepest inner ground of my soul; but I am also, at the same time, certain that the unwavering honesty I display in this is the correct way to emulate that model of order according to my capacities and to please him. Apart from my inner rectitude, there is nothing possible within me that can give me a worth, nothing that can make me accord with the most primary constitution of my nature and with the intentions

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of the supreme government. This single ground of the divinity’s pleasure is as eternal and inalterable as he himself is. It is impossible for my desire for honor to rise higher than when I please the one from whom all goodness flows; when the one who sees all, who penetrates with a single gaze to all the sensations and motions in a million worlds, when he sees and approves of me amid this great host. Now, to me the judgments of the entire world are far too small for me to trouble myself especially for their sake. If the approval of other human beings, the favor of the great as well as the respect of the lesser, is not to be found on the royal road of truth and justice, which I alone must tread, then they certainly do not deserve for me to depart from it by a single step on their account. No human being, with all the pomp of his pageantry and his pride, can provide me with a worth through his endorsement, since he himself has no worth except insofar as he is upright and conducts himself according to the very same eternal standard of right and order. I am sufficiently great if I do not displease the governor of the whole. However, just as this renders me great, it also renders me calm. The spirit who watches over all will also watch over me. He whose wisdom and kindness reveals itself everywhere in such visible traces will let nothing happen whose end is not to him fair and to his creatures wholesome. In his hand alone stands also my fate, and if I do not disqualify myself from the happy effects of his care through my departure from the unchangeable prescriptions of the true and the good, if the judge whom he has appointed within does not condemn me, then nothing that seems adverse can truly harm me. To be sure, everything in this world is a riddle to me. I see the surfaces of things and their inner constitutions escape my eyes as well as my reflection. Perhaps the most protracted and diligent investigations teach me nothing more than to guess at things more artfully, but never once more successfully. Here everything leads into the infinite; and hence also the administration of the world. Everything con-

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fuses me; everything makes me uncertain.—But of course, what more do I need to know, seeing that I recognize with an undoubted conviction my obligation and the sovereignty of an infinite love? Ultimately, these alone are worth having all other insights terminate in them. Hence, I will not find it strange when I run into circumstances wherein I do not see beforehand the consequences and developments. Only, I will never lose sight of my great end, and hence will abandon myself, with an immovable assurance, to the one who steers all things according to his will and whose will is always good. Guided by his foresight, I will successfully make it through the most fearful confusions of this life, and all the obscure things that perhaps now surround and perplex me will at some point finally be transformed into light and joy. But when will this happen?—With my observations, I from time to time follow fortunes in this life until the end and I find the knot remains uncut. Only death ends here the oppression of virtue, and there the proud happiness of vice.—This wholly contradicts my expectation, which was grounded on concepts of order. Can the unchangeable rules of fairness permit a soul that exists as it ought to be forever robbed, by a malicious force, of the natural happy consequences of its inner rectitude (which would otherwise already be sufficient reward for it), and to be stricken and embittered? Is it proper for a person of upright mind, who deserves only to be happy, to be the prey of evil and a plaything of unjust persecutions throughout his entire life? That innocence and right should be condemned? That virtue should groan under hunger and privation and contempt, and frequently find its final reward in pains and tortures at the hands of a cruel executioner and the order of a still crueler tyrant? And that, on the contrary, treachery and bloodthirstiness, while seizing the pleasure and benefits of this life, are not at all aware what it means to deviate from what is eternally right and to revolt against the laws of the universal government?—Proportion and harmony here vanish; and my concept of a ruling order becomes a complete chaos.—

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No! It is not possible that the world should be governed in this way, if it is indeed governed at all. There must necessarily exist a better relation of things, even if I should have to seek for this, in its full clarity, outside the circle of this life. There must be a time at which everyone receives his due; at which everything that appears to be shifted and to be standing in the wrong place settles into its proper fate and into its proper position, at which the very most appropriate recompense occurs in an infinite variety of degrees from the one furthest extreme to the other and everything will be established in the most perfect proportion. Presently there exists a kind of disharmony that would incontestably be a flaw if it did not later resolve itself into a perfect harmony. In this manner, there opens up to me a prospect into the future, one which provides my hitherto trapped and beclouded soul with so much more pleasure and freedom, which promises complete enlightenment regarding all those dark spots in the plan according to which the world is governed, and which makes the entire extent of this foresight infinitely worthier and greater to me. I therefore confidently expect a distant series of times that will be the full harvest of the seed of the present and, by means of a universal, rightful recompense, will justify the wisdom that administers the whole. The dispositions in my nature appear quite obviously to be made for this purpose. I sense capacities within me, which are capable of a growth reaching into the infinite and which can also express themselves no less outside the connection with this body. Is my faculty to know and love the true and the good to cease at the moment when it is either for the first time able to mount upwards so much more swiftly to a greater perfection, or even, when it has hardly begun yet to develop or set itself in motion? There would then be too much futility in the arrangements of an infinite wisdom. But if only I am reassured that the great creator of all things, who acts in every case according to the strictest rules and according to the noblest intentions, cannot very well be willing to annihilate me himself, then, I believe, I need fear no other destruction. My own inner constitution provides

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me security of this. When I pay attention to myself, then I find that I am, in the very most precise sense, one. These members that make up my organs, I am not that; according to my most distinct sensation, these are distinct from me. Properly, I am that which has representations within me, judges, decides; and it is entirely certain that this I is not something among many and does not consist in various parts that can stand separately. I, the I feeling the impression of light, I am exactly the same who simultaneously senses the warmth of the air, the smell of the flowers, the sound of the person speaking to me, who compares these sensations with each other, who prefers one to the other. I am all too clearly conscious that there are not several of us, one of which has this impression, another of which has another, which impressions they then perhaps communicated to one another, and that therefore this I can be no compound made from several parts. Admittedly, I do not know further how matters really stand with this; but, on the contrary, I also know just as little whether and what the external, divisible, corporeal things are of which I have representations. At the very least, I myself am more known to me than all of that, and I can hence conclude from the foregoing, with a rational sureness, that whatever I really am, it must necessarily not be subject to the destruction that tears away my body. How much are my worth and my vocation not elevated by this great expectation? I henceforth know that I belong to an entirely different class of things than those that arise, transform, and pass away before my eyes; and that this visible life does not exhaust the entire end of my existence. I am therefore made for another life. The present time is only the beginning of my duration; it is my first childhood in which I am reared for eternity; days of preparation that are to make me capable of a new and more noble condition. From this concept of my true and entire life I will learn to correctly gauge the value of the present one. I will never forget the proportion in which these few days stand to the eternity that I have to live through. While considering them from this point of view, the good and evil encounters of the present world lose all their weight in my eyes. Repu-

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tation, fame, might, victories and crowns are a brief play of human vanity, and after death at least, are no more. Am I to debase myself so much as to make such things an object of my genuine esteem? My soul, whose duration and sentiments stretch infinitely further, is not so small. After ten thousand years, none of those things provide me with either worth or gratification any longer, and I would be very happy if I could think of them at that time with as much satisfaction and lack of shame as I presently do the pastimes of my childhood. But what then, by equal reasoning, even is the adversity of this life? Should I be inconsolable over the discomforts of a short road that leads me to my loftier fatherland, to that kingdom of light and truth, where I will receive, in the form of a closer vision and enjoyment of original goodness, and in the eternal feeling of the purest joy, sufficient compensation for what have I suffered here perhaps innocently. I see how much for me depends on my presently holding fast to these thoughts within myself. I will therefore accustom myself to constantly considering eternity and this present life as one whole, to connecting the latter with the former in all of my actions, to always thinking of every matter as I will have to think of it at some point in the future world and in the final moment of this present life, and to never ever forget that uprightness and an orderly soul are the only thing that retains equal worth in both. I hope this will bring me gradually to the state where I can view the changes and accidents of this world with an immovable mind, without fear and desire. At that point, I will no longer be allowed to concede that apparent good and evil make a more vivid impression on me than they are worth. I will thereby give my life a certain proficiency and uniformity and always be the same to myself. I will pass the days of this temporal life with satisfaction and end them with gladness. In particular, I am constantly prepared for this last step. I think about my exit from this scene of life like a matter to which I could perhaps be summoned this very hour, and I lose nothing by this otherwise so frightful

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thought. It is undoubtedly a sad and pitiful condition in which those human beings find themselves, to whom this great and unavoidable change never occurs without making them tremble. Hence, I have regarded it as worthy of my greatest concern to lift myself above this distress; and I succeeded. My entire constitution is precisely formed such that all my gratifications are perfectly compatible with the representation of death. This representation can never again disturb my rest and peace, since this thing itself, namely death, will find nothing in my happiness to destroy, but rather the latter must necessarily increase in respect to all its essential parts. Such a noble and important influence on the entire state of my soul and conduct, stemming from this great prospect of my future vocation, would cause me to avoid as much as possible discovering its falsity, even if it could be false. To me too much depends on its being true. I will therefore always further saturate my entire mind with the comforting representation that I am to live in a still different condition wherein I may expect nothing but good owing to the nature of things and the kind government of the supreme wisdom; that I will therefore at some point, after a complete liberation from the follies as well the plagues of this life, unite myself eternally with the source of perfections, enjoy unalloyed and without interruption the entire ecstasy of righteous inclinations, and hence all the more achieve the great goal to which I am destined by my nature and by my creator, namely, to be upright and in uprightness to be happy. Omnium, quae in hominum doctorum disputatione versantur, nihil perfecto est praestabilius, quam plane intelligi, nos ad iustitiam esse natos. Cicero3

3

Cicero, Laws I.28: “But out of all the material of the philosophers’ discussions, surely there comes nothing more valuable than the full realization that we are born for justice . . . ” (Cicero 1928, p. 329).

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2

Thomas Abbt and Moses Mendelssohn: Doubt and Oracle on the Human Vocation, And Excerpts from Their Correspondence (1756–1766) translated by Anne Pollok1

Letters Between Moses Mendelssohn and Thomas Abbt, 1756–17662 Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, August 13, 17563 Dearest, best friend! You have often told me, into my ear, or publicly, that you take the connection between the will and reason to be an impenetrable mystery; so often that I feel the urge to take up the challenge, and start a quarrel with you.4 Apologies are in vain, such as “I am just writing a world history,” or “I drive in circles,” “I am about to visit the count,” etc. Nothing! You have thrown the gauntlet already, I pick it up and say “here I am!” You shall not have aggravated this thinker in vain, who cherishes his system so much, and fantasizes about wild ideas.5 1

2

3

4

5

For this translation, I thank Joel de Lara, who was editor of the Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal of the New School in 2018 (parts of this translation appeared in volume 39.1, pp. 237–61), and who was a tremendous help in forming this translation into a readable text that was still faithful enough to its original. This translation is based on the reprint of the Doubts and the Oracle in JA 5/1:617–37, and the respective letters in JA 11, 12/1, and 21. Autograph from the archive of the Duke of Schaumburg-Lippe, Bückeburg, Sigle F I A XXXV 18.95a, vol. IX, No. 27; to be reprinted in JA 21/1. The present translation is based on the reprint in Moses Mendelssohn (2013), Phädon, Anne Pollok (ed.), Hamburg: Meiner, pp. 6–8. Mendelssohn’s formulation is a bit more roundabout, but “eine Lanze brechen” has nearly the same metaphorical meaning as “etwas vom Zaun brechen:” to start something unprovoked (or barely provoked). Jokingly, Mendelssohn meshes up the system builder (such as Wolff and, to an extent, Leibniz) and the unsystematic dreamer.

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But in all seriousness, dear friend! I want to know what you find so mysterious in the transition from representation to willing. I cannot even tell you anything new about this topic; however, why should I feel ashamed to just repeat what you can find in every compendium? The first source of our understanding comes from our nurse. A student deems himself wiser, since he has already learned how to spell; albeit he got his spelling from the school master, and the greatest school master on earth is and has been, even in his time, a student of the nurse. Allow me to repeat my compendium here. Our soul is a substance that senses and thinks. Within the epitome of all our sensations and thoughts there is sometimes something distinct and enlightened, but oftentimes much rather confused and obscure.—Our soul is a limited substance—but its limits do not always stay the same. Some confused ideas become distinct, some obscure clear up, while other notions lose their distinctness, or recede from light into shadow. This we are taught by our inner, indisputable intuition, which we cannot question. Thus the limits of our soul are variable—and the reason for these changes lies in the soul herself, and is the ground for her power. If you seek to understand this foundation: search within yourself. Pay attention to your fundamental drive,6 which thirsts after new notions without pause and guides your attention now onto these, now onto those concepts. This way you will cognize the original power of your soul through intuition.7 What more do you want? Do you also want its symbolic notion? There is no shortage of those.—Analyze its inner properties distinctly? That cannot happen. This is the first thing that we cognize of a substance, and from which we can explain everything else that applies to a substance. Seeking to explain this first instance of our cognition with even earlier notions would mean to seek to understand the manner in which God can give reality to a substance. Since the substance does not have an inner structure from which we could deduce its constitution,8 there is no other way to get a genetic notion from it, other than understanding how God created it from nothing. These are the limits within which I happily stay quiet. Any further inquiry means seeking to understand the structure of a thing that does not have a structure, or to achieve [insight into] the creation out of nothing with our stupid reason. I resign myself with the inner intuitive conviction that I constantly seek to gain new notions, and hence pay attention now to this, then to that. But how is my attention drawn to this or that? What exactly determines the power of our soul now this way, now that? This is due to the preceding state of 6 7 8

Grundtrieb. Anschauend. Beschaffenheit.

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our soul. If I could clearly and distinctly cognize the epitome of all my current sensations and thoughts; then I would understand why the power of my soul is determined in the next instance like this and no other way, why I will attentively observe this, abstract from that, cognize this distinctly, and that confusedly, etc. Every representation draws our attention, in regard to the reality that it promises; since reality is what satisfies the fundamental drive of our soul and the reason for its striving for cognition.9 Here you have the first seed of desire! In its origin it is nothing other than the determination10 and direction of our attention, and the determination11 of our soul’s power of representation.12 Any representation, insofar as it can cause such a desire, [and exerts] such a control on our attention,13 is called a driving force of the soul.14 Those that we think distinctly [are called] reasons to act.15 In every moment there is a battle in our soul. A vast number of obscure, clear, confused, distinct, etc. notions fight for the attention of our soul. The might of each one is due to the size, novelty, distinctness, and swiftness of its reality.16 Oftentimes driving forces join in a common final aim, and give birth to a desire. This conflict is decided concerning the law of the mightiest, and we pay attention to, or desire to realize the representation of the one that has the highest degree of effectiveness. Now I am on dry land. Once we have the driving forces, reasons to act, desires, and decisions; then the whole mystery of the soul lies before our eyes and we can decipher it. Tell me now where there is the room that divides the understanding and the will, or heart and spirit! Tell me how you could even imagine the faculty of cognition without attention, attention without direction, direction without desire! This desire is distinct from the mightiest passion that could ever grip the soul, like the whispering Zephyr17 differs from a hauling tempest. The bigger the mass and

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17

Geiz nach Erkenntnis in the original may sound even more ardent; A.P. Bestimmung. Determination. Vorstellungskraft. Lenkung unserer Aufmerksamkeit. Triebfeder der Seele. Bewegungsgrund, we could also translate as “motivation.” The phrase “Deutlichkeit und Geschwindigkeit ihrer Realität” is confusing. It seems that this is an early version of Mendelssohn’s theory of the effectiveness of representations. Borrowing from Sulzer, Mendelssohn assumes that obscure ideas can be processed more swiftly and hence have a certain heightened effectiveness. Sulzer brings this to the rather problematic conclusion that “only obscure ideas can move,” which Mendelssohn tampers down a bit, but still uses for his explanation as to why aesthetically pleasing ideas consisting of at least clear and confused, but also obscure notions, can be very pleasing and work effectively to convince us of something. See my discussion of this in Pollok 2010, chapter III.2. Zephyr, the westerly wind, is the most friendly and softest type: it brings the warmth of spring.

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the speed of the air in motion, the more violent the storm. Once the scientist18 explains how you can blow away the tiniest speck of dust, then you have the whole mystery as to how Aeolus can reign over the winds.—But enough metaphysics! . . . I am your true friend Moses Mendelssohn

Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, November 2, 176219 [. . .] I read Hume’s History of England.20 Incomparable! What I like most is the manner in which he develops the characters and events. Here his skeptical spirit served him well. He shows both, the good and the bad side of a character, [and] for every event [he shows] the causes that could be determined beforehand and those that seem random. And he presents the former as meshed together,21 and the latter as intertwined,22 as they tend to be in nature. [. . .]

Thomas Abbt, Rinteln, November 10, 176223 [. . .] When you tell me in a joking antithesis that you lack some necessary things;24 then be aware that there are the hearts of Christians that bleed under the pressure of Jewish virtues. I would not want Brutus to have read your letter before his demise.—You will easily detect the transition,—I begin to hate history indeed. Which earth? What should we say about the human vocation? I have always thought that, according to my notion of it, we know nothing about it, and have expressed this as such in my review of Süßmilch’s Order.25 The human

18 19 20

21 22 23 24

25

Naturforscher. JA 11:358. Mendelssohn refers to the German translation of David Hume‘s History of England (6 vols., 1754– 63); the first installment of the German translation was published in 1762, but it contains the fifth, not first volume. Mendelssohn’s Book Index also lists on p. 17 the 3rd volume from 1770. Vermischt. Ineinander verflochten. JA 11:360. The antithesis refers to the closing paragraph in Mendelssohn’s letter from November 2, 1762: “Goodbye, dearest friend! And do not forget that in Berlin, under the weight of a thousand harrowing businesses, under a plethora of blearing postillions, and in dire need of many necessary things sits a married philosopher, who calls himself etc.” (JA 11:358) Abbt’s review of Johann Süßmilch’s The divine order proven by the changes of humankind from birth to death, and in light of its procreation (Die göttliche Ordnung in den Veränderungen des menschlichen Geschlechts aus der Geburt, dem Tode, und der Fortpflanzung desselbigen erwiesen. 2. Ed. Berlin 1762) was published in Litteraturbriefe 245–50, between July 29 and August 19. See in particular Letter 250, XV, pp. 126–8: “In a nutshell, there is nothing left than to worship in deep humility the moment God’s intentions are mentioned. Even revelation does not teach us about our essential [eigentlich] vocation . . . ” (see my discussion in Pollok 2010, pp. 82–3).

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vocation must belong to a grander plan of which we do not understand anything? Well! That is commonly known. But what if this insight is of any earthly use to us? Nothing more, methinks, than that every human being must realize its own happiness through its virtue, and that providence does not mete out more rewards nor punishments than are necessary for its plan. These general observations secure the thinker in the truth or their systems of happiness, of which others understand nothing. These are the thoughts that well up in me when I read history. [. . .]

Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, February 9, 176426 [. . .] I expect your comments on the human vocation with utter impatience. And to ensure that our freedom of thought is as unrestricted as possible, I wish that for our dispute we borrow the names of two Greek philosophers.27 We shall not bind ourselves to any system, though, and should only presume knowledge of the newer systems, and only as much as is needed. This way, on account of someone already dead, we may be able to present without hesitation our most audacious doubts that we usually do not even dare to unveil to ourselves. I hope that this exchange won’t be without any benefit. [. . .] Now Hercules stands at a crossroads, and must choose. Not between virtue and lust. The latter no longer dares to present the favorite of wisdom her amorous allure. Virtue is sure of her victory; but which way will she lead him to immortality? Through the steep cliffs of metaphysics, or on the flowery path of history, morality, and politics, or via the hills of mathesis? Do you want to hear the voice of our friend, who, kept back by fate, cannot follow you, but only call you from a distance: choose the philosophy of mankind! The Proper Study of Mankind is Man28

The human being, its powers and abilities, customs, rights, and responsibilities make up an infinite sea of knowledge.29 Whoever ventures out there without the guidance of a healthy metaphysics perishes. You have enough metaphysical

26 27 28 29

JA 12/1:32–5. Weltweisen. Mendelssohn cites Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man II, 2 in the original. unermessliches Meer von Erkenntnissen.

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insights30 to start this journey, and, which is more, your genius has already proven itself with advantage. But what? Does not my rashness go too far? I dare to play the advocate for your inner and most secret matters? You must laugh about my daringness, and you might be surprised about it. But luckily I have only half a sheet which is now filled. Who knows what else today’s mood would have lured me into writing? Goodbye, my best friend! and love me.

Thomas Abbt, Rinteln, February 20, 176431 I cannot tell you as strongly as I wish how much I thank you from my heart for your last letter. I have other friends, not many, whom I love as much as I love you. But none of their letters I expect so urgently as yours, for they teach me. My life is not going to be so extraordinary that it would ever appear in print, but by all moments of my luck, my development, and my mistakes that I have jotted down for myself, it should be noted that my first work32 brought me the acquaintance of misters Nicolai and Moses; and my subsequent stay in Berlin brought me their friendship. For a long time I have not doubted it, as unbelievable as its fast acquisition was, given such a non-obliging manner as yours: but I confess that your willingness to indulge in the proposed matter of our exchange is the newest and strongest proof of it. Since I dare say that—maybe with the exception of Lessing and Nicolai—there is not a being in this world, other than me, that you would have started such a discussion with. You expect, as you said, my thoughts about the human vocation with impatience. How much will you be surprised that you can find these already in Bayle’s shadowy form that I evoked in my review on Spalding’s work, which I have sent to our Nicolai.33 It is up to you whether you want to publish this review, or not—even though I wrote it with diligence. But you may think about it whatever you wish; you might fear now that you have to read the same thing twice: our conversation should have its

30 31 32 33

Einsichten. JA 12/1:36–9. On Merit (Vom Tode für das Vaterland, 1761), s. AVW 2. The French author and philosopher Pierre Bayle plays the role of the pivotal Aufklärer here; quite befittingly, as his contribution to the monumental Dictionnaire historique et critique (2 vols. 1695/96, 4 vols. 1702), which was translated into German under Johann Christoph Gottsched’s main editorship in 1741–44 (Peter Baylens historisches und kritisches Wörterbuch, Leipzig), can attest. With the “review,” Abbt means his notes on the seventh edition. Nicolai, however, already had Friedrich Gabriel Resewitz’s review (Letter 277, March 29 and April 5, 1764, vol. XVIII, pp. 3–24).

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proper beginning, and I want to build it from thoughts that are not included in the review. We may choose other names. If orthodox theologians came into possession of this exchange, we would just be in danger to be damned in effigy. Aristipp34 speaks thus: Whenever I reflect on the notion of religion, immortality, eternal beatitude, or eternal damnation; I have always found that we go at them from two sides of our heart. Either we are full of that longing35 for consolation that a mighty being full of goodness should offer its poor creatures in a sensible manner; or we are of the conviction that all creatures are equally distant from their creator, and are left on their own devices. Every searcher must have experienced these two sides. The first one feels quenching. It feels like the position of the tired when finally some peace creeps into their limbs. When we are unhappy, nothing is as uplifting as thinking of our creator, who not only decided to make all creatures as such happy, but who also has some specific repayment for their current suffering in store. I am not talking about the martyrs of various religions. I am not concerned for those. But how could a count of Strafford, abandoned by Charles I,36 how could this spoiled and weak man hold himself in his prolonged suffering? How could the woman who to Monmouth’s anger housed a rebel, and was executed after that rebel himself betrayed her, how could she and thousands of others hold themselves up until their end?37 And something else. If anyone walks the paths of sin, then they will run into warnings that are supposed to hold them back, encounter feelings that lead them to God, that soothe them, lead them onto better paths. All this leads to religion, makes the heart willing to be taken in and being inclined to ascribe all further relapse to the rebellion of sensuality. In contrast to this, the other position, in which I am not so inclined to submerge myself, has something to it that flatters the good heart, and which heightens my love for my brothers: other human beings. Those higher sentiments pleased me, they led me to the means for a more intimate union with the highest being; however, they also gave rise to a new morality in which neglect of people 34

35 36

37

Aristippus of Kyrene, a student of Socrates and Plato, presumably one founder of eudaimonism. Diogenes Laertius characterizes him as a person who sees the positive in everything. His motto: “I own, I am not owned.” He is also attributed with introducing the notion of “humaneness” into philosophy, see Christian Göbel (2002), Griechische Selbsterkenntnis. Platon—Parmenides—Stoa— Aristipp. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, p. 246. bestrebenden Gefühle. Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, a close advisor to King Charles I, was sentenced to death for treason by the House of Commons. Charles I had to sign the death warrant, as he was in dire need of the support from parliament. Regardless, he himself was executed in 1649, which led to the (short-lived) end of the monarchy in England and Scotland. James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, was a bastard son of Charles II, executed under James II. The fate of Mrs. Gaunt is a short topic in Hume’s History of England.

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of another faith38 does not seem so small of a point. Yes, yes! Religion leads me to this union? Alas, how am I supposed to understand this. The man himself, who otherwise preaches nothing but love for our brothers in faith, John himself draws this strange conclusion: “Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God.” And he even adds the command: “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.”39 With this, all that was holy hospitality is immediately reduced to a small heap, and I do not understand how I could earnestly support the doctrine of tolerance40 the moment I succumb to a particular religion. If I look at humanity and how it has fared so far, and still is; then I find as many unbelievable things. Their whole course of life puts me in awe. So many millions slaughtered, so many millions extremely dumb and ignorant, so many millions who endure their lives in sweat and lower duties,41 which is only interrupted by worship at certain times; a certain amount who are evil and torture others; a certain amount who have elevated themselves to thinking, of which some form parties, others doubt and stay quiet. The sum total of those who think, read, write, dissent is, compared to the large masses maybe 1:10 000, and this is even put optimistically—and even for this small number we have only the theory of a religion. If it does not have any practical effect on them all; it may be good, but is quasi non-existent. Such observations, as true as they may be, make me cold, throw me into brooding, and force me to the question or exclamation: for what might the human being be determined?42 What I am searching for might be mostly dependent on the solution to this question. Thus I am going to analyze it: 1) What is the human vocation, insofar as the human being is a creature, a part of the whole of creation? 2) What is their creation insofar as they are considered a human being, as this specific part of creation? 3) Can we infer their future fate after death from the [answer to the] first [question], or only from the second? 4) Can we infer any rules for their current actions from only the [answer to the] first [question], even if we had no knowledge of the second? This might be enough for today, times are busy [. . .] 38 39 40 41 42

Andersgesinnte. I follow the King James translation, 2nd epistle, pp. 9–11. Duldung. tierische Beschäftigungen. Bestimmet.

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If you happen to see our Nicolai stroll by your window or on your path, please call after him like Shimei.43 You may even throw a small stone after him, because he has not written to me in a long while. Now that he has the manuscript, he loses his good virtue again. I do not greet him, 2 John, 10. Farewell, my friend. Love your friend.

Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, May 1, 176444 Some domestic events have shaken me up so much that I did not even want to enjoy my favorite pastime, writing to my friends. Death has knocked on my door and stolen a child, who has only spent eleven months—but these, Blessed is the Lord!45 blithely and full of promise—on this earth.46—My friend! The innocent child did not spend her eleven months in vain. Even in this short amount of time, her spirit had made some impressive progress. From a small animal who cries and sleeps she turned into the seedling of a reasonable creature. Like the tips of fresh grass cut through the harsh soil in spring; such could we witness the dawn of her first passions. She showed pity, hate, love, admiration, she understood the language of speaking people, and she always endeavored to communicate her thoughts to others. Is nothing of this present anymore in the whole of nature now? You will laugh at my naivete, and in my musings you will see the weakness of someone seeking consolation, who cannot find it anywhere than in his imagination. It may be! I have enough self-love to adopt any doctrine that facilitates my well-being, without pampering my flaws. I cannot believe that God has set us on this earth like foam on a wave: and since I see in the opposite opinion less confusion and much consolation, I embrace it, and anticipate with firm footing the friend who wants to take it from me. But please do not let this hinder you, my friend! from sharing all your doubts with me. I have highest hopes to get you onto my side, and I take your prolonged silence as an admission. Please send my previous letter back to me, so that I know exactly what I wrote in there. [. . .]

43

44 45

46

See 2 Samuel 16, 5–13: Shimei curses King David, who defends this by pointing out that God himself has apparently asked Shimei to do so. Shimei’s exclamation “thou art a bloody man” (ibid., 16, 8) is particularly refreshing in the given context. JA 12/1:43. “Gottlob!” in the original; Mendelssohn himself likely meant Baruch HaShem! (I thank Alice Pinheiro Walla for this reference). Moses and Fromet Mendelssohn’s first child, their daughter Sara, only lived from May 29, 1763 to April 15, 1764.

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Doubts and Oracle Concerning the Human Vocation Printed in Schinznach, 1763 Preface47 In the last mail,48 I received a small package for which I had to pay postage of a few Thalers, presumably because the sender forgot that besides the charge for riding post, there is also a charge for driving post. I opened the package with some desire and almost became angry when I did not find much more than a little treatise of ninety-eight pages in a small octavo inside. However, after skimming through this slim brochure, and having read it after this cursory sweep, I felt more gratitude toward the anonymous sender. For various reasons, I presumed that this little piece, though printed, was destined to stay in the hands of a few good friends, and this is why I now send it to you,49 since it seems that you would hardly have any opportunity to lay eyes on it otherwise. It is worth your scrutiny; the topic is extremely important, and the authors do not seem to be scholars of the lowest rank. And if we deem letters by scholars that deal with unimportant matters to be worthy of publication simply because they have not been published previously, we should be much more curious about what learned people have brought to paper for their own edification concerning such an important topic as the human vocation. Even assuming that such inquiries could not sufficiently satisfy the reader, they should nevertheless encourage inquiring minds50 to further thinking, and this is a huge advantage already.

Notice51 During a meeting of valued friends, whose discussions52 have as their own eternal aim the advancement of truth and virtue, nearly everyone shared their

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50 51

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As first published in the 287th Letter Concerning the Latest Literature. The preface is kept anonymous, dated June 21, 1764. Some attribute this preface, signed “Re.,” to Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, though it could have been written by either Abbt or Mendelssohn as well (see Eva J. Engel in her introduction to JA 5/1:lii). Reichspost. The original addressee of these letters was Ewald Christian von Kleist, but it is safe to assume that the letters are meant for the public. Denkende Köpfe. This “notice” [Nachricht] was written anonymously. I follow Engel who attributes it to Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (see JA 5/1:lii), but see above FN 47. Unterredungen.

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thoughts concerning a book by an excellent author, On the Human Vocation. Euphranor and Theodul53 were furthest apart in their opinions. Even at the end of their extensive54 discussion they had not come to a conclusion—as is often the case in friendly gatherings where nobody attempts to silence the enemy with a few rhetorical tricks,55 but rather every party is keen to state their opinion with Swiss frankness.56 Euphranor later wrote down some of his doubts concerning the matter and assertively left them on his desk, being sure that his friend Theodul would see them there. Soon his friend laid eyes on the notes and read them alone, with his Euphranor discreetly absent. Theodul thought more about the matter, and at the next meeting deposited the “Oracle” (as it is printed here below) on Euphranor’s desk. I thought that these two little works would please whoever listened to Euphranor’s and Theodul’s discussion—and, moreover, that it may offer a nice occasion for some friends of virtue57 to meditate on one of the most important, yet controversial, questions. This is the justification for their present publication.

[Thomas Abbt] Doubts Concerning the Human Vocation “Who are we? And for what purpose were we born into this life”?58 Which benevolent spirit will give us the correct answer to these questions? I read Spalding’s work On the Human Vocation. I read it with pleasure and thought it through; I thoroughly considered every thought. My vocation! To study it; to

53

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Euphranor is the enthusiast, who calls forth his doubts (i.e., Abbt); Theodul represents the godfearing declarer of the oracle (i.e., Mendelssohn). Weitläufig. Fechterstreiche does originally refer to the knightly pastime of fencing, but means here, of course, its rhetorical equivalent. “Eidgenössische Freimütigkeit,” which roughly translates to “Swiss frankness,” is most likely an allusion to Rousseau. In Rousseau’s epistolary novel, Julie, or the New Eloise, Saint-Preux reports in a letter to Julie that he was chided by some acquaintances for behaving in a manner that was overly formal and inconsistent with said “Swiss frankness” (Rousseau [1761] 1987, p. 218). Mendelssohn, Abbt, and Nicolai were among the throng of ardent readers. Philaretes. “Quid sumus? et quidnam victuri gignimur”? Abbt opens his essay with the Latin quote from Aulus Persius Flaccus (Satura, bk. 3, line 67), copying Spalding who opened his Bestimmung des Menschen in the same way (see SpKA I, 1:1). Both Spalding and Abbt interpolate question marks that do not exist in the original. Here, I have translated from Abbt’s German translation of the Latin original (rather than directly from the Latin), as I do for all quotations of languages other than German for the rest of this exchange.

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identify humanity’s rank in the world; to detect how we touch the wheels of this great machine; to fathom the connection of our appearances within the content of this great play, in particular within its fifth act: it seems to me that all this should be the true and essential59 content of such a work. Honesty in thinking— you forgotten but still indispensable muse, do not leave our side as we agonize over this vocation in relation to which all further knowledge is merely preparatory! Support me in my examination of the grand scheme60 of this work. After having enjoyed this work’s beauties for an appropriate time, I also want to know whether Mr. Spalding’s answer fully satisfies the question [concerning our vocation]. If only Bayle’s shadowy form61 could be summoned by my evocations; how much would I like to subject myself this one time to the dread of the midnight hour, spell and wand in hand with which to cast my circles!62 I will dare to try, even if I might be unsuccessful. Thus I speak:63 wherever you may be, Bayle, you enemy of systems, wherever you dwell64 and spread your doubt: I summon you to cast your objections to enlighten one of the most important matters. Such a call used to hold much appeal for you—and behold, it still does! It’s as if a folio sheet swooshes past me; I think I also see a figure holding it. Silent, I listen to you:65 speak! The human vocation—is this supposed to mean: how human beings should determine themselves to this or that behavior in order to become happy? Or should it mean: the determinate place of humanity in relation to the whole ordered edifice of the world?66 If we mean the latter, the answer to the question is going to be harder. But that is no matter: my question is also more relevant.67 And if I get stuck, the questioner will nevertheless be able to tell me, paraphrasing Petronius, “I am grateful for your weakness. I have amused myself too long in the shadow of cognition.”68 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68

Eigentlich. The original has Vorwurf, but Abbt does not mean an accusation, but a scheme, an Entwurf. Schattengestalt. Kreiseziehen. Abbt does not use quotation marks to indicate where his speech—or Bayle’s fictional response— begins or ends. Thus, there is a certain amount of ambiguity in the text as to who is supposed to be speaking at any given time. herum schwärmest. Faveo lingua. Weltgebäude. Erheblicher. “Nunc etiam languori tuo gratias ago: in umbra cognitionis diutius lusi.” Abbt quotes Petronius, Satyricon, §129, line 4, except that in the original Petronius refers to the shadow of “pleasure” (voluptatis), rather than “cognition” (cognitionis). What Abbt means here is that if he (or Bayle) gets stuck trying to answer the question concerning the human vocation, at least he got us slightly further out of “the shadow of cognition,” by which he alludes to the broader metaphysical positions that just give us an account of the general vocation, therewith casting the particular vocation of the individual again in shadows.

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And of course we are “in the shadow of cognition”! What can I offer that shines forth in full light? I am not allowed to sit down on the grass, my school knowledge69 spread out under me, and ponder—solemn and carefree about everything that has previously happened in the world—which of the philosophical systems of happiness I shall choose. Oh no, my question cannot be answered so conveniently. First, I must roam the whole earth through the centuries. I must idle with the black troupes70 to understand their way of acting; [I must] endure the winter in Laplandian huts, nearly unconscious from the smoke, to get to know this human race better; I must not lose focus, nor tire amid the repulsive slaughter, the absurdity, the bestial deeds of European history, in my inquiry71 into humanity’s ignorance, stupidity, superstition, and blunders; it must not upset me to observe carefully the premature departure of tender newborn babies, or to witness the imprudence of others, and choose among them the few who can ponder my question. Once I have seen the morals and customs of many cities,72 I might catch a light from these [examples] that illuminate the human vocation to me. I once read a rare work on which I have never laid eyes again; back then, I only crafted a hasty summary of it. The work had roughly the following title: “Description of a March by Some Belligerent People, and of the Funny Occurrences that Happened on It” (Strasburg, 1586).73 A sovereign had taken some people from foreign lands under his command, with a task even unbeknownst to the colonel in chief. The march proceeded slowly; due to reasons that were kept secret from them, the soldiers were forced to stop at different

69

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Abbt alludes to the knowledge of the rational school of philosophy (Schulwissen), as represented by Christian Wolff, among others. Note that Abbt and Mendelssohn already agreed that they might presuppose only some notions of these schools (Mendelssohn’s letter from February 9, 1764, here p. 63). This is a reference to groups of white actors in blackface who performed shows in Europe and America lampooning Black people, who were usually represented as slaves. For a discussion of the history of such shows, which were precursors to minstrel performances, see John Springhall (2008), “Blackface Minstrelsy: The First All-American Show,” chap. 3 of Springhall 2008, pp. 57–78. I thank Joel de Lara for this reference. The original nachschleichen sounds much more clandestine. Here, Abbt reformulates the Latin version of a line from Homer (Odyssey, bk. 1, line 3), as translated by Horace (Ars Poetica, bk. 5, line 142): “mores multorum vidi et urbes.” That this is Abbt’s reference was noted by Mendelssohn’s commentators (see Michael Albrecht and Hans Lausch, commentary, JA 5/3a–b:808). Beschreibung von dem Marsche einiger Kriegsvölker, und was für lustige Begebenheiten sich dabey zugetragen. This work is of course fictional. However, Mendelssohn’s commentators identify this as a reference to an essay by Abraham Gotthelf Kästner (see JA 5/3a–b:808): “Abhandlung von den Pflichten (1751),” in vol. 1 of Gesammelte poetische und prosaische schönwissenschaftliche Werke, Berlin: Theodor Johann Christian Friedrich Enslin, 1841, pp. 58–79.

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estates, some of which belonged to the sovereign, their commander.74 Here now begins the tale of several entertaining occurrences, on which I did not waste any time in my excerpt, as funny and original as some of them had seemed to me. Most noteworthy were the many speeches and conjectures that the soldiers started to entertain, impatient with their lengthy stations, and which my chronologist wrote down carefully and—according to the custom of those times—in a rather circumvent75 and rhetorical manner. Most of the soldiers just wiled the day away in a disorderly fashion, as is common among soldiers. Some of them, however, disappeared suddenly. It was rumored that they had been removed during the night, but whereto? That was the question. The colonel himself and some of his most demure76 officers, despite the fact that they were as uninformed as everyone else about the sovereign’s secret plans, conducted their stay as attentively and dutifully as if they expected an order to decamp at any moment. Many others doubted that such an order would finally come, at least not an order to move any farther. They did venture, however, that an order to divert the troops would eventually be given, even though their comrades reminded them of the extensive preparations and high costs it had taken to get the troops there in the first place. What were they to think about those who had been surreptitiously taken from them? There were no letters from these soldiers, and those who claimed to have received letters were precisely the last people with whom the departed would have corresponded. Were they really deployed by the sovereign to fulfill his intentions? Or had someone secretly—after the soldiers had walked a certain distance, and due to some special circumstances—conveyed an order that they may return home? Were they deployed prior to their other comrades due to good conduct in their fixed quarters? Yet, surely to best serve their master’s advantage, the disorderly ones should have been withdrawn first, and anyway, most among the deployed had been with the troops for such a short time that one could not say anything bad or good about their behavior. The conduct of the colonel and some officers was beyond reproach. But was this any indication as to where they would be sent? The colonel himself did not even know the answer. In light of this obscurity and uncertainty, it seemed advisable and sensible77 to model one’s behavior on the colonel, since it seemed certain that the sovereign would not have wanted a band of robbers. But the soldiers could not discern 74 75 76 77

Soldherr. Weitschweifig. Gesetzeste. Billig.

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whether their behavior on these estates—in case they would indeed advance, which nobody knew—would be of any relevance concerning the further tasks for which they would be deployed, or whether the penalties that here followed bad conduct would later be deemed to be sufficient by the sovereign. Some officers in particular had behaved inappropriately, but from the penalty that they had earned (and that, come to think of it, they had already in a way at least partially suffered), from this present penalty one could at best speculate whether [and how] the sovereign would punish them a second time. But whither and for what act of war78 he had determined them they could not discern from these punishments, either. I could continue to copy [the account] at length here about some of the colonel’s inventions to reign everyone in and, in particular, to prevent desertions; about the brazen conjectures and the insolent pretenses of some letter writers;79 about the penalties against the so-called jabberjaws80 and raisonneurs. But since I am not just trying to stuff my Dictionnaire,81 I shall be more economical in my remarks.82 Instead, let me tell you about the reflections that this work inspired in me. I, for one, became very much convinced that everyone at the camp could have made fixed rules for himself, even though he lived in ignorance with respect to his further assignmen.83 As such, it would be worth the effort to carefully note the inferences that everyone drew from their own behavior and the behavior of their comrades to the intentions of the sovereign, in order to see how hope or fear affected their conduct. Through such careful observations, one might create a history of the disposition of particular members of this war-crowd.84 I see that the author (for the sake of whose work you called upon me to comment [i.e., Spalding]) also gave this work [On the Human Vocation] the title History of the Sentiments of an Honest Man.85 Hence, I can just peruse this work in order to

78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85

Kriegsverrichtung. Briefsteller. Schwermäuler. Wörterbuch; this seems to be a hint that Bayle, author of the 1697 Dictionnaire historique et critique, is still speaking. Ausführungen. Bestimmung. Kriegshaufen. Abbt cites Spalding (SpKA I, 1:67). Spalding, however, did not put this as an alternative title or subtitle of Bestimmung des Menschen, though he did stress in the last paragraph of the addendum to the third edition that it does amount to “a history of the sentiments of an honest man” (see Johann Joachim Spalding, Betrachtung über die Bestimmung des Menschen ([Berlin: Johann Jacob Weitbrecht, 1749], 31; my translation). He kept this addendum until the ninth edition from 1774.

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carefully analyze my second piece.86 It should be noted in passing that the author does not teach us anything about the vocation of the human being, which differs from the vocation of all created beings. The human being, of course, has its part in the latter, but this [the former], is its own and would, once known, solve all riddles. This work is the monologue of an erudite and pensive man. Hence, it does not suit the immense mass of human beings whose happiness—or its opposite—is determined almost entirely by external circumstances. Does the savage know whether there could be a sentiment that—after its enjoyment—our sensibility deems to be too low? But let now the pensive, educated man make himself heard! The beginning [of Spalding’s work] cannot be improved upon. Overly cultivated and natural pleasures87 are juxtaposed, and the latter are given preference due to their intensity.88 However, doubts about the appropriateness of such pleasures for our being and well-being start on page six: “These persuasions are strong; however, it seems to me that their strength has something wild to it that drowns everything else out,89 which does not allow my soul enough quietude” [SpKA I, 1:6, here p. 25]. It is a pity that this is nothing more than a rhetorical phrase! As I have already stated, the unrefined person cannot distinguish that which is deafeningly loud from something that is quieter; when nature speaks to him she speaks loudly, and this man does not even consider that anything else should have the right to speak at the same time. It is quite impossible that our thinker [i.e., Spalding] could be overcome by these natural pleasures while merely contemplating their aforementioned intensity; he would be immensely weak if that were the case. However, if he were not able to contemplate [these pleasures] then “love would capture all with equal power”90 as Mr. Jacob Harlowe91 says to Clarissa. Of course, neither wild92 nor unrestricted pleasure of the senses can be the constant state of the soul, but no human being has ever required that, in any case. 86

87 88 89 90

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Abbt’s references here are a bit unclear. With this “second piece” [mein zweites Stück] he presumably means his discussion of Spalding (the first is the fictional Beschreibung von dem Marsche). Furthermore, what he seems to be suggesting, perhaps rather sarcastically, is that since Spalding refers to his work as the “sentiments of an honest man,” Abbt can peruse it quickly, as it should contain nothing but the truth. gekünstelte und natürliche Vergnügungen. Gründlichkeit. . . . hat etwas wildes und übertäubendes an sich . . . “Tum amor omnibus idem,” Abbt quotes from Virgil, Georgics, bk. 3, line 244. If we swap ratiocination and deliberation for intense feelings, these will sweep us away instead of providing us with good reasons. In Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe, it is James Harlowe, Clarissa’s uncle, who uses Virgil’s Latin phrase, not her father Jacob (see Samuel Richardson (1748), Clarissa Harlowe, or, the History of a Young Lady, London: S. Richardson, p. 240). I have amended the translation here: the original has “der Wilde” (the savage), which does not make sense in the given context (nor does it fit grammatically).

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The consequences of our coarser pleasures seem to be concentrated in our debauched cities. But this might still be tolerable, [since] it is apt to undermine our wild hedonists.93 What advantages against these hedonists has refined94 Epicureanism! Spalding describes this with subtlety and vividness. The author has done a fair job, save for one point, to which I shall return later. “And nonetheless there are certain moments in which I feel like I am missing something. Despite my best efforts, I cannot avoid disgust and tedium” [SpKA I, 1:10, here p. 29]. As if there were any human who, in all fair-mindedness and in all hours of his life, could avoid this tedium, this obscure feeling of lack. Hence, perhaps it should be hard to guess what this fine Epicurean is missing, since not even the soul itself knows this clearly? But it is not hard at all. He lacks intellectual pleasure,95 and not just the one that the spirit can glean from books, from arduously mastered96 sciences, but also the pleasure that someone who simply uses his eyes can glean from, for example, the contemplation of beauty—a flower, or a beautiful sculpture.97 The author has just written about the refined hedonist: “in this series of delectations98 there is surely room for cautiousness and thought, but not for sorrow, accusations, or distressing imaginations” [SpKA I, 1:9, here 27]. Now, how could I imagine99 for myself such a refined hedonist who lacks the pleasures of thought and of beauty—in short, all intellectual pleasures! Indeed, the followers of Saint Evremond should know.100 I thought at first that the author had bequeathed humanity to his hedonistic creatures using Circe’s wand, but now I see that he has just put them on their hind legs, to make them seem human from afar. This is disingenuous. Atticus looked like a human being, and he was one.101

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Wollüstlinge could also be translated as “sensualists” or “voluptuaries,” who are supposedly found in larger concentrations in the cities. Why this situation is apt for undermining their behavior is unclear. 94 Emphasis added. 95 Vergnügen des Geistes. 96 Abbt uses zugetragenen, which translates to “brought.” However, here he seems rather to stress the amount of work to be done to gain some insight into the sciences, not any hard way of having them delivered (which is too passive). 97 Bildsäule. 98 Ergötzungen. 99 Bilden, which also contains “image.” 100 Abbt refers to the followers of Charles de Saint-Evremond (1614–1703), a religious skeptic, satirist, and writer in the wake of Montaigne (see JA 5/3a–b:809). Apparently, Abbt thought that these thinkers could come up with such an imaginary hedonist. 101 Here, Abbt means that instead of coming up with imaginary creatures that only seem human as long as we do not look closely, we should consider actual human beings and their behavior. The Atticus in question is presumably Titus Pomponius Atticus (circa 110–31 BCE), whom Cicero made famous in his De Legibus, and to whom Abbt refers to as an example of an adequate fictional representation of a real person (see JA 5/3a–b:809).

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The following reflection would have reached its goal more straightforwardly, even without its last misguided turn:102 Does my soul have any other natural end, any other natural desire than my own benefit, my own perfection?[. . .] Indeed, I discover incontrovertibly103 that there is something more toward which my spirit is inclined. I observed within me many drives and inclinations that are directed at other beings and their wellbeing, and I cannot explain those from the sentiments mentioned earlier, which do not only stem from my desire for sensuous pleasure, or my own improvement. Hence, there must be another source of inclinations within myself. My spirit has natural concepts of decency, of beauty, of justice. Hence, I will contradict my original thought that my intentions and inclinations104 are directed toward nothing else but me, my pleasure, and my benefit.105

The author continues like this. One knows where he is headed. I must only make this remark: One will never extricate oneself from the dispute between the so-called philosophy of egoism106 and the philosophy of compassion107 if one does not distinguish three elements:108 (1) the inclination not to harm a creature, especially one whose similar organization makes a harmonious impression on us; (2) the inclination to sustain a creature that has already embarked on our path;109 and (3) the inclination and the fervor to devote oneself to the promotion of the common good, to give oneself over to the service of one’s fellow creatures. The first two elements can be found in all human beings, but [what about] the third element? I doubt that it could be found in anyone who has not acquired it through reflection and deliberation. The savages are in this regard the best and most unobjectionable110 witnesses of nature. However, has the idea of common love for the human race ever filled his heart? If one asks whether all inclinations of man can be inferred from a single premise, then one surely does not ask whether such an awareness of the original object of such inclinations is always present to the same degree. Neither do I ask whether I am conscious of it and how every inclination of mine aims at my perfection: this surely cannot be the case—and thank God it cannot be the case. Instead, I ask whether, when all my 102

Wendung. Unwidersprechlich. 104 The original has only Absichten, which I here translate as “intentions and inclinations” to indicate the wide range of mental phenomena that Spalding references. 105 In this long passage, Abbt sums up statements from SpKA I, 1:17–20, 24. The version from 1748 only contains parts of this passage, see here p. 31. 106 Eigennützig. 107 Mitleidig. 108 Stücke. 109 Presumably, Abbt means the evolutionary path of humanity. 110 Unverwerflich. 103

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inclinations are retraced to their first seed, to the first fruitful action of my soul that is just becoming conscious of itself within my body—whether I would not find, then, that all further and least immediate111 inclinations are composed of a motion or emotion that is comfortable, conducive, or pleasurable for me? Undoubtedly, not everybody sees this. But, similarly, it took Locke to first understand that the concept of innocence evolved from an intuitive notion. Our thinker starts to build himself a system. “This body, which I carry with me, shall be sustained, and this is the reasonable112 end toward which every sensible desire that is planted within me aims” [SpKA I, 1:24, here p. 37]. I do not know, however, why such desire should only aim for the preservation of the body. This is perhaps one of those phrases with which a lady consoles herself on the first night after the departure of a platonic love. It seems to me that such desire could also aim to provide the soul with a change in its condition. Once the soul is bound to a body, whose nervous system brings it either pleasurable or painful sentiments according to the specific degree of its agitation, every desire for a painless agitation, as long as it is not harmful for the body, is grounded in the existence of the soul and can aim first and foremost at the soul [rather than the body]. This shall always be my main point: that I shall not pass over my soul’s higher and nobler drives. I understand clearly enough that these should govern me rationally. Human happiness, which moves me pleasantly, shall unerringly be the object of my serious efforts, and the object of my own happiness. SpKA I, 1:25–6, here p. 37

All of this presupposes a learned113 person. If such a person finds their vocation by what they can procure through thinking, then where should all those thousands who are incapable of exploring such an issue through thinking find theirs? From such a manner of thinking114 grows righteousness, and from this grows religion. There is nothing that can give me value, nothing that can make me concordant with the original design of my nature or with the purposes of the highest government, other than my own inner righteousness.115

Is it superfluous to repeat myself here? It is not, since the repetition reveals something important: a differentiation between the vocation that we have in 111

Weiterfortgeführte. Vernunftmäßige. 113 Emphasis added. 114 Denkungsart. 115 Abbt paraphrases SpKA I, 1:38–9 in a rather liberal fashion. 112

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common with all other things in this world116 and the vocation that is mankind’s own as a particular kind of being in a particular place. From the first vocation we cannot discern the latter, which alone reveals to us the secrets of the deity above. Only a revelation, it seems, can teach us anything about it.117 And if all given revelations are quiet about this, then we should conclude that God did not deem it feasible to teach us about our specific vocation, and hence left many things clouded for our eyes. This would not hinder us from forming life rules118 guided by the common final end of all created things, which would be correct and sufficient to lead to the greatest possible happiness. And hence it is clear that mankind, for whom the doors to enter into this life, as well as the doors through which to exit it, are hidden behind clouds—that we, I say, have enough light to see the path that we shall take. It is precisely such a man who might very well say: the Spirit that watches over us all will also watch over me. He, whose wisdom and kindness reveals itself everywhere in visible traces, will not allow anything to happen whose end he could not approve and that would not be beneficial for his creatures. In his hand my own destiny rests. In this world, all may be a riddle to me. I see the surface of things, but its inner design escapes my eye [. . .] Here, everything—including the stewardship of the world—stretches into the eternal.119 Everything confuses me; everything makes me unsure. But what more do I need to know, since I acknowledge with unquestionable certainty both my guilt and the sovereignty of an eternal love? These alone are valuable enough that all other insights end with them. SpKA I, 1:40–1, here p. 47

What a wise judgment! But why does Spalding now trouble himself anew to figure out things he just declared to be part of this riddle? “Every now and then, I follow particular fates in this life—and cannot untie these knots”! [SpKA I, 1:42, here p. 49].120 Who tells this thinker that such knots are not121 untied? This is exactly the question that philosophers of all ages have considered over and over again. Does a continuation of the thread of events along with a recollecting 116

Weltgebäude. This “it” possibly refers to the second, more specific vocation. Abbt’s references are unclear in these passages. 118 Lebensregeln. 119 I have tried to offer an almost literal translation of this phrasing. It is possible that Spalding instead meant “everything contributes to the eternal,” or “every earthly vista has a transcendent undertone.” 120 The German word here [auflösen] means “to dissolve,” or in this case “to undo a knot.” It is unfortunate that neither Spalding nor Abbt employ this metaphor of a knotted string very consistently. Nevertheless, despite its oddness, I kept this metaphor in order to stay as close as possible to the unpolished original. 121 Emphasis added. 117

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consciousness belong to my existence here on this earth? Must those knots that tied themselves in this life on this earth undo122 themselves by a mere continuation [into the afterlife]? Or, will these knots be undone without my knowledge? Will they stay put because they connect to something completely different, from which they actually gain their true direction? Once again, all this ultimately concerns the enormous and difficult question of human immortality. Nothing is more obvious than the fact that this question is indeed hard to answer, both from the perspective of the end for which human beings along with all other things are created (so, according to the principle that no substance will be destroyed, or put another way, that the connections in this world must be sustained in every possible way), and from the perspective of the specific end for the attainment of which every person is put in their allotted position. Should it not be true that it is only from the latter end that we might strictly deduce human immortality? Who, relying merely on reason, wants to say whether the knot of human life will be completely untangled in this life or not? Who wants to speak to this matter? Anyone who simply has their eyes open. And what do these open eyes see? In this world, [they see] a haphazard distribution of happiness and unhappiness, of reward and punishment. It is apparently easy for me to say of another that he is happy, or that he is unhappy! It is easy for me to say that the sums of happiness are unevenly distributed. A Domitian, who is unlucky enough that he may not look a righteous man brazenly in the eyes and quietly live in his acquaintance, unconcerned, and free from suspicion—such a Domitian should count as happy simply because of other things that he owns, without me bringing the aforementioned exit to the fore!123 An Attila [should count as completely] happy! Even a Borgia! Irrespective of the purest joys that they missed! A thoughtful villain suffers from his conscience: what a leaden addition to the medallions that are cast in his honor! A villain who lacks these considerations lacks all pleasures of the spirit. Would I call Caligula’s newly elected councilor124 in his marble stable happy?125 And who tells me that

122

Aufschlingen. Abbt here alludes to Titus Flavius Domitianus (51CE–96 CE), the Roman Emperor also known as Domitian, who was assassinated by his court officials and their servants (see JA 5/3a–b:809). On the day of his assassination, Domitian restlessly and repeatedly asked a servant for the time, since some omens had foretold that he would die around midday. However, the servant—who was in on the plot—assured him that it was already well into the afternoon. The thus relaxed Domitian was struck down more easily. For an account of Domitian’s assassination, see Barlag 2018, pp. 119-20. 124 Ratsherrn. 125 Abbt refers to the Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (12CE–41CE), nicknamed Caligula (“little soldier’s boots”) (see JA 5/3a–b:809). In a questionable act of grandeur, he promised to make his favorite horse a consul, and in fact appointed it as a priest (as Cassius Dio documents in his Roman History, bk. 59, chap. 28, line 6). The sermons must have been riveting! 123

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many things I view as misfortunes are not punishments? Destructions by lightning, earthquakes, foul air, and floods, a sick or mangled body we assume a natural misfortune. Wars, oppressions stem from human society. But considering all of this, who wants to state with confidence that all injustice that I suffer due to human society must necessarily be compensated in such a way that I know of this compensation, and that this is supposed to satisfy my thirst for revenge?126 Could not our earth be subordinate to some other globe and to all that happens on it? How should I, such a lowly worm, understand that somewhere in the whole is indeed some injustice left that is not accounted for? My wish for recompense for all the injustice that I suffer, or think that I suffer, does not prove anything. It is nothing but a comforting hope. And just as ordinary people are kept from using violence by the conviction that God will openly punish his enemies on this earth, so too my hope for a future retaliation only seems to quench my own thirst for revenge. “There must be a time when everything that seems out of place here is going to be put into its right place again” [SpKA I, 1:44, here p. 51]. But what now if it only seems out of place to me? “All of nature leads me to think that righteousness and happiness belong together” [SpKA I, 1:45]. What happiness? “A universal tendency for order must at some point prevail” [SpKA I, 1:45]. Without doubt, but on what grounds do I make myself out to be the subject around which such order is centered? “As soon as I see this life as a state of education, of being tested, of being prepared for something further, then all appears clear and full of comprehensible connection.”127 [But,] let’s consider, in particular, the huge number of children who die right after birth. It is surprising that anyone could convince themselves that such premature deaths could become rationally explicable if we were to just view this life as a test, since it is precisely because of those deaths that understanding our life as a stage of being tested becomes incomprehensible in the first place. Yet, there are articles of faith that one just thoughtlessly parrots, simply because one is glad to have something to say at all. “I feel capacities within me that are capable of eternal growth” [SpKA I, 1:46, here p. 51]. From what do I deduce this? I do not believe that, for instance, human memory can grow eternally. Recent experiments, at least, have proven that it comes to a halt128 in its earthly body. And if everything that can be developed must be developed to a certain degree, how then can we explain why so many

126

Rachbegierde. This putative quotation of Spalding is, in fact, a very loose paraphrase, see SpKA I, 1:46. 128 Stillestand. 127

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thousands of capacities on this earth do not even come close to a modest degree of their possible development? If I may put it this way: every species of creature must have been created with one and the same tangled bundle129 [of capacities], which particular individuals130 of this species could untangle131 partly, depending on the nature of their circumstances. But who tells me that all members of the species must fully untangle [their respective bundles], and that there are no other issues 132 that could pose a hindrance to them? Conclusions of this sort [as entertained by Spalding] always rest on this presumption: that man is not bound in any way to the rest of creation.133 “Aside from annihilation by my Creator, from which I am spared, I need not fear any other destruction” [SpKA I, 1:47, here p. 51]. No, Spalding’s subsequent reflections are not well situated here.134 “Not only merely existing, but actually living in the future is prophesized to me through the nature of my spirit, whose activity [even in this present life] is not completely reliant on sensory tools, which could mislead me without this hurting me fundamentally. [But in the future stage of life,] I will be opened from all sides to external stimuli, sheer sensibility, one common sense.” [SpKA I, 1:50] Should we uncritically accept such an increasing simplification of thinking?135 I know that one might say that if we had a sixth sense, then the scope of our knowledge would be tremendously broadened—by a seventh even more so, and by an eighth, well . . . But can I imagine such apertures—as perforations of my body—in such a number that my body would completely vanish? As soon as I simply let my body drop out of the picture, I will lose that thin thread that guides me on the path of thinking. 129

Knäuel. Stücke. 131 Abwinden in German means unspooling, but that doesn’t fit the previous metaphor that rather references the difficulty of untangling an ensnarled bunch of threads. 132 Dinge. 133 Weltgebäude. 134 Abbt is presumably referencing some speculations that Spalding added to the seventh edition of his work. The “I” does not have to fear anything aside from divine annihilation. In essence, this “I” is a single force that synthesizes ideas, but is not reliant upon them. “But I myself, by thinking this, am—with the help of this most intimate sentiment—conscious that amid all the vast and fundamental changes I will always be unchanged, that I will stay the same as I have been since I can remember my sentiments” (SpKA I, 1:48–9, compare here p. 53). The “I” is not identical with the self at a specific moment, nor is it anchored fundamentally within its body. Both Abbt and Mendelssohn remained skeptical about Spalding’s argumentation. But Spalding goes one step further in that he assumes a “general lively sense” (SpKA I, 1:51) emerging after our death: “Relieved from the suppressive weight of this sluggish body, I will be able to launch myself into a much faster and more powerful flight through the wider reach or possible insights [of my disembodied spirit]” (ibid.). The assumption (which Abbt rejects in one simple stroke) is that without the body, the soul will actually gain broader and deeper knowledge. 135 Fortgang der Leichtigkeit im Denken. 130

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“From this great expectation that heightens my worth and my vocation, I now discern that I belong to a completely different class of things than those things that emerge, change, and fade before my eyes.”136 It seems to me that such rashly drawn conclusions will get us into trouble. Animals do belong to the class of things that emerge, change, and fade. I wouldn’t have the audacity to say this, and it would not be true anyway, at least not according to my observation. [Yet,] if animals do not belong to the class of transitory things, then they must advance to the higher class. What, I, a human being—am I again ashamed to see other creatures from this world137 in union and communion138 with me? “From this great expectation it is also clear that this visible life does not by a long stretch exhaust the complete purpose of my being. Hence, I am made for another life” [SpKA I, 1:51, here 53]. I have already examined how far the validity of such a conclusion goes! What shall I think now about my vocation? First, worship! Then, do good! This I can discern: that I am created in order and harmony with all creatures, and that my happiness could not persist if they were destroyed. What part of creation do I constitute? How much do I and my kind count in the calculation of the whole? Regardless of whether we ever encounter a power139 that annihilates us, should I decide this calculation? No. Should I let go of the thought of my continuity and lose hope for the dead?140 Lose! Consoling thought of immortality: we cannot do without you! We might do without the way our dry intellect expresses you as the un-annihilated, but we cannot do without you insofar as every virtuous sentiment is associated with you. But let us not base you on our self-conceit, as we do when we assume that order is missing the moment we do not see it, and heavenly justice is poorly administered the moment we do not feel it. We must wait in silence until the provider of all good and the master of all creatures deigns to reveal his orders to each of us at our prescribed state of development.141 Ignorant in this regard, we all must set sail, unless divine revelation—through consoling assurances—makes the goal of our departure known and desirable to us. Even so, I shall fill my soul more and more with the consoling, all-sweetening idea that I will have a completely other state of life in 136

Again, this putative quotation of Spalding is in fact a rather loose paraphrase of a remark in SpKA I, 1:51, here p. 53. 137 Weltgebäude. 138 Vereinigung und Gemeinschaft. 139 Größe. 140 Abbt’s use of the preposition auf is confusing here (Die Hoffnung auf die [Gestorbenen] verlieren) but I take it that he meant to imply that we maintain hope for those who died before us—which, of course, includes hope for ourselves as well. 141 vorgeschriebene Höhe.

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which I shall expect nothing but that which is good, according to the nature of things and the benevolent government of the highest wisdom; that I, after the complete liberation from the stupidities and plagues of this life, will unite myself with the source of all perfection; that I will purely and unperturbedly enjoy the pleasure of nobleness, and hence all the more achieve this highest goal to which my nature and my creator destined me—that is, being righteous and in righteousness being happy [SpKA I, 1:56, here p. 57].

[Moses Mendelssohn] Oracle Concerning the Human Vocation Human!—you search for your place in this world!142 And your vocation? Ask both reason and experience. Study the human race—both what it should be and what it is. Observe the savage and the virtuous, the king, the beggar, the wise, the courtier,143 Abauzit, Voltaire, yourself, and the Greenlander in his crude hut.144 All lay claim to the same vocation. Once you have collected all these voices, sit down in the shadow of the Socratic maple tree145 and compare! Could not the soldiers, who in their peaceful quarters found the time to ponder their commander’s intentions, discern these intentions from the daily routines that they were ordered to do? If these routines are military exercises, then their master is afraid of his neighbors, or he himself is keen on conquest. Are they ordered to collect shells at the shores of the sea? Then the commander

142

Standort hienieden. The word Mendelssohn used here (Hofschranze) is the pejorative form of Höfling (courtier). In the given context, the neutral form seems more appropriate. 144 Firmin Abauzit (1679–1767) and Voltaire (1694–1778) could both be read as exemplars of high intellectual capacities, and hence as offering a subtle rebuff to Abbt for being more in league with the Greenlander. However, if we read this enumeration as a constant change between one “higher” and one “lower” form, it serves as a subtle hit against Voltaire, since Abauzit’s reputation as a scholar and scientist was considered untarnished at that time, and as such Voltaire would fall into the category of those whom Abbt means to snub. It is also worth noting that Mendelssohn refers in this list to “the Greenlander” (den Grönländer), presumably meaning to allude to Abbt’s discussion of the various peoples with whom he would need to spend time in order to adequately understand the human vocation. Abbt, however, does not mention Greenlanders, but rather the “Laplandian” people (see the Doubts, here p. 71), by which he means to refer to the Sami people. 145 Mendelssohn means the tree under which Phaedrus invites Socrates to sit at the beginning of the Phaedrus (Phdr., 230B) (see JA 5/3a–b:810). The original Greek name for this tree was πλάτανος, the standard English translation of which is “plane tree,” which is how it is usually rendered in English translations of the Phaedrus (see, for example, Plato (1997), Phaedrus, Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff (trans., eds.), in Complete Works, John M. Cooper (ed.), Indianapolis: Hackett, 230B). 143

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wants to establish a collection of natural objects.146 The speculations of the soldiers will be easier and more certain if their master’s character is not totally unknown to them. Oh, human—your work147 on this earth, is it unknown to you? The immeasurable universe fulfills God’s intentions. All of nature signifies the thoughts of the almighty, but through signs that in themselves are natural things. Every new formation148 that nature takes on is a thought of the eternal that comes to fruition. The animal moves and feels as required by God’s intentions; and humans cannot preclude by any amount of stubbornness that even their excesses do not conform to those intentions as well. A human being’s defiance, their blindness, dissolves in the most wonderful ways into a great harmony, fulfilling the intentions of the All-Highest. This is the universal149 vocation of all creatures—and also yours. But there is also something that is unique to you,150 according to which you are human. Through practice you can—and you will—become more perfect. Your life is an incessant attempt to unspool those abilities that are coiled up within you.151 Your powers152 constantly work on their own improvement. You may die as an infant or as an old man; either way you leave this life more cultivated153 than you entered it. And perhaps the jump from an embryo to a babbling child is greater than the one from a student to a Newton. Without books, without schools, and without laws, the Greenlanders spend their eternal winter in harmony154 and domestic pleasure, and they say about the so-called virtuous colonists who squabble and scuffle: “These people forget all too often that they are human.” Humans may live on bread, fish, or roots; on this earth they all acquire an immeasurable treasure of notions, judgments, sentiments, and rational cognition. The savage who looks at a tree and forms a distinct concept of it: he senses, distinguishes, compares, reasons, judges, exercises all the faculties of his soul,155 and improves them. Upheaval, slaughter, persecution, absurdity, and turpitude do not prevent either those that kill or

146

Collections of natural curiosities (Naturalienkabinett), also known as curio cabinets, were private collections by members of the nobility that were used to entertain curious guests, and for the purposes of private research in natural history, which was a popular topic in the eighteenth century. 147 Verrichtungen. 148 Gestalt. 149 . . . die allgemeine Bestimmung . . . 150 “Aber du besitzest auch etwas Eigentümliches, wodurch du Mensch bist.” 151 In this sentence, Mendelssohn alludes to Abbt’s and Spalding’s metaphor of the tied knot that may or may not be dissolved in an afterlife (see the Doubts, here pp. 49, 78). 152 Kräfte. 153 Ausgebildeter. 154 Eintracht. 155 Seelenkräfte.

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those that are killed from gaining some rational understanding on this earth. Very little [do they gain], you say! Oh, human—do you in the least understand how much belongs to one rational concept? From mere dark sentiments in the mother’s womb to intellectual understanding—what a jump! This seems small to you? The fundamental156 human vocation on this earth, which the foolish and the wise alike fulfill—albeit to a different degree—, is hence the cultivation157 of all faculties of the soul according to divine intentions, since this is the aim of all their earthly work.158 Are their faculties capable of continuous growth? Yes, but these faculties need to stay in proper equilibrium among each other and with the body’s sensuous limbs.159 Who desires to endlessly improve their memory at the expense of losing sight of the requisite equilibrium with their other faculties? Wouldn’t such a person then quickly recall everything all too vividly and become mad? [What of] the character of your commander? Oh, this loveable, venerable one appears to you in a light that is brighter than the hot midday sun. What wisdom and benevolence! This all-wise benefactor sent us onto this earth so that we might improve our faculties160 through constant practice; the nature of our desires, wishes, and passions—our pleasure, displeasure, taste, obstinacy, and even our vanity—teaches us that this is his will. The uneducated human feels the power of all these driving forces without being able to put them into words. The learned reflects161 on them and is happier, the more precisely their free will conforms to the true determination162 of their natural drives [and hence] with God’s intentions. Does this benefactor have intentions with us beyond those that we fulfill on this earth? Without any doubt! No substance is annihilated, and as long as it exists it fulfills the intentions of its protector. Is our future state connected to our present one? As perfectly as the chain of divine intentions, like the premises of a long demonstration. Nothing that follows can exist without what preceded it. The flower that is broken by the north wind, the seed that does not thrive—they

156

Die eigentliche Bestimmung. Ausbildung. 158 Verrichtung. 159 sinnliche Gliedmaßen. 160 Kräfte. 161 The term vernünfteln is usually used as a pejorative way of talking about “consideration” in cases where someone either overthinks or makes up “reasons” to explain something rather simple, and hence they just feign to reason. However, Mendelssohn apparently uses the term in a positive sense here. 162 Bestimmung. 157

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are dissolved; their parts take on another form, and in this new organization they fulfill God’s intentions. Would this flower and the seed be capable of doing this had they not been what they were originally? God’s intentions always take the shortest path toward their goal, like the conclusions drawn from a true demonstration. Oh, human—even there [in your future state] you will serve God! And you would not be able to serve him had you not let your faculties be cultivated on this earth—just as you would not have been able to be a human being on this earth had your fundamental design163 not been formulated in your father’s blood. Within the divine order reigns unity of the final end. All intermediate ends are at the same time means; all means are at the same time ends. Do not think that this life is just preparation, that the future life is just an end in itself. Both are means; both are ends. Divine intentions and changes in each substance proceed in unison further into the immeasurable. Oh, spirit of the great Leibniz! Equipped with modest octavo leaves, he dispels the doubts of the scribbler164 and the ghosts of his folio sheets, like the morning sun dispels the shadows; I feel the whisper of your presence! Come, lead me to the hall of eternal fate. Show me the unfinished165 pyramids of possible worlds and the completed one,166 so that I shall see in the former the fate to which spirits could have been destined, and in the latter [the fate to which spirits] are [destined]! And you, Bayle’s nocturnal summoner [i.e., Abbt], wand in hand, follow our steps! There waves Jove’s blue-eyed daughter!167 Look—the doors open of their own accord! We marvel and step back. Leibniz advances, and the goddess speaks: “You immortal human children! Know that in every possible connection of things you share one fate with the whole realm of spirit.168 The lowest rank within each species has a similar vocation as the highest. Do not feel contempt for yourselves, even if you are indeed mere worms on a speck of dust that floats around in the immeasurable universe. As members of this realm of spirits, as citizens in the city of God,169 you belong to the most magnificent part of creation. What happens to you happens in similar manner to all spirits.

163

Grundbildung. With the word Vielschreiber, Mendelssohn alludes to Bayle, whom Abbt called upon to make his points (see the Doubts). 165 Unvollendet. 166 As Corey Dyck pointed out to me, Mendelssohn here references §415 of Leibniz’s Theodicy (see Leibniz 1985). 167 In The Odyssey, bk. 2, chap. 24, Homer describes Jove’s “blue-eyed daughter” Minerva (Athena), goddess of wisdom and stout supporter of Odysseus. 168 Geisterreiche. 169 Staate Gottes. 164

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When my father decided for the world to be, Apollo and I, following my father’s almighty order, sought in this hall the plan that was most adequate for his majesty. [There was] this [plan whose] misshapen form170 was dismissed. According to [this plan], the interest of the spirit world should be sacrificed for other intentions. [But,] no higher order shall yield to a lower order. In this [other plan], the powers of spirits should gradually diminish. We passed by. There was one plan in which these powers would increase for a while, but then suddenly all that was acquired would be lost—a work of Sisyphus! Nothing is lost fruitlessly. If the evil is not lost, then why should the good be lost? We were undecided whether the spirits in their new state should keep the memories of their former state. But our indecision did not last long. We found that the transition from lower to higher forms of understanding naturally comes with memory. Only in very few cases can this be prevented. We also saw that such memory would be of eternal benefit for the spirits’ moral perfection. Only through this could the strictest justice be satisfied. Only through this could the second life untangle that which seemed tangled171 in the first.” “Step closer, my son,”! she continued, “as you threaten to trace another magic circle. You think that nothing is disorderly within an order. Everything is wisely designed and is in no need of any further development—good! Hence, this itself is a development: you will experience in that [future] life how everything is ordered well, how, even if something seemed to be out of order [in this life], it was not. My father shall be seen by each spirit, justified by each spirit. Consider this, too, my son! You know my dearest Socrates: suppose that this happy spirit never asked for any other reward than that which springs from virtue itself. For him, nothing on this earth seemed tangled, since his soul did not thirst for revenge. How about his prosecutors? Was there nothing [in their lives] that needed untangling?172 Should those unfortunates never know that it is evil to prosecute innocence, shackle virtue, feed superstition, and ban all righteousness from the republic? Should their souls stay thus mutilated for all eternity? Thus you see, my son! Nothing in the moral world would be in its proper place if the next life did not solve all riddles. In the physical world alone your stony stubbornness173 seems to deceive you. Would your whole nature not revolt 170

unförmliche Gestalt. . . . was im ersten [Leben] verschlungen schien. 172 Auflösung. 173 Felsensinn: quite literally the attitude of a rock, unmovable. 171

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if all the atrocities of the depraved, like the torments of the virtuous, in which you share, just vanished like a dream? Is all well and just when an innocent man who is being persecuted has to starve himself to death on top of the corpses of his sons, so that he can finally cease to be? But what, instead, if he continued to be, and remembered this test with pleasure? Oh, divine reassurance!174 Do you chide this irresistible wish, this yearning for the fulfillment of justice? Do you compare it to a mob’s lust for retribution? My son! The most vulgar inclinations must have a natural basis that is good and that is implanted within the soul by the creator. Just as no voluntary motion can be developed by exercise and habit where there is no muscle, no artificial inclination can be generated where there is no natural inclination at its basis—the mob’s most sordid thirst for revenge, in this case, has at its foundation the inclination to bring moral evil to understanding through physical harm. Through habit, acquaintance, and upbringing it can degenerate into an ignoble thirst for revenge. Nevertheless, you must not175 misjudge it completely.” Thus the goddess spoke, graced us with one last divine glance, and disappeared. And now I feel strong enough to slaughter all your doubts, as Elijah slaughtered the false prophets.176 (1) What is the human vocation? Answer: In the state of rational insight, to fulfill God’s intentions, to persist, to become more perfect, and to be happy in this perfection. (2) How should those thousands of people who cannot ascertain their vocation through thinking identify it otherwise? Answer: They abide by their vocation without agonizing over it. Don’t all earthly bodies fulfill their vocation without knowing it? The Everlasting has imbued reason without even the capacity to satisfy our hunger, let alone with the capacity to satisfy the fulfillment of God’s main final end.177 (3) Infants die? [Answer:] Not without having trained at least some capacity of their soul, even if it is just the faculty of feeling, which is already exercised within the womb.178 How many changes—I am amazed when I think about them—does a young spermatozoon179 undergo throughout its new formation, 174

Beruhigung. I have translated nicht müssen with “must not,” since in eighteenth-century German the meaning is precisely this—rather than “need not,” as it would be in contemporary German. 176 Mendelssohn refers to 1 Kings 18:40. After Baal fails to accept the ritual offering, and Elijah is immediately singed by God’s lighting, the crowd willingly hands the priests of Baal over to Elijah, who brought them down to the Kishon River to execute them. 177 Hauptendzweck. 178 Mendelssohn’s phrasing here (Geburt im Mutterleibe) makes it unclear whether he means to include pregnancy or not. 179 Saamentierlein. 175

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when it learns to feel hunger, warmth, and moisture? And they want [to say] that it could not thus become more capable of fulfilling the intentions of its creator? Every little seed that is not pollinated must nevertheless—through its very formation—become more capable of fulfilling God’s intentions in its subsequent state. (4) Why is it that so many thousands of abilities here on earth do not even reach a moderate degree of their potential that is possible here? Answer: [What does it mean to say] “possible here”? [Do you mean:] With or without disregarding far more important intentions? Do you dare to answer this question? . . .180 And why is this the case? Because many thousands of abilities in their general order can fulfill divine intentions in another state,181 without going through the whole chain of formation182 that is possible here on earth. (5) Why [do] just some [capacities develop]? Why not all? Answer: Could someone deny that all the parts of a clock collaborate to fulfill a single intention? This wheel runs quickly; that one slowly; a third one does not even show any sign of motion. Why do they not all run equally quickly or equally slowly if they are united by a common intention? That’s exactly it! Unity of intention requires a manifold in the determinations of the parts. (6) [As for] the animals . . . Answer: Oh, let these poor creatures clamber up to an ever-higher degree; I, a human being, am not ashamed [to share a spot with them eventually]. Where now is that ocean of doubts that you sent into battle against Mr. Spalding? Not one shall escape my hands. Where are they? They vanished the moment they saw their heroes fall, and their flag is the flittering folio sheet that now adorns my triumph. Concerning the demarcation183 between the egoistic and compassionate philosophy184 that you mention, I must add one remark that seems so correct to me that I do not185 have cause to formulate it in the decisive tone of an oracle. The three inclinations that you identify and distinguish all have the same foundation: pleasure in our fellow humans’ happiness and displeasure in its opposite. They

180

It seems that nobody wants to answer this question, as is indicated by two hyphens in the original, which have been rendered here as an ellipsis. 181 Zustand. 182 Reihe der Ausbildung. 183 Grenzscheidung. 184 Weltweisheit literally means “wisdom of the actual functioning of the world,” and was a common expression for philosophy in general in the eighteenth century. 185 This negation is strange, since if he is indeed convinced of the correctness of his stance, presumably it would not hurt to put it forth most decisively.

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spring from the same power and have the same goal. The resistant medium [medium resistens]—the epitome of all other inclinations of the soul that resist this sociable inclination—merely changes their direction, speed, and degree of effectiveness. The philosopher who wants to know the basic drives of his soul,186 however, needs to set aside this resistance, as in mechanics where the effects are observed in a non-resistant medium.187 Habit, education, exercise, example, prejudice, etc., can increase the effectiveness of the driving forces, but they cannot create pleasure, displeasure, or inclination, etc., that have not already been there. The moment we discern that the developed,188 right-thinking human being feels even a slight bit of zeal to further the common good, this basis—the part of the inclination that is innate—must exist even in the coarsest humans, and it can be limited and stunted only by the resistance within oneself. Indeed, the inclination not to harm one’s kind, which we cannot deny even the savage, is at its basis the same as, and only differs in degree from, the zeal to promote the common good.189 This inclination encounters great resistance in the savage due to his natural idleness, inability, carelessness, and so on.190 Civilized people defeat these reluctant inclinations through ratiocination and sustained practice, and enhance the power of sociable inclination through these means. Set the reluctance aside and you will find in both the savage and the civilized the same basic drive. It seems to me that Mr. Spalding is right to side with those philosophers who ascribe to humankind a sociable, selfless drive, a basic drive toward the common good. I suspect that you, no less than Mr. Spalding, are above the childish fancy191 of admonishing the innocent pleasure that springs from the satisfaction of this inclination by calling it selfishness. Trying to destroy the whole system of happiness and virtue with such dialectical artifice would be ridiculous!192

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Grundtriebe der Seele. In medio non resistenti. 188 . . . der ausgebildete, der richtig denkende Mensch. 189 Note that Mendelssohn uses the superlative Beste here, which would make the literal translation of the phrase in question “the common best.” The standard German term for “the common good” is Gemeinwohl. 190 One wonders what “observation” inspired Mendelssohn to make this absurd and offensive statement. 191 Grille. 192 The later edition from 1783 has the stronger word unanständig here, which means “unsavory,” “indecent,” or even “immoral” (see Moses Mendelssohn, “Orakel, die Bestimmung des Menschen betreffend,” in Thomas Abbt (1783), Freundschaftliche Correspondenz, AVW 3:222). 187

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Letters after Doubt and Oracle Thomas Abbt, Rinteln, May 21, 1764193 If the prophet Elijah194 had been a conjurer,195 and if the knife with which he seemed to have butchered the Baaleites would have, instead of into their throats, been stuck back into its hilt: then perhaps the presumed victims of the massacre would have sunk to earth as if dead, but, after everybody left, would have gotten up again—and one hour afterwards they would have even feasted together with the prophet.—Me and my doubt. But you will soon see. [. . .] What is the human vocation? Answer: “To fulfill God’s expectations in a state of rational cognition, to endure, to become more perfect, and to be happy in this perfection.” This reply you justify to me by the fact that this is common to all human beings, because it applies to the newborn as well as the adult. But if I may still be allowed to speak, even though standing here without my knife. From these general features I would rather deduce that the acquisition of this rational cognition be an instrument of our vocation, and not the vocation itself. Once again I let my soldiers196 step forward: some already know the use of arms, the others might even master the maneuvering of large forces, some others, however, might not even be able to march properly, and understand even less how to handle a gun. The order arrives that all of them, regardless of their different levels of preparedness, should go. We stand like political Kannengiesser197 at the city gates: I furrow my brows, and ask: what may they plan for these people [the soldiers]? And now you appear with your blue-eyed goddess, the owl perched on her arm instead of the usual little dog,198 and answer my question thusly: that what you notice in the solder trained for fourteen days, as well as the one trained for fourteen years, is their vocation. Even the farmer boy who, joining the others only a few times, the neck stiffly turned left in lockstep, marching forward and back, has already powerfully trained his faculties as a soldier. Full of astonishment I just keep repeating the three words that I muttered already: whereto do they go?199

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JA 12/1:46–8. Abbt references Mendelssohn’s Oracle, here p. 88. Taschenspieler. 196 The soldiers of the fictional novel in Abbt’s Doubt, here pp. 71–3. 197 Kannegießer were political amateurs with a big mouth, i.e., non-professionals who took themselves to be experts and kept advising those who actually knew the trade; we still know such people. 198 Bologneserhündchen; see Mendelssohn’s Oracle, here p. 86, but without the dog. 199 Funnily enough, even in German these are not three, but four words: “wohin gehen sie denn”? 194 195

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Indeed, everything hinges on this: I do not deny that every being has its vocation,200 even less do I deny that every thing has a vocation, and even less, that every species has its own vocation, and consequently every subspecies.201 I assert furthermore that every species must have its characteristic vocation, all of which are unified in the universal vocation, namely in the happiness of all creatures, and, if you wish, in God’s praise. And to all these particular vocations fit particular tools. The human tool is rational cognition. Now, all these tools are not brought to the same level of perfection: if this were the case, all my guesswork might actually lead somewhere. But since this isn’t the case, all the resulting incommensurabilities confuse me even more. I conclude thus: through thinking and willing these creatures ought to achieve their vocations. But they bring it to such widely different levels of perfection—how, then, can they reach their vocation at all, and what exactly should this vocation actually be?202 I go one step further and say: the only way to know of the human vocation is this: to know the relation of every body in the world203 to every other. If we could trust those deputies, which Klopstock invites to meet, like an ambassador from each and every one of these bodies;204 then we could surely get to learn about the vocation from them. “Thousands, who do not learn of their vocation in this world, are still fulfilling it, and this is enough.” Perhaps not. If the human vocation is cognition up to a certain level and of a certain kind; then the cognition of the savage is not enough. I do not quite see how you are going to prove Rousseau wrong.205 Some argue against him: human capacities must be developed as far as they can. Thus human beings are called to the sciences, and those are even useful, yes, human beings are bound to advance them, bad consequences of their misuse be damned. Now Rousseau takes up

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Bestimmung. . . . das jedes Ding seine Bestimmung habe, noch weniger [leugne ich], dass sie eine jede Gattung, folglich auch jede Untergattung habe. 202 Abbt’s argument is roughly this: if perfection is the goal, and perfection qua perfection is uniform, how do I bring these vastly different, yet existent levels of perfection under the one idea of a universal kind of perfection? 203 Weltkörper. 204 An allusion to Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock‘s Messiah. After the publication of the first three cantos in 1748, Klopstock finished the work only in 1773. However, fragments of the last, the 20th Canto, had just been printed in twenty exemplars meant for friends of the poet. Maybe both Mendelssohn and Abbt knew of this. 205 Abbt hints here at Rousseau’s second Discours, which Mendelssohn translated back in 1755, see Goldenbaum 2000 and Pollok 2010, II.1. 201

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your answer: the savage exercises all the faculties of his soul even with the presentation of a tree. Hence, he is already fulfilling our vocation. And since all further cognition is subject to abuse, may it even be by accident, and offers more harm than gain [I conclude]: human, shed your clothes, and return to the woods. “Newborns die: may this be so, but not without having perfected some capacity of their souls.” I am so sorry that your thinking about this case turned into a painful experience.206 But once you can leave the singular case behind and think about the bigger picture: you will understand my objection. Just this formation207 within newborns, which is so different to the formation of the human being as such, increases my doubt. Not concerning whether they have a vocation at all, but: what exactly this vocation is. [. . .] Farewell, my dear friend, for this time. [. . .]

Thomas Abbt, Rinteln, July 8, 1764208 I still owe you this letter in connection with the previous one; not just so that we get our writing in order again, but also that we gain some ground [concerning our question]. The other aspect concerns human vengefulness in light of future punishments.209 I agree with you that the reason for this is our propensity, that injustice and the act of violence are brought to light and thus stunted. If from my window I see one boy harming another, it irks me and I want to swipe right in. But does this prove that punishments must be metered out in my presence?—To redeem God’s justice.— So, I should see it all.210 [But:] My need is not the need of the whole. On the other side we see Brühl and Pompadour.211 What can I say. Tell me again of eternal punishment; which is even metered out for every sin we commit 206

See Mendelssohn’s letter from May 1, 1764, see here p. 67. Ausbilden. 208 JA 12/1:48–9. 209 See also Abbt’s letter to Justus Möser, October 3, 1764 (AVW 4:19–20): “Happiness and misfortune, reward and punishment maybe are more evenly distributed in this world than we think. And the doctrine of a future public retribution [Wiedervergeltung] is often a mere wish of our vindictiveness than the enthusiasm for divine justice. However, it is also true that if God makes such great efforts for a religion, we could safely assume it would then also serve for the best of all human beings.” 210 Abbt uses “einsehen,” which translates with means understanding, but literally alludes to me actually seeing what is right. Given the “window”-case, it is safe to assume that Abbt means here: we just assume that we see how everything falls into place—and if we don’t, we just assume that things are in disorder. But maybe our perspective is not the main one. 211 Count Heinrich von Brühl (1700–1763) just died the previous year. The commentators in JA describe him as “ruthless and deceitful.” Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1721– 1764), executed only recently, serves as the archetype of the scheming, calculated mistress. 207

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just in our thoughts, but also when we conquer a kingdom; and again I fall into my old skepticism.212 Let me stop here. I want to go to bed. [. . .] Once we moved away from the human vocation, my next question will be about the vocation of your people. [. . . .]

Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, July 12, 1764213 [. . .] Now with regard to your musings concerning the human vocation. It seems that you require that a universal vocation should and must be given on the same level in all individuals. And because the development of all faculties of the soul is not at the same level for all human beings, you wish to understand it as a tool for our vocation, rather than the vocation itself. However, the divine plans concern the whole, but also each individual. They are fulfilled to perfection within the whole, but within the individual said fulfillment is oriented by the whole. Such an arrangement of the whole must have prevented some goals from being fulfilled in the same way within the individual. A general will like it the most if all his soldiers are as capable as the others in their craft, because as a finite spirit he has but a general plan, and cannot determine beforehand how each and every soldier is going to contribute to its realization. The plan of the legislator is more definite. He wants to enable security, peace, and comfort for human society. To this end, he will define ranks, offices, and professions214 differently, and will not require all citizens to obtain the same fortune, nor to develop the same skills. He just cannot allocate and determine215 every detail, because his general insight only goes so far. Only the creator and founder of the realm of spirits distributes all roles in the most definite manner, and allows each individual as much of its vocation216 as possible without any disadvantage to the whole.—Alas, I put too much effort into this. I do not need to understand your objection. You just cannot require all individual elements of the realm of spirits to develop their powers to the same degree. This chimera refutes itself, because uniformity of vocation 212

Unglauben. JA 12/1:50–2. 214 “Stände, Ämter und Nahrungsgeschäfte,” in particular “Nahrungsgeschäfte” is hard to translate. In the given context, it seems that Mendelssohn wanted to refer to those professions every citizen chooses in order to sustain himself and his family. 215 Bestimmung. 216 Bestimmung. 213

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would require uniformity of powers, which would cancel out harmony,217 order, beauty, and perfection. This would turn God’s work into mere chaos. But if differences in vocation are necessary, then the faculties of the soul will need to be developed to different degrees, and proceed from mere abilities up toward the powers of angels. That the development of the powers of our soul is but a preparation for further vocations I gladly give to you. Every particular divine final aim is at the same time the means for a further and higher final aim. These further purposes and final aims for which we prepare ourselves in this world must necessarily aim toward happiness in the realm of spirits. Finite souls cannot be well and happy but through the development of their powers and abilities. Thus we are forced to assume this as the vocation of spirits, and—hail the Lord!—we humans are no cattle, but run with the spirit world.

Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, July 20, 1764218 [. . .] What the vocation of my people is going to be, you ask?—which people? The people of Dessau? The citizens of Jerusalem?—Declare yourself more specifically, and I will answer you with the Pancratius in Moliere: “I wash my hands in innocence. I don’t know anything about this. It will happen as it must happen. It depends on the circumstances.”219 What does not disturb my system does not bother me. Pompadour, Bruehl, the Jesuits, judges of faith, pirates, tyrants, poisoner, traitor of nations—what does it matter? With the cold sense of a German metaphysician I swathe myself in my bare cloak and say, like Panglos: “This world is the best.”220 I repeat the subterfuge that I have used so often now: even if it is not necessary that I see the realization of justice with my own eyes; it will still be very necessary that justice will be meted out (which in my eyes is a very important reason), so that the souls of the atheists will not remain as mutilated as they were when they perished. To be honest, I do not appreciate compensatory justice.221 Every 217

Übereinstimmung. JA 12/1:52–3. 219 Mendelssohn quotes, cum grano salis, from Moliere’s The Forced Marriage (1664). However, he does not quote from the Aristotelian Pancrace, but the skeptical Marphusius, whose replies are so general and vague that they cannot count as an answer, but a parody of the possibility of such. See the commentary in JA 12/1:274. 220 Paraphrasing Voltaire’s Candide ou l’optimisme (1759, translated into German in 1776). Pangloss, the “all-speaker” and the protagonist’s teacher, plays the role of the (stupid) Leibnizian. 221 genugtuende Gerechtigkeit. 218

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chastisement has improvement as its final aim, and in divine judgment this is always the improvement of the chastised subject. This improvement must never be left out completely, but it must happen at some point.—From this we can deduce our vocation! But now shabbat dawns! Adieu for now, my best friend!

Thomas Abbt, Rinteln, November 8, 1764222 My desperate manuscript223 diverted us from our original exchange, and even today I cannot quite so easily return to our previous topic. Just one thing I need to tell you, though, before I forget.—I did say that human beings should at least come so far in their thinking that they become aware of their vocation.—You asked where this would leave the manifold, and without that one, the perfection? If I should give you my honest opinion: this manifold seemed to have become in our idea a mere big word that doesn’t hold much. What do we know about the degrees, how much do we need to level up or down? and in the present case— would it not also result in some uniformity if all people came as far as I require in their thinking? Methinks this would still leave enough room for a manifold. If a clockmaker has many clocks in his room; they must all be finished insofar as they function and indicate the time properly. Now you assert that somebody came in and added something to one clock, and took something away from another, just so that they would form a manifold. I will repeat my points in the following letter, so that we can see how far we got, and continue to move forward. [. . .]

Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, February 16, 1765224 [. . .] I was willing to continue our exchange concerning the human vocation. But since I am working on—as you already know—a little book on the immortality of the soul;225 I am willing to fill up its second part with our reflections on our

222

JA 12/1:68. Abbt refers to his second major work On Merit (Vom Verdienste). On August 8, 1764, he sent it to Nicolai and Mendelssohn with the request for a thorough critique: “I give him [Mendelssohn] free reign to change anything which he finds wrong” (AVW 3:260). See Mendelssohn’s and Nicolai’s reactions JA 12/1:57–66, 68–76. 224 JA 12/1:76. 225 The Phaedon. As the promised “second part” we can take Mendelssohn’s Remarks on Abbt’s amicable Correspondence, 1782, see JA 6/1:27–65. 223

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vocation, and I will hence take my time to think about the issue appropriately. Continue, dear friend! Continue to make your objections and stir the doubt. I cannot help but tell you quite frankly that your latest objections seemed pretty weak, and that I expect much stronger attacks from you. Instead of asking my oracle: why is this so, and not rather so? You instead prefer to blame it for something it did not do. Refute my reasons; or my self-love will claim victory for itself.—I must end here. Goodbye, dear friend! Shabbat is there, and since the calf226 has already been ground into liquid gold, the laws are sacred to me.

Thomas Abbt, Rinteln, March 6, 1765227 No wonder that you misplaced my last letter. Never does a former virgin carry the birth certificate228 of her child in her purse. I am still glad that my lamb-like manner managed to elicit a reply from you. It might have irritated you. But so much is certain, I would have achieved nothing by scolding. I even called you Moses the Mute, and who knows what else. In vain. A writer of Litteraturbriefe229 you grew so used to swear words that my cussing would seem quite small to you. One must rather mistreat such writers like a Cossack to wring even one tone from them. A tame reflection, in contrast, is somewhat unexpected. But I have to tell you that you exhausted my art; and if you now return to your mutiny, then I won’t know what else to do. So many times have you threatened me with an avalanche of letters230 and predicted that you would overload my mailbox: but alas! So far you have not tested me in that regard . . . If my objections against your system of the human vocation are worth nothing anymore: the better for you! Why do you nag with me? But I want to tell you what my true opinion is. You have proven to me that the human vocation is the development of the powers of their soul. I just think that they have this in common with all other spirits. Now I want to know, what these spirits that roam the earth and whom we call human beings should do with their vocation in particular? There, methinks, 226

The golden calf not only refers to the idol erected by the Israelites while waiting for Moses to return from Sinai (Exodus 32:1–7), but is also a reply to Abbt’s allusion in his letter from February 3, 1765 (JA 12–1:70–2, here 72): “My dear Moses, please do come down from your mountain soon, and talk to me—otherwise I will craft myself a calf and won’t care about your laws afterwards. I bit you farewell.” Their mutual bickering about taking too long to reply to their letters truly reached epic proportions. 227 JA 12/1:76–9. 228 Taufschein. 229 Mendelssohn and Nicolai edited the Letters Concerning the Newest Literature, in short Litteraturbriefe (they spelled literature with two ‘t’s), which were widely read but also quite widely hated. 230 Vielschreiben.

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sits the knot. I think it is curious that some among them develop so little. Since, as you hold, the progress from the first sensations of a fetus to the first clear concept is bigger than the step from the a-b-c of a student to the problemate binomiali of a Newton; I still think, that the aim of our development is only fulfilled if the person doing the developing knows why they are here. You think now that the manifold degrees of development belong to its beauty, but I myself take the liberty to doubt this. I think it more beautiful if a carpenter delivers half a dozen uniform, but well-formed armchairs, than if he, for the sake of beauty, left out the backrest in the first, an arm in the second, and a leg in the third. I have been reading Ontology and Cosmology again this year. Heaven knows that I am less than enthusiastic about the concepts substantia, substantiale, and vis, on which all is built in the end. What do I know if I present force as the ground for the inhaerentia of an accidentis, and this rationem again as that which ex quo aliquid congnosci potest. No one understands where this force resides, and if it counts towards the composito, or the simplici,231 and in the end we do not know what is matter, what is spirit. Thus it seems to me, maybe others are luckier.—But I completely agree with you that Voltaire and Helvetius232 mistreated, in an aggravating manner, the fundamental principles of all civil societies, and the consequences of all finer sensations in those societies. I on my behalf will insist on loving my friends and doing as much good as I can.— Once I have written myself out of Rinteln, then the booksellers should have their rest from me. History I find entertaining, and I would put some effort into learning about the rights of the people. If I am not gifted with understanding mankind from the inside, then I want at least to see, what these strange things did externally, and how they advanced themselves in this world. I had in mind to publish some stuff that partly I have already written, partly I have just thought about history, under the title Preparations for History.233 231

A parody of contemporaneous metaphysics a la Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten. Substantia: Substance; Substantiale: With his monads, Leibniz revives the notion of “substantial forms.” According to medieval predecessors such as Johannes Scotus Eriugena these are the essential or fundamental form of everything; Vis: force, power; inhaerentia: that what determines the essential form in contrast to the accidental; ex quo aliquid cognosci potest: principle of sufficient reason—that from which we can cognize something, s. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s introduction to his Metaphysica, 1739; compositum vs. simplex: complex versus simple. 232 Voltaire, s. above. Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771), French Materialist and sensualist, author of the skandalous De l’esprit (Paris 1758) that, among other things, argues for self-love as a motivator of all human acts and for atheism. That he also defended the fundamental equality of all human beings (also of women) does not seem to have fazed Abbt. 233 These plans are mentioned in the “chronological and reasonable index of Abbt’s works” (“chronologische räsonnierende Verzeichnis aller Schriften Abbts,” in AVW 6:xxxvi), unfortunately in reference to this letter. Page xiv has the first works fitting the description: lectures held in Rinteln, ca. 1761–65: “Remarks on the History of Europe with Reference to Joachim” (AVW 6:120–8), and

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But the moment I think of myself of being still stuck in Rinteln, I lower my hands. I cannot even continue to learn the things I am interested in here; this is how miserable I am here, but shush! You seem to be already tired of our theological fight; but you should not be let off the hook so easily, as you already agreed to it. You may believe that we keep getting stuck in this topic. No, dear Sir! We want to go further. You shall hear something new in my next letter. This was only about a preliminary question. [. . .]

Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, March 26, 1765234 [. . .] I will not respond today to your further doubts concerning the human vocation, since [. . .] I don’t have your letter at hand. Our friend, the bookseller235 does not seem to be able to believe that an argument on the human vocation could be that important and not tolerate any delay. If it only was a manuscript for the next [book]fare, as he might think.—But I cannot resist making some short remarks, even if I might have already made them and, in that case, you would need to read them again. The well-known statement that in all of God’s works all means are aims and all secondary aims are means is capable of a bigger fruitfulness than previously thought. When, for instance, Maupertuis asks whether the fly is built so wonderfully because all her grandeur will be devoured by the greedily robbing spider in an instant?236 Then I reply that in God’s works there is no such definite that’s why.237 The artful build of this flying machine has as its first aim the little animal’s life. What for? So that all such things that look like flies also have life and

even more a work begun in 1765 (ebd., xxv–xxxiii), the “History of the human race, insofar as it became known in Europe, from the beginning of the world up onto our times. Taken from the great works of universal world-history and extended” (“Geschichte des menschlichen Geschlechts, soweit selbige in Europa bekannt worden, vom Anfange der Welt bis auf unsere Zeiten. Aus dem großen Werke der allgemeinen Welthistorie gezogen und ausgearbeitet,” printed in Halle 1766 as a “first volume.” See AVW 6:137–40 and 141–64. See also Nicolai, Ehrengedächtnis Herrn Thomas Abbts. Berlin, Stettin 1767, p. 27. 234 JA 12/1:86–8. 235 Nicolai—but mind that Abbt playfully alluded to him (and others of his kind) in his previous letter. 236 The French physicist and mathematician Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759), was president of the Academy of Sciences between 1746–53. The question referenced here reminds us of his theory of the smallest cause, applied to biology, see Système de la Nature (1751). 237 Deswegen.

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sensations. Just keep going with your short-sighted “what for”?, and you will turn creation into a desert. This proud but poor thing, a human being, questions everything that they cannot use with “what is this for”?—The existence of the fly might even support other secondary aims: yes, this must even be the case, if the notion that I have of the connection between means and ends in nature should not be entirely wrong. They might clean the air, or announce to us humans with their bites that the weather is going to change, or they serve as food for spiders, but then God also, most likely, has a particular goal in mind for this particular fly—but who would ever know it? A similar question in the doctrine of nature is the following: why so immeasurably many animals and seeds in animals’ semen and plants’ seeds, if just one of them is going to make it, and the others will perish? I reply thus: these little animals and seeds are as important in nature as the big ones, and nobody can say that the former are just there so that the bigger ones emerge from them. It is true that spermatozoons and seedlings all have an inner disposition to become mature animals and plants. But where is the necessity that they have to mature instantly? And why are we denying their being all its worth, the moment they do not mature to their predestined size? Even in their smallness they are an adornment of creation. But this way a disposition to develop is lost for the biggest part among them. Not lost. They do not cease to be, they do not cease to fulfill God’s plans, which extend toward the immeasurably small, and they could not have, in all probability, if their inner organization was not exactly as it was, fulfilled these plans and purposes.—What are these plans and purposes?238 I think that now is the time to be quiet. This wise I do not know is our last resort in all our ruminations.239 But we must not therefore discard all that we know. I believe that I get ever closer to your question. With us human beings, with our life on earth it might have a similar condition, when you define more concretely what is specific for us rational creatures. We are here, and hence we can deduce safely that the world would have been less perfect if there had been no human beings at all. What shall we do here?—That, what we all do and that we cannot neglect to do, which is the continual development of the powers of our spirit; this one more, that one less. How is the human vocation different from the vocation of all other spirits? Insofar as we by these senses we possess, on this earth that we inhabit, develop the specific degree of perfection that we were

238 239

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ordained to develop.—And why do the least amount of people know the purpose of their existence? Because they can fulfill it as well without knowing it. The least amount of people know the purpose of our appetite, and these few have quite a bad case of it. People do not know why they are here! Oh well, they actually know it quite well. They hear, see, feel, compare, exercise, and think without pause and with great desire; just that they do not have these common notions such as purpose, existence, means, etc. to transform what they continually sense and do into a logical statement. I do not know why you deem this so necessary.—From the restriction that we shall develop the powers of our spirit with the help of our senses follows the duties toward our bodies, and since it has to happen on this earth, it comes with a plethora of other duties that pertain the human being in these particular relations. Some people die before they can reach the level of formation240 that is possible on this earth.—Yes, if you look at these possibilities in light of the whole. But if we look at the possibilities in regard to this and that particular thing, in its individual determinations and relations,241 then we will judge differently. We will find that every thing got to the level of formation that it could and should reach under the given circumstances, in these relations; same as the spermatozoon that is not conceived for this time cannot and should not develop itself further. Not the least disposition, nor the least degree of formation is totally lost; as I said, in God’s works we do not see a definite, glaring purpose but the universal main aim, of which we could say: the moment we see that it will not be reached, all means are lost. Of your objections against the metaphysical blabber about force and substance, about which you, alas! have to earn your bread against your conscience, I will deal another time. I am daring enough to assure you that you can calm your conscience, and that your students truly get enough truth for the little money they pay you. Goodbye! I wanted to tell you a million other things, but I have to go to work. I embrace you.

Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, June 14, 1765242 [. . .] Your εστι αγνοητου τι [there is something we cannot see] does not humiliate me in any way. Yes, yes, from this side our natural cognition is indeed lacking. We know of the human vocation as such (and you won’t believe how much I rejoice 240

Ausbildung. . . . mit seinen individuellen Bestimmungen und Verhältnissen . . . 242 JA 12/1:92. 241

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in the fact that we agree on this), but how this vocation is modified in the particular cases, this supersedes our reason; same as we generally know that all aim at the good without being able to show in each case how this is achieved. We know that we will die, but we don’t know when, or of which disease. But we ought not hastily conclude: we do not know how, hence we do not even know if. Or: we do not know everything, hence we know nothing. Then we need to examine if what we know is sufficient for our reassurance, or if this allows us to beseech our father for further illumination. But before I get involved with such an examination I ask for the following explanation: Which revelation gives me the further instruction that you require, such that it excuses me from the mortification of not being able to answer the following questions: how far will I get in my development? Which ethereal body will serve my soul as a sheath? Where will I dwell? Why this or that development was not carried as far on this earth as— seen from an isolated standpoint—it could have been? You can imagine that this further instruction would have to be done in more than allegorical images, rhetorical, or poetic figures of speech. These just move and awaken, but we want to be taught. Godspeed, dear friend! I wanted to fill up the fourth sheet, but alas! I am kept from it.

Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, July 22, 1766243 [. . .] You say that I still owe you a reply to your theological inquiries. Maybe that is the case. Just know that I am planning to send you a printed one, which would comprise about ten sheets and, therefore, will keep you somewhat busy.244 For presumably you will not simply throw up the game, and ten sheets are not so easily refuted. Your inquiries inspired me to finally complete a little treatise on the immortality of the soul, which I had started many years ago. I put my arguments into the mouth of Socrates. Perhaps I run the risk of turning my Socrates into a Leibnizian. But that is no matter. I need a pagan in order to be absolved from any recourse to revelation. Besides, Plato already turned him into a Pythagorean, and who knows whether Socrates doesn’t gain with me what he indeed lost in Plato. You would hardly believe what miserable metaphysics the son of Ariston [Plato] attributes to him. 243 244

JA 12/1:118–19. This, of course, is the Phaedon.

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These are the eggs that I have begun to hatch this summer and which I, for that reason, must not abandon. I defer the pleasure trip that you proposed, and that tempts me no little, until later. But we must have come considerably closer to resolving our controversy, before we debate in person; and I am vain enough to expect this to result from my treatise.245 It doesn’t contain anything new that I can tell you in advance. But since any mode of proof requires an inner disposition within the person who ought to be convinced; I hope to have chosen the right manner that is most adequate for us. Even if we had our doubts concerning the doctrine of immortality; we still have tried to live in a way that we reasonably should not fear to lose anything if it was even true. Even more, we could not help but wish to be convinced of the affirmative. The worst in such cases is just that the more you wish for this, the more you fear the opposite. This had been my situation over many years; but I know that you, my friend! had secured virtue first before you started to doubt the human vocation: and thus I assume that similar reasons will have a similar effect of conviction for us both. I herewith return you the letter of your count, a truly great friend of humanity.246 His way of thinking is worlds apart from the common manner of thinking of reigning men! [. . .] Please give him, dear friend! my most humble thanks for his willingness for the protection. It cannot be other than pleasurable to reside under such a good ruler; and beside a friend like you, it must be true happiness. [. . .]

Thomas Abbt, Hagenberg, August 28, 1766247 Six weeks I have been sauntering along in the countryside where our court resides, and where I became a busy idler. I had about 100 hours to reply to your letter; and I lost all of them irretrievably. Finally I start with this letter, after all. My Lord asked me just yesterday whether I finally replied to you, and he urged me not to forget. ***248 The count is burning to read your treatise on the immortality of the soul. Me, too, as you can easily imagine. We are all really interested in this topic. You give 245

The first part of the translation of this letter I owe to Altmann 147, with slight changes. The here-mentioned letter to Count Wilhelm zu Schaumburg-Lippe is lost; we can assume that it contained some reference to the Count’s willingness to offer Mendelssohn the status of a “protected Jew” (s. JA 12/1:295). Mendelssohn and the count exchanged a few friendly letters after Abbt’s death, see JA 12/1, letters no. 288, 292, 293. 247 JA 12/1:120–1. 248 See above, maybe this means the letter of protection. 246

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me too much credit, by the way, if you think that my virtue was already in a safe place, and that I would await the further continuation of our argument with an easy heart, and with no inclination for a victory on this side rather than the other. I am by far not in that position, my friend. My vanity sometimes puts me in relations that others get in by mere lust; and in the continuation of the argument there is often the same resultant kind of confusion. I have never quite understood the articles of punishments. This is one of my favorite issues, though. In my review of Justi’s treatise,249 if you recall, I tried to give an outline of my position; but it was still too raw. Since then the Marquis Beccaria with his book dei delitti e delle pene250 stole the issue from me: but methinks he did not treat it in a sufficiently Baumgartenian fashion. I plan to write more on this; but even for my own use I am still unsure [about it]. The eternal punishments of our theologians I hate, same as the complete impunity of villains. On this I expect your statements, the sooner the better. As soon as your treatise is printed, I implore you to send me two copies. In regard to history I think you would fare best if you read Hardion’s spiritual and worldly history.251 It contains all those antics that flood our universal histories; but they are kept, without the whole thing reverting to being a mere compendium, the shortest version available. Bossuet’s Discours serves as the general map. Farewell, dearest friend, and give my best to our Nicolai. The exchange ends here. Thomas Abbt dies on November 3, 1766.

249

Vergleichungen der Europäischen mit den Asiatischen und andern vermeintlich barbarischen Regierungen in drey Büchern verfasset von Joh. Heinrich Gottlieb v. Justi. Berlin bei Rüdigern, 1762. Abbt reviews this in 261. Litteraturbrief, XVI (1763), pp. 117–26, and reveals his own thoughts in letter 262 (ibid., pp. 127–36). 250 Marchese Cesare Beccaria (1735–1793), dei delitti e delle pene, 1764. See also Mendelssohn’s letter to Iselin, June 1, 1766 (JA 12/1:122–3); Mendelssohn owned a German (Hamburg 1766) and a French (Amsterdam 1767) translation (see the index of his books, no. 312 and 657). 251 Jacques Hardion (1756–69), Histoire universelle sacrée, et profane, 20 vols, Paris. Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1681), Discours sur l’histoire universelle à Monseigneur le Dauphin, Paris. Abbt refers to Mendelssohn’s request for appropriate reading on history. Mendelssohn on February 16, 1765 (JA 12/1:75): “You have once sought my advice, if I remember correctly, concerning a certain history that you were planning on writing. And I have never given you an answer. I could not tell you anything, since what do I know of history? Whatever has history in its name, such as history of nature, history of the earth, history of the states, learned history, I have never been able to wrap my head around. I start yawning whenever I have to read something historical—just not if the writing style is good. I think history is one of those subjects that has to be mastered without instruction.” However, a later letter from August 28, 1766 (JA 12/1:120) reads a bit more enthusiastically: “Tell me, dear friend! How do I begin to develop some notion of the history of old and more recent times? I used to think that history is a science for the citoyen, not of the human being, and I thought that a person without a fatherland could not benefit from it. But now I realize that the history of the civil constitution merges with the history of humanity, and that it doesn’t behoof me to be so ignorant in the former. But where do I start? Do I go back to the sources, or do I limit myself to comprehensive histories of the world that are so fashionable lately? What is your suggestion? Please do not forget to reply to this question!”

Part Two

Essays

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The Place of the Human Being in the World: Johann Joachim Spalding, Religion, and Philosophy as a Way of Life Laura Anna Macor

In 1748, the still unknown would-be pastor Johann Joachim Spalding (1714– 1804) published a small work entitled Betrachtung über die Bestimmung des Menschen (Meditation on the Vocation of the Human Being),1 wherein a fictional I embarks on a monologue with a view to discovering the aim of human existence and the behavior required in order to fulfill this aim. Spalding adopted a quite peculiar perspective for a future exponent of the Lutheran clergy—omitting any reference to the Bible yet including explicit quotations from the classics. In so doing, he opened the path for what turned out to be a new way of looking at religion, philosophy, and their mutual relationship, which is the main reason for the immense success of the text across a number of new editions, clandestine reprints, and translations up to the dawn of the new century. It is the purpose of this paper to reconstruct the genesis and sources of this unconventional approach, as well as vindicate it as a hitherto unacknowledged contribution to the long-standing and well-established tradition of “philosophy as a way of life.”

1

The German noun Bestimmung is a proper untranslatable, since its polysemy does not find any satisfactory equivalent in English (nor in French, Italian, or Spanish, cf. David 2014; Macor 2015). The most common options include “vocation,” “calling,” “determination,” “destination,” and “destiny,” but all of these lead to the loss of at least some of the shades of meaning coexisting in the original. That said, in what follows “vocation” is consistently used on the grounds that it is the one chosen in the present volume as well as in the majority of specialized studies.

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I Philosophy as a Way of Life: Hadot, Foucault, and Spalding’s Ancestors “Philosophy as a way of life” is the formula mostly used today to identify a specific way of conceiving of philosophy as a predominantly practical discipline addressing existential issues, rather than academic and erudite ones. Cognate expressions include “art of living,” “mode of life,” “style of life,” and “care of the self and others,” all of which cover the same semantic field. According to this view, philosophy is—or rather, originally was and should perhaps become again—a tool for dealing with universal problems and questions, such as the place of the human being in the world, the rules to follow in everyday life, and the path to happiness; hence, it is both performative and transformative in nature, in that it both affects and changes the life of those who engage with it. In the 1980s, this very notion of “philosophy” was made the focus of research by two prominent French philosophers, namely Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault. Though for a few years they knew each other and were colleagues at the Collège de France, their acquaintance never developed into a close relationship. To a certain extent, this comes as a surprise, given the convergence of their interests and conclusions, but it does not diminish the combined impact of their works, which succeeded in inaugurating a new field of research2—and this is something which will prove crucial to a proper reassessment of Spalding’s contribution to the culture of his time. In a series of felicitous articles, books, and editions uninterruptedly unfolding until his death in 2010, Hadot championed what he presented as a forgotten image of philosophy going back to ancient culture, a time when thinking was not separated from life. According to this view, philosophy is not the same as philosophical discourse, since the former consists in daily practice stemming from an inner stance on things, whereas the latter offers the theoretical reasons for that daily practice, and “justifies, motivates, and influences this choice of life” (Hadot [1995] 2002, p. 172). As a consequence, one is called a philosopher not primarily because of one’s speculative merits, but in consideration of one’s concrete attitude towards the challenges that life poses to everybody. For Greeks and Romans, “one was a philosopher not because of the originality or abundance

2

On both biographical details and intellectual connections, including similarities and differences, see Hadot [1989] 1995; Davidson 2005; Sellars 2020; Ure 2020.

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of the philosophical discourse which one conceived or developed, but as a function of the way one lived”; in particular, the final “goal was to become better,” i.e., a better human being and not a more learned or cultivated individual (ibid., pp. 172–3). Any theoretical reflection had to exhibit its immediate relevance to this practical commitment in order to be deemed philosophical: “discourse was philosophical only if it was transformed into a way of life” (ibid., p. 173). But there is more: Philosophy as “a mode of existing-in-the-world,” aimed at “transform[ing] the whole of the individual’s life,” demanded to be “practiced at each instant” and thus “took on the form of an exercise of the thought, will, and the totality of one’s being” (Hadot [1987] 1995, p. 265). “Spiritual exercises” is the phrase that epitomizes all this (ibid., pp. 79–144). In his late writings, and most notably in his 1982 lectures, Foucault made ancient culture the main object of his interest and contributed to a similar reassessment of the relevant philosophical paradigm in a way that was theoretically his own, although at least partially influenced by Hadot. According to Foucault, there are two possible ways to engage in the search for truth. On the one hand, there is a “form of thought that asks what it is that enables the subject to have access to the truth and which attempts to determine the conditions and limits of the subject’s access to the truth”; on the other, there is “the search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth” (Foucault [1981–2] 2005, p. 15). The former identifies a merely theoretical endeavor without any effect on the human being committed to it; the latter is anything but a merely theoretical endeavor, since it requires, and in turn enables, inner change. It is this existential point of view that Foucault champions as being typical of the ancient world: “[T]here can be no truth without a conversion or a transformation of the subject,” and this may take place either as “erōs (love)” or as “ascesis (askēsis),” the former being “an ascending movement of the subject himself, or else a movement by which the truth comes to him and enlightens him,” and the latter “a work of the self on the self, an elaboration of the self by the self, a progressive transformation of the self by the self ” (ibid., pp. 15–16). Needless to say, the two are not necessarily independent of one another—quite the contrary. In addition, both point to the notion of “care of oneself” (souci de soi; epimeleia eautou, cura sui), which Foucault considered the quintessential expression of ancient culture.3 Caring for oneself did not mean egoistically reducing everything to one’s own needs and

3

Cf. Foucault [1981–2] 2005, pp. 2–3. The notion of “care” (Sorge) had been previously dealt with by Heidegger; on all this see Schmid 1995.

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desires, but rather improving and perfecting one’s inner self with a view to both becoming a better human being and helping others to do so. Evidently, caring for oneself leads directly to caring for others, and both in turn presuppose eros and/ or askesis. Hadot and Foucault clearly shared the same core idea regarding what philosophy was for Greek and Latin thinkers, namely a predominantly practical discipline prioritizing moral conduct over theory. In addition, both insisted that the relevant behavior was not simply a sequence of isolated good actions, but instead rested on a permanent inner revolution; continuous exercise, effort, and labour were an essential part of this. In sum, philosophy entered human history with a truly existential calling, and hence was conceived of as a tool for orientation in life. Socrates and the Hellenistic schools play a crucial role in this narrative, being credited with a symbolic value by both Hadot and Foucault. The following quote from the Stoic Latin poet Persius may serve as a radiant example of this line of thought: discite et, o miseri, causas cognoscite rerum: quid sumus et quidnam victuri gignimur, ordo quis datus, aut metae qua mollis flexus et unde, quis modus argento, quid fas optare, quid asper utile nummus habet, patriae carisque propinquis quantum elargiri deceat, quem te deus esse iussit et humana qua parte locatus es in re.4

It is no coincidence that the poem from which this quote stems has been designated “a wake-up call to study philosophy,” supporting the view “that it is a matter of life and death whether we respond to the call or not, whether we pursue moral and spiritual integrity or simply go on drifting through our aimless, fragmented, unexamined lives” (Reckford 2009, p. 63). A quite astonishing difference from today’s image of philosophy as a mere academic discipline, confined to universities and specialized libraries. Something must have happened along the way.

4

Persius, Saturae (Satires), 3, lines 66–72 (“Come learn, unhappy people, what it all means: what we’re made of; what life we’re born to lead; where we are placed; how to make the most graceful turn around life’s racecourse; what limit’s set for moneymaking; what is the point of prayer, or of hard cash; how much it is right to spend on your country’s needs, or your dear relatives; and who the god has ordered you to be; and where, in the human world, you have been stationed”; the translation is that given in Reckford 2009, p. 63).

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According to Hadot and Foucault, a slow but irreversible change occurred in Western culture accompanying the rise of the Christian religion, which assumed the existential function previously fulfilled by philosophy and reduced the latter to no more than a tool for assessing the validity of theological doctrines. Moreover, the establishment of universities turned the philosopher into a scholar, and the early modern turn to epistemology accomplished the rest, giving prominence to abstract knowledge disconnected from inner transformation.5 Some exceptions, however, can be found along the centuries, and these include isolated yet anything but marginal authors, including Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche (cf. Foucault [1981–2] 2005, p. 28; Hadot [1995] 2002, p. 263). One of these figures warrants closer attention here as he will turn out to be the (missing) link between Spalding and ancient thought. Let us suppose a man who, having this resolution merely, how to employ his understanding to the best purpose, considers who or what he is, whence he arose or had his being, to what end he was designed, and to what course of action he is by his natural frame and constitution destined [. . .]: what we are and the lives we are born to live [Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur?]. “Where are we”?, “Under what roof ”? “Or on board what vessel”? “Whither bound”? “On what business”? “Under whose pilotship, government or protection”? are questions that every sensible man would naturally ask if he were on a sudden transported into a new scene of life. It is admirable, indeed, to consider that a man should have been long come into a world, carried his reason and sense about with him, and yet have never seriously asked himself this single question, ‘Where am I or what?,’ but, on the contrary, should proceed regularly to every other study and inquiry, postponing this alone as the least considerable or leaving the examination of it to others commissioned, as he supposes, to understand and think for him upon this head. Shaftesbury [1711, 1714] 2000, p. 406

In this passage from the Miscellaneous Reflections, Shaftesbury makes a case for a reassessment of the very nature of philosophy, and in so doing, he tellingly chooses verse 67 of Persius’s aforementioned third Satura (Satire). Along the same lines are Shaftesbury’s assessments in his Moralists, where the condition of philosophy in the early modern age is described as a loss of its original and authentic purpose: The “poor lady” is bemoaningly “no longer active in the world” and has been “immured [. . .] in colleges and cells and [. . .] set [. . .] 5

To be sure, this is a somewhat simplistic survey of Hadot’s and Foucault’s arguments, which are presented here together in consideration of their common aim, although they are anything but identical; on this see Foucault [1981–2] 2005, p. 14; Hadot [1995] 2002, pp. 263–5.

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servilely to such works as those in the mines”; accordingly, the investigation into the human being’s “end and constitution in nature itself ” has been deemed of interest only for “some intricate or over-refined speculation,” (mis)leading the majority of people into prioritizing other, i.e., secondary issues (Shaftesbury [1709, 1714] 2000, p. 232). Shaftesbury’s philosophical sympathies are no mystery, and it comes as no surprise that his attitude has been alternatively traced back to Socrates, Platonism, and/or Stoicism (cf. Dehrmann 2010). What matters most in the present context, however, is that his efforts to revive the ancient tradition of thought became pivotal for the German Enlightenment and contributed crucially to shaping its philosophical profile. Here is where Spalding most distinctively, and finally, comes into play.

II Reassessing Christian Apologetics: Spalding’s Education, Early Readings, and Translations Native to Tribsees in Swedish Vorpommern, in his childhood and youth Spalding received both private and school instruction in the Lutheran religion, Latin, old Greek, and Hebrew, and no later than the spring of 1731 he enrolled at the University of Rostock to study philosophy and theology. Put off by the conservative teaching he encountered, he took a break before resuming academic work at the University of Greifswald in 1735. His disputation centered on the lively topic of Jesus’s miracles, which he defended against the accusations of Emperor Julian as well as modern Deists. A year later, a philosophical dissertation followed, this time dealing with—and endorsing—the system of Christian Wolff, whose credibility Spalding vindicated before his former professors at the University of Rostock.6 Spalding’s intention in pursuing this education was to follow in his father’s footsteps by entering a career in the clergy, which he eventually did, in 1749 he became the pastor of Lassan in Vorpommern, and in 1764 he moved to Berlin where

6

Cf. De calumnia Juliani Apostatae in confirmationem Christianae religionis versa Exercitatio Theologica [. . .] (1735), SpKA, I, 6/1:1–37; Dissertatio philosophica, quaestionum metaphysicarum bigas sistens [. . .] (1736), SpKA, I, 6/1:39–74. For a detailed analysis of Spalding’s education and early “Wolffianism,” as well as the philosophy programs at both Rostock and Greifswald, see Schwaiger 1999; Sgarbi 2011, pp. 172–3; Raatz 2014, pp. 63–85.

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he was to become one of the most prominent theologians of the Prussian Enlightenment.7 Yet, preparing for the doctoral degree also and foremost meant reading the most recent offerings in the fields of apologetics and metaphysics, and this paved the way for what would become his consistent attitude towards philosophy. From the very beginning, in fact, Spalding showed a clear inclination to combine, rather than juxtapose, philosophy and theology, considering the former as an ally (not a servant) of the latter. So, in 1738, he published a German essay dedicated (again) to Wolff ’s theories, presenting them as a weapon against “freethinkers,” “atheists,” “Pelagians, and naturalists.”8 Moreover, delving into the early modern controversies on revelation and reason yielded his quite innovative stance on the matter, leading Spalding to prefer “the inner excellence of Christianity” over erudite arguments,9 and accordingly to look for an appropriate reformulation of religion itself. Inspiration for this came, against all expectation, from a thinker until then accused of being an obstinate enemy of faith and a fierce supporter of deism. This was none other than Shaftesbury, whose work Spalding started to read in the early 1740s with a view to “studying English,” but ended up finding so compelling that he was “courageous enough” to embark on a proper translation (SpKA I, 6/2:124). In 1745, he published the first German edition of The Moralists, which was followed two years later by the first German edition of An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit. Both include extensive prefaces, which are connected to one another and stage a fictional dialogue between the translator and an anonymous friend, signing himself “S.A.T.I.P.” In the first preface, the latter writes to the former—about whose projects he is evidently fully informed— asking for further investigation into Shaftesbury’s ethics in the other translation planned. In the second preface, the translator follows this suggestion and specifically addresses, and supports, the relevant moral theory.10 Spalding’s

7 8 9

10

The most complete survey of Spalding’s life and work is provided by Beutel 2014. Der Wolffischen Philosophie Bittschrift an die Akademie zu R**, SpKA I, 6/1:78, 93. Lebensbeschreibung (1804), SpKA I, 6/2:120. In his 1735 dissertation, Spalding demonstrates a thorough knowledge of almost all the relevant works of the time, including those by Grotius and Jacques Abbadie, and in the following decades he even published in German translation writings by Jean Le Clerc, Jacob Foster, Francis Gastrell, and Joseph Butler. On all this see Macor 2013, pp. 74–9, 94–9; Beutel 2014, pp. 48–53. Some scholars doubt that Spalding was the author of the first preface, which they assume to stem from a close interlocutor of his (cf. Albrecht 2001, p. 14; Dreesman 2008, p. 33); others hold the opposite view (cf. Schollmeier 1967, p. 246; Klemme 2001, p. xvii; Dehrmann 2008, p. 132; Raatz 2014, pp. 181–2), whereas Beutel seems to have slightly changed his stance on the matter, since after opting for not including this preface in the relevant volume of Spalding’s critical edition (SpKA I, 6/1:xviii), in his later monograph he also mentioned the possibility of Spalding staging a fictional correspondence (2014, pp. 46–7). It is my opinion that Spalding composed both prefaces and decided to present them as a dialogue in compliance with what was then literary custom. On all this see Macor 2013, p. 81.

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hypothetical collaborator admits to “being captivated” by the very idea of a “moral sensation [moralische Empfindung],” which reflects “the creator’s wise goodness” and must hence be considered “an indubitable thing” ([Spalding] [1745] 2001, p. 16). Accordingly, in the second preface this moral sensation is made the object of some crucial considerations: Human beings are equipped with a natural “perception [Wahrnehmung],” a natural “feeling [Gefühl]” for “harmony” and “order,” and reinforcing it in intentions and deeds is what makes them “virtuous” and gives them “true merit; and so, virtue rests on a moral sensation [moralische Empfindung]” (SpKA I, 6/1:177). Tellingly, Spalding also deals with linguistic aspects, deeming other expressions equally appropriate— “call it as you wish, call it moral sense [moralischer Sinn] or moral taste [moralischer Geschmack] or conscience [Gewissen], or even, if you are audacious enough, an inner light [ein innerliches Licht]; it is all the same to me,” provided one thinks of a faculty avoiding “the difficult, slow, and tedious path of rational deductions,” while leading “much more quickly” to the final goal (ibid.). So far so good. But what is the connection between this and Spalding’s former theological preoccupations? Shaftesbury’s moral sense is “innate” and given by “nature” alone, independently of any “art, culture, or discipline;” in other words, it is something like an “instinct” (Shaftesbury [1709, 1714] 2000, p. 325). This means that everybody possesses it regardless of their education, knowledge, or profession, and thus also regardless of their religious ideas and theological competences. Moreover, Spalding thought it identified the distinctive feature of the Christian faith, resting on inner qualities rather than abstract proofs, and this is why he made Shaftesbury’s moral sense into his most powerful argument in support of the truth of Christianity. In the 1730s, Spalding had already expressed his preference for an apologetics that dispensed with erudite reasoning in favor of the simplicity of an ethical message, which in his eyes would prove successful not only with learned enemies, but also and foremost with the majority of uncultivated individuals.11 Until familiarizing himself with Shaftesbury, however, he had been unable to find a suitable theory to support this rethinking of apologetic discourse. The notion of “moral sense” provided him with the key to his problem in that it not only enabled each individual to feel and realize morality and justice, but also led the human soul to God, or, more precisely, to the Christian God. So, rather than give credence to erudite controversies about obscure passages and inconsistencies in the Old and, particularly, New Testament, one could, or indeed should, trust in one’s own 11

Cf. above, footnote 9.

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direct capacity to acknowledge the truth, both in ethics and in religion. And so the validity of the Christian religion relied not on the ability of its apologists, but more simply and appropriately, on human nature itself. All this urged Spalding to look for further illuminating elements in Shaftesbury’s work, and here is where Christianity and the legacy of ancient tradition converge. Shaftesbury’s commitment to the Greek and Latin idea of philosophy shines through across his multifaceted writings, and Spalding possessed them all—or, rather, he possessed all those included in the three volumes of the Characteristicks.12 Hence it comes as no surprise that he did not hesitate to follow his author in prioritizing the practical dimension of knowledge over any abstract claim, also endorsing the literary strategies adopted. This applies particularly to the monologue, which was comprehensively dealt with in Shaftesbury’s only work translated into German before Spalding’s editions, i.e., Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author.13 Here introspection is considered the most effective way of gaining insight into the purpose of human life, as well as of identifying the rules to apply in daily conduct in order not to betray that purpose. The “sovereign remedy and gymnastic method of soliloquy” enables the individual performing it “to gain [. . .] a will and [. . .] a certain resolution by which he shall know where to find himself, be sure of his own meaning and design and, as to all his desires, opinions, and inclinations, be warranted one and the same person today as yesterday and tomorrow as today” (Shaftesbury [1710, 1714] 2000, p. 84). This process, also compared to a medical “operation” that the “patient (for such we naturally suppose our reader)” must undergo in order to restore interior health, is evidently “for no inconsiderable end” (ibid.), yet anything but easy or painless. And the more cultivated the soliloquist, the more applicable this is. In fact, willingness to give up all previous knowledge is required, as well as adopting a different perspective on things. It must needs be a hard case with us, after having passed so learned a childhood and been instructed in our own and other higher “natures,” “essences,” “incorporeal substances,” “personalities” and the like, to condescend at riper years to ruminate and con over this lesson a second time. It is hard, after having, by so many pertinent interrogatories and decisive sentences, declared who and what we are, to come leisurely, in another view, to inquire concerning our real self and end, the judgment we are to make of interest, and the opinion we should 12

13

According to the catalogue of his library prepared after his death, Spalding was in possession of the 1733 edition of the Characteristicks, which is identical to that of 1714, cf. Macor 2013, p. 80. For an accurate overview of Shaftesbury’s German reception in the second half of the eighteenth century, see Dehrmann 2008, pp. 194–209.

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have of advantage and good, which is what must necessarily determine us in our conduct and prove the leading principle of our lives. ibid., p. 137

Once more, metaphysics and scholastic inquiries are dismissed, since neither can live up to the calling of philosophy. All this is exposed under the aegis of none other than Persius, figuring at the very beginning of Shaftesbury’s Soliloquy with the following verse: “nec te quaesiveris extra” (ibid., p. 70).14 And tellingly, it is Persius again who is referred to in the passage from the Miscellaneous Reflections quoted above, which is not coincidentally presented as a commentary on the role of the monologue following Shaftesbury’s own work. The other author cited at the outset of his writings is the Latin poet Horace.15 Shaftesbury was in fact used to choosing significant sentences from ancient sources as mottos epitomizing the main ideas of the relevant work—a habit, which was not without effect on Spalding. In sum, Shaftesbury provided Spalding with an “open anthropology” (Adler 1994a) suited to his apologetic needs, drew his attention to the literary genre of the monologue, and furthermore helped him find in Greek and Latin philosophy a powerful ally for his existential revision of Christian religion. All this turned out to be crucial for his reflection on the human vocation, and it is maybe not a coincidence that the very first occurrence of the term Bestimmung in Spalding’s own work—as far as the extant documents permit us to assess—is to be found in the preface to his translation of the Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit. Here “our vocation [Bestimmung]” is defined as “that which matters so much to us,” identifying “what we must or must not be.”16 The time was ripe for a dedicated investigation.

III Religion as a Way of Life: Spalding’s Pioneering of a New Area of Inquiry The year 1748 was a turning point for the German book market. In May, a small yet lively treatise entitled Betrachtung über die Bestimmung des Menschen

14

15 16

Persius, Saturae (Satires), 1, line 7 (“No need to inquire outside yourself ”; the translation is that given by Shaftesbury himself). Cf. Shaftesbury [1714] 2000, pp. 4, 29, 70, 163, 231, 339. SpKA I, 6/1:177.

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(Meditation on the Vocation of the Human Being) was published in Greifswald, and soon became a sensation. The author had decided to remain anonymous, but he did not manage—or perhaps actually wanted—to avoid publicity: in the same year, his name was revealed in a review, and within a short time was known to anybody versed in literature, philosophy, or religion. Moreover, the text quickly became a genuine bestseller, being republished in ten further editions, revised, updated, and considerably expanded by the author (1748, 1749, 1752, 1754, 1759, 1763, 1764, 1768, 1774, 1794), while also undergoing at least eight clandestine reprints, six reproductions within the works of other authors or anthologies, and nineteen translations (into Czech, French, Latin, Dutch, Russian, and Swedish), including re-editions from reprints and translations. Starting with the seventh edition, Spalding’s signature appeared in the introduction (yet not on the cover), and the title was shortened to the more direct Die Bestimmung des Menschen (The Vocation of the Human Being).17 This work marked the introduction of the relevant key term into the German language for both learned and unlearned,18 and did so while also supporting a very particular view about religion. Spalding in fact applied Shaftesbury’s polemic against abstruse and sterile philosophy to the religious field, marginalizing any dogmatic aspects in favor of those aimed at helping human beings to become better. Knowledge about disputed—and disputable—doctrines could not contribute anything to this process of perfecting, and that is why none of them figure in the text. Accordingly, Spalding produced a literary piece devoid of any reference to the Bible, yet provided with explicit quotations from the ancients, placed furthermore in strategic positions following Shaftesbury. Hence, Horace appears on the cover, Cicero on the final page,19 whereas the author and verse cited on the first page seem to be far more than a simple allusion to Latin culture, being rather a silent yet unmistakable quote from Shaftesbury: “Quid sumus? et quidnam victuri gignimur?—Persius” (SpKA I, 1:1). Spalding’s preference for the aforementioned passage from the Characteristicks clearly

17

18

19

For these and further editorial details see Macor 2013, pp. 100–9. A dedicated investigation into Spalding’s treatise, both in the first and eleventh editions, is provided by Tippmann 2011. This is not to say that Spalding was the first to use the expression Bestimmung des Menschen, which already occurred in the 1730s in the Reformed pastor August Friedrich Wilhelm Sack’s homiletics (cf. Macor 2013, p. 70). However, Spalding undoubtedly has the merit of having brought the formula towards success and consensus. Spalding first met Sack in early 1745, and during his subsequent stay in Berlin from late 1745 to the spring of 1747, he could profit from the latter’s mentorship. For a comprehensive survey of Sack’s life and works see Pockrandt 2003. Cf. SpKA I, 1:LII, 25. Coenen (2018, pp. 71–91) focuses especially on Cicero’s role as a model and reference for Spalding’s text.

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signals his intentions and paved the way for other authors willing to follow in his footsteps, such as Kant himself.20 So, Shaftesbury influenced Spalding’s approach, opening quotation, and, last but not least, his literary genre. The text stages a monologue by a fictional I committed to discovering the meaning of existence and the following rules of behaviour, based on the conviction that only introspection can enable the achievement of such an end. I see that I can spend the brief time that I must live in the world according to very different basic rules, whose value and consequences therefore cannot be the same in any way. Since I undeniably find in myself an ability to choose and to prefer one thing over another in my decisions, thus in this case too I must not proceed blindly, but first try to distinguish, as best as my abilities allow me, which way is the most secure, most respectable and most advantageous. [. . .] It is well worth the effort to know why I exist and what I should be according to reason. SpKA I, 1:1

The ensuing inner journey comprises five successive phases, which from the seventh edition onwards are subdivided into the same number of paragraphs: Sinnlichkeit (sensuality/sensibility), Vergnügen des Geistes (pleasures of the spirit), Tugend (virtue), Religion (religion), and Unsterblichkeit (immortality). Each stage depends on the results gained in the previous one, in that it tries both to resolve its flaws and to maintain its outcomes. Hence, the work is a genuine meditation, i.e., a gradual process of knowledge-acquisition, whose single phases cannot stand alone since they are mutually related; and this is why Spalding originally included the term Betrachtung (amounting to “meditation”) in the title of his treatise. To perform such a task, Spalding’s fictional I relies exclusively on their own intrinsic abilities, without calling on any authority nor on the opinions of others, because external “examples [. . .] are so infinitely different from one another” that “choosing a guide from among them” would cause much more “confusion and embarrassment” than looking for “the right way” independently (SpKA I, 1:1). Thus, the only solution is to strive for “a certainty that springs from an inquiry” (SpKA I, 1:2), whose credibility evidently depends on an optimistic anthropology centred on the moral sense.

20

In the drafts of his preface to the second edition of Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason), Kant quotes the same verses from Persius’ third Satire (cf. AA 23:89).

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Accordingly, the speaking I first, and provisionally, identifies the purpose of human existence in the pleasure of the senses, although it turns out before long that this cannot be unlimited or without moderation. However, not even “an orderly voluptuary” can exemplify “what nature intends for the human being,” since a sense of “disgust and tedium” inevitably follows sensuous satisfaction, and this does not enable the individual to experience any tranquillity (SpKA I, 1:5). As a consequence, the narrator decides to go beyond this first phase of reflection and move on to the next. This is devoted to spiritual pleasures, i.e., those intellectual “improvements, perfections, and advantages” that offer a substantially different, and in fact superior quality of fulfillment than that afforded by the mere senses (SpKA I, 1:6). The way to succeed in acquiring this peculiar form of “pacification” consists in making one’s “spirit more perfect,” “enriching” one’s “memory,” “enlightening [aufzuklären]” one’s “concepts,” “intensifying” one’s “wit,” “amplifying and reinforcing” one’s “insight,” in short, elevating one’s abilities “from one level to the next” (SpKA I, 1:6). This is something the fictional I envisages being able and willing to do endlessly, because the continuous effort implied is itself a source of pleasure: “I take care of myself [ich sorge also für mich], of my true advantages, and enjoy possessing them” (SpKA I, 1:7).21 But however serious and fulfilling spiritual activity may be, it is nonetheless as transient as sensuous life, since it is not exempt from shortcomings. Due to their purely egotistical stance they were adopted by the narrator, who suddenly realizes that there are “other beings” in the world, and hence is motivated to change perspective in a radical way. In fact, the “natural aim” of life cannot be reduced to personal “profit,” nor revolve around the self as the unique “central core” (SpKA I, 1:7). A proper conversion is taking place, and virtue is the answer. The third phase of the introspective process opens the field of morality, where the speaking I decides to take the needs of others into consideration, while also discovering that this is an inclination coming from nature. Humans are in fact equipped with natural “drives [Triebe] and feelings [Empfindungen],” which go beyond personal benefit (SpKA I, 1:7)—“feelings [Empfindungen] for goodness and order,” “natural and independent drives [ursprüngliche und unabhängliche Triebe]” towards what is “appropriate” and “just” (SpKA I, 1:8). These “inclinations [Neigungen]” have nothing to do with “egoism [Eigenliebe]” (SpKA I, 1:10), being 21

The verb used in this sentence, sorgen, is that underlying the German notion of “care,” (Sorge) cf. above, footnote 3. Spalding elsewhere has recourse to this key noun, cf. SpKA I, 1:12. Unfortunately, neither Hadot nor Foucault ever mention Spalding, who until recently was a true outsider in scholarship—except in connection with German theology.

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aimed not only at the well-being of those closest to us, but also, and more fundamentally, at the “happiness of humankind” (SpKA I, 1:11–12). Clearly, the ethics underlying these passages is none other than Shaftesbury’s moral sense theory, which Spalding had already aligned himself with in both prefaces to his translations of 1745 and 1747. Moreover, this anthropological model turns out to be the implicit basis for the whole investigation, which rests on the idea that the soliloquist has reliable and suitable instruments not only in the moral arena but also in the cognitive. Otherwise, to put it simply, a monologue without external help—be this divine intervention or social authority—would not have been possible. It is not a coincidence, then, that the moral voice within proves useful in enabling recognition of both “the eternal rules of law and order” and “the supreme maxims of truth” (SpKA I, 1:13). And it is by this means that the transition to the fourth phase of this interior journey takes place. The fictional I now turns to nature and its multifaceted appearances, including “green field[s],” “brook[s],” and “uncountable worlds” (SpKA I, 1:14). This observation permits the ascendance to a new, altogether different and higher dimension, thereby inferring the existence of “an intellect that thinks for the whole, that organizes and guides the whole,” “a spirit that transmits all things, through its ineffable emanations, existence, duration, abilities, and beauty” (SpKA I, 1:15). Religion is thus the acquisition of this stage, which, however, is not yet the last one. The unhappy fate often reserved for the just and, conversely, the prosperity undeservedly enjoyed by the wicked, motivates the speaking I to leave behind the merely earthly perspective hitherto adopted and to look for the right balance between merit and reward in another life, since “there is here a kind of disharmony, which would undeniably be an error if it was not resolved afterwards in perfect harmony” (SpKA I, 1:20). Only “the future” can provide such a solution (SpKA I, 1:20), and this is how the immortality of the soul, the last phase of the investigation, is introduced. Two further arguments support this assumption, and both rest on human nature. First, human faculties such as the “capacity for recognizing and loving truth and good,” are susceptible to “infinite growth,” and it makes no sense for “an infinite wisdom” to provide a creature with such potential while also planning to interrupt the relevant process of perfecting at any stage (SpKA I, 1:21). Second, the “I” of the narrator is conceived of as simple, i.e., as “not consisting of many or different parts separated from one another,” and other than the “organs” forming the sensuous instruments of earthly life (SpKA I, 1:21); hence, it does not participate in the corruptibility of the body.

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At this point, the fictional I can finally state the aim of human existence, which requires acting rightfully in daily behavior, but cannot be achieved before death: Now I acknowledge [. . .] that this visible life does not exhaust the whole aim of my existence. So I am made for another life. The present time is only the beginning of my being; it is my early childhood, in which I am being brought up for eternity; these are days of preparation that must make me suited for a new and more noble state. SpKA I, 1:22

And so, in just over twenty pages, Spalding succeeds in giving a sense of a sincere existential search, being able to do this in part thanks to the first-person narrative, which promotes the reader’s involvement and identification with the speaking voice. Indeed, Spalding himself draws attention to this point in the preface to the eleventh and last edition of his treatise (1794), not coincidentally before once again quoting “a moral poet of antiquity,” who is none other than Persius.22 Clearly, the overall message is religious in nature, yet not manifestly Christian, let alone specifically Protestant or Lutheran, and the absence of any reference to the Bible could only add to the ambiguity of the text. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that already in 1748 Spalding was accused of deism and Pelagianism by Lessing’s later opponent Johann Melchior Goeze, being thus motivated to supply the third edition of 1749 with an appendix.23 Here, Spalding explicitly declares his deeply-held faith in the Christian God, but also insists on his particular way of conceiving of religion, and particularly Christian religion, as something universal, accessible to anybody, and substantially different from dogmatics, since its “chief and final aim” consists in “making the human being better and happy” (SpKA I, 1:204). This was perfectly in keeping with the ancient view, which evidently proved valid well beyond the boundaries of philosophy, but this could only provoke further criticism. This came about in 1754, when the Lutheran theologian Johann Martin Chladenius deemed Spalding’s appendix insufficient or even misleading for a Christian public.24 In this case, Spalding did not react

22

23

24

SpKA I, 1:32; cf. Persius, Saturae (Satires), 4, line 23: “Ut nemo in sese tentat descendere” (“How no one risks descending into himself ”; the translation is that given by Reckford 2009, p. 109). Cf. SpKA I, 1:198–214. Curiously, Goeze republished Spalding’s text in its entirety followed by his detailed reply, and Spalding considered this reprint the second edition of his work; on this controversy see Beutel 2004. Chladenius published a review of the third edition of Spalding’s treatise, focusing on both content and language, and rejecting the term Bestimmung in favor of the traditional Beruf(ung); on this see Macor 2013, pp. 125–30.

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with a dedicated piece of writing; he simply continued working on his recasting of German Protestantism along the lines of the Greek and Latin legacy, and he did so not only in the further editions of his treatise, but also in other works. So, both in minor essays and major volumes up to the 1770s, he claims that “religion” is “meant to be [. . .] effective,” and its “truth” is intrinsically and “immediately practical” (SpKA I, 6/1:258). Accordingly, it does not include “merely theoretical doctrines,” “scholastic over-subtleties,” and “theoretical church doctrines,” (SpKA, I, 3:134, 153, 174) which either do not have an impact on daily behavior—such as those related to the Trinity and Eucharist or those identifying the differences between different Christian confessions (cf. SpKA, I, 3:139, 147, 150, 165)—or on the contrary may exert an influence on human actions, and more precisely, a negative one, if they are unclear or contrary to common sense—such as the doctrine of original sin and the justification sola fide (cf. SpKA, I, 3:179). To be sure, Spalding does not intend to exclude discussion on these points, which in his eyes do indeed deserve careful consideration; rather, he suggests reserving this for theologians, who possess the necessary background and tools for dealing with them without—it is to be hoped—damaging their capacity to act rightfully. For a “way of philosophizing,” which “turns its supporters into worse human beings,” cannot “possibly be worth a thing.”25 Clearly, Spalding was committed to combining the practical conception of philosophy typical of the ancients with the modern need for an existential revision of the Christian religion in the face of the exacerbation of erudite and dogmatic controversies following the Reformation. In so doing, he was able to pioneer a new area of inquiry, which was to be explored over the whole of the second half of the eighteenth century and well beyond what can be described as disciplinary boundaries. His little treatise on the human vocation crucially contributed to “the conflation of theology and philosophy that characterized modern German Protestant culture,”26 while also (re)shaping philosophy itself. In fact, it marked the transition from a merely “speculative metaphysics to a practical and self-conscious philosophy,” leading to the well-known popular trends of the late German Enlightenment, and finally to Kant’s primacy of practical reason (Brandt 2007, p. 61). In sum, Spalding revived the ancient tradition of thought and made it available to the following generations for further development. Not a minor legacy.

25

26

SpKA I, 6/1:269. On the distinction between religion and theology in Spalding’s work see Dreesman 2008, pp. 121–31; Beutel 2014, pp. 229–30. Printy 2013, p. 191. On this see also Kubik 2009.

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IV Conclusion In light of the preceding, it is clear that Spalding embodied Hadot’s and Foucault’s ideas in a quintessential manner, countering the reductive view of philosophy— and religion as part of it—as a science unfolding over the centuries. His first book championed an existential perspective on theory and was not coincidentally dedicated to the universal problem par excellence, namely, the purpose of human life. The literary genre chosen was in line with this general stance, being a monologue aimed at transforming the speaker’s—and reader’s—life through a proper conversion. The fictional I—and the all but inert reader—experiences all the inner steps required for their discourse to be authentically philosophical, in that it presupposes continuous effort and practice as well as an ascending process towards truth and God—in keeping with Hadot’s paradigm and Foucault’s distinction between eros and askesis. After all, it seems that both Hadot and Foucault failed to notice the programmatic and influential restoration of the ancient model in the German territories of the second half of the eighteenth century, stemming from—while in turn producing—an extremely fruitful interaction between philosophy and theology. To be sure, they refer to the German Enlightenment and occasionally make mention of some of its protagonists—Johann Georg Sulzer, Georg Friedrich Meier, Johann August Eberhard, and Moses Mendelssohn—but rarely expand on these allusions, a notable exception being Kant (cf. Hadot [1995] 2002, pp. 265–70; Hadot [1996] 2019, p. 286; Foucault [1982–3] 2010, pp. 7–21). Needless to say, Spalding’s name is entirely absent. It is perhaps time to reassess his position in this long and fascinating story.

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Between Spalding and Fichte: The Vocation of the Human Being in Mendelssohn and Kant Günter Zöller

Hardly any other locution or formula is as suitable for capturing the philosophical project of the German late Enlightenment in the latter half of the eighteenth century as that of the “vocation of the human being” (Bestimmung des Menschen). To be sure, already in early modern discussions, especially among the European humanists, there had been talk about the “human condition” (conditio humana), just as later, in the twentieth century attempts at a philosophical anthropology, there was to be talk about the peculiar “cosmic position” (Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, Max Scheler) or the “excentric positionality” (exzentrische Positionalität, Helmuth Plessner) of the human being. But only during the final five decades of the eighteenth century does the discourse about what it means to be a human being and to live as a human being figure under the formula of the “vocation of the human being.” At first blush, the German term featured in the locution regarding the human being’s “vocation,” Bestimmung, seems to derive from the sphere of logic and ontology, where it serves as the German translation of the Latin determinatio, designating the delimitation of a concept or a thing from what it is not. But in eighteenth-century German, Bestimmung also serves, linguistically speaking, as a loanword (Lehnwort) for the Latin term vocatio meaning “calling,” with the Stimme (voice) in Bestimmung corresponding to the vox (voice) in “vocation.” In this second, vocational meaning, the German term Bestimmung functions as an alternative to the older related words Beruf and Berufung for rendering what in Latin is called vocatio and in Greek klēsis. A possible reason for the alternative translation of vocation as Bestimmung, rather than Beruf, may have been the latter term’s increasing usage for designating an occupation or profession.1 In a

1

On the early modern separation of Berufung (vocation) and Beruf (profession), see Conze 1972, esp. pp. 491–2.

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theological perspective, the multiple professions exercised by different human beings are contrasted with their single God-given moral and religious vocation, which concerns the human being as such, simply as a human being, and precedes as well as exceeds any professional or vocational specialization. While the term “vocation of the human being” is used consistently by an entire series of German philosophical authors in the second half of the eighteenth century, there is no matching agreement on the concept of the vocation of the human being.2 On the contrary, the question concerning the vocation of the human being becomes the arena for deep disputes between the main currents of the German late Enlightenment, in which Leibniz-Wolffian school philosophy, English and Scottish influences, popular philosophy, and (Kantian) criticism run alongside each other, sometimes influencing each other and thereby causing not a few vortices in the stream that forms the history of philosophy. Accordingly, a sustained reflection on the historical semantics of the key term “vocation of the human being” can provide helpful orientation. Such an elucidation is not only a matter of ascertaining the different and differing understandings of the vocation of the human being, but also of identifying the entire semantic spectrum of the term. At the very least, such an investigation would aim at uncovering the basic mode of thinking underlying and holding together the polymorph “vocation of the human being” beyond the latter’s designation by an identical terminus technicus. In what follows, the presentation of the main historical and systematic features of the deep semantics of the discourse concerning the vocation of the human being is preceded by an orientation about the historical span of the usage of the formula “vocation of the human being” (I). At the center of the investigation then stands the vocation of the human in Moses Mendelssohn (II) and in Immanuel Kant (III).3

I From Spalding’s Vocation of the Human Being to Fichte’s Vocation of the Human Being In 1748, there appears in Greifswald—a North North German town on the Baltic Sea, then under Swedish rule—a booklet, comprising twenty-six pages, under the

2 3

For a comprehensive conceptual history of the “vocation of the human being,” see Macor 2013. This article draws on the following earlier publications by the author: Zöller 2001, Zöller 2015, and Zöller 2021.

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title Mediations on the Vocation of the Human Being (Spalding 1748).4 Under the simplified title The Vocation of the Human Being (including the definite article typically left out when the title is cited) and with continuously increasing length, the work is issued in thirteen editions up to 1794. In addition, it is translated four times into French, two times into Dutch, and once each into Latin and Italian. The “newly improved and enlarged edition with several supplements” from 1768 (Spalding 1768)5 comprises, in addition to a notice of the “rightful publisher” warning against “bad reprints,” the main text of sixty-eight pages, eleven pages of “appendix to the third edition,” and four supplements of together sixty-three pages—all in all 146 counted printed pages.6 The “new enlarged edition” of 1794 (Spalding 1794) comprises 274 pages, of which 165 contain the main text and about seventy the supplements. The author of the original text and of all the newly edited subsequent versions is the Lutheran pastor, Johann Joachim Spalding (1714–1804), who is active in Berlin’s Protestant church administration as Provost and Chief Consistorial Councilor, and counts among the members of the leading intellectual circle in late Enlightenment Berlin, the Wednesday Society (Mittwochsgesellschaft), founded in 1783. Spalding’s Vocation of the Human Being is, in its author’s own words, a “book of moral edification” (Spalding 1794, p. iv). The work describes in five main sections7 and in the manner of a personal narration—hence the reference to “meditations” in the original edition—the course of reflection of a human being who has decided “to undertake, from the beginning, the investigation of what he is supposed to be” (Spalding 1794, p. 4). The steps of the self-examination, which form at once the successive candidates for the sought-after end indicated in the work’s title (“vocation”), are: sensual gratification, pleasures of mind, virtuousness,

4 5

6

7

On the specifics of Spalding’s text and its reception, see Lorenz 1994 and D’Alessandro 1999. See also the recent reedition of this edition, without the supplements but recording the deviations from the first edition of 1748, in Spalding 1999. The differences in the main text between the editions of 1748 and 1768 are listed ibid., pp. 69–95. See also the combined reprint of the first edition (1748) and the last edition (1794), with modernized orthography and punctuation, in an edition from 1997 by Wolfgang Erich Müller (Waltrop: Hartmut Spenner). An Austrian edition from 1779, Salzburg: Hof- und akademische Waisenhausbuchhandlung, comprises 111 pages and consists of the main text, the appendix to the third edition, and four supplements. The structure of the work summarized in what follows is based on the inspection of original exemplars of the editions of 1768, 1779, and 1794. The page references are to the edition of 1794. The editions of 1768 and 1779 both contain the appendix to the third edition, which is replaced by a section entitled “Final Thoughts” (Schlußgedanken) in the edition of 1794. Of the four additional appendices in the editions of 1768 and 1779, entitled “The Value of Devotion,” “The Happy Old Age,” “The Human Hopes,” and “Resoluteness” (Der Werth der Andacht, Das glückliche Alter, Die menschlichen Hoffnungen, and Die Entschlossenheit), only the first one is not taken over into the edition 1794.

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religiosity, and immortal afterlife (Spalding 1794, pp. 10–25, 26–39, 40–97, 98– 132 and 133–61). The course of meditation runs from the life form according to which all human existence aims at sensuous pleasure to the inclusion of intellectual pleasures into life’s goal, from there to the cognition and recognition of the life forms of juridical and ethical regard for other human beings, further on to the turn towards God and finally to a life led in the firm expectation of personal immortality. While the first two steps (sensual gratification, pleasures of mind) are to be left behind once and for all, the insights of the two following steps (virtuousness, religiosity) are to be preserved even once the final step (anticipated immortality) is reached. But, the mundane ends of human life, under the forms of right and morality and of religiosity, are trumped by the ultimate, otherworldly orientation toward eternity. Spalding’s work is remarkable for a number of reasons. To begin with, the title phrase “vocation of the human being” does not occur in the work itself.8 The text talks only occasionally and only rarely, in a personalized rendition of the title term, about “my vocation” (Spalding 1794, pp. 145–6). To be sure, in Spalding the fictional meditator asks about the goal “where I ought to be,” inquires after the “main purpose of my life” (Spalding 1794, p. 114), and seeks the “true end of my existence” (Spalding 1794, p. 162). The meditator-author also employs the traditional locution, dating back to Renaissance humanism, of the “grandeur and dignity of my human nature” (Spalding 1794, p. 115). In all these passages, the destination, the end, and the essence of human nature is rendered in personal and individual terms as “mine,” the latter term referring to whomever engages in the vocational meditation. To be sure, the insights gained regarding the human vocation are regarded by Spalding as applying to each and everyone. But the insights in question are to be achieved individually and personally, by ideally transposing oneself into the presented role and function of the exemplary meditator. The experience of one’s own vocation is only to be had as a singular self-experience. A further trait to be noted in Spalding’s Vocation of the Human Being is that its orientation toward the human being does not originate in knowledge of the world—the outer world, to be precise—but in the return into one’s own, inner self. The featured meditator explicitly contrasts the difficulty, even impossibility,

8

This assertion is based on an examination of the final, thirteenth edition of Spalding’s work from 1794. Given Spalding’s general practice of continuously expanding his work in successive editions, it is not to be assumed that the phrase “vocation of the human being” is contained in an earlier edition or earlier editions and subsequently removed. Thus the findings from the final edition may be extended to all previous ones.

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of knowing much—much more so, everything—about the world, with the immediate presence and absolute certainty of inwardly grasping the “grand purpose” (Spalding 1794, p. 132) of one’s own life. The second of the three supplements to the edition of 1794, entitled “The Human Hopes” (Spalding 1794, pp. 204–23),9 transposes the contrast between the difficult-to-know world and the absolute certainty of one’s vocation into the practical sphere—as the opposition between unreliable, “empty” hopes, on the one side, and the firm conviction about one thing, viz., personal immortality, on the other side. Finally, and related to the previously isolated features, the overall otherworldly orientation of the human being in Spalding has to be noted. The vocation of the human being belongs to a comprehensive context that exceeds earthly existence, and this not only towards the end of life or at its end, but from the beginning and throughout. Among the broad but also diffuse and therefore difficult to reconstruct forms of reception that Spalding’s work receives, the one by Moses Mendelssohn distinguishes itself in terms of extent and significance. Initially, in 1764, Mendelssohn writes a defense of the work against the attacks by a friend of his, the philosopher Thomas Abbt (1738–66). Abbt’s “Doubts About the Vocation of the Human Being” (originally planned as a review of the seventh edition of The Vocation of the Human Being of 1763) together with Mendelssohn’s rejoinder, “Oracle Concerning the Vocation of the Human Being,” appear, both pseudonymously, in the periodical publication Letters on Literature (Nicolai et al. [1764] 1974, letters from June 21 and 28, 1764, part XIX, pp. 8–40 and 41–60). The private correspondence between Abbt and Mendelssohn on the topic of the vocation of the human being, carried out on the basis of Spalding, soon comes to an end though, because of Abbt’s early death. Mendelssohn’s dialogue Phaedo or On the Immortality of the Soul, fashioned as a latter-day rewrite of Plato’s work and first published in 1767, also stands in close relation to Mendelssohn’s critical reception of Spalding’s Vocation of the Human Being. Already in the preface to Phaedo, Mendelssohn refers to Spalding’s work and to his correspondence with Abbt regarding it (JA 3/1:7 and 9). The final of the three dialogues that make up the main part of Phaedo (JA 3/1:110– 59), then, is heavily informed by Spalding as far as its disposition and argument are concerned.10 Moreover, Mendelssohn initiates and, in part, undertakes a

9 10

In the editions of 1768 and 1779 this is the third of the four supplements. See also the introduction of the volume’s editors in JA 3/1, especially p. xxxiii, and Altmann 1982, esp. pp. 96–8.

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posthumous edition of Abbt’s Varied Works, which also feature Abbt’s correspondence, including the correspondence between Abbt and Mendelssohn on the vocation of the human being, along with Abbt’s Doubts and Mendelssohn’s Oracle from the Letters on Literature, all supplied with extensive notes (AVW 3). Subsequent to his posthumously extended exchange with Abbt on the vocation of the human being according to Spalding, Mendelssohn further refines his position on the matter in his correspondence of 1782 with the German government administrator in Danish services, August Hennings (1746–1826).11 But the work by Mendelssohn that is completely centered around the vocation of the human being is an article, published in 1784 in the Berlin Monthly, entitled “On the Question: What Does ‘to Enlighten’ Mean?” (Kant et al. 1974, pp. 3–8).12 Finally, the continued correspondence with Hennings on Mendelssohn’s essay on enlightenment offers further clarifications regarding Mendelssohn’s understanding of the vocation of the human being.13 While Mendelssohn refers explicitly to Spalding’s work and, moreover, employs the formula of the “vocation of the human being” over decades affirmatively and without modification, Kant’s reflection on the vocation of the human being is neither tied to the wording of Spalding’s formula nor explicitly related to the latter’s work. Rather in the lectures on anthropology from the 1770s onward (AA 25; esp. AA 25:675–7, AA 25:838–40, and AA 25:1415–17), in the reflections on anthropology and the philosophy of history from his unpublished literary remains (Nachlass) underlying those lectures (AA 15)14 and in correlated journal publications from the 1780s and 1790s, mostly published in the Berlin Monthly,15 Kant employs an entire series of variations on Spalding’s basic formula. Thus he speaks of the “vocation of the human species” (AA 8:30), of the “human vocation” (AA 8:46) and of the “natural vocation of the human being,” as opposed to the “rational vocation of the human being” (R1521, AA 15/2:885; see section 3 below).

11

12

13 14

15

See Mendelssohn 1979, pp. 55–62, esp. 58 (#568), 64–7, esp. 65 (#571), and 73–80, esp. 57 (#577). The parenthetically indicated numbering of the letters provided in this and future references to Mendelssohn 1979 indicates the numbering in the authoritative edition of Mendelssohn’s correspondence in Mendelssohn JA 13. See especially Mendelssohn’s statement: “I assume throughout the vocation of the human to be the measure and aim of all our efforts” (Kant et al. 1974, p. 4). Mendelssohn 1979, pp. 227–30, esp. 229 (#660) and 234–7, esp. 236–7 (#664). See also the compilation of pertinent reflections in Kant 1974, esp. pp. 201–55 (“Selected Reflections from the Literary Remains on Anthropology, Philosophy of History and Historiography”). See the compilation of Kant’s articles from the Berlin Monthly and of related articles of his from other publications in Kant 1974. For similar collections in English, see Kant 1991 and Kant 2007.

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The recourse to Spalding’s work is more terminologically fixed and obvious in several writings by Johann Gottlieb Fichte from the very end of the eighteenth century. The first public lecture course that Fichte holds at the University of Jena in 1794 is published immediately in book form under the title “Some Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar” (FGA I, 3:23–68 and 72–4). The first of altogether five lectures that make up the work bears the title “On the Vocation of the Human Being in Itself,” the second is entitled “On the Vocation of the Human Being in Society.”16 Subsequently, Fichte presents two further lecture courses on the role and function of the scholar, one in Erlangen (1805) and one in Berlin (1812). For the publication of the Berlin lectures he again employs the expression “vocation of the scholar” in the work’s title.17 More explicit yet is the reference to Spalding in the first work that Fichte publishes after leaving Jena for Berlin in 1800. A good fifty years after the first publication of Spalding’s Vocation of the Human Being, six years after the publication of the work’s last, thirteenth edition, and with its original author still alive, Fichte titles a work of his own, which offers, in essence, a popular presentation of his own basic philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre), The Vocation of the Human Being (FGA I, 6:189–309; Fichte 1987).18 With its meditative ductus, its sequential steps of insight into the vocation of the human being, its general movement from the world of sense to the world of spirit, and its concluding religious orientation, Fichte’s Vocation actually appears as a post-Kantian rewrite of Spalding’s Vocation. After Fichte, however, the locution “vocation of the human being” occurs neither as a book title nor as a technical term of importance. The term and concept remain exclusively tied to the second half of the eighteenth century and to the German late Enlightenment.19

16

17

18

19

Previously, at the conclusion of his Zurich lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre in the spring of 1794, Fichte had placed his systematic thought under the traditional humanist formula of the “dignity of the human being.” See “Ueber die Würde des Menschen. Beym Schlusse seiner philosophischen Vorlesungen gesprochen,” in FGA I, 2:83–9; Fichte 2021, pp. 458–60. On the comparatively recently discovered Zurich Wissenschaftslehre, see Zöller 1996. The complete title of the Berlin lectures reads: “Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar” (Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten). The Erlanger lectures appeared in 1806 under the title “On the Essence of the Scholar and its Appearances in the Domain of Freedom” (Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten und seine Erscheinungen im Gebiete der Freiheit). See FGA I, 8:57–139. On the character of Fichte’s Vocation of the Human Being as a summary presentation of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, especially the latter’s “new presentation” from 1796/99 (Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo), in a popular guise, see Zöller 1998, pp. 110–26. On the extent and limits of Fichte’s involvement in the German late Enlightenment and its discourse on the vocation of the human being, see Fuchs et al. 2005.

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II The Vocation of the Human Being in Mendelssohn The arc spanning the half century between Spalding’s Vocation and Fichte’s Vocation rests on two outstanding pillars, viz., Mendelssohn and Kant. Although Mendelssohn acts as an avowed defender of Spalding’s work, Kant intervenes critically and originally in an ongoing discussion about the human vocation that is essentially shaped by Mendelssohn. But already in Mendelssohn a line of thought can be found that does not occur in Spalding and that, under the influence of Mendelssohn, fully emerges in Kant. For while Spalding deals with the human being’s gradual insight into the human vocation by tracking an entire series of possible candidates for such a vocation (sensuality, virtuousness, etc.), Mendelssohn introduces the idea of gradation into the human vocation as such and in itself, beyond the extraneous differentiation into its correct or incorrect, complete or incomplete cognition to be found in Spalding. The latter is concerned with the (fictionally rendered) development of the vocation of the human being. Mendelssohn and Kant, following Mendelssohn, focus on the vocation of the human being for development. Mendelssohn introduces the idea of development as a constitutive part of the human vocation itself by means of the concept of “formation” (Ausbildung). For Mendelssohn, the “proper vocation of the human being in this world” is the “formation of the capabilities of the soul in accordance with divine designs” (AVW 3:218; Mendelssohn, Oracle; in the original emphasis). Several things are remarkable about this definitional determination of the vocation of the human being. First of all, there is the restriction of the vocation to the sphere of earthly existence (“in this world”). By contrast, in Spalding the proper, ultimate vocation of the human being is located in the latter’s vocation for an eternal life. Moreover, it is to be noted that in Mendelssohn’s definitional statement, the objects of vocational formation (Ausbildung) are quite generally mental capacities (“capabilities of the soul”) and not the human being’s specifically intellectual formation. Finally, it is noteworthy that, despite the orientation toward this world, the formation of the mental capacities occurs within a framework determined by divine purposes (“divine designs”). Mendelssohn goes on to distinguish between the special vocation of the human being as a human being and the general vocation of the human being as a created being. The latter vocation, which the human being shares with all other creatures, consists in “fulfilling the designs of the Almighty” (AVW 3:216; Mendelssohn, Oracle). By contrast, the specifically human vocation of the human

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being resides in the (divinely disbursed) capability—and the associated (divinely preordained) goal—“to become ever more perfect through practice” (AVW 3:216; Mendelssohn, Oracle). “Practice” here does not refer to the repetitive exercise of already formed capabilities, but to the acquisition and training of capacities that are first to be developed. The comparative expression “more perfect” might at first surprise in this context. It seems that something is either imperfect or perfect—and in the latter case no longer in need of, or even capable of, further perfection. But Mendelssohn employs a metaphysical conception of perfection developed in Leibniz-Wolffian school philosophy, which in turn takes the concept from the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals. According to that extended tradition, each being (ens) merely as such (ens qua ens)—each being, generically considered, regardless of its categorial specifications and to that extent exceeding, or transcending, the latter (transcendentalis)—possesses some (degree of) perfection: “Ergo omne ens est perfectum transcendentaliter” (Baumgarten 1757, §99; also AA 17:47). Perfectio in the ontological understanding is here coextensive with realitas (real content). In medieval scholasticism as well as in early modern German school philosophy, the identification of perfectio with realitas is part of the general conception of an ontological relation in which each finite being stands to the infinite, emphatically perfect being, the ens perfectissimum (“most perfect being”) containing an omnitudo realitatis (“totality of reality”). The metaphysical conception of perfection also includes the plural use of “perfection” (perfectiones). Ontologically speaking, in German school philosophy—as whose most influential late propagator and popularizer Mendelssohn can be regarded20— each determination (determinatio) of a being (ens), no matter how limited, is a perfection (perfectio). In Leibniz and his successors, most prominently among them Wolff and Baumgarten, the ontological, specifically “transcendental” concept of perfection is in turn theologically grounded—more precisely, based in philosophical, “rational” theology (theologia rationalis), and more precisely yet, in the rationaltheological doctrine of the world as having been selected by God as the best possible world and hence so created (Leibniz [1710] 1969). Moreover, for Leibniz and his successors, the perfection of the world in its entirety is shared by the

20

In particular, Mendelssohn’s late work Morning Hours, Or Lectures on the Existence of God from 1785 (JA 3/2) can be seen as the concluding culmination of German school philosophy in the succession of Leibniz and Wolff.

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world’s constituent parts. Each being contributes in its own way to cosmic perfection, even if not always (and perhaps hardly ever) in a manner open to human insight. But, in principle, so Leibniz and his successors argued, it is the case that the world would be less good and hence no longer absolutely perfect, if it were the least different from how it actually is. In the perspective of cosmic optimality, everything and everyone is something good (bonum), and to that extent also something perfect (perfectum). Against the background of the Leibnizian or school-philosophical conception of metaphysical perfection, Mendelssohn undertakes his decisive innovation in determining the vocation of the human being: he subjects human perfection to the capacity for development—and so to the need for such development. For Mendelssohn, the human being is not, like every other being, ready once and for all. Rather the human being, and the human being alone, must, can, and ought to “form” (ausbilden) itself. To be sure, for Mendelssohn the goals for the perfectioning of the human being are preordained, viz., through some allencompassing divine design. But, the “formation” (Ausbildung) itself and as such—the actual execution of the divine plan—is left to each and every human being, while it is still also mandated of each and every human being. In Mendelssohn, the vocation of the human being to self-perfectioning in accordance with the divine order of things is a vocation, not to physical or bodily improvement, but to mental and spiritual self-perfecting (“formation of the psychological capabilities”). Also for Mendelssohn, the goal of human selfperfecting does not consist in achieving some identical, universally valid ideal type of human being. The reason for this lack of a uniform end is not only the human’s subjective inability to cognize and realize such a perfect goal, but the objective lack of such a goal in the divine world-plan (AVW 3:256–7; Mendelssohn’s letter to Abbt from July 12, 1764). According to Mendelssohn, the span of self-perfecting varies from human being to human being—and this both with regard to the selection and to the extent, as well as the duration, of the selfformation of the “capabilities of the soul.” Based on his metaphysical perfectionism, Mendelssohn insists that no human life, no matter how short or comparatively unformed, remains behind its individually defined vocation (AVW 3:226–7; Mendelssohn, Oracle). Mendelssohn’s determination of the vocation of the human being as individual mental and spiritual self-perfecting far exceeds the horizon of Spalding‘s work. Neither the ontological and rational-theological conception of perfection, nor the notion of the human being’s self-formation, are to be found in Spalding. To be sure, the intellectual lacunae in Spalding’s work are already exposed in Abbt’s

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critique of Spalding. But Abbt’s prior criticisms of Spalding also provide Mendelssohn with the basis and the incentive for supplementing Spalding’s theologically informed meditations on the vocation of the human being in a decidedly philosophical manner informed by Leibniz-Wolffian school philosophy. In particular, Abbt’s critical objection according to which Spalding’s determination of the vocation of the human being is not valid for human beings only (since all substance is indestructible), leads Mendelssohn to search for a specifically human vocation of the human being (AVW 3:198–9).21 In the process, Mendelssohn’s novel conception of individual human self-perfection undercuts, with lasting consequences, the perfectionism of the Leibnizians, for whom perfection on a micro level as well as a macro level is always already achieved and not to be trumped. To be sure, Mendelssohn still seeks to keep the notion of independent human self-formation within the larger context of the theologically based cosmic order that informs school-philosophical thinking. In particular, Mendelssohn stresses that an individual’s self-perfection does not imply, or involve, an analogous perfecting of the “human species” (Menschengeschlecht), but remains restricted to the individual human being. This further refined position, however, is not yet advanced in Mendelssohn’s dispute with Abbt from 1764. Neither is it to be found in the later “Remarks on Abbt’s Amicable Correspondence” from 1782. Rather, it was another correspondent of Mendelssohn, August Hennings, who objected to him, after reading the previously mentioned texts from 1764 and 1783, that, given the universally to be observed “circular motion” of the human species, which now moves forward, now back again, “perfecting could not be the true vocation of the human being” (Mendelssohn 1979, pp. 57–8 [#568]; letter to Mendelssohn from late May/early June 1782). In response to Abbt, Mendelssohn maintains: “Not the perfecting of the human species is nature’s intent. No! It is the perfecting of the human being, the individual” (Mendelssohn 1979, p. 65 [#571], letter to Hennings from June 25, 1782). Mendelssohn argues that a persisting perfecting of humanity in its entirety would deprive later generations of the occasion for intellectual and spiritual selfformation, and hence of the opportunity to reach the human vocation on their own: “Precisely because the vocation on the part of nature consists in the

21

In addition, Abbt criticizes Spalding for casting the vocation of the human being in narrowly intellectual terms, given that the called-for insight into one’s own vocation presupposes a certain measure of cultivation in the human being (AVW 3:188–90, 195). For further details on Abbt’s critique of Spalding, see Lorenz 1994.

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development of the individual, the entire species down here cannot remain in the state that it has achieved through effort” (Mendelssohn 1979, p. 66 [#571]). The individualist vocation of the human being, combined with the theologically informed determination of the individualized human vocation, leads Mendelssohn to an extensionally plural and intensionally complex conception of the human being into which enter, in addition to the formally identical end of intellectual and spiritual self-perfectioning, materially varying vocational ends. Accordingly, in his essay “On the Question: What Does ‘to Enlighten’ Mean?”—published in the Berlin Monthly in 1784—Mendelssohn supplements the generic “vocation of the human being as a human being” with the specific “vocation of the human being considered as a citizen” (Kant et al. 1974b, p. 5). In both cases the vocation involved is to be considered individual and God-given. In general, Mendelssohn shows a stronger interest in the specifically civic vocation of individual human beings than in the generically human one. In particular, he declares the human being as a human being, considered prior to civic “engagements” (Widmungen), to be in need only of (intellectual, “theoretical”) enlightenment (Aufklärung), but not yet of (vocational, “practical”) culture (Kultur): “The human being as a human being is in need of no culture, but is in need of enlightenment” (Kant et al. 1974b, p. 5). For Mendelssohn, practical self-formation always involves civic culture and not just generically human cultivation. In addition, regarding a possible conflict between the “enlightenment of the human being” and the “enlightenment of the citizen,” Mendelssohn emphasizes that “certain truths that are useful to the human being as human being [. . .] may harm the human being as citizen” (Kant et al. 1974b, p. 6). With his differential distinction between the generally human and the specifically civic extent of enlightenment, Mendelssohn anticipates Kant’s distinction, in his parallel publication “Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” from the same year as Mendelssohn’s pertinent piece, between the “private use” (Privatgebrauch) of reason in one’s capacity as a human being, which is to remain unfettered throughout, and the “public use” (öffentlicher Gebrauch) of reason, which is subject to strictures arising from a given individual’s civic functions and societal obligations (as a teacher, preacher, state bureaucrat, military officer, etc.) (AA 8:38).22

22

See also AA 8:42 note as evidence that Kant wrote his Enlightenment essay without having read Mendelssohn’s slightly earlier publication on the same topic. On the conception of publicity underlying Kant’s definition of enlightenment, see Zöller 2013.

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III The Vocation of the Human Being in Kant The idea of the human being’s very own, entirely self-accomplished development also figures prominently in Kant’s reflections on the vocation of the human being. More explicitly than Mendelssohn’s, Kant’s thinking on the matter is informed by the contemporary discussion in emerging biology (“natural history“) on the development, including generation and growth, of a living being—regardless of whether it is a plant, animal, or human being—in its entirety (“organism”) as well as its functional constituent parts (“organs”) from “germs” (Keime) and “predispositions” (Anlagen). According to the doctrine of preformation, the germs and predispositions actually already contain the eventual developmental result (“educt”), while the opposed doctrine of epigenesis—embraced by Kant— holds that the prior containment is merely virtual and in need of genuine actualization, which thus brings forth something altogether new (“product”) (AA 5:371).23 Regarding the relation between germs and predispositions, on the one side, and formed and developed living beings (including their organs), on the other side, Kant follows a teleological mode of thinking that regards the fully-fledged living being as the goal, the end, or the vocation of its own developmental process: “All natural predispositions of a creature are destined to once develop completely and purposively” (AA 8:18). In Kant, the developmental conception of the human vocation, which in Mendelssohn remains restricted to human intellectual and spiritual capabilities, is naturalized and universalized to encompass all living beings. Accordingly, the special position of the human being that is to be found, if not already in Spalding, then at least in Abbt and Mendelssohn, can no longer be established by way of an opposition between the originally completely developed animal soul, on the one hand, and the human soul essentially capable and fundamentally in need of development, on the other hand. Kant provides the required further differentiation between a generic, creaturely kind of development and a specific, humanly variety of development by distinguishing between two forms of natural predisposition in the human being—those natural predispositions that the human being shares with other animals (among those the predispositions for the

23

On the biological background of Kant’s developmental thinking in general and the analogous development of the body of knowledge in particular, see Zöller 1988 and Mensch 2013.

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propagation of the species) and those natural predispositions that distinguish the human being as a rational being from all non-rational animals. The natural predispositions of the former kind are such that they, like those in non-rational living beings, achieve their vocation in each exemplar of the species—at least ordinarily and normally so. In this regard, then, Kant follows Mendelssohn’s individualist perfectionism. By contrast, according to Kant, the natural predispositions that are peculiar to the human being as a (finite) rational being are such that their full development does not occur distributively and separately, in each exemplar of the human species, but only collectively and cumulatively, in the human species as a whole and over the course of many generations: “In the human being [. . .] those natural predispositions that aim at the use of reason are supposed to develop entirely only in the species but not in the individual” (AA 8:18). In Mendelssohn there is to be found a twofold stance with regard to human development. On the one hand, Mendelssohn exempts the human species from any perfecting that does not also involve relapse and regress, while, on the other side, he considers every human individual as such to be fundamentally in need of and essentially capable of intellectual and spiritual perfection. Kant completely reverses this scenario by exempting the human individual qua rational individual being from complete development, while at the same time attributing to the human species in general a lasting form of development and thereby, in principle, perfection through self-perfecting.24 What is preserved in the change from Mendelssohn’s individualist and distributive vocation of the human being to Kant’s collectivist and cumulative vocation of the human being, is the formal feature according to which the perfecting of the human being—whether as an individual or as a species—represents a genuine, spontaneous accomplishment on the part of the human being, for which Mendelssohn draws on the differential terms (theoretical) “enlightenment” and (practical) “culture.”25 In a noteworthy further move, Kant subjects the vocation of the human being for generic self-perfection to a further division into the “natural vocation of the human being” (Naturbestimmung des Menschen) and the “rational vocation of

24

25

Kant also stresses that the perfect development of the human species is a task perpetually to be pursued but never to be accomplished. But the infinity of the progress of the species in Kant is not to be confused with the perpetuity of the human species’s relapses in Mendelssohn. See AA 8:65. Kant criticizes Mendelssohn’s denial of lasting progress in the history of the human species in AA 8:307–13 and, without naming Mendelssohn as someone maintaining the view, declares this position to be a case of “abderitism,” so called after the notoriously obtuse inhabitants of the ancient northern Greek city of Abdera, mentioned in AA 7:79–94. On a possible rejoinder by Mendelssohn to Kant’s generic progressivism, see Hinske 1994.

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the human being” (Vernunftbestimmung des Menschen) (R1521, AA 15/2:885). This distinction is not to be confused with the earlier one between the human being as a mere animal and as a rational being. Both sides of this further distinction concern the vocation of the human being as a rational being and concern that being’s “humanity” (Menschheit)—as opposed to its “animality” (Tierheit), which lies in “propagation and expansion” (R1499, AA 15/2:782).26 Kant identifies the nature-based, “natural” vocation of humanity formally as the “highest culture” and materially as the establishment of a worldwide “civil society” (bürgerliche Gesellschaft). By contrast, the reason-based, “rational” vocation of humanity for Kant consists in “morality” (Moralität) (R1521, AA 15/2: 885; see also AA 8:22f. and AA 5:429–34, esp. 432). On Kant’s understanding of the matter, the cultural vocation of the human being is still natural in that nature, under the guise of “inclinations” (Neigungen), drives the human being to the progressive unfolding of all kinds of talents and abilities. In particular, it is the “unsocial sociability” (ungesellige Geselligkeit) (AA 8:20) inherent in human nature (or the nature of the human being) that propels the juridico-political development of the human being from a relatively undeveloped animal endowed with the capacity for (instrumental) reason to a rationally free world citizen.27 In Kant’s species-wide developmental perspective, human history reduces to the “natural history” (Naturgeschichte) of freedom— more precisely, the natural history of external, juridico-political freedom, as opposed to internal, morally minded or ethical freedom. Accordingly, for Kant the human vocation to culture in all its forms, including civico-political culture, is a natural vocation (propelled by nature’s drives) to more-than-natural, “cultural” self-determination. By contrast, with regard to the moral vocation of the human being, both the end pursued and the only suitable means for achieving that end lie within the domain of reason—more precisely, of pure practical or moral reason—which is to determine the will entirely independently of nature, including human nature and its inclinations, which are considered foreign factors not conducive for achieving and maintaining moral autonomy. The supranatural vocation of the human being to moral self-determination in Kant harkens back to the ultimate non-sensory, even extraterrestrial orientation 26

27

“Humanity” (Menschheit) here, as elsewhere in Kant, denotes not yet, as it does today, the totality of human beings, but the essential quality of the human being as such in a humanist tradition (Latin humanitas). Modern German usage employs for this intensional, as opposed to extensional, aspect of humanity in the term, borrowed from Latin, Humanität. On the differential semantics of Menschheit as “humankind” and “humanity” in Kant, see Lyssy 2020. See also AA 7:321 for the related distinction between the human being as an “animal endowed with the capacity for reason (animal rationabile)” and as a “rational animal (animal rationale).”

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of the human being that figures in Spalding under the heading “immortality.” But while in Spalding the final vocation of the human being for immortality concerns a hoped-for personal existence postmortem in the realm of God, for Kant (as well as for Leibniz before him and for Fichte after him) the human being lives already in the “realm of grace” (A812/B840), provided he or she righteously engages their moral freedom. Given the radically rational conception of the vocation of the human being in Kant (and, following Kant, also in Fichte), which consists in the progressive working-away of any foreign determination in favor of absolutely rational self-determination, it also becomes clear why Spalding’s formula of the “vocation of the human being,” with its theological and teleological connotations, in the end could no longer serve as an adequate heading for the philosophical reflection on the human being in its basically dynamic and essentially self-determined development. The heir apparent to the German Enlightenment discourse on the vocation of the human being was to be the political philosophy of world history founded by Kant, furthered by Fichte and rendered systematic by Hegel. Rather than being concerned with the cultivation of individual morality and the ethical preparation for a praeternatural afterlife, classical German philosophy of history focused on the worldly realization of reason under conditions of (universal) freedom. In an epistemological perspective due to Kant, and continued in various ways by Fichte and Hegel, the politico-philosophical view of human history as progressively rational and increasingly free reflected a teleological order that was not considered inherent in the historical facts and data, but imported into history by philosophical thought. The earlier vocational discourse about human selfperfection had been transformed into the idealist, not to say constructivist, discourse of making the world, or at least of making it meaningful. To be sure, the inner-worldly but global vocation of the human species to rational freedom, as encapsulated by the “idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim” (AA 8:15; Kant 2007, p. 108), itself enjoyed only a brief historical moment, which, like that of the earlier vocational discourse, lasted about half a century— until Hegel’s death, when “society” (Gesellschaft) as a political and economic entity under various guises (liberal or socialist; capitalist or communist), rather than “humanity” (Menschheit), became the focus of mid-nineteenth century discourse about progress and perfection.

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Reinhard Brandt: Excerpt from the Human Vocation in Kant1 Translated by Courtney D. Fugate and Anne Pollok

I The Word and the Concept “Bestimmung”: In Particular in Kant For physical phenomena, determination2 can, on the one hand, be a metrical determination;3 we determine the intensive or extensive magnitude of something through measuring, the determination can concern the location or duration of a thing. On the other, a determination can be brought about by an efficient cause: the mass and speed of A determine its effect on B; B is then determined by A. According to the model of L’homme machine, human beings are determined through their movable mechanical parts.4,5 Here, we can follow the table of the categories and speak of quantitative extensive or intensive magnitude and of causality. There are two further concepts of determination in theoretical philosophy. First, minerals, plants, and animals can be determined by placing them in an already existing topological system, which is organized according to the principles of uniformity, variety, and affinity (A 650–68). But, when one of Kant’s writings carries the title the “Determination

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Mellin (1797–8), vol. I, pp. 556–62. This article does not entail anything about the “final vocation” of man. Eisler 1964, p. 63: “Bestimmung. Human beings reach their vocation in history, not as an individual, more specifically by their own activity. The moral vocation is the final purpose of human existence and is sublime. See Critique of the Power of Judgment §42 (II, p. 153 [AA 5:171–3]) and Religion part 1, General Remark (AA 4:54–6); see also society, culture, sublime, final purpose, providence.” [Bestimmung] [Feststellung] [Versatzstücke] Guzzoni 1976; her Geschichte der Bestimmungsproblematik lacks a discussion of the final purpose, which is the topic of the present study.

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of the Concept of the Human Race” (1775, AA 8:89–106), this does not indicate that the human race shall be localized based on its characteristics in a conceptual ordering of nature (such as Linné’s, for instance), but that it shall be genetically determined according to novel criteria borrowed from Buffon.6 Second, Kant incorporates the old metaphysical principle of “omnimoda determinatio” into his philosophy, even in the critical period. Every being is “completely determined” (AA 1:27.5; see also 2:72.19 and others).7 This principle is a settled fact with respect to all possible predicates whether they apply to this particular being or not. It establishes the foundation of the forms of determination in nature mentioned thus far; the act of a metrical or causal determination presupposes that whatever is to be determined is always already in fact determined. Here, just a quick reference to a counter-position by a contemporary. August Ludwig Schlözer writes (which is somewhat surprising for a historian) in his Presentation of a Universal History: “The human being is by nature nothing, and can become anything by conjectures: the indetermination8 is hence the second part of its being.”9 According to Schlözer, the human being is hence indeterminate by nature, and for this reason there is also no determinate history nor philosophy of history; but we will come to this later.10 Kant also holds that the study of nature employs a causa finalis that is set against the causa efficiens, as it inverts the latter’s chronological order: in it, the (representation of) the effect of an action precedes the cause. The causa efficiens A at t1 generates a change of condition of B at t2, as it is the case, for example, of a moving billiard ball A that hits billiard ball B and causes a change in the latter’s state of motion, that is, determines its being in t2. In contrast, the Kantian conception thinks of the causa finalis that the intended state B is anticipated at t1, and guides the efficient causes such that state B is indeed realized at t2. State A is determined to realize B. Because of the linear structure of time, there can be no further forms of causality than the “whereby” and “wherefore” (AA 5:372.33– 6

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See also AA 25:253.12–13, Anthropologie Parow: “We proceed further towards the vocation of man in regard to his cognitions and note . . . ” But the then following observations do not contain anything about a final component. On this Heßbrüggen-Walter 2004, pp. 110–25: “Excursus: Kant’s notion of the vocation of man and its historical background.” Heßbrüggen-Walter only discusses the metaphysical meaning of Kant’s notion of Bestimmung. Ulivari 1998 discusses the different stages and forms of the theoretical dimension of Bestimmung. [Unbestimmtheit] Schlözer 1775, p. 223. The human being as that being which is by nature indetermined is, however, a topos that the historian only had to take up. [See Brandt 2007, chapter 4.]

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373.3). In Kant, we see the concept of determining and determination first in the mathematical and physical sense; the use as final cause we find for instance in the closing section of his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755). Something is determined to something else, and thus a means to an end. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant determines an organized product to be something “in which all is an end and reciprocally a means as well. Nothing in it is in vain, purposeless, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism in nature” (AA 5:376, 12–14). And in modified form regarding the cosmos: “everything in the world is good for something; nothing within it is in vain” (AA 5:379, 5–6). In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant generally avoids speaking of a final determination within the systems of ends and functions within nature, even while undoubtedly propounding that every part of nature is determined to some end. The use of this terminology is limited to the final determination of human beings specifically, and their spiritual, but also natural capacities and qualities, that is, to their rational and natural vocation. The former says that we are determined to act out of freedom, that is, according to the law of freedom, which first provides freedom with reality (Critique of Practical Reason). This law of freedom we encounter as the norm of our own reason, namely, in the consciousness that we consequently ought to check whether the maxims of our actions can qualify to be a universal law. To illustrate: Human beings are determined by their very own reason to create an alternate kingdom to nature; this realm has an external-juridical and an internal-ethical dimension. Within the territory of law, the imperative calls us to subject all our actions to the norm according to which “the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom according to a universal law” (AA 6:230.29–31). Within the territory of ethics, we (according to the Groundwork) ought to reproduce the system of nature, in which “everything is a goal and at the same time also a means,” as a kingdom of ends in which no person is a mere means, but always also an end. Our determination (or vocation) is hence the realization of freedom, whether this be through our acting in accordance with the law of freedom, or through our acting from respect for this law.11 At the beginning of the second walk in his Reveries of a Solitary walker,12 Rousseau writes that he wants to be “what nature has determined him to be” (“ce

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[The difference in German is marked by “gemäß” versus “aus Achtung vor.” Brandt discusses this again in chapter 9 in connection with the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment.] Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire, 1776–8.

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que la nature a voulu”).13 The vocation of man is nature’s will. “Nature has willed: that . . . ” (AA 8:19.18). Here what our own reason determines us to be is once again elevated and conceived of as the determination of nature or providence as understood by the Stoics. Francis Hutcheson, who advances Shaftesbury’s philosophy of the human vocation, speaks throughout his late System of Moral Philosophy of the “determinations of our nature”;14 these spring from the law of nature by which an almighty and benevolent God keeps the world in order; “determination” hence corresponds to both fact and norm at the same time. Most current authors prefer to speak of the normative dimension of determination as “vocation” or even “destination”; in place of final determination, Kant himself also uses the words “end,” “final end,” “sake,” or “calling.”15 At times we find Kant using words that hardly match up with these alternatives. In the preface to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science we read: “there can be as many different natural sciences as there are specifically different things, every of which must contain its own peculiar inner principle of the determinations belonging to its existence” (AA 4:467. 4–7). What precisely does “determinations” mean here? Are these essentialia? Or the fundamental qualities that belong to this and only this class of things? Most often, attention to context helps to decide what is meant by “determination,” and to which of these groups a specific usage is to be assigned. The isolated word “determination” is thus underdetermined; it always requires a context that precisely defines its linguistic meaning. Whereas artificial languages proceed with isolated words and are obligated to define their most basic components, philosophy deals contextually with natural language, offering its readers specific contexts that they have to retrace in order to provide its basic components, the words, with the most precise meaning that is possible within a certain context. This general rule must always be observed in the application of the word “Bestimmung.” [The first part of this chapter contains an analysis of the founding document of the philosophy devoted to the theme of Bestimmung. Its second part reviews what Kant specifically says about the human vocation. The chapter concludes

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Rousseau 1959–, I, p. 1002 – Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire. [A standard English translation of the line partially quoted by Brandt is: “These hours of solitude and meditation are the only ones in the day during which I am fully myself and for myself, without diversion, without obstacle, and during which I can truly claim to be what nature willed” (Rousseau 2000, p. 9)]. Hutcheson 1969, V 1, pp. 2–4. [The German terms here are “Zweck,” “Endzweck,” “Behuf,” and “Beruf.”]

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with some critical comments about how the various phases of this philosophical project should best be divided and characterized.16]

II The Beginning of the Modern Philosophy of Bestimmung In 1748, the 34-year-old theologian Dr. D.17 Johann Joachim Spalding anonymously published the booklet Contemplation of the Vocation of the Human Being.18 Through this work, an almost unknown author, supplied the catchword and guiding concept for the central philosophical debate of the next half-century in Germany.19 This continually popular book was translated into French by the Prussian Queen, widely distributed in pirated copies, and reprinted eleven times—most often with additions—during the life of its author, that is, before 1794. In that same year, Johann Gottlieb Fichte initiated a new and final climax of the German philosophy of Bestimmung though the publication of The Vocation of the Scholar; followed in 1800 by Vocation of the Human Being, after which interest in the genre declined. Neo-Stoicism was replaced by a revived Christianity and a renewed Platonism. Before that, the motto was “Act, act, this is what we are here for!” “Man is born for action!” Spalding: “Man is destined20 for activity.”21 This stance is already prompted by an interest in the question of a final determination or vocation, since neither an Epicurean nor a Platonist would discuss their philosophy of life under the title of a universal vocation of mankind; both wished to develop their understanding of life for a pleasureseeking or intellectual elite, but not to thereby prescribe a way of life for everyone. Without yet placing any emphasis on its practical consequences, Immanuel Jacob Pyra writes in his short work On the Sublime (circa 1740) and borrowing from a passage in Pseudo-Longinus: “Man is destined for majesty. The creator

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[This paragraph has been added by the editors to replace Brandt’s own prospectus of the full chapter, parts of which have been omitted in this translation.] The letter “D.” doesn’t stand for another first name, but for the doctorate in theology. This work was published in 1748 in Greifswald by Hieronymus Johann Struck, twenty-six pages. Concerning all questions regarding the publication history, see the excellent introduction by Albrecht Beutel in SpKA I, 1. See the short but important reference by Hinske in: Wolff 1996, p. xiv and Hinske 1999 (= Aufklärung 11, issue 1). On the usage of “destination,” “destination” right before Spalding see Schwaiger 1999, p. 8, footnote 7. [bestimmt] In: Spalding [1745] 2001, p. 36. Concerning this pathos of agency see particularly Epictetus 1961, I 146 – Discourses I 22, 17 (“ti oun poiesomen”), also I 26, 6–7; IV 1, 63; 118.

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destined him for this. We can learn this by contemplating his nature, and experience confirms it.”22 Under closer inspection, Spalding’s small book reveals itself to be a manifesto for the second phase of the German Enlightenment; it being no accident that at the same time the German word “Selbstbewusstsein”23 is coined and, like the word “Bestimmung,” begins its popular as well as academic career. The turn from speculative metaphysics to a more everyday-practical24 and self-aware philosophy had already been accomplished in England by Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Shaftesbury, and initiated in France by Voltaire. Rousseau advanced this tendency still further at roughly the same time with Spalding.25 “Manifesto for the second phase of the German Enlightenment”—Christian Wolff, the most significant representative of the first phase, argues that, in regard to its constitution, the state is obligated to promote the project of “unhindered progress toward the end of society”;26 progress here being understood as an increasing enlightenment of a partially still-darkened world. At the center of such a program stands theoretical cognition, with the help of which all parts of state and society are increasingly improved. However, when the vocation of the human being takes priority, enlightenment in the end ceases to be the ultimate goal, and instead becomes only a means employed for carrying out the practical tasks of human beings. Kant will take over as herald of the primacy of the practical and declare cultivation and civilization of the human being as preliminary steps towards moralization—which latter is the genuine goal of history, and, as anyone has learned, any uneducated Roman farmer can far surpass a sophistically civilized Greek, if not regarding Wolffian enlightenment, then at least morally in morals. This is a fundamentally Stoic assumption; Spalding’s work imports the morally unconditional and therewith smuggles the seed of destruction into the enlightenment of progressive rationalism. Although 22

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Pyra 1991, p. 51. On the dating of this treatise see Zelle 1987, pp. 75–7; Till 2006, pp. 283–7. On the respective passage in Pseudo-Longinus see [Brandt 2007], pp. 150–1. When Bodmer and Breitinger write in their Critischen Briefen “Hence this innocence reigns in all grand orations that flow naturally [großmüthige Reden der Natur], where it surpasses all art in its brevity and clarity” (cit. after Till 2006, p. 273), then the usage of the notion of nature as such shows that the reception of Longinus’s treatise transitioned from a Platonic to a Stoic phase. According to his own words, for his translation of the Examination of Virtue, Spalding had to invent the words “Selbstsucht” [selfishness, verbatim: an addiction for oneself], “Selbstneigung” [unusual word for self-love; verbatim: a predisposition or affection for oneself] next to “Selbstliebe” [self-love] (Spalding [1745] 2001, pp. 28, 29, and 58). [lebenspraktisch] Compare in particular the “Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard” in the fourth book of the Emile concerning the “destination” of man (Rousseau 1959–, IV, p. 591). See Wolff: “non impeditus progressus ad finem societatis consequendum, salus societatis dicitur” (Wolff 1965–1986, II 26, pp. 524–5 – Institutiones juris naturae et gentium, § 837).

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the former stresses a progressive illumination, the latter is mainly interested in the fact that this light comes from me myself—it means not to promote knowledge, but that one make use of one’s own understanding. The self, along with the primacy of the practical, is now front and center, and the metaphor of light pushed into obscurity. After 1748, the enlightenment shifts from theoretical to practical reason, from the knowledge of a minority to the will of all. The very title Contemplation of the Vocation of the Human Being (from the seventh edition of 1763, simply: The Vocation of the Human Being) contains an innovation. According to the relevant lexicons, the term “vocation”27 had not been used before Spalding. But while the word is new, the issue is not, as Albrecht Beutel (in SpKA I) seems to think. There is, as far as I can see, no thought in Spalding that he did not owe to his reading of Roman authors and Shaftesbury. I will document this in the following; Spalding just masterfully formulates what his educated reader already knew, or could already also find in, for instance, Rousseau. In terms of its content, Spalding’s Contemplation presents itself, in its practical orientation, as a complementary but also opposing work to Descartes’s theoretically-oriented Meditationes de prima philosophia (1641). What Descartes tried to achieve through speculative metaphysics, Spalding attempts to show without any metaphysics, merely through a meditation on the practical task of the human being. The former asks: What can I know with certainty? The latter adds the practical counterpart: What ought I to do? What is my vocation? In both works, the I withdraws into solitude and reflects on the decisive question— in the first, about its knowledge; in the second, about its life and actions. According to the latter, the most earnest deliberation should be directed to “the source of my real worth and to the whole state of my life. It is certainly, for once at least, worth the effort to get to know why I am here and what, rationally, I ought to be”(1).28 Descartes’s problem is elitist and ultimately a matter of mere speculation, because the question regarding absolutely certain knowledge does not arise in the ordinary human being’s practical life; Spalding, on the other hand, directs his Contemplation to a problem that sits at the heart of the rational interest of every human being: What ought I to do? And, in connection to this: Is there a God? Is my soul immortal? The theoretical proofs of God and immortality, which Descartes offers in his Meditations, are here partly replaced, partly completed by

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[Bestimmung] The page numbers given here reference SpKA I, 1.

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a moral-practical proof that anyone can confirm for themselves. We cannot help but to see in this, retrospectively, a preformation of the Kantian project: The old metaphysics is crushed and destroyed to make room for morals and through it a new faith based on practical reason; and in the execution of this program in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant, in drawing the consequence of this thought, precisely adopts the structure of Spalding’s booklet as his foundation. Spalding’s remarks do not contain an explicit refutation, but a decisive, if implicit rejection of contemporaneous metaphysics and its Latin “determinatio” of all existing things. The school philosophy’s question of perfection, “perfectio,” or, the synonymous “omnimoda determinatio,” complete ontological determination—with this Spalding’s Bestimmung has nothing to do; but rather from its first to its last line, stands in a completely different world. Here no learned lecture is heard, but instead a popular appeal for virtue and faith; here we are not in an academic-peripatetic nor Cartesian auditorium, but rather in a Stoic hall, into which anyone can and should enter. From the outset, “Bestimmung” ought to be understood as what is final, as posing the question of that to which, not that by which we are determined.29 It is also no accident that no motto or interlaced quote comes from Plato or Aristotle, but instead from the Roman reception of the Stoa. The Contemplation is oriented by those Stoic “Soliloquies”30 revived by Shaftesbury, and offers in compact yet easily digestible form the thematic ideas of the writings concerning Bestimmung that were to follow. Its triumph is not due merely to this one catchword, which so suited the tendency of the age, but also to its literary form and the deliberate consistency with which it invokes the decisive ideas and develops them one by one. Spalding absorbs convictions that are in the air and effectively translates them into prose. His 1745 translation of Shaftesbury’s The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody. Being a Recital of Certain Conversations upon Natural and Moral Subjects31 already

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For these reasons I do not agree with the general direction of the otherwise instructive essay from Zöller 2001. As Baumgarten writes in the Initia philosophiae practicae: “Qui autem eosdem fines intendit, qui naturae praefixi sunt, naturae convenienter vivit. Ergo perfectionem suam quaerens, quantum potest, naturae convenienter vivit,” (Baumgarten 1760, pp. 20–1; Initia, § 45) [“Whoever intends the same ends as are fixed in advance by nature, however, lives according to nature . Therefore, someone seeking his own perfection so much as he can lives according to nature” (Baumgarten 2020, p. 55).]. Although Spalding leaves the metaphysics of perfection aside, does Kant criticize the attempt to reach the ought of our actions via the factum of “perfectio”? This marks a first break between the first and second Critiques, between cognition and ought, which we will extensively discuss [in Brandt 2007, chapter 8]. That the notion of “perfectio” from 1770 doesn’t match with the one used by Wolff anymore is shown by Schwaiger 1999, p. 82. Another author who takes up the Stoic philosophy of self and its favored literary device of the inner monologue is Rousseau. The society of the Contrat social becomes for him a “moi commun” (Rousseau 1959–, III, p. 361). [The original translation of the title is Die Sitten-Lehrer oder Erzehlung [sic] philosophischer Gespräche, welche die Natur und die Tugend betreffen.]

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effectively bore the motto of the Enlightenment, “sapere aude.”32 Whether Kant actually read this work or the Vocation is, as far as I can see, uncertain;33 the latter is nevertheless constantly present in the debate it sparked and of which Kant was also an active participant. Mendelssohn refers to it in his Phädon of 1767, a work Kant knew quite well and later mentions explicitly (B 413). Kant absorbed Spalding’s work, or at least the tendency it expresses, in that exoteric part of his philosophy that makes him still somewhat of a popular author today. This is the Kant, not of the subjective forms of intuition, the table of the categories, or synthetic judgments a priori, but instead of the unambiguous law of duty, of peace as a postulate of right, of the sublimity of the starry sky, and of the morality in one’s own heart. Retrospectively there seems to have been an existential moment of awakening that occurred before the intellectual awakening of 1769 (which “gave me great light”, AA 18:69. 21–2) and perhaps even before the famous “Rousseau set me right” (AA 20:44.12–13). Here there must have arisen something close to Spalding’s pathos for humanity.34 Starting with the edition of 1768, the introduction to the Vocation organizes the path of the subsequent investigation according to three stages: First, the narrator35 wakes up with the “most joyous sentiments of inner peace, trust in god, and the hope for eternity” (39). Then, in classical order, doubt follows: After a childlike phase of naïve self-certainty, the human being gets to know the world from another side, “where it shows us nearly the complete opposite of what one would normally have taken to be the single, most straightforward path to happiness.” “Doubt,” “sensual pleasure,” “stormy sea,” and the “brink of vice”—the danger is great and it forces the human being to reconsider their own selfunderstanding by asking “who they ought to be” (39–40). The investigation leads to a reflective self-consciousness or knowledge regarding those matters about which one was previously convinced only by naïve faith. Here we discover the typical biographical movement in three stages, from original self-certainty and unity, followed by instability and being lost in the turmoil of opinions and desires, to finally the recovery of one’s ego in a now higher, reflective self-constitution. The first and most famous example of such a

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See on this Klemme in: Shaftesbury [1745] 2001, p. xiv, footnote 4. Concerning the hymn to nature [. . .] (ibid., pp. 183–4) see Willey 1940, pp. 65–6. This hymn is one of many variations of the hymn to Zeus by the Stoic Kleanthes, see Arnim, von (ed.) 1964, I, pp. 121–3. Fr. 537. In the lecture on anthropology from 1772–1773, Kant references laudingly “Spalding’s works” (AA 25:9.16), not limited to his sermons, which he explicitly mentions elsewhere (see AA 25:1108 and 244.33). We may include the essay on the human vocation here, too. [Here we omit a line in which Brandt remarks that he will return to this topic later in the book.] [Brandt uses the word “author,” p. 65.]

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process is found in Augustine’s Confessions; there, however, the epoch of self-loss in the sensuous is followed by a turn to Christendom. This model is applied not only for structuring the practical conduct of our lives, but also theoretical knowledge. Think only of the Platonic dialogue Meno; the boy or slave first supposedly knows well how to double a square; only to then plunge into the abyss of ignorance before finally, in the third stage, wining a new mathematical understanding that is immune to doubt. The classification employed by the skeptics in antiquity, namely “dogmatic,” “academic,” and “skeptical”36 returns with Kant in the three steps of dogmatism, skepticism, and criticism. Here it is projected into the biography of reason, as its polygenesis: The first step in matters of pure reason, which characterizes its childhood, is dogmatic. The just mentioned second step is skeptical, and gives evidence of the caution of the power of judgment sharpened by experience. Now, however, a third step is still necessary, which pertains only to the mature and adult power of judgment, which has at its basis firm maxims of proven universality [. . .]; this is not the censorship but the critique of pure reason [. . .]. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 761

The Critique of Pure Reason thus locates itself within this topography at the same place where Spalding locates the Vocation of the Human Being. Through the recovery of his proper self, the narrator will turn from an impersonal “he” into an “I”; the doubting, restless soul turns back within itself in opposition to the contrary opinions of all others. This discovery of one’s path can be delegated to no one else; each person must return to themself only through themself. The word “self ” here is not overstressed, nor is the notion that a human being can now only make use of their own understanding, and that this recovery of the self must always be an act of freedom; but these thematic ideas—given prominence by John Locke and especially Shaftesbury and, later on, even more emphasis by later authors—implicitly lie at the basis of Spalding’s thought as well. Later we will be confronted with the problem as to why self-thinking, unguided by others and not resting on authorities, should be immune to error and illusion; the answer is the same as for Rousseau and stems from their shared foundation in the Stoa: Within the pure self we find pure nature and therewith, sans all adulterating erudition, pure truth.

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See Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism I, 4: “Hence it seems reasonable that there are three highest philosophies: the dogmatic, the academic, and the skeptic.”

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In all this, the form of the “I” is neither the neutral “the I”37 or “the ego” of school metaphysics; but nor is it the subjective, confessing I, the individual Augustine, Montaigne, or Jean-Jacques, who grapples with their own vocation. Rather, it is the “I” as that which every human being actually finds themselves to be; in the same way, Kant asked himself these questions: “What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope”? Here, each is involved. Continuing this conceptualization of the “I,” Fichte writes in his conclusive38 Vocation of the Human Being (1800) . . . that the “I” who speaks in the book is by no means the author. Rather, the author wishes that the reader may come to see himself in this “I”: that the reader may not simply relate to what is said here as he would to history, but rather that while reading he will actually and in fact converse with himself [. . .] and through his own work and reflection purely out of his own resources, develop and build within himself the philosophical disposition that is presented to him in this book merely as a picture.39

The author, that is, his everyman-I on its path to self-discovery, asks, “why am I here and what, rationally, ought I to be”? (1). The first reflection follows in three stages according to the ancient order of the philosophy of life’s journey; in the first, the path of sensuality is tested and discarded, in the second, the path of intellectual pleasures, which also cannot satisfy, and in the third, the life of virtue in the forms of self-care, family life, and life in civil society.40 The reflection regarding the soul interested in the well-being of others within society leads to a contemplation of harmonious nature as such, and from here, after passage through the world, opens up a vista to God and immortality. There follows a short outline of deistic theology, which in turn becomes the foundation for our knowledge of the immortality of our soul. Spalding defines41 this soul—the I—as a unity (in contrast to the mutual externality of the spatial phenomena of the world) and as temporally self-identical (Descartes’s “cogitatio”).42 From this we

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[Brandt here stresses the neuter German article “das.”] [Used here in the sense that commonly Fichte’s treatise is taken to be the last word within the Bestimmungsliteratur.] Fichte 1962–, I 6, p. 189 – The Vocation of Man, Preamble. Translation from Fichte 1987, p. 2. On this see Hösle 2006, p. 112. Spalding here follows Shaftesbury’s Ethics almost verbatim according to his own translation from 1744, pp. 69–72 (against the lasciviousness of the Epicureans), pp. 73–4 (against the joys of the senses); and concerning the good actions for family, fatherland, humanity in general (pp. 81–3). What follows are a physico-theology and a hymn on nature (pp. 183–4). [bestimmt] See [Shaftesbury] 1744, pp. 188–90.

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can continue the thread started in the first part of the meditation: The virtue left incomplete in this life consequently points beyond this life toward our immortality; thus, after death our path leads, firstly, to a further perfection of ourselves; at the same time, secondly, God promises that then “everyone receives his due” (20), so that “righteousness and happiness” (173) coincide.43 The literature on Spalding has so far overlooked the idea that determines the execution of the work: As we have seen, after two forms of life have proven fruitless in the quest for our vocation (sensuality and intellectual pleasure, that is, pure theory), there remains the path of action, and this path makes possible our practical certainty of God and immortality. In Kant’s further elaboration of this program, the deficient character of both theoretical and speculative knowledge is shown through a critical examination of the human cognitive faculties; in contrast, Spalding does take recourse to the theoretical sphere as such, but judges scientific activity with criteria that are external to science; scientists, he suggests, ultimately only care about their own wealth, their own ego, which is morally untenable. A topos not of the Platonic-Aristotelian, but of the Stoic tradition, which we can also find in Rousseau and Kant. Science in its vanity, readily excuses its activity on the grounds of its importance. And here too the claim is likewise commonly made that a rational understanding of the spirit-nature of the soul is very necessary to the conviction that there is life after death, and that this conviction, in its turn, is necessary if one is to have a motive for leading a virtuous life. [. . .] But true wisdom is the companion of simplicity, and since, in the case of the latter, the heart commands the understanding, it normally makes the elaborate apparatus of learning superfluous, and its purpose does not need such means as can never lie within the reach of all human beings. AA 2:372.12–2344

This thought from the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer finds its systematic continuation in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, among other places: It is not our faculty of cognition through which our being acquires its value, nor is it “the feeling of pleasure and the amount of such feeling in relation to which we think of a final aim of creation as given” (AA 5:442.30–31) that could offer us an answer as to why we exist at all. Hence, it can only be our faculty of desire, for “a good will is that alone by means of which his existence can have an absolute value and in relation to which the existence of the world can have a final end” (AA 5:443.10–13). It is the same process, and Kant and Spalding arrive at the same result. 43

44

[Translator’s note: Here we leave out a sentence in which Brandt notes that this topic will be discussed again later in the book.] [Translation amended.]

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First action, then follow faith in God and the hope for immortality. This is the foundation for the structure of the entire thought as has by now become clear, and it is not difficult to guess the source from which Spalding drew: These are the three Christian virtues of faith (in God), hope (for the immortality of my soul), and love (in worldly agency). Virtuous action, however, is placed at the beginning, and then follow faith and hope. This inversion in sequence is important, since it signals that the determination of moral action does not take place through a previously cognized concept of God, but the other way around; faith in God is a consequence of morality. With this the neologist Spalding turns against pietist orthodoxy, which fought bitterly (and against Christian Wolff in Halle quite successfully) for the dependency of all morality upon faith. Following in the wake of Spalding (and thereby of Shaftesbury), Kant’s entire moral philosophy will fight for the primacy of morals over theoretical knowledge and religion. We can gather how orthodoxy saw the relationship between faith and morality from a collection of texts in Königsberg, which Georg Christoph Pisanski summarized in 1790 like this: “This work is a collection of ten disputations that have been held since the year 1732 in which he [Konrad Gottlieb Marquard] connects natural theology with morality, and deduces the duties of the human being, especially those toward oneself, from the motives provided by God’s existence, attributes and works.”45 Spalding and Kant revolutionize this sequence in Germany and make faith and hope, conversely, to be dependent on morality! Spalding turns directly to nature: “Pure and naïve nature may speak through me; her decisions are undoubtedly the most reliable” (45). Or: “When I retreat into myself without the befuddlement of my sensibility, I see well that true improvements, perfections and advantages regarding my own self are possible within me; that my nature drives me internally to strive after these things” (6). “All of this accords with my nature [. . .]” (7). “According to nature,” “naturae convenienter”—the author follows Stoic impulses here, above all those found in Seneca’s De vita beata, and because of these common Stoic roots many things sound just like Rousseau. Naturae convenienter and the inner satisfaction that nature connects with what accords with it46 are the themes and the criteria in the search for our vocation. When I extend my well-being to the world (the Stoic “cosmopolis”), then “I am pleasing to myself; then I am conscious that this is as it

45 46

Pisanski 1886, p. 541. We will revisit this kind of pleasure in Kant’s theory of the judgment of taste [in Brandt 2007, chapter 9, p. 405].

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should be; and this gives me such a pure and internally satisfying pleasure that I become very well aware that this is in full accordance with my nature” (89). If I act according to nature, “a balance, a serenity and calm is brought to my soul, one which is far above the attacks of external adversities” (13). In describing this inner peacefulness of the soul, this pleasing quietude amidst all the disagreeable circumstances of the world—and with a glance back to the Stoic sage—Spalding anticipates what Winckelmann will write about the Laocoön in 1755. Spalding: “Any evil that I should perhaps encounter at most penetrates no further than my body, and never extends its destruction into my soul as long as I approve of myself in a state of calm contemplation, as long as I can say to myself: I do what I ought to do; I am what I ought to be” (81). Winckelmann: “Just as the ocean’s depths stay calm at all times regardless of the turmoil at the surface, the expressions of Greek characters indicate a great and composed soul amidst all passions.”47 Laocoön may suffer physically, but the pain does not penetrate into his soul—this is the message of both authors. We do not need to assume that Winckelmann read Spalding’s work; but we cannot deny that both, whether directly or indirectly, were intellectually formed by the same Stoic texts and praise the same ideal of the tranquility of the soul, ataraxia. Spalding discovers in his own being, and thereby within human nature, what he is and what he ought to be, or: what he is called or destined—bestimmt—to be. If we search for our true vocation, then, as Spalding indicates, we need only follow the simple voice of nature, which speaks to us in our thoughts and feelings. “And in this way, the presumption entirely falls away that those drives of right and kindness could be a prejudice, an effect of education on me” (9). Therefore, also not the effect of Christian education. An irrational breaking point [Bruchstelle] now necessitates the aforementioned transition from this world to the world beyond and correspondingly the need to secure the unity and therewith immateriality of the I, which remains untouched by the bodily decay brought on by material death. This dramatic turnaround comes at a surprise and is described with only a few words: Through my observations, I from time to time follow the fortunes in this life until the end and I find the knot remains uncut. Only death ends here the oppression of virtue, and there the proud happiness of vice.—This wholly contradicts my expectation, which was grounded on concepts of order. Can the unchangeable rules of fairness permit a soul that exists as it ought to be forever robbed, by a malicious force, of the natural happy consequences of its inner 47

Winckelmann 1972, p. 541.

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rectitude (which would otherwise already be sufficient reward for it), and to be stricken and embittered? Is it proper for a person of upright mind, who deserves only to be happy, to be the prey of evil and a plaything of unjust persecutions throughout his entire life? 19

This incursion of evil into the author’s presentation is surprising; for nothing of it appeared in the harmony and sympathy between nature and the human being, which served as the foil for the development of virtue. Now evil raises its head with all its might and it prevents an adequate and appropriate proportion of virtue and happiness and of vice and unhappiness and even seems to turn this proportion into its opposite. The escape from this earthly misery is offered by the notion of immortality under the rule of a good and just God. The same connection between virtue and justified hope, which must be fulfilled by a good and just God, can be found in many contemporaneous works, as in Rousseau’s Emile (1762) and the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar contained therein.48 A condition of this resolution is a soul that need not cease to exist after physical death; accordingly, the knowledge of the self as an immaterial being appears not in the fundamental first part, but in the second. Immortality is postulated on moral grounds, and theory can  (because, naturally, it must and it will) show that the immaterial soul is indeed capable of and destined to immortality. Just as the certainty of God follows from morality—and the former does not, as in traditional metaphysics, serve as the basis for the latter—so now the essence of the soul is determined by our practical needs, and not, conversely, defined as the condition of said needs. We saw above that in his analysis of life’s path, Spalding votes against Plato and Aristotle through his rejection of “intellectual pleasure” as the best way of life; for both of them insisted upon and argued for the primacy of pure theory over any practice, Plato first in his Phaedo49 and then in the Republic,50 and Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics.51 We will encounter the same vote in Kant: Practical reason maintains primacy over theoretical reason, which the latter is unable to provide its activity with an autonomous value all of its own. Striving for truth and scientific knowledge is good only conditionally, namely when pure practical reason lends it this predicate. 48 49 50 51

Rousseau 1959–, IV, pp. 590–2 – Emile IV. Plato, Phaidros 252d–253a. Plato, Politeia V 473a–487a. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X 7–8, 1177a11–1178b32.

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The epistemological-theoretical validation of the path to certainty here is also anti-Platonic and anti-Aristotelean. Where Plato delineates an intricate path to knowledge (“No one without knowledge in geometry may enter here”!52), and Aristotle employs the political and cultural knowledge of the polis to gain insight into the essence of humanity, Spalding shows that we can indeed gain such knowledge without any external help or advice: It lies within yourself, you only need to discover it there through understanding and sentiment. The Christian doctrine of predestination, or of the divine pre-determination of every individual human being, was twice removed from us human beings. For one, it was the result of the learnedness of clerics, who inevitably disputed its meaning with other clerics in discussions that were incomprehensible for laymen, even though such discussions pertained to the very salvation of their souls. For another, God chooses not to tell us what we are specifically destined to be. In contrast, for Spalding the vocation to which the human being is destined is comprehensible for anyone. Tacitly this does away with revealed religion, and with it every thought of salvation: A human being, as determined by Spalding, develops the ideas of God and immortality in a natural way; for it is in both that the whole of nature and of human existence is first discovered and this being is destined to the perfecting of themselves here and in the other world. An external intervention through the salvific death of Christ, thus of a fellow human being and of God, contradicts the pathos of human self-determination and self-responsibility. The succeeding German Enlightenment will appropriate this vote for natural religion as its own; only once literary interest in the issue of vocation has ended, will Christian faith regain its importance. And further: The discovery of my vocation, and therefore that of the human being, is a matter for each individual who understands how to listen to their own contemplation and their own natural sentiments. No scholarship or difficult deductions are required in order to pose and to solve the essential question of human existence, since nature herself guides us toward the right answer, which we grasp with the feeling of our own soul. And this answer pertains to all being per se, the world, God, and the human soul, so that there remains no room left for any learned or other objection. Whenever morality is put at the beginning, and faith in God and hope for immortality turn into its mere epiphenomena, then there is not only a morality of nature or reason, but also a right of nature or reason that need not fear the competition of canonic right. Instead, it can serve as the model for morality

52

According to later sources (see Liddell & Scott s.v. ageometretos) this was an inscription upon Plato’s door.

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as such, as we can see in Kantian ethics of law. This ethics can be juridically explicated in the tradition of Roman right, and it can dictate what is good and evil. The question of the human vocation is not posed within, but outside of the church, and in such a way that the congregation hardly realizes that the theologian Spalding develops the sermon of the savior into a school of morality; without quite saying it, Spalding announces the transformation of a Christendom of revelation into a new religion of reason.53 This is comparable to Rousseau’s confession that he does not pray in closed rooms, but in open nature. But what exactly this prayer consists in is not said. In terms of content, we cannot really discern any essential difference between Kant and Spalding, and even the order of thought matches. The difference lies in the theoretical justification. Spalding references the voice of nature; he writes his confession as a course of education, which ends at the guaranteed truth; it is toward this truth that the call to a virtuous life is composed, a call which vests the work in the form of a sermon. It is exoteric and requires nothing more from its readers than moral reflection, which collective civil life requires just as well. It glosses over inconsistencies: The naturalistic justification of virtue is undermined by the introduction into this world of that very evil that necessitates the transition to the dogma of immortality. Kant will take up this popular thought while trying to offer an epistemically more convincing foundation. Spalding appeals to our ability to listen to the voice of nature; he extracts self-knowledge from a feeling granted to him. But both these sources of cognition are, according to Kant’s critical theory, dogmatic and unsuitable. This is shown in an exemplary way, so Kant could argue, in the fact that nature and the feeling that harmonizes with it first seem to indicate that the true path to happiness is virtue, but, then, the existence of evil destroys this natural connection and hence, the voice of nature must be in error. Instead, a radically different groundwork must be laid for the doctrine of virtue, and morality must be founded in reason, not in a feeling. By its very nature, the historical significance of Spalding’s work for the German Enlightenment is hard to pin down exactly. This booklet accompanies German intellectual history during the second half of the eighteenth century in ever new editions; this alone guarantees it a direct influence during this time frame. It is a symptom of the turn to a new era, it participates in it, it stands for a short while at the peak of a development that it helps to formulate, but which

53

In a separate consideration, the author assigns a subsidiary position to Christendom, see the “Addendum to the third edition” in SpKA I, 1:199–215.

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cannot be brought about by a mere booklet alone. Spalding participates here in a new tendency of the second half of the century. Some of these new phenomena shall be listed here since they will prove to be important for the greater debate on the human vocation. Spalding’s work mediates between Baroque Christendom and a principally non-Christian Classicism. Although Leibniz and Wolff are still confessed Christians and document this in their works, the second half of the eighteenth century, if we may say so, is no longer orientated by Christianity. But there is no clamorous clash between Christianity and Enlightenment until the 1790s and Wöllner’s edicts and their “terreur.” Spalding offers the possibility of a peaceful mediation; it is Neostoicism, to which no intellectual explicitly subscribes, but that implicitly influences their thoughts. Had other paths been taken, had Epicureanism or Skepticism defined the “climate of opinion,”54 instead of the Stoa, then an open conflict between throne and altar, on the one hand, and the non-Christian conviction of many intellectuals, on the other, would have been unavoidable. As briefly as it lasted, the Spinoza debate had already indicated the problems associated with a detachment from Christianity and a turn towards Atheism. Spalding’s irenic work contributed to the relatively peaceful conditions under which the second phase of the Enlightenment could develop. The debate regarding the vocation of the human beings is connected to the question of what this being ought to do. What awaits us is arranged according to our moral ought and its fulfillment; the hope for immortality, as we have seen, is founded, first, on the inner necessity of moral progress after physical death, and, second, on our reasonable expectation of a proportional balance between moral accomplishment and happiness. Both of these bases for our hope practically exclude the threatening prospect of eternal damnation after death. Christian hell plays no role in the debate on the vocation of the human being.55 A closer exposition of the first conception of immortality—that of the progress in the striving of the soul for further perfection—could be found by any educated person in Addison’s and Steele’s Spectator of July 7, 1711. Addison mentions some proofs for the existence of God, but only deems the one “of the perpetual Progress which the Soul makes towards the Perfection of its Nature” convincing.56 Animals, 54 55 56

[Originally in English.] Compare concerning the “decline of hell” Schollmeier 1967, p. 163 (with reference to Hutcheson). Addison and Steele 1964, I, p. 339 – Saturday, July 7, 1711, No. 111. The following passages are also from this letter. The whole German translation from 1749–1751 is a second, improved edition from the translation by the “Gottschedin” [Luise Adelgunde Victorie Gottsched] from 1739–1743. This is an abbreviated version of the “Spectator” from July 7, 1711. The notion of Bestimmung is not used, neither in this translation, nor in another one from 1782–1783 (“Auszug des englischen Zuschauers, nach einer deutschen Übersetzung”).

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“which are formed for our use,”57 find satisfaction in this earthly life in which they realize everything for which they were created. The human being, in contrast, has spiritual potentials that extend far beyond this life. Would an infinitely wise Being make such glorious Creatures for so mean a Purpose? Can he delight in the Production of such abortive Intelligences, such short-lived reasonable Beings? Would he give us Talents that are not to be exerted? Capacities that are never to be gratified?

In short: An earthly life without an afterlife would not be worthy of a God, and hence we can be sure that this life is only the beginning of eternal progress in the other world.58 Spalding had already published a summary of his Contemplation in the introduction to his 1747 translation of Shaftesbury entitled Untersuchung über die Tugend.59 The motto, alluding to the Stoa, comes from Horace: “Amoto quaeramus seria ludo”:60 “Games aside, let us now consider something serious.” This quote is directed against the Platonic dialogues, which are considered play; what is discussed here is serious in the manner of the Stoics and not some mere pastime for a few scholars. Above this stands the inscription of a medallion: “Sapere aude,” the motto of the second phase of the Enlightenment. Indeed, the fundamental idea of Spalding’s Vocation of the Human Being has already been developed by Shaftesbury in this very essay. It is made explicit in the title as well as the very first sentence of the work: the issue is a more specific definition61 of virtue and the relation of virtue to religion—with Spalding stressing the dependence on religion more strongly.62 Shaftesbury, Spalding, and Kant must inevitably face the question of religion, since an ethics must show the interest that a human being can take in virtuous actions; that which is “honestum” must also prove itself to be “utile,” or at least, it should not get into an irresolvable disagreement with the agent’s interest in their own happiness. This poses the problem of solving the following antithesis: On the one hand, pure moral action cannot be dependent upon reward and punishment, without losing its morality

57

58

59

60

61 62

This is a Stoic concept, foreign to Plato and Aristotle, see Santozki 2006, pp. 279–84, 290–301, 385– 8, 420–1. See also Kant’s lecture on metaphysics from the beginning of the 1760s in Metaphysik Herder AA 28:108–9. [This is Spalding’s translation of Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit (first authorized ed. 1711).] Horace, Sermones I 1, 27. Concerning the significance of Horace and his “paramount prestige” in the eighteenth century see the reference in Mauser 2001, pp. 58–9, footnote 27. [Bestimmung] Schollmeier 1967, p. 155.

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and its characteristic merit. On the other hand, if moral action is taken on its own, then it faces the objection that—seen under the conditions of this world— it becomes or can become the cause of unhappiness; in which case, only a fool acts morally, since the virtuous has to exclude prudence as the highest guide of action, so that only the stupid person is honest. According to Shaftesbury, Spalding, and Kant, this antinomy between morality and prudence (or selfinterest) can only be solved by having it so that pure morality necessarily motivates the act first, but then, nevertheless, only faith in an omnipotent and just God, as well as in the immortality of the soul, saves reason from being unreasonable.63 We can extend this line: Kant shares in the idea of a primacy of morals over theology, but unlike Shaftesbury and Spalding he carries it to the point of proving the impossibility of a theoretical, morality-free cognition of God and immortality; for if such existed, this would destroy morals. This is the doctrine found in the last chapter of the dialectic of pure practical reason: “On the Wise Adaption of the Human Being’s Cognitive Faculties to His Practical Vocation” (AA 5:146.14– 16). If we can prove this through an exact analysis of our powers of cognition, then morality is no longer in danger of becoming dependent upon theology and revealed religion or threatened by skepticism or atheism. If human beings are indeed destined for moral agency, then the presuppositions for this agency cannot lie in theoretical theology or even in revelation, neither of which falls within “the limits of pure reason” or is grounded in autonomous morality. This thought must lead to the overthrow of scholastic metaphysics, just as this was consistently carried out by Kant in 1781. Important for the preceding discussion is the already-mentioned distinction between two grounds for the postulate of immortality. The first ground is located in the dispositions of human beings, which, in contrast to those of animals, cannot be fulfilled in this life and hence are intended for a life after death. The second ground is the otherwise threatening irrationality of a constitution of the world that requires us to be moral, but oftentimes rewards not virtue, but evil. Hence, creation must include a life after death so that happiness and virtue are put into proper proportion to one another. Kant will adopt both of these grounds; applying the first, however, also historically and designating humanity as a whole as the genuine subject of a natural intention directed to the future (AA 8:18–19), while adopting the second argument nearly without any changes throughout all phases of his critical philosophy. 63

Shaftesbury 1900, I, p. 271.

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III Review Along with the representation of the vocation of the human being there is communicated a spiritual sentiment, which forms an important element in the self-understanding of the second phase of the Enlightenment. This vocation always relates to the total existence of the human being, whether it be merely an earthly, or also an other-worldly existence. The evocation of our existence within the totality of the world and before God is accompanied, in all its expressions, with enthusiasm; for already the totality of one’s own existence, located in earthly life in general and in life after death—this vision or imagining of the unsurpassable, of the most issue of our existence—is something sublime. Just as the space of the universe, ruled entirely throughout by Newtonian forces, places the mind into an enthusiastic mood, so also does the thought of the human vocation, which can seize hold of, enliven, and unsettle anyone. The representation of it is in earnest moral, but at the same time aesthetically thrilling (always: according to the testimony of Kant and his contemporaries).—If we do not fully envision the powers of mind that are released in this experience and instead falsely regard the discussion of the human being’s vocation as a dispute among scholars, then we cannot understand the fascination of this thought and its effect. It is no mere matter of the intellect that is being dealt with here, but rather an existential feature of the entire human being and of all human beings. The moral vocation of the human being is set against the hedonistic culture of distraction and of trifling typical of the Rococo, as well as against the ever increasing influence of the sciences that deal with everything possible, except for the actual I or self of the human being. There are two levels at which to talk about the vocation of the human being, namely, a popular and a learned-sophisticated level. In the popular discussion, everyone could pretend to understand what is meant by such a vocation and from whence it draws its normative force. Philosophically, however, it was exactly this that needed to be illuminated, and it turned out that the unclarified “natural” vocation was to be transformed into a lucid rational vocation, just as, analogically, natural right was to become the right of reason. It is exactly this that Kant accomplishes by focusing on ethical self-determination in the former, and on the legal vocation of humanity in the latter. In this way, the popular concept attains philosophical status.

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Kant on the Human Vocation Allen Wood

“The human vocation” (die menschliche Bestimmung) is a term Kant uses regularly, not only in his writings on ethics, but also in those on history, aesthetics, and religion. Many of these references, though by no means all, are specifically to our “practical” or “moral” vocation. One might expect that for Kant the two would be the same: that our human vocation would simply be identical with our vocation as moral beings. But to put it this simply would misunderstand even the significance of our moral vocation as Kant conceives it. Therefore, my aim here will be to emphasize the non-moral aspects of Kant’s conception of the human vocation, and show how they provide the context for our moral vocation.

I The Meaning of “Vocation” (Bestimmung) Let’s begin by reflecting on the different meanings of the German word Bestimmung. In the most basic sense of this term, it refers to what makes a thing the kind of thing it is. In this sense, Bestimmung could be a synonym of the German words Benennung (“naming” or “designation”), or Erklärung (explanation or definition). But when Bestimmung is translated into English as “vocation,” it clearly has a normative or evaluative meaning: the human Bestimmung is what human beings ought to be, or should aspire to be. As it is used by Kant, and also by Fichte, die menschliche Bestimmung suggests a close connection or even a fundamental identity between “is” and “ought”—since it refers simultaneously to what human beings are and what they ought to be. The human Bestimmung in that sense might be what Aristotle calls the human function (ἔργον)—the work or activity best suited to the nature of human beings, whose successful performance constitutes the highest human good. 163

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But in both Kant and Fichte, the connection operates in just the opposite way from what this suggests. We would suppose that for an Aristotelian, the inference proceeds from the factual nature (the “what-it-is”) of a thing to conclusions about what it ought to be: Its formal cause determines its final cause. If human beings are by nature rational, then the end of a rational being is to act and to contemplate with rational excellences. For Kant and Fichte, however, the inference goes in just the opposite direction. For to be human is to be precisely that kind of being where the “is” depends on the “ought.” To be rational is to be free (AA 4:448). Human beings are nothing definite (bestimmt) until they determine themselves. We can come to know what we essentially are only through deciding what we ought to be. As Kant puts it: “The human being has a character, which he himself creates insofar as he is capable of perfecting himself according to ends that he himself adopts” (AA 7:321). For this reason, therefore, the term “vocation” may have some misleading implications. If taken in the sense of the German word Beruf (profession or calling), it suggests that something (or someone) is calling you: if not God, or nature (or your own nature), then the collective voice of your profession, or of its traditions. But as Kant thinks of our Bestimmung, it refers to what you, as a free being, or even to what human beings generally, decide or resolve upon for themselves. In this way, a better German synonym for Bestimmung, in its usage by Kant or Fichte, might be Entschlossenheit: “determination” in the sense of resolution or steadfast purpose. The human vocation is what we humans have ourselves determined, or if not that, then something we have yet to determine but which awaits us as a task we are still to define. Yet another synonym for the German word Bestimmung might be Schicksal: fate or destiny; but not the predestined doom of a tragic character—such as Oedipus, Phaedra, Macbeth, Blanche DuBois, or Willy Loman—that this tragic hero or heroine might struggle in vain to escape. Rather, it would be a human destiny in the positive sense: an aim, end, or purpose which human beings determine and to which they aspire. Humanity then either fulfills its destiny or fails to fulfill it, or else (as Kant and Fichte both think) it strives endlessly towards its destiny without ever completely reaching it.

I A The Human Vocation as Rational—that is, Self-made It is significant in this connection that Kant rejects the theory of “preformation” regarding a priori concepts, cognitions, or principles (B167); that is, he regards no cognition or principle as innate (AA 8:221–2). What is a priori does not come from

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what we imagine might have been put in them from some source external to our agency: such as God or nature, or perhaps our genetic make-up and evolution by natural selection. It comes only from the exercise of our rational faculties, from that which we both do and comprehend, and for which we therefore assume responsibility. The same is true of our predispositions (Anlagen)—at least our rational ones. Kant does, however, speak of our Bestimmung as a natural purpose, and of nature (metaphorically) as willing or directing us to it (AA 7:329; cf. 8:17–18). There are, Kant says, three basic predispositions in human nature, which are “elements in the Bestimmung of the human being”: animality, humanity, and personality (AA 6:26). For the first of these only is reason not required; the other two are rational predispositions: that is, they are self-made by us. Their content depends on the human character. “The character of a living being is that which allows its Bestimmung to be cognized in advance” (AA 7:329). But for a rational species, this Bestimmung is one that begins with nature and then departs from it, in a direction we ourselves determine (bestimmen). Our natural animality, Kant thinks, has a constant tendency to drag us back into passivity or contentment, which we call “happiness.” But this is opposed to our true vocation. That is why Kant denies that human happiness could ever be either the ultimate end of our existence, or any end at all of nature. We cannot, Kant thinks, even make for ourselves a stable and consistent idea of our happiness (AA 5:430; cf. 4:415–16). Happiness always remains for us “a wavering idea” (eine schwankende Idee) to which our state can never perfectly reach, or even approximate in an enduring way. Our restless discontent is also destined (bestimmt) for us through our character as rational beings, since it is our vocation (Bestimmung) to overcome what is natural in us in order to perfect ourselves as rational beings: “No matter how great his animal tendency may be to give himself over passively to the impulses of ease and good living, which he calls ‘happiness,’ he is still destined (bestimmt) to make himself worthy of humanity by actively struggling with the obstacles that cling to him by the crudity of his nature” (AA 7:325). Even our rational predispositions themselves are present in us only as capacities for us to develop: [Thus the human being] has a character which he himself creates, insofar as he is capable of perfecting himself according to ends which he himself adopts. By means of this the human being, as an animal endowed with the capacity for reason (animal rationabile), can make of himself a rational animal (animal rationale). AA 7:321; cf. 8:18–20

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To be an animal rationale would be to have developed fully the two rational predispositions: humanity and personality. These predispositions are capacities whose development consists in the human choice or determination (Bestimmung) of both the ends they are to serve and the means by which these ends are to be attained.

II The Predispositions II A The Rational Predisposition to Humanity (Menschheit) To understand the human vocation (Bestimmung), as Kant conceives it, is to understand these two rational predispositions and how human beings are destined (bestimmt) to develop them. The predisposition to humanity is the capacity to set ends according to reason, and choose the means to them. The ends in question are derived from natural impulses or inclinations. “Humanity,” then, refers to our capacity to set non-moral ends and choose (or devise) our own means to them. Humanity is our most basic capacity of self-government, which delivers our lives and even our entire world over to our own care and our own choices. For nonrational animals, in Kant’s view, the ends pertaining to their natural predispositions are fixed by nature, as are the means by which they are attained. Some animals live on plains, deserts, or tundras, others in forests or jungles, some in or near rivers or seashores. Some animals are herbivorous, others carnivorous. None of them chooses its environment, the conditions of its survival, or the skills and capacities through which its members survive and reproduce. The human species, however, has spread over the entire earth, lives in all the environments just mentioned, is omnivorous, and survives through widely varying skills and activities it has collectively devised over centuries. Kant’s explanation for this remarkable fact is human rationality. It is reason that makes us capable of adapting through powers we ourselves have invented, so that we can choose our own way of living and at the same time create the means for living that way.

II B The Technical Predisposition In the Anthropology, Kant subdivides our predisposition to humanity into two predispositions: the technical predisposition, to set ends and devise means to them; and the pragmatic predisposition, which is the capacity to unite our ends

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into a rational end of happiness or well-being, and also to create a cultural world in which we seek this end through social relationships with our fellow human beings. In the eighteenth century, there was a genre of writing that the Scottish philosopher Dugald Stewart later called “conjectural history” or “natural history” (see Marušić 2017, pp. 261–74). The aim of the genre was not to present a narrative of actual origins, but rather to invent an account based on reasonable conjectures, whose aim is to illustrate the nature of its subject matter. Contributions to the genre included the essays on the origin of language by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Adam Smith, and also David Hume’s essay Natural History of Religion, as well as parts of Hume’s account of the origin of moral concepts and principles. Kant offered a natural history in this sense, based on a consciously irreverent interpretation of the book of Genesis, in his essay Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786). One of its aims was to expound the nature of our rational faculty, representing its use by our first parents Adam and Eve in their choice to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The voice of God that commanded them to eat from the tree of life could not have been a moral voice, since not yet knowing good and evil, they could as yet understand nothing of the kind. Instead, Kant says, it was the voice of instinct that speaks to all animals, disposing them to do what was naturally beneficial for them. The choice of our parents to eat from the new and different tree was therefore an act of liberation from their instinctive animality; for the first time, they chose for themselves how to satisfy their hunger, creating at the same time the very concepts of good and evil (AA 8: 111, cf. 7:322–3). Now free from the minority or tutelage (Unmündigkeit) of instinct, human beings set new ends and develop new skills, new predispositions, and entirely new ways of life. Following Herder, Kant sees the human hand, with its supple and sensitive fingers, as a means of manipulating objects in indefinitely many ways, and hence as a sign of rationality (AA 7:323). The natural predispositions of other species of living things are normally developed in the lifetime of a single, normal specimen. But human beings transmit their capacities to later generations, which in turn develop new capacities, which are then further handed down and passed along. The technical predisposition, therefore, already marks the human species as the only one that has a true history: its species predispositions can be realized only in the species, not in the individual (AA 7:323, 8:18–19). Kant’s name for the process of education (Ausbildung) through which this happens is “culture” (Kultur), or more precisely “cultivation” (Kultivierung) (AA 7:324, 5:431, 8:26).

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The foundation of human historical development is therefore the creation of what Kant would call new technical predispositions. Marx called this the development of new productive powers (Produktivkräfte). As Marx was later to do, Kant thinks of human history as consisting of stages, characterized by different human ways of life. Kant, whose early work was centrally concerned with what we might now call geology or earth sciences, is often credited with being the inventor of the science he called “physical geography.” His lectures on this subject, which he gave every summer quarter, were intended to parallel his lectures on anthropology, which were given every winter. Both series were intended to deal with the human world: physical geography with the natural environment of human beings, anthropology with the social environment. In fact, the physical geography lectures often deal more with what we might now call “anthropology,” since they discuss the ways different peoples around the world interact with their physical, climatic, and biological environment (AA 9:151–436). Kant follows Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), whose Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) divides human history into four main periods, based on the ways people produced the material conditions of their existence: huntergatherers, pastoral nomads, and finally agriculture, which laid the foundation for the fourth stage: urban society and the development of practical arts and commerce. This is how Kant too depicts the stages of human history (AA 8:118– 20). These economic stages ground the social way of life characteristic of each historical stage. They thereby ground a second rational predisposition belonging to our humanity: the pragmatic predisposition characteristic of social culture (Kultur) or civilization (Zivilisierung).

II C The Pragmatic Predisposition: Civilization By the “pragmatic” predisposition Kant means, first and most fundamentally, the capacity we have as individuals to unite our ends of inclination into a single one, under the name of “happiness” (AA 4:399, 418), and then to adopt a way of life that promotes this end. Kant’s name for skill in promoting our own happiness is “prudence” (Klugheit). This term also has a second and closely related sense— which Kant sometimes distinguishes from prudence in general by calling it “worldly prudence”—which is “the art of using human beings for our purposes” (AA 9:486., cf. 7:312). This is because we develop the concept of our own happiness only in a social or cultural context, and that, in turn, is because its natural meaning for us is comparative: we seek a happy condition (Zustand) in

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order so that we may compare our condition competitively with that of others and seek superiority over them (AA 6:27, 8:20–2). Our pragmatic predisposition therefore is closely bound up with our “unsociable sociability” (AA 8:20). But it also includes the ways we find to bring concord out of discord (AA 7:322), and that prepares the way for our highest or moral predisposition, personality. For Kant, the term “culture” (Kultur) has a double meaning, referring to two concomitant historical processes. Culture is the development of human technical skills, or “cultivation” (Kultivierung), but also the development of all the ways human beings can interact with each other socially, or “civilization” (Zivilizierung). The historical process of civilization then leads to a third stage of historical development, which Kant calls “moralization” (Moralizierung), which is the development of our predisposition to personality (AA 7:324, 326; 8:26). But in looking at the human vocation in Kant we should not pass on too quickly to this third stage; for we need to appreciate how it is grounded on and develops out of the second stage. Kant takes seriously Rousseau’s unsettling thought that civilization might not be on the whole a good thing; perhaps it is something we would have been better off without. In the end he resists this thought, but only because he thinks civilization is a relentless and irreversible process, whose end we cannot predict, but which we have reason to hope will make possible a future better than the deeply troubled historical past of human civilization. Or at least we are entitled to this hope if we do our part to bring about that possible higher future (AA 7:324, 326; 8:116–17). Kant’s readers often suppose that for him “pure reason” is some kind of atemporal and supernatural power, which must have descended on angel’s wings, or emerged full blown like armored Athena from the forehead of Zeus.1 1

For Kant, we think of ourselves as noumena, or members of an intelligible world, when we think of our actions as subject to laws of reason or the understanding (nous, intellectus). This does not mean that the human awareness of these laws does not have a history (which is ongoing, and perhaps endless). Kant thinks that moral agency, even the theoretical capacity for judgment, presupposes freedom, which is therefore the “keystone” of the entire system of philosophy, both of theoretical and practical reason (AA 4:448, 5:3). Kant holds that practical freedom can be known empirically: the capacity for free agency of mature human beings can be empirically distinguished from those of non-human animals and the absent or diminished capacities of immature or impaired humans; but there remains a speculative issue of how freedom relates to natural necessity (KrV A802–3/B830–1). The latter issue, Kant thinks, is insoluble. We must rationally presuppose that we are free (KrV A547– 55/B575–83; AA 4:448, 5:30, 95–100). Moreover, it can be shown that there is no inconsistency (no logical contradiction) in the unavoidable rational presupposition that we are free and our actions are also subject to natural laws (KrV A557–8/B585–6, AA 4:459, 5:103–5). Freedom can therefore be defended to the extent that we can show it is a necessary presupposition and its impossibility cannot be demonstrated (AA 4:456–9, 5:48–50). In order to show this, Kant sometimes proposes the metaphysical thought that freedom might belong to us in one respect (as things in themselves) but not in another (as appearances) (KrV A530–41/B558–69; AA 4:450–3, 5:89–103). But on Kant’s critical principles, this thought could never be known to be true, or even known to be really possible. It is offered only to establish a logical possibility: Kant is not committed to it as a positive

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Often they do this because they think of Kantian reason as a capacity we possess only as members of an intelligible world, outside space and time. This common but serious (even disastrous) distortion of Kant’s philosophy does its greatest harm when it occludes the role of historicity in Kant’s theory of agency. For Kant, reason is a faculty that arose in the course of human history by paradoxical processes driven by conflict. As we shall see presently, it emerged even more originally out of a certain peculiarity in our animal nature: human sexuality. Sexuality, as we will see presently, accounts for human sociability, the ambivalence of civilization, and in the end also for the possibility of morality. Kant anticipates thoughts at this point that we would now be more likely to associate with later thinkers: not only Marx, but Nietzsche and even Freud.

III Reason and Irrationality III A Civilization as the Source of Morality—and of the Obstacles to Morality If moral reason had been present in us fully developed from the start, Kant thinks that the relationship between moralization and civilization would have been exactly the opposite of what they in fact are. Reason would then have prescribed that we begin from moral principles and arrange our social relations, our civilization, according to them. Such a species “begins with morality and its law leading to a culture designed to be appropriate to morality.” With us, however, it is just the opposite: “Nature within [the human being] strives to lead him from culture to morality . . . This inevitably establishes a perverted, counterpurposive tendency” (AA 7:328).

doctrine. How freedom and natural causality in fact relate to one another is in Kant’s view unknowable, and even (apart from its bare logical possibility) inconceivable or incomprehensible. “Freedom can never be comprehended, nor even can insight into it be gained” (AA 4:459). For Kant, the metaphysical problem of freedom is insoluble. Freedom must be presupposed, and human beings, as natural and historical beings, must be supposed to have it. But how our freedom relates to natural causality is one of those metaphysical questions Kant thinks lies beyond our cognitive faculties to answer, even though we necessarily ask it (KrV Avii). This, of course, will come as an unfamiliar and unwelcome thought to those who think empirical science can answer all philosophical questions, and have fallen prey to the sad, comforting self-deception that they have found a solution to the problem of freedom in some form of naturalistic compatibilism. Rather than accept Kant’s bleak skepticism, it is easier for them to deal with his arguments by attributing to him a wild, metaphysical theory that is easily dismissed. This misunderstanding does additional mischief when it causes them to be oblivious to Kant’s empirical accounts of the origin of human reason in our biological nature and its development through the history of culture.

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The process by which morality must emerge is therefore beset from the start with self-generated obstacles to that very process. This is the meaning of “unsociable sociability,” and is the basis for Kant’s account of the radical propensity to evil in human nature. Human beings are by nature—even in their animality—social creatures (AA 6:26). They are interdependent beings, whose well-being and happiness are dependent on others (AA 6:393, 451). Reason itself emerges only out of our sociability. But the emergence of reason is at the same time the emergence of social antagonism, “the unsociable property of willing to direct everything so as to get his own way, . . . and, driven by tyranny, greed and ambition, to obtain for himself a rank among his fellows, whom he cannot stand, but also cannot leave alone” (AA 8:21; cf. 7:331). We compare ourselves with others, always with the aim, and the hope, that we may come out ahead of them (AA 6:27). “With the advance of culture,” moreover, human beings “feel ever more strongly the ill which they selfishly inflict on one another” (AA 7:329). This is why prudence, our pragmatic predisposition, is fundamentally a skill in the manipulation of others, whom we seek to use as mere means to our own ends (AA 7:201, 271, 322, 9:450). The moral principle commanding us to treat humanity in others always at the same time as an end in itself (AA 4:429) must therefore emerge, by a historical process ridden with conflict, entangled in a struggle against its diametrical opposite. Another feature of human civilization, connected with the project of using others for our ends and emphasized by both Rousseau and Kant, is the tendency to conceal from others anything that might make them think less of us, and, arising from this, the tendency to deceive. “It therefore belongs to the concept of [the human] species to explore the thoughts of others but to withhold one’s own; a tidy quality which then does not fail to progress gradually from dissimulation to intentional deception and finally to lying” (AA 7:332). The tendency to dissimulation, Kant holds, increases with the advance of civilization (AA 6:33), and also embraces the tendency to deceive oneself, and be taken in by selfinflicted delusions, representing oneself as superior to others, or imagining oneself able to acquire the means of achieving this superiority (AA 7:274–5). Kant is well-known for his moral objections to deception (AA 6:429–31). Perhaps he is too well-known for it, since his views on the subject are commonly misunderstood, distorted, and even caricatured in crude ways by critics seeking a quick and easy dismissal of Kantian ethics as a whole (on this topic, see A. Wood 2008, Chapter 14). Kant does hold that justice requires strict truthfulness under certain specific conditions (AA 8:381–6, 5:44). He also regards open-heartedness as an important moral ideal, which would have to prevail among people insofar

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as they constitute a realm of ends. But, it is usually insufficiently appreciated that Kant was realistic to the point of cynicism about how far short of this ideal people in fact fall in civilized life, and was well aware of the compromises social reality forces upon us. Civilization, he says, makes people well-behaved (wohlgeartet) but not yet moral (AA 7:323). The idea of morality belongs to culture (to civilization), but its practice consists more in propriety (Sittsamkeit) and decorum (Anständigkeit), which are mere semblances of moral goodness (AA 8:27). With his characteristic perceptiveness about—even acceptance of—the moral ambiguity in the life of our still imperfect human culture, Kant realizes that people are bound to fall short of the ideal, and he even thinks the tendencies to dissimulation, deception, and illusion characteristic of civilization, do contribute in positive ways to culture and even to morality (AA 7:149–53). For by encouraging in others the self-flattering pretense of virtue, we may also encourage them to imitate what they imagine they are, and this is the chief mechanism through which civilization contributes to moralization. “All human virtue in circulation is sheath coins (Scheidemünze) – it is a child who takes it for real gold. But it is still better to have sheath coins in circulation than no funds at all, and eventually they can be converted into genuine gold, though at considerable loss” (AA 7:152).2 Culture also makes possible aesthetic experiences that contribute to respect for our moral vocation, and thus prepare the way for our moral predisposition. This is especially true of the feeling of the sublime. We need moral ideas to be developed through culture before we can experience the powers of nature as sublime: “Without the development of moral ideas, that which we, prepared by culture, call sublime, will appear merely repellent to a refined person” (AA 5:265). The feeling for the sublime, however, once developed, is intimately associated with our moral vocation and contributes to our feeling for it (AA 5:268–9).

2

Kant’s metaphor in this passage needs a bit of explanation. In Kant’s time currency was on the gold standard. But in Germany and Austria even up to the time of World War I, states also commonly minted Scheidemünze—literally: sheath coins, also called “representative money” or “fiat coins.” These were coins made of cheap metal but with the value stamped on them that they would have if they were genuine gold coins. In small amounts they often passed in common circulation for gold coins of the stated value because others would accept them at that value. But everyone knew that in genuine gold currency they were actually worth much less. Kant thinks that the cultured imitations of moral virtue that pass for virtue in civilized life are like sheath coins. People let them pass for moral virtue even though everyone knows they are dissimulations having much lower real moral value.

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III B The Origin of Culture in Human Sexuality Kant has a theory about the root of culture (in the sense of civilization) in our animality and also the root of our moral predisposition. He presents this theory, once again, in the Conjectural Beginning of Human History, in the form of an impish interpretation of the verses of Genesis that narrate the fable of the human acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil. Specifically, Kant associates the foundations of culture with the effects of human rationality on our sexual impulse: The human being soon found that the stimulus to sex, which with animals rests merely on a transient, for the most part periodic impulse, was capable for him of being prolonged and even increased through the power of the imagination, whose concern, to be sure, is more with moderation, yet at the same time works more enduringly and uniformly the more its object is withdrawn from the senses, and he found that it prevents the boredom that comes along with the satisfaction of a merely animal desire. The figleaf (Genesis 3:7) was thus the product of a far greater manifestation of reason than that which it had demonstrated in the first stage of its development. For to make an inclination more inward and enduring by withdrawing its object from the senses, shows already the consciousness of some dominion of reason over impulse and not merely, as in the first step, a faculty for doing service to those impulses within a lesser or greater extension. Refusal was the first artifice for leading from the merely sensed stimulus over to ideal ones, from merely animal desire gradually over to love. AA 8:112–13

The fig leaf with which our legendary first parents are supposed to have covered their genitals is not for Kant an expression of shame. In the first instance, its meaning is that it transformed, through the influence of the imagination, a merely animal impulse into a specifically rational inclination. When the man and woman concealed from each other’s eyes the object of desire, they altered the character of sexual desire. It ceased to be a merely transitory impulse associated with reproduction—as Kant says it is in all non-rational animals. Concealment had several important effects on human sexual desire. It acted as a new kind of stimulus to desire, while at the same time prolonging it, making it more inwardly directed, influenced more by imagination than sense. It also made sexual desire into the way human beings first became able to exercise rational dominion over animal impulse. This dominion, we should especially note, was not originally rational control over one’s own desires, but instead control over the desires of another—by exciting them and then refusing them. Rational control

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over desire itself also appears as the original form of truly human (and rational) sociability. At the same time the mythical fig leaf served as a stimulus and a transformative power over sexual desire, it also constituted an act of refusal. It said to the other: “Yes, you desire me, and you desire me more, and more enduringly, precisely because I have hidden from you the object of your desire and therefore transformed your desire through imagination into something entirely new -- a more inward and enduring part of your life as a desiring creature. As I stimulate and transfigure your desire, however, I am also withdrawing its object from you and denying it to you.” In this way, the structure of sexual desire, when it is made human and rational, at the same time exhibits the structure of unsociable sociability: “I excite your desire, but I also use your desire to assert my superiority and dominion over you.” This transformation is also identified by Kant with the ground of the feeling of love: Pleasure in the perfection of another, leading to a desire to benefit the other (AA 27:416, 5:276; cf. 6:449, 6:45n). That which we love has, through the pleasure we take in it, a claim on us, and therefore a kind of dominion over us. At the same time, according to Kant’s theory of sociality and culture, we tend, as if through self-protection, to love mainly that which we regard as in some way inferior to ourselves: “Love, like water, always flows downward more easily than upward” (AA 27:670). “We love everything over which we have a decisive superiority, so that we can toy with it” (AA 15:490). This same ambivalence is also the structure of the fundamental moral feeling of respect: for respect combines esteem with displeasure and even humiliation. Respect has something in it analogous to inclination but also something analogous to fear (AA 4:401n). It displays to us a value that offers us an incentive, but at the same time limits our self-love and strikes down our self-conceit (AA 5:72–3). As civilization advances, the antagonism of unsociable sociability regularly takes the form of the competitive quest for honor or social esteem. In Rousseau’s telling phrase, people “live outside themselves in the opinion of others” (Rousseau 1997, p. 187). Their social standing, and even their fundamental sense of self-worth, depends on what others think of them and how others rank them within the informal but powerful hierarchy of social prestige. The basis of the values that determine the worth of a person in civilized life are, on Kant’s account, located in the ambivalent act of sexual stimulation through imagination combined with sexual refusal. In society these sexual feelings become transformed (Freud might have said “sublimated”) into sentiments of social approval. This is what Kant calls “propriety” (Sittsamkeit). It

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is connected with social decorum (Anstand, Anständigkeit). Both are the capacity to inspire in others esteem and respect rather than dishonor and contempt. Propriety (Sittsamkeit) an inclination by good conduct [or decorum, (guten Anstand)] to influence others to respect for us (through the concealment of that which could incite low esteem), as the genuine foundation of all true sociability, gave the first hint towards the formative education (Ausbildung) of the human being as a moral (sittlichen) creature.—A small beginning, which, however, is epoch-making, in that it gives an entirely new direction to the way of thinking— and is more important than the entire immeasurable series of extensions of culture that followed upon it. AA 8:112–13

We see in the final sentence here that Kant regards the sense of social propriety or decorum to be the basic mechanism through which culture (civilization) operates on human nature in its historical development—eventually leading to morality and the predisposition to personality.

III C Kant and Freud The thing we should be sure not to miss here is that Kant is grounding our rational, social, and even moral capacities on social-psychological processes that are not themselves rational. They are natural (even animal), and in their emergence from animality, in certain ways even irrational, and contrary to the moral values whose appreciation is later to emerge from them. The sexual desire which, in the biblical myth, is stimulated, transformed, and also refused by means of the fig leaf, is not itself a rational desire. The transformative process involves an imaginative transfiguration of desire that is even enhanced by its denial or frustration. In Kant’s account, there is, I suggest (following Béatrice Longuenesse), an anticipation of the basic elements in Freud’s account of the origins of the superego.3 It is well-known, of course, that Freud’s account of the conflict plays itself out in a mythic familial context: The male child’s sexual desire for the female parent is prohibited by the male parent. Oedipal conflict results in the emergence of an authority within the ego that Freud says issues categorical imperatives of morality. The processes through which this happens are emotional rather than rational.

3

For an insightful comparison of Kant and Freud, see Longuenesse 2016, Chapter 8. What I am about to say echoes her discussion, which was also influenced by a dialogue on these subjects between us while she was writing this remarkable book.

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Freud is also keenly aware of the ways in which moral prohibitions, especially under the influence of social tradition and religion, can become morbid, excessive, and harmful to the health of the ego. This feature of Freud’s account easily creates the impression that Freud regards the superego’s moral authority, perhaps even the superego itself, as a fundamentally irrational and even pathological phenomenon. As Longuenesse points out, however, this impression represents a serious misreading of Freud. Freud thinks that a strong superego is required for a healthy ego; when Freud says that the superego’s moral commands are categorical, he means to be agreeing with Kant, and even attempting to offer a psychological defense of the Kantian concept of the categorical imperative. Freud is not in the least dismissing Kantian ethics as a form of mental illness. The impression that Kant’s and Freud’s views on the social-psychological foundations of morality are deeply at odds is based on the application of common, oversimplified stereotypes that lead to serious distortions of both thinkers. Of course it is true that Freud’s psychoanalytical patients often exhibit the effects of excessive and unhealthy moral tendencies in need of treatment, while Kant’s moral philosophy is far more sensitive to the ways in which people irrationally or self-deceptively attempt to evade the rational demands of morality. But it is entirely consistent to agree here with both Kant and Freud. Moreover, both are surely right: People do exhibit irrationality in evading moral requirements; and at the same time it is also true that in our culture, the way people think of moral requirements themselves is excessive, irrational, and unhealthy. Kant himself acknowledges that people understand the demands of morality in ways that are excessively strict and that undermine the rational selfgovernment that is the basis of morality (AA 6:409). Kant also rejects certain ascetical (or “Carthusian”) conceptions of morality as unhealthy (AA 6:24–5n, 6:485): “The cynic’s purism, and the anchorite’s mortification of the flesh, without social good living, are distorted forms of virtue, which do not make virtue inviting; rather, being forsaken by the graces, they can make no claim on humanity” (AA 7:282). The convergence here between Kant and Freud results from the striking similarity of the basic psychological materials out of which they develop their respective theories. Both involve social interaction in the development of the human moral faculties. Both involve the sexual impulse, emotionally transformed, and also the refusal or prohibition of that impulse. Both involve the emergence of our rational faculties out of processes that are fundamentally emotional, pre-rational, and even in part irrational. Kant’s readers make themselves incapable of seeing all this when they adopt the distorted stereotype according to which Kantian pure reason rises supremely above the

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impurities of everything natural. The source of reason itself, for Kant, is necessarily both natural, even animal, and yet also social. If, as Kant consistently argues, our rational faculties are the historical products of culture, and if culture arises from the emergence of reason out of our sexual animality, then it could not possibly have been otherwise. Longuenesse quotes Freud’s arresting assertion: Wo Es war, da soll Ich werden (“Where the id was, there shall the ego come to be”) (Longuenesse 2016, p. 206, 208, cf. Freud 1953–74, vol. 22, p. 79). Freud’s assertion applies equally to Freud and to Kant. If the ego is the site of Kantian reason, then it must have emerged from something pre-rational, even contra-rational. There is nowhere else from which das Ich could have come except das Es. The pre-rational in human nature must have been that through which das Ich: reason, or original apperception and the autonomous self-legislation of the moral law, must necessarily have come to be. Kant even holds that it is only from human culture, in itself fundamentally conflicted in its relation to reason, that everything human and rational has arisen (AA 8:18–20, 7:323–4). And as we have seen, Kant identifies the sexual impulse, socially transformed by imagination and met with refusal, as the psycho-social origins of culture itself. All that is missing from Kant’s account is the tragic Sophoclean family setting of the Freudian myth.

IV Morality and Custom We have seen that for Kant, the worth of a human being in civilized life is set by honor or social prestige, by the perception of that worth by others according to socially established standards of propriety or decorum. It is also through these and our pragmatic predisposition that civilization, and the pragmatic aspect of our human vocation gives rise to our moral predisposition, and thus to our moral vocation. The original meaning of morality in civilization is that conformity to custom, which at least protects us from the contempt of others, and when it assumes the form of an excellence, gains us honor and the esteem of others. Virtue (Tugend) is the capacity to constrain or discipline oneself to observe social customs in a way that makes a person serviceable (tauglich) for the habitual usages of civilized life. As an aspect of civilization, then, the original meaning of “morality” (Sittlichkeit) is: conformity to customary propriety (Sittsamkeit): that is, doing what the culture expects of you, and therefore what raises your standing in its opinion, or at least protects you from its contempt.

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Kant sees this origin of morality in the fact that in our language, the word for “morality” is derived from the word for custom (ἦθος, mos, Sitte): The word “custom” (Sittlichkeit) has been taken to express morality (Moralität), but custom (Sitte) is the concept of decorum (Anständigkeit); to virtue, however, there belongs a certain degree of customary goodness (sittlichen Bonität), a certain self-constraint and self-government. Peoples can have customs (Sitten) but no virtue, and others can have virtue but no customs (conduit is the manner of customs). The science of customs is still no doctrine of virtue, and virtue is not yet morality. But because we have no other word for morality, we take custom (Sittlichkeit) before morality, since we cannot take virtue for it. AA 27:300

For Kant, as for Nietzsche, the origin of morality is to be found in the Sittlichkeit der Sitte—the power of social custom, its tyrannical dominion over the individual (Nietzsche 1967, pp. 84–8). That is how morality began. From our standpoint much later in the genealogical process, however, we can draw a distinction between true morality and what is merely customary, separating what we rationally esteem from what merely arouses the esteem of others or protects us from their contempt. We also come to value moral virtue, as genuine strength of character, differently from the mere habit of conformity to accepted customs. People can have customs, but no genuine moral virtue, when their habitual usages do not display genuine moral strength; and they can have genuine moral virtue only when they have ceased to be subject to a set of empty customs. Thus, knowing how to conform to the customs of those around us is not the same as knowing what virtue is. Moreover, even virtue, the strength of character to conform to what is truly good, is not yet morality if the constraint is merely customary or habitual and does not take the rational form of practicing genuine moral principles. “In spirit, the moral law ordains the disposition (Gesinnung), in its letter, the action. In ethics, what matters is how the moral law is practiced in spirit” (AA 27:300–1). In this part of Kantian doctrine we can see how personality, our moral predisposition, arises out of humanity, in the form of our pragmatic predisposition as it shows itself in culture. Or, as Kant also puts it, the moralization of the human species arises out of its civilization (AA 8:26, 8:63, 8:116–18, 7:323–8). It does so through the emergence of a set of values that are in some way diametrically opposed to those practiced by civilization. Civilization values conformity to customs that may be contingent and local: morality, as Kant understands it, values conformity to moral laws that have universal validity for all rational beings. The aim of civilization is to distinguish the higher value placed on some

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people, those whose decorum or propriety marks them off from others who have lesser comparative worth. Morality attributes a fundamentally equal value, even a supreme and non-comparative value to all rational beings, as ends in themselves having dignity. The customs of civilization demand the conformity of individuals to a set of practices imposed by the opinion of others. The moral law is the law of autonomy, given by each individual’s own universal reason to him- or herself, and at the same time to all other individuals. There is in all this a historical pattern that parallels what Kant thinks is also true about both right and religion. The political state began as a military despotism, protecting the private property of agriculturalists and artisans, privileging those who coerce over those they exploit (AA 8:118–20), but its true rational and human vocation is to protect the external freedom of all according to universal laws (AA 6:230–3), to combine force with law in order to protect freedom (AA 7:330–2), and to insure the freedom, equality, and independence of each person in relation to all others (AA 8:290–6, 6:237–8, 314). The political vocation of human beings is therefore to bring the actual constitution of the state progressively closer to perfection, so that the state comes closer to achieving justice for everyone (AA 8:22–31, 8:303–13, 8:349–53, 7:83–94). Religion, in Kant’s view, began as the spiritual despotism of priests over the human mind, using fear, superstition, and conformity to ritual under the ecclesiastical authority of traditional scriptures and their authoritative interpretation. But the vocation of religion is to unite people into an ethical community, a voluntary union of hearts, in principle universal in scope, for the moral improvement of humanity (AA 6:96–102, 115–23, 135–6). Kant cites the hoped-for progress of religion as his example of the way that culture, in leading to morality, exhibits its “perverse or counter-purposive tendency; for example, when religious instruction, which should be a moral culture, begins with historical culture, which is merely the culture of memory, and tries in vain to deduce morality from it” (AA 7:328). In all three cases: the state, the church, and morality—the culture of civilization begins at the opposite pole from what it is eventually destined by its vocation to strive to become. This for Kant illustrates an important and fundamental proposition of human history: Nature has willed that the human being should produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical arrangement of his animal existence entirely out of himself, and participate in no other happiness or perfection than that which he has procured for himself free from instinct through his own reason. AA 8:19

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Nietzsche later restated the same Kantian thought about human history in a characteristically blunt way: “All good things were formerly bad things” (Nietzsche 1967, p. 113). With Nietzsche, however, one might suspect (though I think wrongly) that what he might have meant is merely that what we now think to be good was formerly thought to be bad. For Kant, however, the claim is that what is truly good about the state, religion, even morality itself, is something that began as bad according to the correct standards by which the same social institutions ought to be measured. And then to the extent that it has become what it ought to be, it has become good, or at least better than it was at its historical point of origin. Kant’s version of the thought therefore includes this one: It is the human vocation to make what is bad into what is good. In particular, it is the human vocation to transform the historical process of civilization into the process of moralization, which means (in Kant’s technical terms) to develop our predisposition to personality out of our predisposition to humanity. A crucial turning point in human history is the intellectual process Kant calls “enlightenment” (Aufklärung). The history of civilization is largely a history of the ways past traditions and customs, supported by the coercive power of the state but mainly consisting of the spiritual tyranny of religious priestcraft (Pfaffentum), have kept human beings in a state of minority or tutelage (Unmündigkeit). People are afraid to make independent use of their intellectual capacities and therefore disposed to allow others to do their thinking for them. Enlightenment is the process by which human beings exit or leave behind this degrading condition (AA 8:35). Kant thinks that this is unlikely to happen through the efforts of isolated individuals, but it comes about when an entire public is left free to communicate their thoughts with one another (AA 8:36). He sees the process of enlightenment going on before him in the modern world. The fruits of enlightenment are the recognition that reason is its own proper judge—that is the fundamental meaning of the title of Kant’s work Critique of Pure Reason (KrV A viii–xiii). In the moral sphere, the fruit of enlightenment is humanity’s dawning awareness that it is our own reason that is the proper legislator of morality, that the fundamental moral value is the dignity of every rational being, and the ultimate aim of culture in the sense not of cultivation or of civilization but of moralization, is progression towards a social world in which all human beings will be treated by one another as ends in themselves, and the ends they set will form a harmonious and shared system. Kant’s name for this social ideal, of course is a “realm of ends” (Reich der Zwecke) (AA 4:433–6).

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V Conclusion: The Human Vocation V A The Predisposition to Personality: Our Moral Vocation In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant argues that human beings, because they are the only beings in nature that can form the concept of an end and organize ends into a system, are the only beings that can be thought of as the ultimate end of nature (AA 5:429–36). But what is it about human beings that can be thought of as this end? Not human happiness, since nature has contrived things so that we are driven by discontent to cultivate and civilize ourselves. Nor is it this cultivating and civilizing process itself, but only that to which these serve as an end. That is the vocation to make ourselves worthy to be the end of nature: our moral vocation. Kant differs here from many recent moral philosophers. Bernard Williams, for example, holds that the main business that makes our lives meaningful is not morality but our “ground projects”—especially our loves, our commitments, and even our self-interest (Williams 1981). For Harry Frankfurt, what is important in human life is determined by “what we care about” (Frankfurt 1998). Morality is then seen as a set of constraints characterized mainly by impartiality. Morality is what tells us No when we are tempted to press too far the partiality to ourselves and our loved ones that gives our lives meaning. This is even the way a highly influential tradition in recent (self-described) “Kantian” ethics sees things. For it supposes that the task of the moral principle is to test for universalizability a set of maxims drawn from our inclinations and self-interest and decide which ones are permissible (O’Neill 2013). Christine Korsgaard struggles mightily to recapture authentic Kantianism by developing a deeper concept of rational self, but she still thinks of Kantian moral selfhood as a critical reflection on maxims given to us by our non-moral (even pre-rational) self, where the task of moral reflection has the task of deciding which of them are to be ruled out as impermissible (Korsgaard 1996, Chapters 2–3, 2009, pp. 15–16).4 To all of this

4

The dominant tradition in recent “Kantian” ethics therefore understands the formulas of universal law and the law of nature very differently from the way Kant himself understands them. For “Kantian” ethics they are general discursive criteria of right and wrong, used by the moral agent to decide which “maxims” originating outside morality in our inclinations or prudential reason are permissible and which are impermissible. For Kant, however, these formulas serve only as a standard of judgment in applying duties—maxims drawn from our moral vocation—in particular cases where we are tempted to exempt ourselves from them in ways that would betray or fall short of our true human vocation. For a fuller discussion of this issue, see A. Wood 2017, pp. 13–60.

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clings the utilitarian contradiction that depicts each of us as rightfully natural egoists and morality (=impartiality) as our natural enemy. For Kant, however, morality (the realm of ends) emerges from our natural sociability insofar as it becomes enlightened, and constitutes the fulfillment of our vocation as natural and social beings.

V B Our Individual Moral Vocation For Kant, morality is a doctrine of duties or virtues drawn from a “metaphysics of morals.” Each of us has, and also has a duty to have, such a metaphysics within himself, at least in an obscure way (AA 6:216). In other words, each of us is to devise for him- or herself a life whose meaning and content is drawn precisely from our human vocation when morality has become central to it. The meaning of our lives is therefore drawn from our ethical duties—especially our wide and imperfect duties: ends it is our duty to have (our own perfection, the happiness of others) (AA 6:381–98). The life which is my moral vocation is something I choose, and about whose content I have a certain latitude (AA 6:390). These ends belonging to my moral vocation are not impartial: they include my own happiness (though not as a direct duty, see AA 6:388, 451); they involve moral commitments towards some (such family and friends) that I need not (even should not) have towards everyone. The things that matter to me and give my life meaning are always drawn from my human vocation, especially my moral vocation. Kant’s claim is that the choices that give our lives meaning matter to us because they should matter to us. Morality is not a constraint on what we care about. Morality lies at the very heart of it, when we care as we should. What we care about has importance only because our humanity—the capacity for rational caring—is an objective end in itself. Much that people care about are things they should not care about—things that are trivial, silly, or even evil. Nothing ever has importance just because we happen to care about it. Self-centered caring is selfdestructive. We should care about something because it has importance independently of our caring. The loves, projects, and causes we care about, when our caring is wise and decent, are carings that do matter because they belong to our human vocation.

V C Our Species’ Moral Vocation Kant also thinks the entire human species has a vocation. It includes cultivation (of our technical predispositions), civilization (of our social relations), and

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moralization (of our wills and characters). The highest of these is the third: our moral vocation. Kant thinks, however, that the human moral vocation is something on which our species has so far barely begun (AA 8:116–17). Kant thinks we must concern ourselves with this collective vocation, hope that the human species is making progress in it (AA 8:307–12), and even look for signs of this progress (AA 7:84–9). There is even a duty sui generis, a duty of the human race towards itself, to make itself into a moral community for the collective promotion of moral virtue, and what is the same thing, a unification and sharing of ends (AA 6:97–8). The earthly attempt at this Kant sees in religious communities, churches, and ecclesiastical faiths. Existing religious communities, however, often fall short of promoting the human vocation, or—succumbing to religious delusion—they superstitiously substitute morally indifferent rites and statutory observances for the conduct that truly belongs to the human vocation (AA 6:151–202). Like the state, like the morality belonging to culture and civilization generally, they require reform if they are to fulfill their true vocation in human life. Kant urges us to hope that God himself participates in the founding of a true moral community. “But human beings are not permitted on this account to remain idle in the undertaking, . . . as if each could go after his own private moral affairs and entrust to a higher wisdom the whole concern of the human race (as regards its moral vocation [Bestimmung]). Each must, on the contrary, so conduct himself as if everything depended on him” (AA 6:100–1). The fulfillment of this vocation is the progress, both individual and collective, in moral virtue. Its basis must be the resolve to place the moral incentive ahead of all others, but its practice will consist in the artful education of our sentiments, and even our inclinations, so that they harmonize with morality and do not conflict with it. Kant sees this as a struggle between nature and culture, to whose conflict human art must put an end: our natural predispositions, he says “suffer injury from progressing culture and injure culture in turn, until perfect art again becomes nature, which is the ultimate goal of the moral vocation of the human species” (AA 8:117–18; cf. 7:210, 9:493). This vocation is expressed in the final and definitive formula of the moral law: the formula of the realm of ends, which represents moral laws as those that would systematically combine the ends of all rational beings regarded as a community. It is clear that Kant thinks our vocation can be fulfilled only through a collective effort of cosmopolitan scope. The final sentence of Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)—his very last published work)—concludes with precisely this moral assessment of the character of our species:

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It presents the human species not as evil, but as a species of rational being that strives among obstacles to rise out of evil in constant progress toward the good. In this its volition is generally good, but achievement is difficult because one cannot expect to reach the goal by the free agreement of individuals, but only by a progressive organization of citizens of the earth into and toward a system that is cosmopolitically united. AA 7:333

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Understanding the Vocation of the Human Being Through the Kantian Sublime Giulia Milli

The aim of this paper is to investigate Kant’s understanding of the human vocation by providing an account of the concept of the Bestimmung des Menschen through his theory of the sublime. In the first section, I begin by considering the notion of Bestimmung as Kant lays it out in both the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View and Lectures on Anthropology, in order to show its manifold meanings and to explain how the concept of “vocation” connects to the notion of moral worth as it pertains to human beings in contrast to animals. In the second section, I argue for the importance of the feeling of the sublime as a tool of inner orientation toward the human Bestimmung. Here I also highlight the continuity between the essay “What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?” and the third Critique, regarding the role feelings play for the moral orientation of human beings. In the third and fourth sections, I explain that rationality is a crucial feature of the human Bestimmung and I consider the special relationship between rationality and the imagination. This allows me to develop a clearer foundation of the particularly practical aspect of the human Bestimmung. Finally, in the fifth section I point out that this moral aspect involves an effort oriented toward the whole human species; thus the human vocation can be fulfilled only by looking at humanity as a whole and not merely from an individual point of view.

I The Concept of Bestimmung in Kant’s Anthropological Writings The term Bestimmung was introduced into German philosophical language by the theologian Johann Joachim Spalding, who highlighted the ability of human 185

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beings to transcend their material nature. Spalding explicates the human vocation as a path toward our goal, or a mission for which we are destined: these first considerations anticipate the multiple meanings included in the concept of Bestimmung as well as the different features implied in it, which make the human Bestimmung a destination that can be determined in the perspective of a vocation.1 From Spalding’s book onward, the concept of the Bestimmung des Menschen increasingly flourished in the philosophical debate of the time (see Fonnesu 1993, pp. 35–7, 43), figuring as a major topic in the debate between Abbt and Mendelssohn, until it found, in Kant’s investigations one of its most important accounts as well as a crucial starting point for future treatments and fundamental changes of the theme. Kant’s first account of the character of the human being dates back to the Friedländer lecture notes of 1775–1776 (AA 25:675–97); in fact, although in the physical geography lectures of the previous years he had already addressed the issue of human physical characteristics (see AA 9:311– 20), the discussion now moves to a different level by highlighting the feature that constitutes the greatest difference between human beings and all others: the final destination and vocation of humankind. From this moment onward, it seems that Kant’s greatest concern is every living being’s natural predisposition for development; as we can read in the Mrongovius transcription of nine years later, “every creature reaches its destination in the world” (AA 25:1417–18). This statement agrees with Kant’s account in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, where he writes, regarding the character of the species, that nature wants “every creature to reach its destiny [Bestimmung] through the appropriate development of all predispositions of its nature” (AA 7:329). These extracts from Kant’s anthropological works show that the theories he developed are not simply a description of human behaviors and cultures. Rather, as Robert Louden points out, they offer a moral map that people can use to move toward their Bestimmung (Louden 2000, p. 106). Indeed, while talking about the character of human beings, Kant turns away from a descriptive account that would concern the character of all species, in order to focus on a normative

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Destination, determination, and vocation are the principal meanings included in the concept of the human Bestimmung and, in my view, they must always be treated together in order to give a complete and coherent account of its sense. This paper aims to highlight the specific component within the overall sense of this term, which makes the Bestimmung des Menschen different from the Bestimmung of all other species. The sense of a determination alone, in fact, is not sufficient, since it would fail to account for the dynamical process required to achieve the destination reserved solely for human beings; at the same time, such a destination can be achieved only insofar as human beings become aware of their vocation and make an effort towards it. Throughout this chapter, I shall address the problem of how the feeling of the sublime plays a crucial role in our grasp of the sense of this vocation.

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account that distinguishes the human character, insofar as humans feel they are meant to fulfill a “mission.” As regards the multiple meanings of the term Bestimmung, some scholars recognize “mission” as one of these meanings, particularly the scholars that have dealt with the Bestimmung des Menschen as treated by Fichte.2 However, in my view, the concept of a mission that human beings must fulfill is not identical to the concept of a vocation. Rather, it is from the specification of a more general concept of vocation that the concept of the Bestimmung des Menschen arises as something particular. In other words, insofar as human beings are able to have a feeling of their own vocation, they can also become aware of the particular mission they have to realize; and yet, if they did not have a vocation, then they would not be capable of having a mission at all. The mission at stake here is not essentially, or at its foundation, a common one, since it is oriented toward the moral end, which always concerns the dispositions of the human, rational will as such. Thus, the effort toward this end must be exerted by human beings because of their supersensible ground as free beings, an awareness of which is disclosed by their vocation. Therefore, before the effort of a mission, an effort is implied in the human vocation itself, since it must drive human beings to a determination that is different from the determination of all other beings. The process of this different determination, as well as the effort required, is well explained by Robert Louden, who highlights the different kind of development that is required in the case of human beings. Louden highlights two terms used by Kant in reference to the development of the human species, namely Keime and Anlagen, the first translatable as “germs”: the second as “predispositions.” Kant’s use of these terms is especially interesting in a passage from the Lectures on Pedagogy, where he claims that “it is our business to develop the Naturanlagen proportionately and to unfold humanity from its Keime and to make it happen that the human reaches his destiny” (AA 9:445). This statement 2

Laura Anna Macor discusses this point in relation to some Italian translations of Bestimmung, which began to use “mission” based on the concept of Bestimmung expressed by Fichte, in particular with respect to his work Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794). I think that her contribution can be helpful also in relation to Kant, since it explains why from the concept of Bestimmung we can get the sense of a mission: it conveys a value that is not only theoretical but also practical and moral, thus subject to a constant moral duty that has to be translated into an action (Macor 2015, pp. 173–4). As I argue in this chapter, I do not believe that on a Kantian account we can say that “mission” is a perfectly suitable translation of Bestimmung. Rather, it is the vocation of the human being, the main meaning that deserves to be investigated, since the moral mission that human beings have to realize comes as a result of such vocation. However, from the study conducted by Laura Anna Macor, we can assert that a mission is definitely connected with the Bestimmung des Menschen because it deals with the moral effort we are supposed to make in order to realize ourselves and, as it will be clear throughout this paper, the ability to feel our own vocation propels us toward the realization of our mission, that is, the moral end.

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sheds light on an important consideration that is connected with the Critique of the Power of Judgment and that deals with the possibility that humans must attain their own ends and realize themselves, a possibility that requires effort. In fact, on the one hand, the human Keime must develop by following a natural process; on the other, humans must also work to achieve their full potential in such a way as to move toward progress and improvement of their own accord. In human beings, therefore, there is not only a biological potential but also a component of freedom that makes each human being responsible for the development of his or her own character. As Kant explains in the Anthropology: he [i.e., the human being] has a character, which he himself creates, insofar as he is capable of perfecting himself according to ends that he himself adopts. By means of this the human being, as an animal endowed with the capacity of reason (animal rationabile), can make out of himself a rational animal (animal rationale). AA 7:321

Thus, the ability to choose one’s own ends and to develop oneself makes humankind unique, different from other animals, not least since the other animals achieve their natural vocation without any particular effort, even when they are “left to themselves” (AA 7:324). The human Bestimmung, on the contrary, can be accomplished only from the perspective of the whole species, namely, the progression of generations, because only in this way can improvement take place: human beings not only preserve themselves and their species, but also educate their species for life in society, which is arranged as a systematic whole (AA 7:323). Such an effort toward their future condition hints at a fulfillment that can only be understood in light of the progression of generations. Furthermore, to make this concept even stronger, Kant says that “with all other animals left to themselves, each individual reaches its complete vocation; however, with the human being only the species, at best, reaches it; so that the human race can work its way up to its vocation only through progress in a series of innumerably many generations” (AA 7:324). This idea coheres with an example taken from the Pillau transcription in which Kant spells out the difference between the Bestimmung of animals and the human Bestimmung by reference to bees: each bee is born, learns to carry out its tasks (such as the production of honey), and dies, and in this cycle it has achieved the highest degree of its Bestimmung. This is what bees have done from their beginning until the present, with hardly any change to their species at all (AA 25:839). Human beings, on the other hand, are capable of continuous progress; thus the human Bestimmung is not accomplished once and for all, and achieving improvement embraces a wider reference to the whole human species.

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For this reason, it is not sufficient to give an account of the character of the human species from a descriptive point of view. As Kant’s contrast of this with that of bees is intended to illustrate, the human species is more dynamic: the way in which each individual will develop is more open and essentially dependent on moral agency and autonomous decisions. Thus, human development can only be understood through a normative account related to the fulfillment of a mission. Accordingly, this distinguishing, normative feature of the human Bestimmung imparts to it a much more sophisticated process that implies an effort and improvement aimed at opening it up to morality. This precludes translating the term as “determination” or “destination,” for it encompasses both these meanings and more. In considering the meaning of Bestimmung, Louden also emphasizes the sense of a “vocation” as a calling that the human being must follow (Louden 2014, p. 218). The supersensible ground of this calling can be perceived since human beings are equipped for morality in choosing and attaining their goals, and recognizing the effort made by reason. Kant highlights this fact in his description of the process that awakens the feeling of the sublime, a process that is essentially distinct from that which awakens the feeling of beauty. The former involves an effort arising out of respect for the moral law rather than (like the latter case) a charming play between the mental faculties (AA 5:244–5). The supersensible human vocation is therefore not a goal that can be attained passively, simply by following certain natural laws. Rather, it is an aim shaped in a process marked by the effort implied in respect for the moral law. This effort involves the acknowledgment of reason, and this is what characterizes human behavior in the attainment of the uniquely human Bestimmung. In this regard, it is useful to remember one of the most important Kantian definitions of the sublime, namely, that it consists in a “respect for our own vocation” (AA 5:257). Accordingly, the sublime can arise only with the imposition of reason, and this condition further strengthens the relationship of reason with the human Bestimmung.

II The Feeling of the Sublime as Orientation Toward the Human Bestimmung The feeling of the sublime allows human beings to grasp themselves in a new light, aware of their own moral value, and it offers them useful tools for attaining

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correct behavior and orientation in the world. This idea also finds expression in another of Kant’s texts, namely “What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?” (hereafter, Orientation Essay), in which the primary theme of orientation is developed not only in its physical and geographical dimensions but also—in fact, predominantly—in a further dimension, the dimension of thought, a metaphysical space in which reason can rely only on itself. It is useful to focus here on the way in which Kant talks about the feeling of the sublime in this essay. Here it is defined as the feeling of a difference according to a subjective ground of differentiation, which “is nothing other than reason’s feeling of its own need” (AA 8:136). Reason and feeling are thus in a relationship that is disclosed in reason’s need to judge even when our knowledge is limited. Accordingly, as Stegmaier suggests, Kant’s account of orientation rests on reason’s own lack and on the feeling that reason itself attaches to this lack.3 As Kant himself explains, the feeling of need in this case is not felt by reason; rather reason produces it in response to the recognition of its own lack (AA 8:139). Moreover, as regards orientation in the case of the sublime, it is important to take into account the point made by Schleich, who stresses that, for Kant, it is reason’s lack that makes space for the imagination to play an independent role. As I will discuss in the third section, this role consists in the imagination’s striving toward the representation of something that cannot be represented. Reason’s lack thus leads to an initial failure of the imagination that, nevertheless, generates in turn a more meaningful result. On Schleich’s account, imagination itself has an orienting role, since it deals with something that belongs to the supersensible world and that cannot be represented. Thus, imagination does not represent anything positively, but instead makes something present (Schleich 2020, pp. 192–3),4 and in this way provides orientation toward the field of the supersensible. 3

4

Stegmaier focuses on the issue of “orientation” understood as rooted in reason’s needs, and on the resulting feeling of a need that makes reason a needy reason (eine bedürftige Vernunft). On this basis, we can state that reason has the right to accept a subjective ground as valid even if it cannot be known from an objective point of view. Stegmaier also clarifies this point by reference to the controversy between Kant and Mendelssohn regarding the meaning of orientation, while underlining an important distinction between them: Whereas for Mendelssohn self-orientation is a means of conduct (Leitungsmittel), for Kant it is a consequence of a need. That is, for Kant we are not dealing with a cognition but rather with a felt need (gefühltes Bedürfnis) of reason. Reason’s need thus justifies the assumption of presuppositions although they cannot be assumed dogmatically (Stegmaier 2008, pp. 89–90). Here Nora Schleich points out the importance of the imagination in the sublime by highlighting that, in the related feeling, what is central is to become aware of one own disposition toward the supersensible world and not the knowledge that one may gain; such a disposition is enlightened by the imagination insofar as it sets a meaningful context in which imagination leaves behind its traditional function of representation in order to align itself toward a new field, i.e., the supersensible field.

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What is most noteworthy here is a certain continuity in Kant’s account of the inner dimension of self-orientation as it is explained in both the Orientation Essay and the third Critique. In the former, Kant argues that the faculty of feeling works as if it were a guide lighting the path to be followed in the presence of the disordered manifold of nature, which it does by providing the necessary indications for making sense within it.5 In a parallel way, Kant claims in the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment that the power of judgment must presuppose an agreement between nature and understanding as if this agreement were a transcendental purposiveness, since “without presupposing this, we would have no order of nature in accordance with empirical laws, hence no guideline for an experience of this in all its multiplicity and for research into it” (AA 5:187). To gain experience of anything, it is necessary to trace it back to unity. Hence, the human being needs coherence and harmony in the world in order to understand how to behave and to act. This orientation in thought is a need of reason, which has no ground in external experience but only in reason itself. Patricia Matthews observes in Kant the merit of recognizing the difficulties that humans, as simultaneously rational and sensible beings, find in a context in which their cognitive abilities are limited, and notes that the faculty of feeling is a tool through which they can overcome these difficulties (Matthews 1997, p. 129). In the Introduction to the third Critique, the feeling of pleasure is once again defined as the sign of a successful enterprise, particularly because it hints at the discovery of order and coherence in the external world (AA 5:187). This discovery delights humans because it makes them aware that they can orient themselves, both outside and inside the world of nature. Whereas the judgment of beauty seems to deal with orientation in the relation of our cognitive faculties themselves, the judgment of the sublime is instead a kind of inner orientation of our entire sensible selves toward our supersensible vocation. These two kinds of aesthetic judgments contain the two main ways in which subjects can orient themselves, both in the sensible world and with respect to their supersensible ground. Beauty gives voice to the subjective a priori purposiveness that the human being presupposes in nature in order to experience it and, when the 5

In the Orientation Essay, Kant outlines the feeling of a difference as a crucial faculty of distinguishing, without which we could not understand how to act in the world of nature: “If I did not have this faculty of distinguishing, without the need of any difference in the objects, between moving from left to right and right to left and moving in the opposite direction and thereby determining a priori a difference in the position of the objects, then in describing a circle I would not know whether west was right or left of the southernmost point of the horizon, or whether I should complete the circle by moving north and east and thus back to south” (AA 8: 135).

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object fits perfectly with human cognitive faculties, a feeling of pleasure arises and leads to the formulation of the judgment of beauty. The sublime, on the other hand, consists in the feeling of subjects who have finally become aware of their own moral destination, rising above the limits of the sensible world thanks to the law of reason. Thus, the sublime includes the human being’s own respect for her supersensible vocation. But, in order to lead correctly to such a revelation of the Bestimmung, the sublime must also necessarily give humans the tools for orientation, both in the world and in themselves.

III The Rational Vocation of Human Beings The experience of the sublime leads to the recognition that the human Bestimmung is different from that of any other species, since it emphasizes the role of reason and the ability to obey reason despite the limitations and empirical conditions of nature. Reason, in order to reveal itself, leads the imagination to a kind of humiliation, demanding something it cannot fulfill. In the mathematically sublime, for example, the imagination is triggered to reach infinity, the absolutely great; but it must recognize its limits—and yet reason comes out successful.6 This is why Grier suggests that in the relationship between imagination and reason lies the paradoxical idea that conflict generates harmony (see Grier 2014, p. 248); for without the humiliation of the senses caused by the failure of the imagination, we could not experience the power of reason and thus move toward our supersensible destination. Hence, the moral value of the Bestimmung flows from the acknowledgment of the presence of reason. Humans have respect for their Bestimmung and feel themselves to be different from any other being in nature. As already highlighted, on Louden’s account, the Bestimmung of humans includes their determination, their destination, and their vocation. Going beyond this, Grier, in considering the experience of the sublime and the role of reason, argues that for Kant the human vocation is essentially a rational one, since it entails the ability to obey a law against the interest of the senses (Grier 2014, p. 251). In this ability lies the highest human destination. The human Bestimmung is thus the

6

See Kant’s discussion of the counter-purposiveness of imagination as purposive for the ideas of reason (AA 5:259–60).

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ability to act in harmony with reason despite the humiliation felt because of the limits of one’s sensible nature. Accordingly, preserving it does not mean preserving the biological nature of the species but encouraging moral action so that reason can impose itself even upon sensibility. For these reasons, the feeling of the sublime is the feeling of a rational vocation, and in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, the emotional impact of this rational destination is disclosed by the feeling of spirit. This is stressed especially by Brandt (Brandt 2007, p. 119), who believes that, in the sublime, Kant makes his greatest effort toward articulating the supersensible dimension, much more effort than he makes in the case of the beautiful, because it is through the sublime that reason, in its peculiar relationship with the imagination, establishes itself against the senses and turns them to a higher purpose. In agreement with what we have stated so far, Brandt claims that the failure of the imagination is not only necessary but also good because it awakens the awareness of our rational ground (Brandt 2007, p. 120). Only in the context of the human Bestimmung does the sublime acquire its own meaning, since only from this perspective can the failure of the imagination—the displeasure and the humiliation that human beings initially experience—be turned toward a higher purpose that raises the subject above mere sensibility. Only in this way is it possible to explain how a displeasure can be purposive to such an extent that it is turned into a pleasure. I would like to expand on this point, since the imagination in the sublime has been addressed from different points of view and has been interpreted in a variety of different ways. I assume the perspective of Brandt as a starting point, because if we take into account the role of the imagination in the sublime without considering the context in which it functions, i.e., the context of the human Bestimmung, we will have an incomplete understanding of it. Brady, for instance, asserts the existence of a metaphysical imagination in the sublime that works in light of the combination of negative and positive feelings: negative feeling occurs because we feel overwhelmed by the greatness and the power of nature; positive feeling is instead linked to a new awareness of the self in relation to the world, e.g., its aesthetic transcendence made possible by the metaphysical imagination itself. In line with this, Brady states that metaphysical imagination complements the role that the imagination played in the Kantian sublime (Brady 2013, p.

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Brady discusses the existence of metaphysical imagination by sharing the perspective of Ronald Hepburn as regards the importance of metaphysics in the aesthetic experience of nature (Hepburn 1996, p. 192). Hepburn claims that metaphysical imagination is a component of the concrete present landscape-experience, which helps to determine this experience as a whole. In Hepburn’s opinion,

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193).7 But I think that this suggestion is unnecessary and departs from the original insight of Kant’s theory of the sublime. In my view, the imagination involved in this theory does not need a further kind of imagination to achieve its task. The failure of the imagination is not a defeat, but rather conveys the effort required to rise toward the human vocation. For this reason, I hold that the role of the imagination in the Kantian sublime cannot be fully understood if it is separated from the sense of striving contained in the Bestimmung des Menschen. Brandt confirms this interpretation by reference to §39 of the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments, where Kant writes that, in the sublime, the pleasure of rational contemplation is preceded by “another feeling, namely that of its supersensible vocation, which, no matter how obscure it might be, has a moral foundation” (AA 5:292). The value of the experience of the sublime therefore lies in the disclosure of the Bestimmung, which is the feeling of the awareness of one’s being a part of a dimension beyond nature. This is the feeling of spirit, which after the initial inhibition of vital powers, results in an outpouring of them in response to the awareness of the highest destination the subject can aspire to. The sublime thus involves the greatest human effort, because it demands recognizing in the boundaries of nature not a constraint but rather the possibility of prevailing by means of moral action. Once aware of one’s own moral ground, one is also at the same time aware that one can overcome any limitation of nature and view the humiliation of the senses as a means for pursuing the purposes of a broader plan. On this basis, Brandt claims that the concept of the Bestimmung des Menschen achieves its highest expression in the Critique of the Power of Judgment—and so also does the Bestimmung of Kant’s whole philosophy. For here the systematic unity of nature and freedom is symbolized and expressed, and the unity of theoretical and practical reason is achieved. In the idea of the the metaphysical imagination has been underestimated because of its abstract character, as if it were contrary to science. But, metaphysics is not ousted by science, but instead rises beyond science’s boundary and “seeks to delineate the wider context in which science itself has its place” (Hepburn 1996, p. 194). Hepburn’s argument is set into the frame of the skepticism of aesthetic eliminativism and Brady wants to apply it to the sublime since the profound feeling associated with the sublime and its resulting awareness of self are because of the metaphysical imagination: “Metaphysical imagination helps to articulate that awareness – an opening out of felt experience that sublime astonishment produces” (Brady 2013, p. 193). I disagree with any such approach that argues for the necessity of supplementing Kant’s aesthetic theory of the sublime with a metaphysical underpinning. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant provides a new understanding of sensibility itself, one which opens up the possibility of making use of the term “aesthetic” in transcendental philosophy and in relation to the supersensible substrate of the world. This is explained well by Nuzzo in her work Ideal Embodiment: “Kant establishes ontological and epistemological conditions that radically break with the modern paradigm of the mind/body dualism. His aim is to overcome such metaphysical dualism by proposing not only a new concept of rationality but also a new, broadly construed notion of human sensibility that includes Anschauung, Empfindung, Gefühl, Affekt/Affektion, and Einbildungskraft” (Nuzzo 2008, p. 200).

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human Bestimmung, the paths of philosophy and the final end of all actions meet. According to Brandt’s account, this outcome is cryptically implicit in the Preface to the third Critique, which refers to “the final aim of all cognition” (Brandt 2007, p. 120). Nevertheless, the idea of such an aim remains underdeveloped there. Kant instead leads the reader toward it gradually. His view seems to be that only after explaining how aesthetic judgment really functions, particularly the judgment on the sublime, can it be possible to grasp the full meaning of this final aim. The rational vocation revealed through the sublime is, therefore, the effort to go beyond sensible limits in order to determine oneself as a moral agent. Within such an experience, the two antithetical features of the human being, namely sensibility and pure reason, can both coexist and be harmonized thanks to a common ground, i.e., the supersensible ground of freedom. Brandt’s reading further underlines the close link between the sublime and the Bestimmung by noting that insofar as the sublime acquires its full meaning in the context of the Bestimmung, the feeling of the sublime gains a truly transcendental status.8

IV The Sublime as the Experience of One’s Rational Vocation The issue of the human Bestimmung is central to Kant’s philosophy from the earliest pre-Critical writings and indeed arises whenever he focuses on describing the nature of human beings. It can therefore be informative to retrace, with the help of Brandt, Kant’s own understanding of it from 1755 to 1790. Brandt selects passages from all manner of Kant’s texts to demonstrate his constant and deep concern with the life of humans: especially concerning how they orient themselves in the world, and what makes them different from all other living beings. One early passage belongs to the third part of the pre-Critical Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (AA 2:215). Here, Brandt

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In this regard, what Kant says in §29 about the sublime as a feeling is quite important, since here he discusses it as a branch of transcendental philosophy: “In this modality of aesthetic judgments, namely their presumed necessity, lies a principal moment for the critique of the power of judgment. For it makes us cognizant of an a priori principle in them, and elevates them out of empirical psychology, in which they would otherwise remain buried among the feelings of enjoyment and pain (only with the meaningless epithet of a more refined feeling), in order to place them and by their means the power of judgment in the class of those which have as their ground a priori principles, and as such to transpose them into transcendental philosophy” (AA 5:266).

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points out that although the word Bestimmung never appears, the concept is implicit in the discussion when Kant comments that people sometimes lead their lives without distinguishing themselves from plants and animals, and that in such cases the latter are able to live more worthily than the former, even if they have fewer capacities. Over the years, such reflections become more explicit and find a more refined expression in the Lectures on Physical Geography and the Lectures on Anthropology, where they are framed in terms of the idea that, by completing a certain task,9 human beings must enter the scene of their Bestimmung, that is, the world (See also AA 2:443). Particularly interesting is the Friedländer Anthropology of the winter semester 1775–76, which culminates in a discussion of the human Bestimmung. Here, we read that the human being has two determinations, one in relation to humanity and another in relation to animals, namely, the determination of pure reason on the one hand and that of merely natural reason on the other.10 Brandt notes that in the Lectures on Anthropology, Kant never talks about the individual Bestimmung but always about the Bestimmung of humankind, which is the endpoint of all the considerations made so far. In Kant’s view, it seems, the final vocation of humankind is the highest moral perfection, which can be accomplished only by means of freedom. It was already mentioned above that in his Lectures on Pedagogy Kant argues that the Keime—those “germs” that must be developed in order to achieve their Bestimmung—underlie the importance of education in the building of character and the moral development of human beings (AA 9:445). Further, in the Orientation Essay, we noted that reason needs to presuppose nature as organized according to a principle of order, which gives it homogeneity and coherence. Here Brandt explains further the particular dynamics that evolve into a delineation of the human Bestimmung. Human beings are destined to selfdetermination; they should move toward their own natural destiny, but they remain dependent on an external confirmation, which is beyond their control, as the logical order of their knowledge requires a logical order of nature. Natural determination can be accomplished only in the end of nature, without which the correlation required between the order of thought and the order of things would be incomprehensible.

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Robert Louden well specifies the task at stake here as a long-term process of enculturating, civilizing, and moralizing ourselves (Louden 2014, p. 222); it coheres with what it is claimed in the Anthropology: “The human being is determined/destined/called [bestimmt] by his reason to live in a society with human beings, and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to moralize himself by means of the arts and sciences” (AA 7:324, original emphasis). See AA 25:682.

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The value of reason and the rational determination that follows are outlined even more clearly in the Critique of Practical Reason, where Kant claims that although reason has an obligation toward sensibility, reason cannot be employed merely for sensible purposes, since a human being belongs to the sensible world and so has sensible needs: “No doubt once this arrangement of nature has been made for him he needs reason in order to take into consideration at all times his well-being and woe; but besides this he has it for a higher purpose: namely, not only to reflect upon what is good or evil in itself as well – about which only pure reason, not sensibly interested at all, can judge – but also to distinguish the latter appraisal altogether from the former and to make it the supreme condition of the former” (AA 5:62). This definitive response regarding the human Bestimmung distinguishes humans, who are endowed with reason, from animals. But it also asserts that this difference is fully expressed only as long as reason is properly used by being aimed towards the highest end, namely, the moral end. Brandt argues further that the endpoint of the concept’s development is reached in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, particularly in the feeling of the sublime, since here, reason rises above sensibility, and this highlights the kind of vocation to which humans must aspire. Accordingly, the third Critique contains the highest account not only of the human Bestimmung but, more generally, of the whole Kantian philosophy, because here the unity of nature and freedom is properly achieved along with the unity of the natural and rational determination (Brandt 2007, p. 120). It is now clear what the enigmatic Preface to that work was hinting at: the final aim of all cognition is the practical-moral end, and it is for that end that reason is essential to the Bestimmung des Menschen (AA 5:168). In this way, Brandt has identified reason as the key that sets human beings on a higher level than other species. But, reason can actually mark the difference between human beings and all other beings only as long as humankind acts in accordance with its distinctive Bestimmung, not simply by fulfilling sensible needs, but above all by achieving its moral end. In claiming that reason has a distinctive role in providing the sublime with its significance as an awareness of the vocation of human beings, it may seem as though Brandt overshadows the distinctive role of the imagination that is highlighted by Schleich. It would seem that there is a conflict between Brandt’s and Schleich’s interpretations, since the latter claims that, in the contemplation of the sublime, leadership cannot be assumed by reason since the determination of reason (Vernunftbestimmung) would undermine the autonomy of the domain of aesthetics (Schleich 2020, p. 177). Thus the question here is how is it possible to gain an awareness of our supersensible ground through the sublime, if

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reason is something “additional” (hinzutreten) in respect to the imagination, and so cannot have a direct effect in such an anti-aesthetic experience (Schleich 2020, p. 177)? Schleich’s answer is that a reference to reason arises when the imagination itself is judged to be indirectly purposive after its failure. In other words, because it is precisely the inadequacy of the imagination that is essential to the sublime, it is possible to abstract from the sensible and logical determinations. And, in this way, the imagination aligns with the supersensible and this is what characterizes the process of the sublime. Thinking or knowing an idea of reason cannot directly trigger the sublime state of mind for at least two reasons, namely, since an idea of reason cannot be concretely imagined or represented, and, even if it could, the sublime would then be a judgment of reason and not an aesthetic judgment (Schleich 2020, p. 181). Aesthetic reflection does not involve the comprehension or determination of the idea of reason, but instead discloses the feeling of our disposition toward the supersensible world. Reason is the “reference partner” (Bezugspartner) of the imagination,11 but it cannot make demands and does not assume a guiding-role with respect to sublime, since the actual determination (Bestimmung) of reason is not at issue, but only the indirect aesthetic presentation of our supersensible vocation.12 The upshot of this comparison between Brandt’s and Schleich’s interpretations is that it points us toward an important tension in Kant’s account of the sublime. On the one hand, Brandt shows that reason is a key element of the experience of the sublime; on the other hand, Schleich stresses the original contribution of the imagination, which is essential in securing the independence of the pure field of the aesthetic.

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While in beauty the relationship at stake is between the imagination and the understanding, in the sublime the imagination is engaged with reason, so that the latter is the necessary partner of the former; Nora Schleich argues this point as follows: “Ein zentraler Unterschied zwischen dem Erhabenen und dem Schönen besteht in dem Wechsel des Bezugspartners der Einbildungskraft. Im Schönen wird sie mit dem Verstand kooperierend beurteilt, im Erhabenen hingegen wird die Einbildungskraft als auf die Vernunft bezogen angesehen” (Schleich 2020, p. 253). There may be a pun here as regards the concept of Bestimmung because of Schleich’s statements and the mention she makes with respect to a passage of the Critique of the Power of Judgment: “So betrifft das Wohlgefallen am Erhabenen – die aus der Unlust entstehende Lust – nicht die Darstellung oder das Erfassen einer Vernunftidee, sondern nur die in solchem Falle entdeckende Bestimmung unseres Vermögens, sowie die Anlage zu demselben in unserer Natur ist” (Schleich 2020, p. 192; Kant 2001, p. 145). I would suggest to explain it as follows: although in the sublime is not central to the determination (Bestimmung) of reason, it discloses the vocation (Bestimmung) of our capacity as well as the predisposition to it that lies in our nature.

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However, the presence of reason has to be highlighted since it makes the sublime an experience reserved only for human beings: it is because of reason that human beings can grasp their supersensible vocation. Hence, even if on Brandt’s account it may seem that the role of the imagination in the process of the sublime is ignored in favor of reason, reason is not a common “Bezugspartner.” Rather, its presence is necessary in order to consider the sublime as an experience that discloses the supersensible ground. Kant writes, indeed, that “[t]he disposition of the mind to the feeling of the sublime requires its receptivity to ideas” (AA 5:265). He specifies further that the foundation of the sublime is “in the predisposition to the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e., to that which is moral” (AA 5:265): this means that the sublime can be lived only by human beings who, thanks to reason, become aware of their moral ground. Accordingly, the feeling of the sublime opens up the way for understanding the human vocation and, in doing so, marks a difference between human beings and all other beings. Insofar as, in the feeling of the sublime, humans can grasp themselves as moral subjects by means of the imposition of reason upon sensibility, we can claim that the sublime provides a way towards the human Bestimmung, thus helping us develop an awareness of our special vocation as one that is both moral and rational, brought to fruition in relation to the whole human species.

V The Human Vocation as the Vocation of the Human Species Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, which is based upon his previous lectures on this topic, highlights his intent to define the character of the human being according to a twofold perspective. In the 1798 publication, in particular, he shifts from earlier descriptions of what the human being is to one framed in terms of what the human being does. The first kind of description is interpreted by Cohen as a negative definition, mainly linked to the Critique of Pure Reason, which returns a portrait of human beings based on the capacity for self-recognition as an “I” and aims at illustrating the cognitive processes that distinguish human beings within nature. By contrast, the definition linked to the anthropological works is, in her view, a positive definition, because it deals with concrete actions and therefore with pragmatic possibilities through which humans can define themselves in the world. It thus marks a pragmatic turn in

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the sense of “praxis” because it hints at what humans decide to make of themselves (Cohen 2009, p. 59). But Kant approaches the issue of the human Bestimmung from both points of view, since, in either case, the full definition of the human being can only be achieved when the frame of its destination is outlined as well. This is clear from the fact that the very concept of the Bestimmung des Menschen encompasses definitive features of the human species that mark its difference from all other species of beings. Such features are what make human beings the only ones capable of conceiving of themselves in both a sensible and a supersensible way. Now, in Kant’s anthropological writings we also note a further twofold vantage point, which Cohen identifies as the combination of a first- and a third-person perspective: the first-person perspective is framed in terms of the intentional actions of human beings seen within a context constituted by their purposes, while the third-person perspective is linked to human behavior seen in relation to the development of the species. In the latter, in particular, it is understood that the natural predispositions of humans are realized not in the individual, but only in the evolution of the entire species itself (Cohen 2009, p. 74). In fact, in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, we read that “for the ends of nature one can assume as a principle that nature wants every creature to reach its vocation through the appropriate development of all predispositions of its nature, so that at least the species, if not every individual, fulfills nature’s purpose” (AA 7:323). This passage indirectly reveals a further defining feature of the human being; for, if the human Bestimmung could not be accomplished from a purely individual point of view but must also take into account the relation of each human being to all others, then no individual would ever be able to fully realize their own Bestimmung solely through a singular perspective. Rather, one’s own natural human predisposition can become fully developed only within a wider context, one which indeed spans generations. Moreover, once this natural development is connected to the human being’s moral vocation, a more meaningful conclusion can be drawn: the human being, as the only being endowed with a supersensible Bestimmung, seems to be meant for a moral mission that embraces the whole species and not itself alone. The peculiarity of the human being therefore lies not in each individual human Bestimmung alone, but rather in a Bestimmung that also involves all other humans. This expresses the Kantian aim of articulating a specifically human form of self-cognition which, starting from the individual level, can aspire to an improvement of the whole species with respect to both its natural and its moral life.

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This twofold approach by Kant results from considering the twofold constitution of the human being as both a natural and a free being, so that human beings are defined not only by what they are but also by what they do. However, what we have said so far also allows us to characterize this twofold constitution in terms of a unity that brings the antithetical aspects of the human being into harmony, yielding an organic image of the human being despite the apparent contradiction. Judgments of the sublime are the outcome of a process that arises from the natural world within which the human being lives, and yet it is symbolic of the moral because it suggests the supersensible dimension to which a human being is destined. It thus encompasses a supersensible as well as a sensible component. This process as such is guided by the faculty of feeling, a peculiar human feature that includes empirical traits, since it is triggered by empirical phenomena, but which at the same time is endowed with a transcendental status because it expresses the state of moral conscience within which the subject is set during the contemplation of nature. The feeling of the sublime, as defined in the third Critique, is the respect for our own vocation, and cannot be felt by a subject who has not developed the idea of morality (AA 5:257; 265). Therefore, the sublime conveys a vocation that deals with the whole field of human dispositions. It is a natural, moral, theoretical, and cultural vocation (see Grier 2014, p. 261), and that is why the sublime is also an extension of the concept of ourselves. The definition of humankind finds its widest expression in the sublime because the sublime leads humankind to its Bestimmung and discloses the full meaning of the human vocation by making human beings aware of their peculiar rational status. This status reveals that they have a vocation akin to a mission, related to the whole human species and not only to themselves.

VI Conclusion I set out to illustrate the complexity of Kant’s understanding of the human Bestimmung, and particularly of its sense when taken in respect to feeling and our moral vocation, by explaining its relation to the experience of the Kantian sublime. As we have seen, the German concept of Bestimmung cannot be adequately translated by any one word, since it incorporates multiple meanings. I have argued that a central such meaning is the human vocation characterized by the presence and demand of reason, which introduces into it an essentially

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moral dimension. I have further highlighted the deep connection between the human vocation and the sublime in Kant’s philosophy by explaining how the feeling of the sublime marks an experience that can be had only by humans and is possible for them alone insofar as their vocation, as sensible human beings, is nevertheless also a rational and moral one. Such an experience makes humans aware of their peculiar status, which demands an effort because of the moral value it entails. As Kant claims in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, the sublime requires the development of moral ideas; for otherwise it “will appear merely repellent to the unrefined person” (AA 5:265). Accordingly, grasping the sublime takes effort that is analogous to that characteristic of the human vocation. The human vocation is a moral vocation that involves the development of humans in relation to the whole species to which they belong. For this reason, it cannot be separated from an effort directed beyond oneself. Since the concept of Bestimmung equally encompasses the senses of determination, destination, and vocation, this concept is fully expressed by humans insofar as they determine themselves as natural, yet free, beings, aware of being destined for the moral world. Furthermore, being destined for the moral world qualifies as a mission involving the whole human species. Thus, the vocation of the human being cannot be accomplished once and for all by an individual but leads to the whole human species and demands a continuous progress that culminates in the moral end.

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“It Will be Well”: Isaak Iselin on the Self-realization of Humanity in History Ansgar Lyssy

I Introduction Isaak Iselin (1728–82) is one of the lesser-known thinkers of the German Enlightenment. Not much research is available, and the little that there is, is mostly written in German. Those who write on the philosophical concepts of history in the Enlightenment usually focus on Herder, Hume, Kant, and Rousseau; maybe even on Condorcet, Lessing, Turgot, Vico, or Voltaire. Iselin is rarely discussed.1 Even the two major contemporary philosophers of history of his time, namely Kant and Herder, rarely mention him;2 neither does, to the best of my knowledge, Hegel. However, he did not go unnoticed by other contemporaries. His major work, the History of Humanity (first edition 1764),

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Only a few examples are needed to drive this point home: Iselin is not mentioned once in many of the classical or important surveys of Enlightenment thought or universal history. For instance, he is entirely neglected in the following: Cassirer 2007; Gay 1995, 1996; Israel 2013; Kondylēs 1981; Pagden 2015; Palmeri 2016; he is mentioned only once in passing in Gaukroger 2016. Scholarship on Iselin is slightly more prominent in the German-speaking world, most unsurprisingly in Switzerland, where Iselin lived. Modern research starts out with two volumes on Iselin’s life and his works in the context of the late Enlightenment (Im Hof 1947, 1967), both of which are of a strong biographical slant. Sommer 2002 provides the first modern scholarly work dedicated to Iselin’s philosophy of history, followed by an anthology on the same topic, Gisi and Rother 2011. Noteworthy also is Kapossy 2006, who provides a detailed analysis of Iselin’s works as responses to Rousseau and situates them in the Swiss debate concerning the shape and viability of republicanism. Beyond these dedicated volumes, Iselin’s philosophy of history also receives some treatment in Binoche 1994; Meyer 2008; Oz-Salzberger 1995; Reill 1975; Sommer 2006; Zedelmaier 2003. To the extent that Kant writes about universal history and Herder writes an actual universal history himself, one would expect either to discuss Iselin’s work, but that is not, in point of fact, the case. To the best of my knowledge, Kant does not mention Iselin even once. Herder does, however, mention Iselin, but just once, where he seems to suggest that he conceives of both himself and Kant as successors of Iselin: “This is how we really succeed each other, Iselin, myself, and Kant.” Letter to Garlieb Helwig Merkel, 1799. See Herder 1984, p. 108.

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was reviewed by Moses Mendelssohn, who praised it as a triumphal synthesis of history and philosophy.3 It also impressed the historian Johann Christoph Gatterer, who made Iselin a member of the historical institute of the university in Göttingen (Institutum regium historicum Goettingense), and, further, he was also called to take up correspondence with the Musée de Paris.4 So, should this rather restrained reception lead us to conclude that his work is unimportant or unoriginal? Not at all. Before we can pass any such judgment, the scope, themes, and arguments of his work need to be first analyzed and appreciated; evaluative judgment can only come afterwards. First, Iselin deserves some merit for introducing a distinctive topic of inquiry, even an entire genre of philosophical literature, to his German contemporaries, namely, universal history or conjectural history grounded on a philosophical basis. And yet, he has received little attention. Before I discuss the content of his philosophy of history, let me first deal with some features of his work that may be responsible for his neglect among his contemporaries and modern readers. Despite the great fondness of many of his contemporaries for construing philosophy as a system, Iselin’s work is largely of historical and essayistic nature—something that he shares with Herder. He rarely bothered to reflect on the epistemic and conceptual presuppositions he makes or on the explanatory limits of his stance. If we apply the narrow standards that are common to the analytic philosophy of today, Iselin might not even be considered a “proper” philosopher. His concepts remain vague and his arguments are all-too-often based on empirical evidence and speculation. Moreover, his work is, in many instances, directed not at the academic community, but rather at an audience of educated citizens, and it encompasses a diverse array of writings on literature, politics, economy, and history. His popular philosophy regarding virtue and happiness occasionally bears more resemblance to the modern feuilleton than to academic debates of his time. In these respects, he might be called a popular philosopher or a follower of the particular German tradition of Popularphilosophie.5 Although such an approach might pale against the great systems of Kant and Hegel, insofar as it lacks both the rigor and the apodictic foundation that we have come to value in eighteenth-century philosophy, it should not be forgotten that both Kant and Hegel also argued for the necessity and importance of such a popular approach themselves, and that they too wrote 3 4 5

Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, vol. 4.2 (1767), pp. 233–42. See Im Hof 1967, p. 98. A good recent overview over the scope and role of Popularphilosophie in the late-eighteenth century can be found in Binkelmann and Schneidereit 2015.

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books and essays directed at a broader audience. Admittedly, Iselin’s philosophical arguments may not always evince the greatest clarity. Indeed, they are also, especially regarding his anthropological foundations, heavily based on pre-Kantian sources (primarily Wolff and Baumgarten) that do not hold up well in a post-Kantian world. In his depiction of individual historical events, there are few original insights or interpretations to be found—Iselin compiled his ideas from other sources and usually had little to add of his own. But all this should not be understood as a reason to discard his philosophy entirely. It is the general ambition of his work that, I will argue, is nonetheless well worth considering, because he develops a distinctive approach to universal history that can help us understand the potential merits and faults of the project of universal history in general. When juxtaposed against other major authors, such as Kant, Rousseau, or Herder, the scope and limitations that must necessarily pertain to certain methods and approaches of universal history become much clearer. In mapping out the historical and conceptual landscape of any philosophical topic, we are frequently drawn to the great thinkers that succeed in being influential, innovative, and rigorous alike. But their connections to one another, in which these topics and ideas have arisen, are typically hard to understand unless we map out more of the terrain that connects and situates them to each other, i.e., the debates in which those ideas that “made history” arose. Here we find the questions and the criticism that are often only implicitly answered; only here do we also find the argumentative dead ends and conceptual pitfalls in light of which it becomes possible to understand why some of the great minds chose their rather counterintuitive approaches and core notions. Following Dieter Henrich, one might call such topography of intellectual debate a constellation, i.e., a relational dynamic of questions and answers, of ideas and their criticism or improvement, of shifting alliances and oppositions that might have been conceptual, argumentative, or simply personal. In such a topography, the great systematic works of a given age can be situated, whereby we can understand them better than if we were to exclusively focus on the argumentative structure of one single text. When seen through this perspective, Iselin’s significance and his philosophical innovations can be delineated more easily. Such a contextualizing perspective lends itself to one of the major current trends in the history of philosophy of the eighteenth century, inasmuch as there has been a surge of interest in the (minor) precursors and contemporaries of Kant6 and in the lesser-known German 6

For example, see Dahlstrom 2018; Dyck and Wunderlich 2018; Watkins 2009. Another volume on the background sources for the Critique of Practical Reason is currently being prepared by Michael Walschots.

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Enlightenment.7 A recently published new edition of Iselin’s seminal work (the first in more than two hundred years!) is also poised to renew scholarly interest in this rarely discussed thinker.8 So perhaps the time has finally come for us to pay more attention to this neglected, but by no means inconsequential thinker. In this chapter, I will first provide a brief outline of Iselin’s main work on the philosophy of history, focusing on these questions: What are the aims of universal history? What function does it have? Subsequently, I will examine the particular concept of humanity that is the subject of Iselin’s history. I argue that the subject of universal history is denoted by a kind of hybrid concept that connects morality qua human nature with humankind understood as the collective of all humans—and that this is Iselin’s most impressive and influential philosophical invention. Regarding the “constellation” that Iselin is situated in, I will briefly argue that the book methodically sketches a unique approach to universal history within the German-speaking world, while making certain advantages and limitations in this project transparent, and that it is also the first book to introduce the term “humanity” (Menschheit) in a prominent place, a term that was to play a central role in the German late Enlightenment. I claim that this concept of humanity most likely had a significant impact on Kant’s and Herder’s conceptions of humanity, as a consequence of which some ideas found in both authors can be interpreted as implicit reactions against Iselin.

II The General Outline and Purpose of Iselin’s History of Humanity Although Iselin’s book was first published anonymously as Philosophical Conjectures about the History of Humanity (Philosophische Muthmassungen über

7

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See, for example, the series Werkprofile, edited by Gideon Stiening and Frank Grunert at DeGruyter, where new editions and interpretations of authors such as Crusius, Feder, Garve, Hißmann, Meier, Sulzer, Tetens, and others have started to appear over the past few years. Iselin 2018. All citations are taken from this most recent version edited by Sundar Henny and published in 2018 by Schwabe. Citations will first name the respective book in Latin numbers, then the respective chapter (Hauptstücke) in Arabic numerals, and next the pages in question of this new edition in Arabic numerals, followed by the pages of the fourth and final edition of 1779. But, since the latter edition is itself divided into two books, the relevant book is indicated by another Latin number. By way of illustration, “I.5, p. 79 / I, p. 167” would refer to book II, chapter V, page 79 in the 2018 edition and page 167 of book I of the 1779 edition. Occasionally, I will refer only to a single chapter (e.g., “II.5”).

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die Geschichte der Menschheit, 1764), editions after 1768 were simply called On the History of Humanity (Über die Geschichte der Menschheit, 1768–79) and published under Iselin’s name. The original title indicates the genre of the book. A conjecture is an a priori speculation without proper truth-makers, that is, it is a theory that is neither grounded in apodictic principles nor in empirical facts. Put differently, one could say it makes claims of the following form: It is reasonable to assume that things must have been like this in general at that time. Iselin is not so much interested in discussing specific individual events for which we have supporting evidence, such as documents or testimonies, as he is in tracing very general historical developments. He develops a broad panorama of character types to capture the mentality, ideology, and capabilities of entire peoples. Following such a procedure, he uses the mentality, ideology, and capabilities of what he calls “the savages” (die Wilden) as a backdrop against which more modern types of character or societal development can be discussed later. However, he offers us little evidence to ground his assumptions on historical facts, and when he does so, the evidence is cursory at best. Despite its comprehensive scope and size, Iselin’s History was motivated by a rather local and minor debate. In 1762, Henry Home, Lord Kames, had sent a letter to the Société des Citoyens, a society for patriotic thoughts located in Bern, Switzerland. This letter raised the question whether historical facts fit better to Montesquieu’s history of the transformation of law or to Rousseau’s conjectures about the necessary steps of human development. Iselin did not respond to this question precisely, but it showed him that the time was ripe to finally work on his own history of humankind, something that he, incidentally, already had the intention of doing ten years earlier.9 He had a few other works in mind in relation to which he situated himself. In his own response to this question, Lord Kames had already written his own history of laws, the Historical Law-Tracts (1758), where he attempts, through what is often purely a speculative historical sketch, to give order to the collection of laws by pointing out their origin and explaining their original intentionrhere, the idea of history serving as a source of order is introduced. Iselin himself, however, drew lessons not only from Lord Kames, but also from various other sources: From Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des Lois (1748), he came to understand that it is possible to write of a history of human culture

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Peter Hanns Reill emphasizes that Iselin’s book was not so much an original, groundbreaking work, but rather a representative accumulation of the major ideas of his time, all tied together under the hopeful impetus of proving Rousseau wrong. See Reill 1975, pp. 65–7. Gisi 2016 traces the development of Iselin’s ambition to write a history of morals in the 1750s to his more anthropologically oriented approach to history in the 1760s. For this, he largely builds on Buffon’s natural history.

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instead of a history focusing exclusively on political and ecclesiastical achievements; from Hume’s Political Discourses (1752), he gathered that it is possible to conceive of history in psychological terms; from Voltaire’s Essai sur les Mœurs (1756), he became familiar with the idea that history can be written to “enlighten the soul,” rather than simply to accumulate facts (albeit Iselin seems to be little interested in Voltaire’s more detailed and source-oriented method of historiography).10 Further, he knew of Bossuet’s Discours sur l’histoire universelle (1681), although maybe not first hand,11 and would most likely have found its deistic foundations of little use for the kind of cultural history that he was envisaging—if culture was ultimately grounded in God’s plan, how could it be distinguished from nature? Iselin aims at a bigger, more comprehensive approach to history than any of these authors, connecting all these threads and arguments under a single, more general and comprehensive perspective.12 A proper universal history should encompass more than the development of laws and societal institutions: it should, or so he argues at least, be interested in the development of moral agency in the whole of humankind. For the purpose of conveying this idea, he introduces the term “humanity,” which here becomes the central concept and object of universal history. I will return to this point later. Besides Hume, Montesquieu, and Lord Kames, the most important source of inspiration was Rousseau. Iselin had studied Rousseau’s writings carefully, and even met him personally in Paris in 1752 , although he disagreed with him on almost everything.13 Especially in his second Discourse, Rousseau had argued on a priori grounds that the trajectory from the state of nature to civilization was a

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A more comprehensive survey of Iselin’s sources can be found throughout in Im Hof 1947. On Iselin’s reception of Voltaire see ibid., vol. 2, pp. 476–7. See Im Hof 1947, vol. 2, p. 564. Other authors, such as August Ludwig von Schlözer and Johann Christoph Gatterer, were working on very broadly conceived histories as well. Schlözer’s Versuch einer allgemeinen Geschichte (1758) connected ethnological insights with political and economical developments long before his more famous Universal-Historie (1772). Concerning Schlözer as one of the major inventors of ethnology, see Vermeulen 2015, chap. 6. Gatterer also aimed, in his Abriß der Universalhistorie (1765), to unite separate historical events in a comprehensive and systematicized “nexus.” Regarding Gatterer as a pioneer of systematizing history, see Gierl 2012. However, Iselin offers, in contrast, a decidedly speculative history wherein facts only serve to lend some credibility and certainty to his arguments. For example, Iselin criticizes Rousseau for a number of the claims that the latter holds (besides his account of human history, which the rest of the above paragraph deals with): Rousseau has a much too negative view of human nature; he misses the purposes of our faculties, which must be conceived as ultimately beneficial for our happiness (otherwise, the creator, in his infinite wisdom, would not have provided us with them in the first place); moral decay is not, as Rousseau contends, caused by science and education, but rather by (wrongly directed) trade and commerce; the most basic or natural ways of living and organizing humans consists in oppression, not in freedom; education can liberate people and lead them towards happiness. See Im Hof 1947, vol. 2, chap. 5; also Binoche 1994, pp. 167–9 and Kapossy 2006. Perhaps most importantly, Iselin holds that happiness is the goal of the state, not liberty. Liberty is a mere means but still needs to be mediated and governed by reason.

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profoundly negative one: The natural human being was in alignment with themselves and balanced in their desires, drives and emotions, but the achievements of civilization, such as the division of labor or property, enticed people to compete with each other. Because of civilization, people developed all the attitudes, emotions, and corresponding societal institutions that ultimately led to inequality, corruption, and a general loss of humanity. Although we may have gained thereby a life that contains more physical wealth, we have lost our spiritual values: Egoism, envy, disenfranchisement, and alienation from others and oneself—all these are consequences of technological and civilizational progress. But Iselin disagreed profoundly. Against Rousseau’s pessimistic assessment of historical progress and of civilization’s impact on humanity, he desired to show that history leads us towards humanity, not away from it. This may have been the main motivation for his philosophical history. I will examine the two above-mentioned conceptions of history as a source of order and as the development of humanity in more detail below. Before sketching the premises, contents, and arguments of the History, I want to briefly argue that both are interconnected in a broader perspective on the Enlightenment. This more pragmatic perspective becomes obvious only at the end of the book. Here, in the last chapter on the contemporary age, Iselin finds Europe engaged in a political and moral crisis (VIII.39, p. 358 / II, p. 467)—but he maintains that this should not unsettle us. We may still be closer to barbarism than to true humanity, but we should have learned by reading this book that we are on the correct trajectory, so that, sooner or later, we will be led towards a fully developed humanity. This is, in fact, already announced emblematically by the citation with which he prefaces this concluding chapter. He quotes a phrase from the Roman poet Suetonius: “Recently a crow was sitting on a Tarpeian rooftop. He could not say ‘It is well,’ only declared: ‘It will be [well]’ ” (VIII.39, p. 356 / II, p. 461).14 Put differently, the claim being made is history is a means for consolation,15 although Iselin has few arguments to ground this optimism. Indeed, he has only really proven, at most, that things are better now than they were before and that we are therefore roughly on the right path. It is worth tarrying with this need for consolation. It arises from two distinct sources, namely, from the chaos and disorientation caused by the current age, but also from theoreticians such as Rousseau who provided a notion of history 14 15

“Nuper Tarpeio quæ sedit culmine cornix, Bene est non potuit dicere, dixit erit.” This interpretation is developed in more detail in Sommer 2002. In fact, this perspective towards progress and happiness provides a justification for all the evils in history. In this fashion, Iselin’s philosophy can be read as a historical theodicy (see Binoche 1994, pp. 149–51).

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that is void of any positive meaning and sense. As such, not only do the facts of history look grim, but the most widely-discussed interpretation makes them look even grimmer. This attitude or perspective, Iselin suggests, is destructive: It leads us away from happiness and morality alike. Rousseau’s conclusion, namely, that we need to form the modern human in the shape of a “savage,” is the opposite of Enlightenment and morality. People need to understand that the path of history leads to happiness and not to chaos and disorder, lest they risk sabotaging the very project of the Enlightenment in favor of conserving the status quo. The acceptance of societal change increases among the populace if they can assume that this change will not lead to desolation or injustice. Iselin thus aims to educate and motivate his readers by showing the conjoined workings of morality and history. So much for the general aim of the project pursued by Iselin’s History. The work itself is divided into eight books originally published in two volumes. The initial book, which contains a general sketch of the nature of human beings, is followed by a series of reflections on the state of nature, the state of savagery, sedentism, and four books on the transition from more archaic forms of society to the formation of a bourgeois society in the various regions of the world. Iselin distinguishes three states or conditions that shape human history in the broadest terms: the natural state, the state of savagery, and the state of customs, which is then compared above all with the ideal of a bourgeois society. Iselin conceives of these states or conditions by means of analogy with ontogenesis, that is, the individual development of man. Analogous to the case of the individual human being, entire peoples develop their abilities only slowly. In the state of nature, humans are like animals, responsive to sensuality only. The biblical narrative of creation is mentioned only in passing, as “a secret reserved for revelation” (II.15, p. 103 / I, p. 233).16 The book begins, after a short preliminary report, with a philosophical treatise on the nature of man, which serves as the foundation for the historicopsychological considerations that follow. For now, suffice it to say that the basis of Iselin’s anthropology has little in common with later anthropologies developed by, say, Kant or Humboldt, but much more in common with the rational psychology of the scholastics and their late German descendants. However, the use of rational psychology as a foundation for history might be (as Gisi 2016 and Zedelmaier 2003 have argued) one of the major contributions of Iselin to universal history. Iselin’s work contains a very general outline of a theory of the 16

“Ein der Offenbarung vorbehaltenes Geheimnis.”

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soul and its basic powers: sensation (Empfindung), which is conceived of as a kind of drive; imagination (Einbildung); and reason or intellect (Verstand). These are basic building blocks of what one might call “scholastic anthropology,”17 insofar as Iselin is here not only interested in the different types of human activities, but also their different sources and causes. For instance, he argues that imagination is the basic driving force of most people and actions, since it allows us to strive for the satisfaction of our desires, to have ambitions, and to make plans; hence, it is responsible for both the good and bad actions that make up history and is, as such, not opposed to morality and reason per se.18 This approach may seem puzzling, but it is indeed philosophically innovative. After all, what kind of content would require a history book to use a philosophical anthropology as its foundation? We can read Iselin’s History as a history of the human mind with a focus on moral progress.19 Or, to put it more precisely, we can read it as a history of the governance of the mental faculties over individual and collective agency, which amounts to a history of general expressions of morality in society. Moral progress, however, is evaluated by the self-realization of the human being in the form of a balanced and harmonious self-governance of human faculties over our animal drives. Iselin’s philosophical anthropology is, in rough outline, as follows. Drives are that which is inborn in all human beings by virtue of their simply being part of the human species. Just like the higher faculties, which are equally inborn but unique to the human species, they exert a certain power over our agency, as they direct it and motivate it. Their development is constrained by external forces, which can be either social or natural. All mental faculties have a corporeal basis, especially in the nervous system; for otherwise, there would be no causal influence of the climate to differentiate the moral characters of peoples. In other words, Iselin incorporates the standard climate hypothesis of the Enlightenment that was pronounced by John Arbuthnot, Montesquieu, and others. In addition, the power of our mental faculties cannot be developed independently of a healthy body (see I.22–23). But our drives or mental forces can also interact with one another, furthering or hindering each development, unfolding, or our capacity to tame and direct them instead of being merely driven by them. Thus, 17 18

19

I borrow this notion from Heßbrüggen-Walter 2001. Earlier versions of the History had divided the mental faculties slightly differently and emphasized the role of the body more than in his last edition. The earlier dichotomy between humans dominated by animal desires and those governed by reason is replaced by a tripartite system of humans adhering more to either sensuality, imagination, or reason. Here, Iselin may have been inspired by Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines (1755).

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Iselin conceives of a reciprocal influence between mental faculties and technological developments (such as the arts, sciences, and religion): The refinement of mental faculties leads to better expressions of the human mind and technical advancements, which in turn lead to intellectual stimuli and an increased value that we place on these advancements. Both go along with greater rational control and an increase in moral agency. Mental or cognitive harmony and happiness and perfection go hand in hand (see I.29). Moreover, the individual develops in precisely the same way as the species—ontogeny and phylogeny follow the same principles and can be understood by means of analogy.20 This not only holds for the body, but for mental capacities as well: Young or “barbaric” cultures act, feel, and think just like children. Whereas children learn morals and culturally appropriate behavior from their parents, through schools, and exercise, people improve their morals by being guided by paternal figures (whether they be political or religious), by having access to institutions that improve moral consciousness (such as those of churches or the arts), and by consistent exercise and demonstration of virtue. By conceiving of entire peoples as immature, childlike, and unreasonable, Iselin displays a paternalistic slant developed throughout his History.21 Ordered imagination and the intellect provide the basis for art and science, and Iselin attempts to show that and how both have helped, on the one hand, to keep our animality at bay and, on the other, to fight against our tendency to fall back into barbarism by refining our mental dispositions (Gemüt) and our morals. Arts and sciences not only make humans more sociable and more moral, but also happier; by realizing this connection, people will be ever more interested in these achievements and increase their efforts of aligning themselves with them and furthering them. This puts Iselin directly at odds with Rousseau; for while the latter argued for an increase in vices and self-love through technological and civilizational achievements, Iselin insists on the opposite, making one of his aims to disprove Rousseau through an examination of history. The analogy between phylo- and ontogenesis as driving factors of history was not an invention of Iselin. We find sufficiently similar concepts already developed 20

21

Sommer 2002, pp. 34–5 points out that Iselin was not able to develop the reasons of progress in a systematic manner. This has been recently challenged by Gisi 2016 and Stiening 2016. Both articles can be used to summarily point out that the development of human faculties is not uncoordinated in Iselin, but driven by a formal idea of the development and balance of drives and faculties. Structural order and moral perfection can only be achieved when individual and societal agency are coordinated with each other and we can conceptualize such a coordination by means of the analogy between phylogeny and ontogeny. Progress of reason is inseparable from progress in morality; societal progress translates into individual progress as well. On this see Stiening 2014.

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in Augustine, Vico, and Fontenelle, who, however, never discussed the entirety of humanity (Menschheit) in its psychological development. At any rate, these authors only had a rather vague understanding of phylo- and ontogeny, so that they could only really elaborate this analogy in equally vague ways. In this context, it is remarkable that Iselin did not draw upon the recent developments in physiology when developing his anthropology and instead refers to ancient sources. For Iselin, ontogeny consists of a rather vague understanding of bodily changes, which is then supposed to cause different mental faculties to gain or lose influence on agency. The mental faculties of children are weak, and so they are driven by corporal sensuality. As they grow stronger in their youth and adolescence, they become disorderly; imagination stirs sensuality and leads to excesses. Reason alone can bring order and balance to these untamed and undirected drives by shining light on those ends that are worth pursuing, although an untamed imagination can still derail or distract the most principled and reasonable people (see I.31, p. 56 / I, pp. 104–5).22 The same lack of balance and tendency for excess is found in “savage” people or “barbarians.” Indigenous people are frequently described as children who just strive to satisfy their momentary desires without taking future possibilities into account. But this holds not only for non-European peoples, but also for our own ancestors, who can be conceived of as barbarians as well. The three sources of activity and cognition also shape the three major historical stages or developmental phases discussed by Iselin: (1) People in the “savage” state of nature are driven by mere sensation. (2) In the age of imagination, they cultivate each other through language, the arts, and myths. (3) A society develops that allows intellect or reason to flourish. Only in the last case is a balance between the more animalistic drives achieved, which, in turn, leads to more orderly thoughts and actions.23 Humans are led to their full development primarily through education and the general benefits of humane forms of society, which includes not only fully realized cognitive capacities, but also enlightened consciousness and happiness. Since even the most reasonable humans can be distracted by the objects of their passions,24 the path to happiness 22

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“Selbst wenn die Vernunft eines sorgfältig erzogenen Menschen auf das gründlichste von der Wahrheit eines allgemeinen Satzes überführt scheinet, reissen ihn die Bilder seiner ehemaligen Vergnügen oder Misvergnügen in den besondern Fällen dahin.” Stephen Gaukroger points out that Lessing discusses three similar subsequent stages, although he notes a different focus of both authors: “It is the development of spiritual or religious ideas that drives historical development for Lessing. The sequence is one of increasing moral awareness, an awareness achieved through rational insight” (Gaukroger 2016, p. 266). Proß calls these the “Adiaphora,” that is, ethically permissible actions, opinions, or attitudes that are driven by contingent desires instead of rational, ethical motives. See Proß 2016.

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and harmony requires us to cultivate not only self-control, but also a societal environment where moral agency is incentivized and facilitated. The forces that drive history can be identified empirically through their effects, but their causality and mutual differences in general are postulated a priori. However, all forces, drives, and faculties are articulated, understood, and governed through thinking (see I.20). Whereas animals are simply driven by instinct and are thus incapable of having proper agency, let alone a comprehensive history, humans are driven by their very conception of progress resulting from the consciousness of their current predicament. They understand that their own irrational and unbalanced drives are the cause of excess and evil, in consequence of which consciousness they strive to mitigate these through personal discipline, societal reforms, and national and global communities. Iselin goes so far as to argue that we can know a priori that all humans possess perfectibilité, which he translates as the “drive for perfection” (Trieb zur Vollkommenheit—see II.4 and II.5 for a discussion of Rousseau). Such a drive is culturally invariant, even though its diverse effects can only be understood empirically, inasmuch as they are, on the contrary, culturally and contextually modifiable. This path from natural order to the order of reason leads us through ages of turmoil. In the state of savagery or barbarism, humans have already formed simple societies where the law of the strongest applies. Only rudimentary forms of human emotions such as love, compassion, sociability, etc., are developed here. It is only with the emergence of agriculture, and therefore sedentism, that humans begin to develop morality and higher forms of society. Religion and institutionalized forms of rule give structure and order to human life. Then the transition to civil and bourgeois society can take place. Property is guaranteed by law; the arts can develop; and the basic concepts of order, education, justice, and morality are discussed in public forums, refined, and finally translated into institutional reforms. Now the various factors that favor the development of what is actually human are increasingly intertwined— culture and civilization, understood in the Kantian sense, are interconnected. Nevertheless, the state of perfect morality is still not achieved, for even among scholars and the most highly developed role models there are still remnants of barbaric thought and feeling. Iselin’s depiction of history in the form of stages is thus tempered with a concession that progress is only gradual and not as fast as one would hope. With these remarks, the goal of this section has been reached, which was to show the motivation and aim of Iselin’s book. As we have seen, this was to convince his readers that moral progress is possible, and that history can be used

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as proof thereof. However, such a general claim still requires an examination of the general subject matter of history, and this is precisely where Iselin’s philosophical innovation lies: The subject matter of universal history is identical to the acting subject of history. This will be the topic of the next section.

III Humanity in History How does humanity develop or unfold in the course of history? This seems to be the core question that Iselin’s book strives to answer, but we never find the answer spelled out as clearly as one would like. The human faculties serve as grounds to identify and explain the characters of divergent peoples, which combine a broad purview of intellectual capabilities, cultural traits and preferences, established patterns of behavior, etc. But the title of the History indicates that Iselin aims at sketching an even broader pattern—he is interested in the subsequent development of characters in order to flesh out the development of humanity in general. As such, this term is not merely a generic or collective term—the history of humanity is not identical to the history of all humans or all peoples. This is where the German term “Menschheit” comes in, which I have so far translated as “humanity.” This is not the best translation, albeit the most common one. To fully understand the overarching ambition of Iselin’s work, we need to enter more deeply into the semantic subtleties of this term, which, to the best of my knowledge, is here introduced for the very first time as a titular concept for any major theoretical work. Thus, it will be necessary to look at the notion of “Menschheit” within its linguistic context as well as within the history of ideas, if we are to gain a full appreciation of its meaning and its philosophical function in Iselin. German has its own term for “humanity,” namely “Humanität,” which denotes a distinct moral property that appertains to all humans and is not synonymous with the more ambiguous “Menschheit.” Occasionally, “Menschheit’ is translated as “mankind” or, better yet, “humankind,” but this, too, is problematic since the suffix “kind” indicates a natural species and such a connotation is missing in the original German term. Even more puzzling is the following fact: the term “Menschheit” was not part of colloquial German in the early-eighteenth century, but was introduced in a very specific theological context from which it escapes, only, perhaps, between 1750 and 1800, and Iselin’s writings seem to play a major role in this semantic entry of the word into everyday German. According to Bödeker (1980 and 1990) it is a theological neologism, introduced into the German

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language around the year 800 by a monk named Balbulus, who used “Menschheit” for translating the Latin term “humanitas.” Therefore, its emergence relates to the ontological triad of animalitas, humanitas, and divinitas and their respective German terms (“Tierheit,” “Menschheit,” “Gottheit”). Until the eighteenth century, “Menschheit” remains a theological expression that is rarely used, and when it is, usually to differentiate between the humanity and the divinity of Christ. Between 1750 and 1800 the meaning of the term alters, now increasingly denoting the whole of humankind, i.e., the entirety of all human beings; but this stands in contrast to the usual use of the German suffix “heit,” which typically denotes the essence or nature of something (similar to the English suffixes “hood” and “dom,” e.g., as in “Kindheit”/“childhood” or “Weisheit”/“wisdom”).25 Here it is apparent that in the timeframe that coincides with Iselin’s writings (roughly 1750 to 1800), the meaning of the term “Menschheit” changes from that of human nature to that of the human race, that is, from essence to a collective, from human nature to the human species and its mental or moral dimension. As a consequence of this, we see why consistently translating “Menschheit” as either humanity or humankind can occasionally be problematic. A more literal translation of “Menschheit” would thus rather be the morphologically related terms “humanhood,” “humanness,” or “humandom.”26 With this semantic background in mind, it appears that we can best read Iselin’s seminal use of the term “Menschheit” as combining two different historical strands of thought—two strands that can now come together in the concept itself in a way that is intuitively plausible, since few philosophers (not even Kant, Herder, or Schiller) have bothered to define or discuss this neologism that takes up such a decisive role in Enlightenment philosophy.27 In the first place, earlier Enlightenment authors such as Montesquieu, Bossuet, or Henry Home, Lord Kames, use “mankind” or “genre humain” to refer to the subject of universal history and treat it as if it were a soul-like substance or a thinking subject, ascribing to it intentions, common sense, and other mental states or faculties.28 25

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For an overview of the transformation of this concept based on its definitions in German dictionaries see Bödeker 1980, cf. also Bödeker 1990. In addition, it could be noted that any grammatical analogy to “humanity,” “humaneness,” or “Menschheit” within the animal world would also seem rather unusual: there is neither cathood nor dogness, neither cowdom nor horseity—and neither are there corresponding terms in German or in any other European language stemming from Latin or Romance roots, to the best of my knowledge. One could say that in the emergence of the notion “Menschheit,’ ” semasiology and onomasiology come together in a remarkable way: on the one hand, there was the need to give a new name to the historically changeable and culturally variant aspects of general human nature; on the other hand, the theological term “Menschheit” was available for a new interpretation in a secular context. Speaking very broadly, this will later still be a common approach easily found in Schiller, Hegel, and others.

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However, the emergence of a more biological perspective under the name of natural history develops and it becomes clear that animal species are defined by physiological traits. Linneaus, for example, in his famous and groundbreaking taxonomy of species (developed in the Systema Naturae (1735) and later works), claims that mammal species can be distinguished by features such as the shape of their teeth, whether they have fingers, paws, or hooves, by the number and position of teats, etc. Such an approach makes “the human species” unattractive as the subject of universal history, as few of the Enlightenment authors would have the knowledge available to write about the long history of physiological changes in humankind, nor would they have an interest in such a history. A history of the human species would be very different from universal history, as the former would consist in a depiction of physiological change, physical geography, and maybe some forms of organization; the latter, by contrast, would constitute a history of universal self-development. In the second place, the notion of humanity plays a distinct role in Protestant theology. Especially in a Christological context as mentioned above, the German term “Menschheit” is originally not used to refer to “humanity” in the modern sense, but rather to the specific human nature that is maintained in Christ, who is also, by being the Son of God, divine. Theologians since antiquity speak of humanity and divinity as the two personalities or hypostases that are united in one person. Humanity is necessary for making Christ the Savior of humankind, but Christ does not act in accordance with his human will, inasmuch as this human will (and ergo his humanity) is subordinated to and governed by the divine will or divinity. Because of his humanity, Christ has his own will, which, however, is fully subjected to the divine will. Thus, a hierarchy is introduced into the agent: One hypostasis (namely, divinity) commands, and the other (humanity) enacts these commands. Both remain irreducibly distinct, but not separate, since humanity (i.e., the distinctive aspect of human nature) is created in the image of the divine. The humanity in Christ is the temporal and embodied bearer of his thoughts and actions as a mortal being; that being so, it nonetheless fully serves the eternal and spiritual divinity. In Christ, divinity is actualized qua his embodied human nature. Herein, Christ can represent the entirety of both human nature and the collective of humankind. It seems that it was Martin Luther who in his Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535, chap. 3) first uses the expression of “humanity in a person” (“Menschheit in einer Person”). This will later become famous in the so-called formula of humanity of Kant’s categorical imperative. Luther argues that the word “human” denotes neither a normal person nor the human properties of Christ, but rather the person that

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unites both humanity and divinity. Importantly, these two natures in Christ are fundamentally different and must be conceptually distinguished, which warrants the use of the expression “humanity in a person,” as opposed to the divinity in Christ.29 When in the second half of the eighteenth century the term “Menschheit” takes up center stage in philosophical discussions about human nature and universal history, it perhaps ought to be read as a conjunction of these two traditions. It is a singular expression that entails a collective (what Koselleck calls a “collective singular”30), all the while also being an abstract expression of the unique qualities that distinguish humankind from other species, without thereby being reducible to merely external or physiological aspects. Consequently, on the one hand, “Menschheit” is used to designate the entirety of all human beings; on the other hand, it additionally designates the particular human dimension of our agency, i.e., the particular interests that we act upon, interests that are not merely animalistic and yet do not fully conform to any divine law. It is reasonable to assume that Iselin employs this theological notion for the first time as a secularized and core notion in his philosophical works, not only in the History, but also in the journal he edited earlier, the Ephemerides of Humanity (1776–82) and the Philosophical and Patriotic Dreams of a Philanthropist (1758). In both texts, “Menschheit” is understood as either the collective of all people and/or as a collection of drives in the broadest sense, which allow for self-development, if exercised properly. Although—as I will discuss later—the notion of a divine will at work in history is not fully absent in Iselin, his leitmotif is to show human agency as following the genuinely human faculties of the soul. Merely animal drives, such as “blind” emotions or physical desires, do not figure in his History (at any rate, humans are, at least outside of the state of nature, not fully governed by animal drives). But the specific historical dimension of “Menschheit” only comes fully to the fore if we understand it as human perfectibility at work. It was Rousseau who first pointed out this particular quality as the major difference between humans and animals. Iselin agrees with this point. We cannot change our animal drives, but we can train ourselves not to be governed as much by them. What we can change is the balance of our inner workings, of the ways the different human faculties rule over our actions. Thus, “Menschheit” designates the culturally variable, albeit

29

30

Many Protestant thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, such as Jacob Böhme, John Calvin, Johann Höpner, Johann Salomo Semmler, Johannes Heinrich Ursinus, Gotthilf Traugott Zachariae, and others, pick up this expression to argue that the humanity in the person of Jesus Christ contains the mortal aspects of Jesus, but not his immortal soul. See Koselleck 2006, part I.

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ubiquitous aspects of human nature. To the extent that it designates a universal property, it can also be used synecdochically as a stand-in for a collective.31 In a groundbreaking way, Iselin combines Rousseau’s speculative approach with the idea of a humanity geographically and culturally differentiated into “varieties” or “races.” The unity of humanity is emphasized and every factual, cultural difference is explained by contingent causal factors and interpreted with a view to a possible approach to an ideal. This ideal of a fully developed humanity, which is supposed to fully find itself both in the individual and as a global society, is underdeveloped here; the all-too-simple analogy with individual development and the process of maturation and aging alone makes such a formulation difficult, of course. The text as a whole is carried by an enlightened, optimistic impetus that humanity will one day cast off, by their own efforts, all the evils that plague them. This progress can be made intelligent by such an anthropologically informed historiography. It seems that Iselin saw his work as a kind of foundational text from which numerous ideas could be drawn in popular discourse, which could then contribute to this very progress. The different pathways of singular histories of specific peoples and nations all lead towards humanity—the full realization of human nature in the collective of all human beings. In the state of nature, history begins with “simple-minded” humans who display great uniformity. Ever since people advanced beyond this state of “sensual certainty,” to borrow a term from Hegel, they have separated and individualized; only by fully submitting themselves to reason and virtue can humanity ever again reach equality: It thus seems to be the course for the human race as prescribed by its wise Creator, as it had to begin with child-like simplicity, in which all men were equal to one another; it had to split up [sich trennen] through infinite varieties, confusions, disorders, and transform itself into infinite shapes, in order to reach the sublime simplicity of reason and virtue by which alone lasting happiness can be produced and by which every man once again becomes as equal to another as nature permits. II.viii, p. 356 / II, p. 460, my translation32 31

32

Bödeker 1980 suggests that the term was also used in the eighteenth century to designate not only a collective and an essence, but also an end. Although such a notion is frequently found in Kant, who argues that Menschheit (humanity/humankind as a collective) develops its humanity (as an essence) towards humanity (as an end, i.e., as fully developed morality), I cannot see such usage in Iselin. For him, humanity is not an end, but morality and happiness are. “Es scheinet so der von seinem weisen Schöpfer dem menschlichen Geschlechte vorgeschriebene Gang zu seyn, da, wie es bey einer kindischen Einfalt anfangen mußte, wo alle Menschen einander gleich waren; es durch unendliche Abwechslungen, Verwirrungen, Unordnungen sich trennen und in unendliche Gestalten verwandeln mußte, um zu der erhabenen Einfalt der Vernunft und der Tugend zu gelangen, durch welche allein eine dauerhafte Glückseligkeit erzeuget werden kann, und durch welche wieder jeder Mensch dem andern so gleich wird, als es die Natur erlaubet.”

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The differentiation of humankind into separate peoples is intended by God, although it is not directly caused by his actions. The “varieties” of human beings are an intended consequence—put differently, it is a feature, not a bug. There is no actual diversity in progress, as Herder would later argue—essentially, all progress follows the same scheme. People are united simply by being part of the overarching universal abstract that is humanity. Let me now put the interpretation sketched above to a quick test by discussing three core ideas that Iselin deploys to argumentatively structure his conjectures: the general nature of universal history and its philosophical dimension; the three stages of the development of history; and the teleology of history. First, let us look at the general nature of universal history. At the very beginning of Iselin’s book, the history of “Menschheit” is introduced in comparison to the biography, i.e., the history of an individual life, and the history of any given society or people (see Introduction, 13 / I, p. XVI–VIII). All three histories are also contrasted with a respective philosophy. Biography describes the particularities of an individual life, while philosophy focuses on the generalities of individual lives to infer ethical or eudemonic principles. Either by virtue of reason or natural drives, humans seek to establish communities in which they can find a higher degree of happiness, which thereby constitutes the purpose of said communities. The history of individual states or peoples thus teaches us how and to what degree they have succeeded in providing happiness to their people or why they failed to do so. Iselin here seems to have both an educational and a normative dimension of historiography in mind: History teaches us which specific pitfalls are to be avoided, while additionally allowing us to judge the successes or failures of different cultures. From a philosophical vantage point, the general advantages of civil society and the civic constitution (der gesittete Stand und die bürgerliche Verfassung) for human development become apparent. Regarding the history of humanity, Iselin only states “it contains everything from the histories of individuals and entire peoples that is essential in this regard” (Introduction, p. 13 / I, p. xviii).33 This is a regrettably brief definition of an ambitious and complex project. That being said, I take it that Iselin here is suggesting that the history of humanity develops two interconnected perspectives: It contains the general aspects of the developments of peoples and individuals insofar as they are not only general, but also essential to human development; and it contains the respective evaluative and normative

33

“Die Geschichte der Menschheit umfasset alles, was die von einzelnen Menschen, und die von ganzen Völkern in dieser Absicht wesentliches enthalten.“

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perspective by means of which the particular historical instantiations of said general and essential features can be evaluated against the purposiveness of happiness and morality. The measure that is applied is the universal balance of mental faculties in service of moral agency. Taking up this perspective from a philosophical point of view, one would then find out “the great principles” by means of which peoples can achieve better prosperity (i.e., Wohlstand—for the sake of consistency, we can assume that Iselin has in mind not only material wealth, but also general welfare, including a “wealth” of happiness and morality). Second, from book II.8 on, Iselin discusses the development of humanity in degrees (Grade) or states (Stände). He distinguishes between two degrees of humanity, sensuality and childish reason (kindlicher Verstand), which are both part of the first state, namely the state of nature; but he also discusses the savage state (der Stand der Wildheit) and the civilized state (der gesittete Stand), which the latter includes the “bourgeois” state (der bürgerliche Stand). Although these concepts are not developed in a precise way, Iselin’s approach here resembles other conjectural histories that also proceed in stages.34 The animal stage entails “the lowest degree of humanity” (II.8, p. 83 / I, p. 176).35 In this stage, the human being is mostly animalistic in that it is directly governed by drives, instincts, and sensual perceptions. But development is possible, as we can easily see in the development of children: Passions arise and are connected to external objects and normative concepts. This initial normativity gives rise to simple forms of morality and social relations. The desire to communicate arises and this causes the emergence of language, which in turn allows the formation of abstract notions, which mark the emergence of the second degree of humanity. This latter degree is defined by the development of sociability and the related sociable sensations by means of the imagination (II.12, p. 93 / I, p. 205; cf. II.12, p. 101 / I, p. 227). We understand the state of nature by looking at very young children who can barely engage in interpersonal relationships; but in relation to historical understanding, it is more of a boundary concept that can be used to delineate humans from mere animals. It is not found in nature, as even the most “primitive” peoples (incidentally, for Iselin, these are the Greenlanders) have developed at least partially into the second stage—otherwise they would not even be recognized as peoples in the first place, let alone as societies. Here, Iselin mirrors

34

35

One is reminded of the four stages described by Adam Smith (based on four modes of subsistence: hunting, shepherding, agriculture, commerce); the three stages of Ferguson (who distinguishes stages of forms of organization: savage, barbarian, and civilized); and the ten stages of Condorcet (stages of scientific and technological progress). See, for example, Palmeri 2016. “Niedrigster Grad der Menschheit.”

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the two hypostases (animality and humanity) mentioned above: Our inborn human nature, which we are gifted with by means of being part of the human species—what others would have called “animality”—and our constituted second nature, which would not develop at all if it were not for acculturation. So, pace Rousseau, the first stage of humanity and even the most “primitive” peoples are not identical to the state of nature and will not be found anywhere except in the animal world. Even the basic animal features of humankind as a species lend themselves to developing into or being used by higher, cultivated, or cultivatable faculties. Our inborn natural sociability defines the entire path of humankind through history such that even humans in their natural state would be sociable and thus already aggregate into societies. The state of nature is thus nothing that could be found anywhere in history; it is rather a boundary concept that has no objective content for human beings. Humans in the state of nature would be nothing but humans stripped of all humanity, leaving nothing but vegetative and instinctual forms of behavior.36 Although the first stage corresponds to the phases of the development of young children, the second stage does so to the development of the faculties leading up to adolescence. In this context, Iselin outlines the rise of imagination, taste, belief, and superstition, the sensibility for right and wrong, and sociability— everything that has its basis in sensuality, but gets “elevated” by imagination, i.e., directed at objects that are not necessarily immediately present to the senses. These cognitions are not directly caused by external objects but are produced by our mind by means of comparison, constant conjunction, and the variation of memorized objects. As such, they are not governed by the forces of nature, but only by our mental spontaneity, and can be subjected to the principles of reason; but without the governance of reason, they lack order, harmony, and moderation. The resulting excesses make societies dysfunctional: They lead to ignorance, injustice, carelessness, impermanence, falsehood, infidelity, gullibility, audacity, cowardice, inertia, and superstition, among other things (see III.2, III.6, III.10– 12, III.19). Since life at this stage is a constant struggle, the primary virtue of these “barbarians” is bravery (see III.9). Their life is determined by what Rousseau would call amour propre, the kind of self-esteem that is only found through the approval (and, in this case, subjection) of others. However, the excessive use of

36

Here we notice a common dilemma of eighteenth-century anthropology: To the extent that they are embodied beings, humans are part of the continuum of forms of nature, of the “great chain of being”; but to the extent that they are rational and autonomous, humans stand out from everything in nature. So, in one aspect humans are entirely natural, but in another, even more relevant sense, humans are nothing like other natural embodied beings.

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desires and inclinations provides immediate happiness (see III.21, p. 154 / I, pp. 368–9). The third stage develops in various steps. The first consists of establishing a family form that relies on cooperation instead of domination, a development of traditions and religions that form societal bonds and a more-developed moral conscience. The second step is a more pronounced division of labor and domestication of animals; larger families form the core of “civic” societies that are united by religion and governance. The emergence of religion coincides with the emergence of the arts and sciences—plenty of examples are found in a great array of histories. In the third stage, these advances of civilization spread out over a greater terrain. Through religion and governance, society does not exclusively rely on the informal bonds of people who live together and know each other, but also incorporates the rather formal connections established by common religion or subjection to one ruler. However, the results are ambiguous. As civilization arises, an increase in morality is far from guaranteed. Iselin notes the “savageries” of antiquity in the rise and fall of ancient civilization: Both Greece and Rome start out and end in barbarity (see VII.22). Christianity as well has failed to live up to its promise. Its institutionalized development has distorted (verfälscht) its content and meaning, turned it into superstition, and led to slavery and inhumanity (see VII.23). There are only few early modern achievements that provide consolation by ensuring us of the possibility of moral progress and moral self-governance: Schools, universities, trades, liberal freedoms, and the emergence of science and history as academic disciplines can actively further the advancement of happiness, wisdom, and morality. In all three stages, the faculties of the human mind are exercised differently; and, more importantly, there are both incentives and causal factors that govern the particular way of developing the habits and attitudes of different peoples. These habits form contingent structures of behavior and moral judgment that are called the “character” of a people, a nation, or even an entire age. By means of such a character, the individual can be understood through its historical context; and vice versa, the broader outlines of history can be understood by looking at the motivations of either particularly representative individuals or sufficiently large groups of people. Although some deviations from such a norm may occur, a specific environment is needed that embraces these deviations instead of ignoring, condemning, or actively hindering them. Who, however, pushes this progress forward? It is not the general populace that drives enlightenment, as it is superstitious, morally raw, and generally ignorant; but the political and societal elites are just as corrupt, hedonistic, and

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immoral (illustrated for example in VII.22 for Rome, VIII.5–6 for medieval times, VIII.15 for the Renaissance). Here, cultural attire merely covers barely veiled barbaric attitudes. The modern age, thanks to its valuing of education and innovation, and the establishment of schools and universities, has facilitated the emergence of these groundbreaking “great minds,” but they can be found even in ages of barbarity, albeit with reduced influence or even none at all (cf. VIII.6, p. 302 / II, p. 310). The “great people” of history, who can make significant changes even to the way we conceive of our own humanity, are the ones who drive progress. But they need help from external circumstances, circumstances that, in turn, also require appropriate knowledge and therefore systems of education. Both philosophy and legislation can help us reach “our great vocation” (Preface—letter to the Swiss philanthropic society, p. 6 / I, p. V). The philosopher can help develop our understanding of duties and human needs, and the respective development of the human soul. He provides a pathway for the cultivation of the soul (Anbauung der Seele, ibid.). Legislators can keep excess in check and also those who misunderstand their own purposes and their pathway to happiness and thereby might disturb public order and common good. However, legislators need knowledge of both universal human nature and particular human relations.37 Without broadly accessible education, this is hardly possible; and unjust laws would then impede moral progress and the impact any “great mind” might have. However, not all peoples progress in the same way. For some, progress towards harmony and happiness comes naturally, while for others it is a struggle, implemented through external forces and effectively suppressing their own nature. But the struggle pays off: Progress is more profound and lasting if it is achieved artificially and by means of struggle. Iselin illustrates this point through the cultivation of a plant: “Branched fruits are usually tastier than those that grow on their own trunks without the gardener’s helping hand” (IV.2, p. 162 / I, p. 385).38 Iselin here tries to provide an explanation and justification for the sequence of civilizations, from the so-called “Orient” to the Nordic cultures— while the latter success builds on the former, it is also more artificial, albeit in a positive sense; it is more lasting and more transformative. He writes: 37

38

“Welch ein Unterschied ergiebt sich nicht zwischen dem Menschen des Philosophen, und zwischen dem Menschen des Geschichtsschreibers”? (Preface: Letter . . ., p. 6 / I, pp. VII–VIII). This puts the historian and the philosopher at odds: They refer to different conceptions of a human being. Iselin just mentions this difference, but he does not develop it explicitly, and so here the reader is left in the dark about the nature of this difference and what to make of it. “So sind gezweigte Früchte meistens schmackhafter als die, welche ohne die hilfleistende Hand des Gärtners auf ihren eignen Stämmen wachsen.”

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In some countries, not only must nature be improved; it must also be recast, as it were. Every sensation of the beautiful, the good, the perfect, is a foreign fruit that, in a hard climate, must first be brought up in greenhouses and which cannot thrive in the open air until, through long cultivation, the soil itself has lost its original rawness. In this way, we understand the early political development [Policierung] of the Orient, the slower development of Greece and Italy, and the late development of the Nordic countries.39

Iselin distinguishes between an internal and external development by means of policies and institutions (“Policierung,” see VII.21)—mere legislation is only superficial and external and fails to produce lasting moral development unless it is accompanied by internal moralization as well as the cultivation of principled behavior. If, for example, “savage” people are kept in check only by harsh and oppressive laws, no lasting change is possible, as sooner or later these laws will be overturned; and vice versa, a merely internal commitment to morality is bound to be corrupted in an unjust, superstitious, and superficial society. This, Iselin argues, was ultimately the fate of Christianity in the Middle Ages (see VIII.4–6). It is only when internal and external development coincide, that is, when a widespread commitment to morality is accompanied by just and open institutions, that proper progress is possible. The teachings of the “great minds” need to fall on fruitful ground, which must be prepared by society as a whole. Iselin here seems to anticipate Herder’s notion of a “Volksgeist” in his culturally and collectively developed arrangement of mental faculties that leads people to arrive at similar conclusions and to be motivated by similar incentives. Despite all moral progress, traces of barbarism can still be found even among the most civilized cultures. Older stages of mental development, suppressed by means of institutional progress, can become forcefully and causally active in later stages—something that Wolfgang Rother calls “residualism” (Rother 2011, p. 48). This poses a threat to civilization and morality since achievements of civilization are in danger of being overcome by older forms of animalistic or at least immoral behavior. Although the morality of the people is enforced and incentivized by institutions, such a paternalistic structure needs—paradoxically— to be supported by the people themselves, lest they change their behavior but not

39

“In einigen Ländern muß nicht nur die Natur verbessert; sie muß gleichsam umgegossen werden. Jede Empfindung des Schönen, des Guten, des Vollkommnen, ist da eine fremde Frucht, die in einem harten Clima erst nur in Treibhäusern erzogen werden muß, und die in der freyen Luft nicht gedeyhen kann, bis durch eine lange Anbauung der Boden selbst seine ursprüngliche Rohigkeit verlohren hat. So wird uns die frühe Policierung des Orients, die langsamere von Griechenland und von Italien, und die späte der nordischen Länder begreiflich.”

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their mental attitudes and moral values, which will, sooner or later, lead to the downfall of these artificially implemented institutions. In short, in the different stages of history, the inner workings of the human mind translate into the mechanisms of the history of humanity.40 Therefore, history is comprehensible to the individual inasmuch as the individual already contains within itself a concrete expression of the abstract particular, i.e., the character of its time and people; and vice versa, the general structures of history contain in themselves causal relations similar to those in the human mind, e.g., upbringing, education, or religion. Even the most rational or morally inclined “savage” will still not manage to keep his drives towards excess and irrational actions fully in check, as “savage” society has not offered him any opportunity to train himself. Thus, “Menschheit” is both present in the course of the entirety of history and manifest in every person. Let us now turn to the third core idea of Iselin’s book, namely, his views on the general telos of humanity, our vocation. One core argument that Iselin uses against Rousseau is that we have been given our faculties and capacities by a well-meaning creator and consequently they have a purpose (see, for example, I.29–30). If used appropriately, they will lead us to happiness. Imagining a human being in the state of nature means imagining a human being that does not actually use any of the powers that we are given for the very sake of our humanity—if there were such a state of nature, the humans therein would indeed be bereft of humanity: The human being once had to rise above the animalistic; and at that time it was impossible for him not to come ever closer to perfection without becoming the most despicable of all beings. Without a considerable cultivation of the intellect, he would have fallen, of necessity, deeper and deeper into the most detestable savagery. III.22, p. 155 / I, p. 371. My translation41

In this way, Iselin subscribes to the common notion of an economy of nature in which everything has its place and function within the greater whole. We find a prominent exponent of this idea in Shaftesbury, who had argued, in the Inquiry 40

41

Wilhelm von Humboldt, who also engages in this line of thought with astuteness, puts it succinctly: “[E]verything that is effective in world history also moves within human beings” (“[A]lles, was in der Weltgeschichte wirksam ist, sich auch in dem Innern des Menschen bewegt”) (von Humboldt 1905, p. 37). “Der Mensch mußte sich einmal über das thierische emporschwingen; und da war es ihm unmöglich, sich nicht immer mehr der Vollkommenheit zu nähern, ohne das verächtlichste aller Wesen zu werden. Ohne eine beträchtliche Anbauung des Verstandes hätte er immer tiefer in die abscheulichste Wildheit verfallen müssen.”

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Concerning Virtue (1699), that humans are given their capabilities for the sake of harmony, happiness, and morality. Exercising them appropriately would prevent both misfortunes and immorality. This general telos of the faculties served as an influence on Spalding,42 who, in his Betrachtung über die Bestimmung des Menschen (first edition published in 1748), condensed Shaftesbury’s different teleological notions into his concept of a vocation: Humans are destined to develop their morality from mere sensuality to autonomy and principled spirituality. These ideas still reverberate in Iselin: Humans are given their faculties and capabilities for their own sake but the condition of their internal telos coming to fruition is exercise, facilitation, and the removal of external obstacles. Our moral self-governance consists in removing both the internal and the external impediments that prevent us from fulfilling our vocation (see I.33).43 Just like Shaftesbury had suggested, our vocation can be understood by reason, but it can also be felt by any human that has found his or her mental and cognitive balance (see I.27, p. 47 / I, pp. 79–81). Iselin had reviewed Spalding’s seminal text on the vocation of humankind in 1768,44 which is twenty years after the first edition appeared and after the ensuing debate between Moses Mendelssohn and Thomas Abbt ended with Abbt’s death in 1766, the same debate that would give birth to Mendelssohn’s Phädon the subsequent year. Abbt criticized Spalding for focusing on the vocation of individuals instead of the vocation of humankind. Although Iselin’s review itself contains little that is of relevance here, the notion of moral progression from basic drives striving after sensual pleasures to reason-based agency and fully developed morality is common in both thinkers. Although Spalding has the individual in mind, Iselin looks at the entirety of humankind and its development, as if it were a single individual—Spalding’s idea of an individual telos is conceived by Iselin as the telos of human nature and therefore also as the telos of the human species. The question concerning the behavior of the individual should also consider the individual’s place within the greater whole of creation, especially taking into account the individual’s place in humankind and their role in history. We find a fitting analogy in Abbt’s Zweifel an der Bestimmung des Menschen (1764), which Iselin surely would have known, since he corresponded with Abbt extensively. Abbt uses a soldier’s relation to the army to make his point: The

42 43

44

See Macor 2013 and Raatz 2014. Iselin does not explicitly introduce his notion of a vocation. Apparently he assumes the readers will be familiar with it. Here, the impact of Spalding and the subsequent debate about the vocation of the human being becomes apparent. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, Vol. 11.2 (1779), pp. 261–2.

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soldier just marches along with his troop, knowing neither the next aim of the group nor the endgame of the war. He may have his own misfortunes along the way or be ordered to go on some “side-missions,” but his strivings and struggles are necessarily dependent on the movement of the whole, which, if properly understood, would provide some orientation in terms of identifying his own direction, purpose, and necessary means. The generals (which in the analogy represent the priests) may receive their orders from higher ranks (i.e., by revelation) and thus command the soldiers. Those who are educated and smart may understand the movement of the army on their own. The behavior of the individuals is influenced by the ends and goals of their “team,” which then provides meaning and effect to one’s individual actions. The individual soldier may derive his most general destiny from eternal values, but his particular role is defined by the common goal of his troop. Here in this analogy, the army is, of course, the stand-in for “Menschheit,” which, with its greater and unifying goal, assigns every being its place and role; it is not a mere aggregate of all individual soldiers, but has its own form, direction and behavior as a whole. Iselin would have agreed with Abbt for different reasons: It is of crucial importance that humans know and understand their vocation and their destiny in history; and it is important that individual humans can orient themselves within a greater whole to which they contribute. To facilitate such understanding and orientation, this is the promise that Iselin sees in the history of humanity. The final goal of history, the harmony of our mental faculties, is conceivable a priori. Humanity as the capacity for harmonious, rational (and consequently ethical) agency is not limited by nature, but can be determined entirely through reason. Like Spalding and Shaftesbury, Iselin cautions against the misuse or exaggerated use of these faculties and capacities: It is impossible for humanity [Menschheit] to remain within the limits that nature has not prescribed for it, and which are only a philosophical fiction. The great Author of nature has planted seeds of abilities in human souls that must sooner or later germinate, and which are perhaps destined to a greatness of which we cannot, at present, have the slightest conception. III.22, p. 155 / I, p. 371; see also II.5, p. 81 / I, p. 171. My translation45

45

“Es ist der Menschheit unmöglich in Schranken zu bleiben, welche ihr die Natur nicht vorgeschrieben hat, und welche nur eine philosophische Erdichtung sind. Der große Urheber der Natur hat in die menschlichen Seelen Saamen von Fähigkeiten gelegt, welche früh oder späth hervorkeimen müssen, und welche vielleicht zu einer Grösse bestimmt sind, von deren wir dermals uns keine Begriffe machen können.”

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The excesses that are destined to happen without sufficient control through reason are effects of individual agency. But as they happen in a shared, communal context (a tribe, people, nation, etc.), they must lead to excesses of humanity itself (Menschheit). Although reason serves as the major driver behind our striving for progress, human beings still need the guidance provided by religion, which can show them how to keep their excesses in check (I 64 f.). Without worship of divine wisdom, happiness would be entirely animalistic, i.e. sensual pleasure. However, Iselin avoids discussing whether such guidance can only be provided by revelation or also by means of natural religion.46 As such, the development of humanity is not only a means to achieve our vocation; it is our vocation. Here again, the notions of the collective and of our shared, mutually developed essence are intertwined.

IV Conclusion The subject of universal history is not the collective of humankind, but an essential attribute that displays itself in the harmony of our faculties and the resulting moral agency. This attribute, namely the governance of given drives and our moral agency through their subordination to the command of reason, is structurally dispersed over a great variety of humans and cultures. It unites people as a ubiquitous, culturally invariant faculty or predisposition, but it separates them in its culturally variant actualization and its effects. The humanity of an individual can be understood as the way this particular person navigates and commands his or her own natural predispositions with respect to the possibility of moral agency and adherence to reason. The humanity of a people lies in the way they allow themselves to make moral progress, to develop themselves in their moral capacity. Humanity in general would only be fully realized if all agency followed from a perfectly balanced arrangement of sensuality and imagination under the auspice of reason—although it seems that,

46

Kapossy has argued that the final end of history is neither a cosmopolitical society nor a full subjection of human agency under the demands of the moral law, but rather a liberal community of states, connected in mutual agreement concerning trade, constitutions, and virtue (see Kapossy 2011). However, as I have outlined above, the institutional arrangement is only one aspect of the “feedback loop” between institutions and morality. If these civilizational achievements are not supported by a sufficiently “mature” populace, their effect will be distorted or even perverted, and they will be overthrown in favor of something more primitive and malicious.

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for Iselin, the human being is “crooked timber” out of which something entirely straight can never be formed. But in this development, the different faculties would provide different cultural achievements, such as the arts, sciences, religion, philosophy, and just legislation, with all of these, in turn, facilitating the development of internal control and mental harmony. The history of humanity thus deals, almost paradoxically, with an internal development that is (conjecturally) understood and evaluated through its external manifestations. All the cultural achievements that provide some means for self-development are thus historically relevant. However, the expectation and scope of Iselin’s philosophy of history are so immense that they necessarily give rise to problems that are painfully obvious and which stem from the conception of a single, but universal subject of universal history. Such a subject can, at best, serve as a kind of regulative idea for the methodology of history and can, at worst, be used to postulate order, regularity, and unity where in reality none are found. The problem here has already been discussed in various respects.47 Historical events are given meaning in relation to their future effects, their causal efficacy, or their symbolic representation of greater trajectories. For example, the rise of the empires of the ancient Orient is meaningful in that it led to the rise of Greece and Rome, which in turn prepared the rise of Christianity and the Medieval states, etc.48 But to the extent universal history not only wants to work out all major historical trajectories, but also—and in case of Iselin, especially—wants to understand the whole of history, there is no discernible relation to future events. Arthur Danto has found a concise formula for this: “[O]ur knowledge of the past is significantly limited by our ignorance of the future” (Danto 1968, p. 16). The expectation of certain successive steps of development will only match the complexities of reality if cultural dissimilarities are either glossed over or if we focus on their “achievements” alone. This ultimately makes cultural differences in each stage of development meaningless and unintelligible, since they are reduced to exchangeable preparations for the next stage of development—according to Iselin, the cultures of the Greenlanders and the Madagascan people are, taken by themselves, ultimately equally

47

48

For example, Marquard 1982. For a brief, but concise summary of a much broader debate, see Habermas 1973. This is the great advantage of Herder over Iselin: Herder refuses to accept such a retrospective meaning and insists that all peoples and all culture need to be understood in their own terms. However, this also, the argument could be made, leads to an empty cultural relativism that is often void of conclusions.

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meaningless. Neither lives up to his standard of development, which can only be understood from his enlightened vantage point and thus would be unintelligible to either. The cultural identities involved remain necessarily vague and thus Iselin’s attempt to prove history’s trajectory on empirical grounds must fail. This is what Herder, without ever mentioning Iselin, will later criticize in his Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784–91): It is arrogant and misguided to judge cultures and peoples from an external vantage point that applies a universal measure (based on one’s own culture) to each and everyone else in history. Such an approach not only fails to value diversity in itself, but it also leads us to misconceive ourselves as the only “chosen” people who uphold universal values, which, as it happens, are nothing but a product of our time. This is nothing but self-congratulatory delusion of one’s own grandeur. By itself, Iselin’s project of history as consolation also fails to escape the problem of induction: We cannot know the future trajectory of history from its past trajectory with certainty. Iselin tries to sidestep this issue by suggesting that, because of the wisdom of the creator, we have to assume that all our capacities will develop and will do so in accordance with their purpose, which coincides with our vocation. However, by virtue of this perspective, his project of history as consolation is little more than a modern type of Heilsgeschichte, a projective history of the possibilities of salvation—and thus it fails to live up to his declared standard of justification by means of empirical and psychological or anthropological evidence. The postulate of the universality of certain “stages” of development now becomes indistinguishable from wishful thinking. That being said, this does not entirely diminish the central achievement of Iselin, namely, that of having provided a singular but universal subject for universal history, namely humanity (“Menschheit”). This unique term allows him to denote a collective as well as an essence. This vaguely recalls Aristotle’s theory of substances: There is no substance beyond its instantiations; but there would not be any such instantiation without it being an instantiation of a substance. The unfolding of human nature beyond its merely physiological basis is dependent on collective moral agency, and vice versa. Certain types of cultural, moral, and institutional changes in the human collective go along with certain changes in the way these people realize their “humaneness” or human morality. Kant, Herder, Lessing, Schiller, and many others will happily pick up this notion and change it to fit their own respective philosophical outlook. But the success of Iselin’s work was what succeeded in making knowledge of this particular meaning of this term so popular, so much that none of these authors feel that it

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is necessary to provide any additional discussion or definition of the term. This is because they could simply assume that their contemporary readers or listeners would already know, largely thanks to Iselin’s contribution in his now largely and unduly forgotten book On the History of Humanity, what such a history of humanity would and should look like.49

49

I thank Joseph Carew for his valuable help with my English. I also thank the German Research Foundation for a generous research grant about the development of the notion of humanity in eighteenth-century German philosophy, which made this paper possible.

9

Whose Vocation? Which Man?: A.W. Rehberg on the Vocation of Man and Political Theory1 Michael Gregory

The notion of the vocation of the human being, or the human Vocation (Bestimmung des Menschen) holds a particular significance as one of the main issues and core tenets of the German Enlightenment.2 This debate was so central to the aims of the German Enlightenment because it attempted to answer a fundamental question: how can we relate human freedom and rational personhood with the sensibility of human nature and the regularities of human history? The main thrust of the discussion, then, was about the human being itself, with its dual personalities, one foot in the realm of rationality and freedom and the other in the shifting sands of nature and history. We might also characterize the question of the human vocation as a question about the application of human being’s rational nature to human nature and history. In other words, what does human freedom and rationality determine about the way we relate to ourselves in history as sensible beings? This last question was being asked with greater urgency and with awareness to political consequence in the 1790s. The French Revolution had rocked the European continent and dragged the conversations around the human vocation from university halls to political conventions and popular tracts. The relation of theory to practice, of political ideal to political reality, which formed the backbone of the endorsements and criticisms of the French Revolution in the 1790s, was merely a reformulating of the debates surrounding the human vocation. What relation, if any, did the rational nature of human beings, and the ideal state that followed from it, have to actual political practice? Enthusiastic supporters of the French Revolution insisted that the French state was being 1

2

The research presented here has been generously funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek. See for instance Hinske 1995, pp. 30–45 and Brandt 2007, pp. 1–4.

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remade in the image of a rational state, no longer burdened by the crusty rituals of monarchy and nobility born of irrational desires. Sharp critics of the revolution insisted that the French were “drunk with theory,” ignoring historical pacts and traditional structures for illegitimate fantasies of complete equality and freedom fit only for a “republic of gods.”3 In this paper, I will focus on a figure who brings together the debate of the human vocation before the Revolution and the debate over theory and practice in the wake of the Revolution. This figure is August Wilhelm Rehberg (1757– 1836).4 Rehberg is mostly known for his contribution to the conservative reaction in Germany after the French Revolution. However, this focus on Rehberg’s political ambitions has obscured his significant contribution to the various debates in the German Enlightenment. In this paper, I will focus on Rehberg’s comments on the human vocation. Understanding Rehberg’s criticism of the human vocation debate allows us to understand Rehberg’s political criticisms as an outpouring of his previously developed criticism of the human vocation. In order to do this, I will first lay out the human vocation debate, trying to highlight the development of the positions for and against the main statement of the human vocation by Johann Joachim Spalding (1714–1804). Then I will show how Rehberg contributed a distinct standpoint on the debate by radicalizing both Abbt and Herder’s objections. Rehberg’s perspective allows him to deny that there is any relevant input for abstract metaphysical ideals, such as moral perfection, on phenomenal actions. In fact, Rehberg redefines perfection as a creation of this world, and therefore argues for various, equally valid states of perfection. In part two, I will briefly outline the theory-practice debate. Here I will attempt to highlight the core problem that figures such as Kant, Fichte, Gentz, and Möser attempted to answer. I will argue that the question is structurally identical as the human vocation debate leading up to it, and that we should see it as an extension of that debate. Thus, it is unsurprising that Rehberg enters this debate defending what seems, at first, to be stubbornly reactionary positions against the tide of political change. However, in the context of his previously discussed positions, they appear to be a politically-oriented reformulating of previous critiques of the human vocation. 3 4

Rehberg 1794, p. 136. This could have easily also been Justus Möser, who was one of Mendelssohn’s critical friends during the debate on the human vocation and who also wrote an unpublished critique of Kant during the theory and practice debate in the 1790s. Rehberg was a student and admirer of Möser, with whom he shares a general proto-historicist outlook. However, Rehberg is arguably more interesting given his acceptance of Kant’s critical philosophy and a better known critic of the French Revolution. See Knudsen 1986, pp. 20–30 and Epstein 1966, pp. 557–8.

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I The Debate on the Human Vocation I A Abbt, Mendelssohn, and Herder on the Human Vocation The debate on the human vocation began with the publication of Spalding’s Betrachtung über die Bestimmung der Menschen, first published in 1748, which was a series of introspective meditations starting from the premise that one can choose entirely different basic principles to live by. Spalding follows an upward trajectory, denying the guiding potential of pleasurable sensation and selfishness, and discovers an alternative desire for the good and orderly quite independent of the drive for sensual pleasure. In the cultivation and encouragement of these “higher feelings” or our “tendency towards the good,” we can find worth beyond selfish pleasure. In turn, the contemplation of the good and orderly in oneself gives way to the contemplation of the general order of the world of which we are a part. This leads Spalding to the contemplation of a higher being at work in us and the world, which gives us our natural tendency towards the good and also orders all things towards the good. The higher being, then, is the source of the law within us, as well as the general notions of good and evil in the world. Finally, the observation of great harmony and justice in the world leads to the notion that there must be a point in which all things are brought into harmony and perfect justice is achieved. This suggests the immortality of our soul, which must have the facility to develop into eternity. Thus, Spalding concludes, “through my nature and from my creator [I am] called to be righteous and to be happy in righteousness” (Spalding, p. 31). Perhaps no one spent more time defending and elaborating Spalding’s statement than Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) who was himself one of the foremost philosophers of the German Aufklärung for the latter half of the eighteenth century. Mendelssohn’s defense of the human vocation comes in his well-known dialogues with his good friend Thomas Abbt (1738–1766) in 1764 and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) in 1769. Mendelssohn summarizes the thesis of Spalding as: “The true Human Vocation here below-which fool and wise alike, though to different extents, fulfill-is therefore the cultivation in accordance with the divine purposes of the soul’s faculties, for it is to this that all man’s actions on earth are directed” (JA 6/1:20). Abbt, however, is not convinced that the question of man’s place in the universe and its destiny could or should be answered by the introspective meditations of

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a solitary human being. As it was, the human race has not shown those refined intuitions that led Spalding upward towards a divine vocation. There is no sure sign of an altruistic propensity in man that repelled him in disgust from his sensual desires. To attempt to derive our vocation from such a shaky basis meant to ignore the absurdity and inherent forlornness in the human condition. Abbt sums up his point through a fitting simile: a story about a prince who brings an army from a foreign land. The general in charge nor the soldiers know their purpose or their destination. Some soldiers disappeared in the night, and some stayed behind, the general and soldiers remained alert with expectation for a letter explaining the plan to the regiment. And yet, nothing came. The general and his officers were left to make speculative claims and rely on apparent testimony from within the ranks (AVW 5:289–91). Abbt’s point was that Spalding had been over-zealous in thinking that the human vocation was clear, or that any evidence about our strange and sometimes miserable experience could give us an indication of what our purpose was. Reason nor revelation could deliver a clear and indisputable answer to the question of man’s vocation.5 Abbt provides a sort of solution by suggesting that we can develop a provisional morality by considering our specific vocation, beginning from individually meaningful actions. However, Abbt insists that this is merely provisional, as a placeholder, for the development of a morality on the objective reality of our, as yet unknowable, general purpose.6 Mendelssohn’s response, in turn, was a reaffirmation of Leibnizian-Wolffian metaphysical optimism. Mendelssohn insisted that historical analysis or natural tendency could not refute the idea that all world events were both factual and purposive.7 The problem with Abbt was that he took these two aspects (factual and purposive) to be distinct realms that could not determine each other. Abbt took factual events as separate in kind from their purposiveness, which remained unknowable. Against this, Mendelssohn doubled down on the idea of an ordered universe, saying, “The whole world is but an expression of the thoughts of God by signs that are identical with the things themselves. Every new form that comes into being is a

5 6

7

See AVW 5:298–9, and further Altmann (1973), pp. 132–3 and Pollok 2018, p. 230. For more detail see Pollok 2010, pp. 92–7 and Pollok 2017, pp. 75–9. Abbt’s relativizing tendency sounds like Rehberg’s solution as explained below. However, Abbt’s insistence that this morality remain provisional reveals that Abbt still conceived of his solution within the context of the necessity for knowledge of an absolute end. See Pollok 2020a and Pollok 2010, p. 87.

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thought of the infinite and as such indicates purposiveness. The animal moves and is sentient in conformity with the designs of God; and man’s actions, no matter how extravagant, likewise conform to the designs of the Almighty”. AVW 5:305–7

The point of this reaffirmation is that Abbt is assuming that the apparent absurdity of the world blocks us from deriving any specific purpose from it. However, Mendelssohn insists that world events themselves, no matter how apparently random they seem, contain an indication of an ultimate purpose. For Mendelssohn and the Leibnizian-Wolffian system, there was no strict separation between purposes of divine design and processes of change (AVW 5:308).8 Every event in the world is, by the very fact that it is brought into existence, a part of the divine purpose, or the divine design of a “most perfect world.” Thus, all beings, no matter how incomplete or imperfect, may still be said to have and fulfill their vocation within the perfect whole. Nothing fails in its purpose because everything conforms to a divine purpose. The point against Abbt was that this would mean that by contemplating on the purpose of any mundane thing, one could infer the whole, the divine design. The soldiers should have looked for clues in the events around them that pointed to their divine vocation. Mendelssohn continued to defend the human vocation against critics even after Abbt’s death in 1766. With the publication of his Phädon, Mendelssohn established himself as the “German Socrates” and also continued his thoughts on the human vocation despite the death of his dear friend. Phädon represents a continued defense of the Leibnizian-Wolffian metaphysical optimism, along with sustained arguments for main conclusions also drawn by Spalding, most notably the immortality of the soul. Thus, Mendelssohn continued to express and defend the notion of the human vocation as consisting in individual perfection within a divinely ordered universe, which is itself progressing towards perfection.9 Mendelssohn’s book was met with great praise but also criticism, with Herder taking up the mantle left open by Abbt’s death. Herder was initially enthusiastic about Mendelssohn’s Phädon but grew to have deep doubts about the project. 8

9

Altmann points out a difference between the Wolffian notion of nature of divine design that relies on a chain of causality and Mendelssohn, who insists that everything is at the same time a means and an end, Altmann 1973, p. 135. This, of course, does not mean that Mendelssohn’s view is reducible to Spalding’s or that Mendelssohn’s Phädon does not contain original content. However, for this sketch of the debate, it is necessary to take Mendelssohn as the defender of the Leibnizian-Wolffian metaphysical optimism of the Aufklärung.

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Herder’s letters to Mendelssohn in 1769 are a straightforward rejection of the purely spiritual perfection of the human soul. Herder insists that human nature could not merely aim at some absolute form of spiritual perfection and thus that the human vocation could not lie in freeing man from sensual perceptions.10 Our nature, Herder holds, contains as “mixed beings” both spirituality and sensuality, and thus our perfection cannot be oriented towards a picture of humanity void of sensuality altogether. Herder also rejects the idea of a detached human soul as a logical possibility and certainly as an appropriate picture of the perfection of mankind. Human nature, furthermore, cannot be viewed as steadily progressing towards perfection, but rather, human nature is in a continuous cycle of perfection and decrease: any perfection is sensitive/relative to the specific circumstances in which and for which it develops; once the situation changes, requirements for appropriate perfection change with it. The perfection of the human soul does not build upon previous stages of perfection, but rather every stage is a self-contained perfection that ultimately gives way to another. Thus, the proficiencies that we are meant to gain in the striving for perfection cannot be removed from the application and context in which they were developed. Therefore, [i]t is this condition [the condition in the present world] that determines the quality, the measure, and the proportion of the development. It is also that which determines utility and purpose. Take any single small proficiency: it presupposes a situation in which it was formed and for which it is meaningful. Remove the situation and application—and the proficiency disappears; it ceases to be a perfection. Herder 1977, I: p.178–9

Thus, perfections are only conceivable as applications or reactions to circumstances that call for perfection of certain faculties or powers. Herder’s main point of disagreement with Mendelssohn, then, is that perfection of human nature, and the faculties therein, can only be conceived as perfection in and for our given world. Thus, we enter into the world only to become perfect here, to increase and decrease, to learn and apply, to enjoy ourselves in the world. Mendelssohn obviously disagrees with this last statement, but Mendelssohn and Herder, throughout the exchange, insisted that they actually agreed on quite a lot. For instance, Mendelssohn concedes, in apparent contradiction with the Phädon, that he never meant to argue for the independence of a disembodied

10

See Altmann 1973, p. 170 and Pollok 2010, pp. 535–50.

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soul and that the body is indeed necessary, at every stage, for the human soul.11 Thus, Mendelssohn agrees that human nature is necessarily a mixed nature. Indeed, he even says that he considers the “sensual element in human nature the flower of its perfection,” and that a soul liberated from sensuality would be a mere chimera.12 This admission indeed brings the two thinkers closer. Herder, on his side, admits that he is convinced in the eternality and incorruptibility of the soul, and so can admit to some sort of eternal existence of the soul.13 So, the point is not that there is, or isn’t, an ethics of perfection of an immortal soul. Rather, the point seems to be about the scope of the ethics of perfection and where the proper context for perfection lies. As Fred Beiser puts it, the “sticking point” is that: Mendelssohn affirms and Herder denies that the ethics of perfection, insofar as it involves specific duties about which faculties are to develop, is extendable to the next life. Herder insists that the purpose of this life is entirely immanent, that nothing we do here can count as preparation for the next life. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, thinks that the purpose of life is not only immanent but transcendent, that we can prepare ourselves for the next life by developing our powers here and now, because the next life will be nothing more than a continuation of the development of the powers we have in this life. Beiser 2011a, p. 241

Within this context, it is easy to see why Mendelssohn thought that Herder would agree with him if he simply thought through his own principles. Herder’s commitment to the eternality of the soul and its purpose to perfect itself is hard to square with the idea that perfection is entirely a task for the here and now. Indeed, Herder insisted that the development of faculties could only develop in response to particular, unrepeatable situations and could therefore be of no use in the afterlife. This would seem to block any correspondence between thisworldly perfection of faculties and other-worldly perfection of faculties. But, as Mendelssohn argues, this simply takes too narrow a view of perfection. Surely some skills acquired in the here and now will be useless in the afterlife, but if we take a wide view of perfection, it seems likely that there will be some development 11 12

13

See Altmann 1973, pp. 171–2 and Beiser 2011a. AVW 5:487. Altmann seems to exaggerate the distance between Mendelssohn and Herder at this point, as Fred Beiser points out in Beiser 2011a, p. 240. Herder was not yet a full-blown Sturm und Drang convert and so Mendelssohn can acknowledge the common ground between them. Altmann is correct in his assessment that the point of disagreement between Mendelssohn and Herder is, therefore, not palingenesis. Mendelssohn seems unbothered by this possibility as long as each “return” is not a return to the exact same thing, but some progressively perfect thing (Altmann 1973, p. 174).

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made here in this life that will carry over to the next. Even if what we develop is defined in part by particular situations, this does not mean that certain skills we adapt are reducible to these situations.14 For instance, I might develop courage in situations particular to this-worldly contexts, and yet the gains I make in being courageous are surely not only applicable to those situations: courage is indeed a transferable skill. Unless Herder wants to deny transferable skills in general, it seems that Mendelssohn was correct to insist that they were very close to agreeing with each other. This does not mean, of course, that Herder’s view collapses into Mendelssohn’s, but only that Herder’s agreement with Mendelssohn about the eternality of the soul and the human vocation in perfection made it difficult to deny that there are some perfections that we acquire in this world that are not reducible to this-worldly use. The exchanges between Mendelssohn and critics of his version of the human vocation in the 1760s show that there were doubts about the Leibnizian-Wolffian version of the human vocation. However, Abbt had not been able to fully articulate his position by the time of his death. Herder, though making important and relevant objections, ultimately ends up very close to Mendelssohn’s own position. In the next section, I will argue that although Rehberg incorporates the critiques by both Abbt and Herder, he goes well beyond them, and couches his critique in a wider rejection of Leibnizian metaphysics.

I B Rehberg’s Critique of the Human Vocation After Kant’s critique of Wolffian metaphysics, the foundation for the human vocation shifted from the knowledge of divine intent to pure practical reason.15 Rehberg, despite his relative obscurity today, was considered by J.B. Jachmann, Kant’s friend and biographer, as “the finest head among all your students.”16 From the 1780s, Rehberg studied the Kantian philosophy, attracted to it as a result of his own skepticism regarding the metaphysical excesses of the Wolffians before the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781.

14

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Altmann also points out that Mendelssohn was trying to distinguish between two types of perfection, this-worldly, and the perfection of the totality of the person. But, Altmann thinks that Mendelssohn was wrong to think that this could bring Herder and himself into agreement given that “the conflict was between two fundamentally different existential attitudes” (Altmann 1973, p. 174). Altmann overstates here. Herder was not so far apart to be able to recognize the tension between his own admitted agreement with Mendelssohn and the attempt to limit perfection to immanent perfection. See Lyssy 2018 and Zöller 2001. Jachmann to Kant, October 14, 1790, AA 11:211.

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As early as 1779, Rehberg’s skepticism towards the Leibnizian system can be seen in an essay for the Berlin Academy, which was a criticism of the ability of Leibniz to explain the metaphysical nature of forces (Kräfte), but his aim was much more general.17 Rehberg’s aim was to point out the futility of metaphysical theorizing by pointing out that attempting to follow through on Leibnizian, or any dogmatic metaphysics, results ultimately in Spinozism.18 A year later, Rehberg anonymously published a short book titled Cato. Here, he takes the human vocation (Bestimmung des Menschen) as the explicit topic of discussion. In a much later reflection on his works, he recognized Cato as a youthful first attempt at the skepticism that would define his later career.19 Thus, it is perhaps here, in his explicit attempt at the question of the human vocation, that Rehberg’s trajectory was set. The work itself is a reimagined version of Plutarch’s story of the death of Cato at Utica. Rehberg admits that the work was meant to see if his attraction to the Platonic system in general, and the dialogue in Phaedon in particular, could be overcome “by the power of a stoic mind and way of thinking” (Rehberg Schriften I, 19). Despite never directly referencing Mendelssohn’s Phädon, Rehberg must have had Mendelssohn’s incredibly popular work in mind when couching his thoughts on the human vocation into a dialogue about the merits of Plato’s Phaedon.20 Indeed, Rehberg was much too young to have participated in the human vocation debate directly, and he never admits that Cato is a direct commentary on the debate. But, Rehberg was familiar with Mendelssohn and

17

18

19

20

Rehberg (1779) Abhandlungen über das Wesen und die Einschränkungen der Kräfte. Rehberg’s defense of Leibniz at the end only comes at the very end and Rehberg later admitted that adding this hat-tip to the Leibniz was in reaction to the Leibnizians in the Berlin Academy who would be judging the essay. See also Rehberg Schriften I, p. 7. Rehberg claimed that he was the first to make this claim: “I was one of the first, perhaps even the first, of those that directed to the depths of his [Spinoza’s] metaphysical ideas, and the consequentiality of his conclusions, the admiration that has since become a kind of fashion in German philosophy” (Rehberg Schriften I, p. 7, cit. Di Giovanni 2005 p. 322 no. 34). Rehberg Schriften I, pp. 19–20. To my knowledge, this work by Rehberg has been almost universally ignored. There is no doubt because of the timing of it. It is much later than the human vocation debates that it clearly references and is also very early in Rehberg’s career (before his defining review of Kant and Reinhold’s work). However, as I will argue, writing off this piece as a stale rehashing of old debates, or as an unoriginal, youthful attempt, misses the particularity of Rehberg’s position in the criticisms of the human vocation. See Rehberg Schriften I, p. 20. Cato was conceived after sitting down and reading the Phädon. It is possible that Rehberg’s reference to “Phädon” is meant to represent both the dialogues of Plato and Mendelssohn’s book as well, serving to underline the way in which Rehberg sought to avoid rehashing old debates while being clearly influenced by them. Indeed, the fourth edition of Phädon was released only in 1776, with reprints in 1778 and 1780.

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interacted with his works and Herder’s.21 In essence, Mendelssohn’s book was too famous, and the parallels in Rehberg’s Cato too obvious, to think that Rehberg was not consciously commenting on the human vocation debate. Rehberg’s Cato is set up as the Stoic Socrates who, after reading Plato’s Phaedon argues with his friends about the relevance and truth of human vocation, the immortality of the soul, and the source of virtue. Rehberg’s dialogue is in certain ways a continuation of the criticisms of Mendelssohn’s position by Abbt and Herder, but also the beginnings of a more radical position. Rehberg follows Abbt in the unknowability of some divine purpose and the forlornness of the human predicament. For Rehberg, there is an unbridgeable divide between this-worldly and the other-worldly. Rehberg insists that there are no inferences that we can make about the status, actuality, or direction of the soul, or anything else beyond the actual affairs of our this-worldly life. Demetrius, Cato’s opponent, attempts to argue from the vocation of simpler organisms, plants, to the human vocation by insisting that plants, like all creatures, have a duration of existence appropriate to their powers. Despite the apparent existence of a divine plan, Rehberg’s Cato denies that we can know even the vocation of germs, which seem to perish arbitrarily and with undeveloped powers just as human beings do (Rehberg 1780, pp. 22–3). If we remain in the dark even in the case of the vocation of this simple creature, then how can we make claims about the destiny of an infinitely more complicated creature such as human beings? Notice that, on Rehberg’s picture, the response that was open to Mendelssohn in response to Abbt’s story is no longer available. Mendelssohn suggested that Abbt’s soldiers could have looked around and made inferences from their daily tasks, from their surroundings, which could have led them to the conclusion of their vocation. Demetrius’s argument follows a similar direction from simpler and contingent purposes to the ultimate purpose (Rehberg 1780, pp. 21–2). But, Rehberg here denies that we can even know the purpose of our simpler surroundings. We cannot establish the purpose of the simplest creature, a germ or seed, and so cannot get our inferences off the ground. Therefore, Rehberg seems to defend a more dramatic division between this world and the next, where there is simply no path, inferential or otherwise, to any knowledge of our vocation. Rehberg’s Cato also gives responses that sound similar to Herder’s. Rehberg insists, like Herder, that the human vocation cannot be conceived as referring to a disembodied soul. From the very beginning, Rehberg’s Cato denies that a 21

See Rehberg Schriften I, pp. 267, 56–65.

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human being’s vocation is disconnected from their body (Rehberg 1780, pp. 1–3). Indeed, while giving a half-hearted affirmation of the immortality of the soul, he denies, like Herder, that immortality has anything to do with the human vocation. In fact, in the very beginning, Rehberg’s Cato just flat-out blocks what he calls “speculative” thinking about metaphysical doctrines about the soul (Rehberg 1780, p. 1). Instead, we must start from the way that the perfection of powers looks from the perspective of individual human beings. Let us therefore leave it to the poets to make images of what the Godhead is capable of. We always want to philosophize from the world. It is the safer way. All that you can say without becoming a poet, therefore, will be that after the death of this body, man will still keep an invisible body, or will receive a new one similar to the present one, to eat away the life begun here. But how many difficulties arise here from the very contemplation of the world to which I referred earlier? All spiritual powers we are searching for depend on the condition of the body. Its illnesses become illnesses of the mind, and especially the memory of what has happened to us so far, whereby we alone remain the same people, is subject to all the changes that the brain suffers. It passes away and comes again with the diseases of the same – so it also goes down, with the decay of the physical tool. Rehberg 1780, pp. 16–17

Here Rehberg insists that if we start from the world, we will see that there is a radical connection between those spiritual powers that are meant to consist in our perfection and the state of the body. The contingent aspects of human beings that the ethics of perfection would seek to overcome are in fact necessarily connected to the supposed “spiritual” powers. Rehberg includes even temperament and “way of thinking” (Denkungsart) as aspects that, far from being obstacles to the development of perfection, actually shape what perfection consists of. Thus, perfection in the Platonic sense is a picture of the perfect human being only for a select few who have the temperament, outlook, and status to embark on a path of contemplative virtue. Rehberg’s Cato laments that such a picture of perfection immediately and arbitrarily excludes people with differing temperaments and engaged in active and demanding professions. Given that this diversity of temperaments, ways of thinking, and circumstances is an obvious and essential feature of human nature, a single picture of human perfection seems impossible and undesirable. For Rehberg, this implies that perfection and imperfection can only be understood as internal consistency and inconsistency respectively. In other words, the human being should live in line with their individually defined

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purpose, and this internal consistency is what perfection is. Rehberg’s Cato insists, [t]hat is perfection of man, when everything agrees to a whole, when all his powers are so balanced against each other that they are all at his command, to carry out what seems to him the highest purpose of his existence; when such unity and agreement is in him, thereby everything he feels, enjoys, does, leads to the one purpose, approaches the image which day and night are in mind for him, to become like it, is the supreme aspiration of all his powers. And this perfection is not the gift of a blind chance or a good deity. Man must create it for himself, and that is what increases its value so much. Rehberg 1780, p. 35

Rehberg’s main thesis, then, is that not only is the perfection of man a thisworldly endeavor, but that perfection is a creation of man, defined by his particular temperament, way of thinking, and circumstances. Indeed, Rehberg’s Cato seems to suggest that perfection is only valuable insofar as it is self-created, and not something that is externally thrust upon human beings from “blind chance or a good deity.” The human vocation is then to strive for this self-made perfection through the habitual development of the skills that allow him to act in accordance with his picture of perfection. Rehberg responds to the deep divide he sees between the present world and divine purpose by not only relocating perfection as a worldly endeavor, but also insisting that the concept of perfection is itself a this-worldly creation. This seems to go beyond Herder in arguing not only that this worldly perfection is the only reasonable goal for mankind, but also that perfection, in order to be a valuable goal at all, needs to be our own creation.22 This extra step seems to block the way in which Mendelssohn seeks to collapse Herder’s view into his own. By insisting that perfection is both created and pursued in this world, there can be no correspondence between the perfections of this world and the next. Furthermore, given the radical connection between body and soul, even if, as Mendelssohn concedes, I am given a new body in the next world, this would radically change the picture of perfection that I take to be valuable. So, unlike the apparent agreement between Herder and Mendelssohn, Rehberg insists that there is not even a clear goal of perfection that the two worlds share. The idea of perfection is something that arises out of the essential connection between this 22

It might be the case that Herder might have agreed that perfection was a creation of mankind and that striving for perfection should be understood as a coherence between one’s self-made perfection and actions. However, as far as I know, Herder is never explicit about this point in relation to the human vocation.

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body and this soul and, because it is a product of this composite, cannot be applied beyond it. We should now be able to see that Rehberg’s ex post facto critique of the human vocation is more radical than Herder and Abbt, and so represents a distinct critique of the ethics of perfection in the human vocation debate despite its later date. Rehberg continued in the 1780s to build a more sophisticated critique of metaphysical speculation, especially in the realms of ethics and religion.23 Rehberg builds upon his early critiques, doubling down on his endorsement of Spinoza and critiques of Leibniz-Wolffian metaphysics. In this, Kant became a great ally. Indeed, as Di Giovanni claims, Rehberg saw Kant’s critical metaphysics as “a more consistent form of Spinozism.”24 Rehberg saw Kantian critical system as having the potential to end metaphysics altogether by flatly denying access to the thing-in-itself and arguing for autonomous moral principles independent of religion or metaphysics.25 But, in Rehberg’s mind, Kant had stopped short by still maintaining that the law by itself could be efficacious for action. In moral theory, Kant insists that the highest moral principle is sufficient for the determination of action.26 Kant thereby re-enters the realm of speculative metaphysics and misses the main lesson from Spinoza: “that any representation can explain its object only within the limits of its particular level of abstraction” (Di Giovanni 2005, p. 129). Rather, in order to explain particular moral actions we must look to particular principles established at the level of experience, where moral action actually occurs. Kant had wrongly tried to paint the idea of law as a causal force in defining actual content, rather, Rehberg argues, one should try to define how the moral ideal is reflected in the level of actual experience. The formal principle of morality, reflected in the immanent world, amounts only to the requirement that my desires harmonize with the satisfaction of my own desires and the desires of any immediate others. Importantly, this principle of harmony still transcends any particular system of desires or picture of perfection, implying that the adherence to this principle constitutes only one world among many. The 23

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This is done mainly through Rehberg’s contribution to the Spinoza controversy in 1787, Über der Verhältniβ der Metaphysik zur Religion and his review of Kant’s Second Critique in the Algemeine Literatur Zeitung 188 (August 6, 1788), which Rehberg reprinted in his Sämmtliche Schriften I, pp. 61–84. Di Giovanni 2005, 129. Ibid. See also Karin De Boer 2020 for an in-depth argument that Kant was not interested in ending metaphysics at all, as Rehberg thought he ought to. Cf. Rehberg’s review of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason in Sämmtliche Schriften I, pp. 75–79. “It appears indeed, as if by the words universal law, more is being meant than the action itself to which the law is adapted in each case. But this universality indicates only a negative determination . . .” (ibid., 78).

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connection to the human vocation is unmistakable. The picture of perfection is not a transcendent law that determines the cultivation of certain faculties or certain conduct. Rather, perfection is merely a formal criterion to act in a systematically consistent way. The content of this system is necessarily the creation of acting human beings in the world, who create the picture of perfection they seek to realize. Thus, Rehberg’s critique of the human vocation was grounded on an increasingly sophisticated anti-metaphysical skepticism that saw any attempt to impose purely metaphysical insights on actual conduct as mere speculation. Rehberg attempted to maintain, however, a notion of a “highest principle of morality” in the same way that he tried to maintain a version of perfection. But, these abstract notions in Rehberg’s thought were empty concepts, unable to determine, by themselves, even the smallest corner of phenomenal life. In what remains of this chapter, I will turn to the context in which Rehberg is best known: the French Revolution. Here I will show the general structure of the debate, as well as Rehberg’s contribution. I will argue, then, that Rehberg and the other contributors in the theory-practice debate actually reformulate the human vocation debate within a political context.

II The Theory-Practice Debate II A The Question of Theory and Practice Four years after the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the question of the relationship of theory to practice had become a central question for those who feared or welcomed the influence of the French Revolution in the rest of Europe. The discussion among public intellectuals in Germany surrounded the implications of Kant’s critical morality for real-world politics.27 Rehberg had already, in his Untersuchungen in early 1793, launched an attack on what he called “speculative politics,” which attempted to build a constitution derived from rational principles “hovering in the air.”28 Rehberg condemned armchair politicians who had none of the essential historical and empirical knowledge

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For a more detailed account of the environment surrounding Kant’s publication than I can give here, see Maliks 2014, pp. 42–9 and Beiser 1994, pp. 38–44, 54–6. See Rehberg 1793, pp.19, 55.

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necessary for statecraft (Rehberg 1793, pp. 12–17, 53–4). This led him to his infamous claim that “metaphysics” had caused the French Revolution (Rehberg 1793, p. 57).29 Johann Gottlieb Fichte attempted to defend what he took to be Kant’s approach to politics in the pamphlet Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought in the spring and the first installment of the Contribution to the Correction of the Public’s Judgments on the French Revolution in May 1793.30 Fichte’s writings were a sustained attack on Rehberg, which develops Kant’s early arguments in the What is Enlightenment? essay by making the state instrumental for preserving and promoting moral autonomy. Fichte insists that a system of law can only be justified through the actual consent of the governed through a historical social contract.31 In September of 1793, Kant’s essay “On the common saying: That it may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice” appeared in the Berlinische Monatsschrift. As the above context shows, this question was immediately seen as addressing the political climate of the early 1790s. But, Kant’s essay does not directly address the conversation being held in his absence. Rather, Kant only addresses one living contemporary (Christian Garve32) and addresses the relevant topics of revolution and state authority with reference to many surrounding nations (Switzerland, United Netherlands, Great Britain, AA 8:301), while excluding discussion of the situation in France. Kant’s introduction to the essay is the most direct address to the problem of theory and practice. Kant admits that there needs to be a middle term between theory and practice, judgment, which cannot be reduced to theory (AA 8:275). Judgment is an art that must be gained by experience, and therefore well-honed judgment is a necessary supplement for theory. But, Kant says that in cases in which the newly educated physician finds theory lacking, he simply needs more theory (ibid). By

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Frederick Rauscher (see his introduction to “Drafts for Theory and Practice,” in Lectures and Drafts in Political Philosophy, Cambridge 2014) claims that this is one of the two possible triggers that prompted Kant to write the TP essay after declining Johann Carl Spener, who suggested Kant revise his Idea for History with a Cosmopolitan Aim in view of the present circumstances (AA 11:415–16), in March of 1793 (AA 11:417). The other possible trigger was the comments by Abraham Gotthelf Kästner, a professor of mathematics who thought it ridiculous that philosophers thought their ideas would have any impact on the state. Regardless of whether Kant was triggered by one, both, or neither, he clearly had the comments in mind when drafting the TP essay where he refers to “the recent but unanswered accusation against metaphysics that it could be a cause of revolution against the state” (AA 23:127). Kant also had hope that Fichte would complete a critical metaphysics of right so that he could stop working on the Metaphysics of Morals (AA 11:434). Kant, however, continued on, developing his metaphysics of right in a different direction. Fichte, Beitrag 1793, pp. 5–7. Kant was responding to Garve’s arguments in his 1792 Versuche über verschniedene Gegenstände aus der Moral und Literatur, part I, pp. 111–16. See AA 8:278.

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this Kant means that we need to use experience to gain more rules to add into the systematic whole of our theory. Practical proficiency, Kant claims, is impossible without the building and application of a systematic theory. Therefore, Kant’s system is straightforwardly a defense of theory over practice. Perhaps more precisely, a defense of the necessity of theory for practice. Kant says that particularly in moral theory,“the worth of practice rests entirely on its conformity with the theory underlying it” (AA 8:277). In the context of morality, Kant defends his moral system against Garve. After dismissing two of his minor misunderstandings, Kant comes to his main disagreement.33 Garve’s criticism is that the distinction between duty and happiness “disappears completely when it comes to acting, when they [duty and happiness] are to be applied to desires and purposes” (AA 8:286). This Kant “loudly and zealously contradict[s]” (AA 8:285). He insists that the concept of duty is written on the hearts of all and can be clearly seen when we act in accordance with duty against or at least not clearly for, the promotion of our happiness. Thus, in the notion that we overcome our own sentiments through the representation of duty, we already understand the distinction. Kant concludes: [t]hat the human being is aware that he can do this because he ought to disclose within him the depth of the divine predispositions and let him feel, as it were, a holy awe at the greatness and sublimity of his true vocation (wahren Bestimmung). AA 8:287–8

Thus, the awareness of our ability to overcome sensible desires points us to our divine vocation for the (perfect) fulfillment of our duty. The second part of the essay, on politics, is the most applicable to the contemporary context and also the most complex. I will focus on the way Kant justifies his overall claim. Kant apparently positions himself against Hobbes in order to argue for the primacy of a theory of right over political practice.34 In parallel to the concept of duty in the first section, Kant argues that: [t]he concept of an external right as such proceeds entirely from the concept of freedom in external relations of people to one another and has nothing at all to do with the end that all of them have naturally (their aim of happiness) and the means prescribed for attaining it. AA 8:289

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See Ludwig 2007, p. 187 and Timmerman 2007, pp. 172–3. Though some scholars have taken Kant at his word (Riley 2007), there are many others who have pointed to Kant’s aim to address more contemporary opponents, as I have briefly mentioned above (Rauscher 2016; Maliks 2014).

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Right in politics, therefore, cannot be based on the general welfare of human beings, nor their striving towards happiness, but rather it must be based on the a priori concept of freedom. Right thus should be understood as the “limitation of freedom of each to the condition of its harmony with the freedom of everyone insofar as this is possible in accordance with universal law” (AA 8:290). Thus, the civil condition is seen as a condition in which free beings are brought into harmony under external coercive laws. This condition is ruled by three a priori principles under which alone the establishment of a rightful state is possible: the freedom of every member as a human being, the equality of every member as a subject, and their independence as a citizen. Taken together, in the form of an original contract, Kant develops the idea of a perfect state that ought to determine the legitimacy of constitutional and positive law (AA 8:302).35 And this also should determine the conditions in which empirical ends (happiness) can be pursued. The third part of the essay is a criticism of Mendelssohn, in which Kant claims that Mendelssohn denies that there can be steady progress of the human race as a whole. As we have seen above, Mendelssohn believes that the progress towards perfection is necessary for the individual, but Kant takes issue with his skepticism about the steady progress of the species as a whole. Kant (quite unfairly to Mendelssohn) reduces the question of the progress of the human race to another: “Are there in human nature predispositions from which one can gather that the race will always progress toward what is evil and that the evil of present and past times will disappear in the good of future times?” (AA 8:307).36 Here Kant’s answer is clear, since in the first part of the essay he had already pointed to the “divine predispositions,” which point him to his “true vocation” (AA 8:288). As he says a bit later, Kant rests his case on “my innate duty” that I ought to (and so can) progress myself and the world towards its moral end, its moral vocation, in moving ever closer towards a more perfect internal and external state (AA 8:309). Kant’s reasoning here seems to be that because each of us has a moral

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As is well known, Kant defends the unconditional obligation to obey a state even if it falls into despotism (AA 8:305–6). But, here we are only looking at a general picture. However, it is worth noting that Rehberg insists that Kant’s rational approach is at odds with his attempt to block the right of revolution, since placing the conditions of legitimacy in a priori principles suggests that states that do not conform to, or even reject, these principles are no longer legitimate (Rehberg, On the Relationship between Theory and Practice, p. 112). This is unfair to Mendelssohn for a number of reasons, but the one that is starkly set in relief in this paper is that it underappreciates (if not just ignores) Mendelssohn’s affirmation of the progress of individual dispositions in accordance with a divine plan. Therefore, Mendelssohn’s denial of Lessing’s linear progress of the human race was obviously more complicated than this simplistic rendering (see Flikschuh 2007).

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vocation and an innate duty to better the world, we can assume that the state of the world will steadily move closer to the moral ideal. Now, despite the large differences between Mendelssohn and Kant, and despite Kant’s general skepticism of the rational perfectionism of the Wolffians, Kant’s essay seems to invoke, at every step, an ideal of rational perfection that is meant to determine the material ends of the human being. Thus, Kant, in the dispute over theory and practice, seems to advocate a position that, to skeptics of the ethics of perfection, looks dangerously similar to the old perfectionism of Wolff as expressed by Mendelssohn.37 The main normative direction is the same: Kant insists that there is an a priori realm in which the rational ideal is defined and then in turn determines the direction men ought to develop. Part three of Kant’s essay even mimics the function of immortality in the human vocation debates: because there is a duty (vocation) to strive towards moral selfimprovement, our opportunity for improvement must extend beyond our own time on earth. Putting aside the complications of Kant’s position, it was clearly taken by his critics as a dangerous defense of a political rationalism that determined the actions of mankind under a universal picture of moral-political perfection. Two replies to Kant’s essay appeared quickly in the Berlinische Monatsschrift, the first by Friedrich von Gentz (1764–1832) in December 1793 and by Rehberg in February 1794, both criticizing Kants excessive commitment to a priori principles.38 In addition to these “conservative” responses, there was also the more “radical” Kantians who were puzzled by Kant’s rejection of a right to revolution.39 However, here we will turn to look at Rehberg’s response that again represents a distinct view among the criticisms.

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This should not be taken to downplay the ways in which Kant’s essay was also a disappointment to the liberal Kantians, such as Fichte, who would have been surprised that the realm of right and politics was not developed in the direction of moral autonomy and was surely shocked at what can only be described as Kant’s conservativism with respect to the authority of the state. See Maliks 2014, pp. 112–16. See Henrich 1967 and Dietrich 1989 for more on Gentz. In addition to these two there is also a critique by Justus Möser written in 1793, which remained unpublished until 1798 (see Möser 1793). Here. Möser insists that Kant does not take into account what a community could accept as law is dependent on empirical factors that shape what they find acceptable in practice. Although we cannot elaborate on Möser’s fascinating response here, it is worth noting that Rehberg was deeply influenced by Möser and no doubt agreed with him on this point. See Vogel 1972, pp. 62–5, 137–40, and Maliks 2014, Ch. 2. These include Johann Benjamin Erhard (1766–1827) and Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob (1759–1827). See Maliks 2013.

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II B Rehberg’s Critique of Political Theory Rehberg’s criticism, though the first time Rehberg was given the opportunity to address Kant’s philosophy in an explicitly political context, was a continuation of Rehberg’s overarching critique of the ability for a priori principles to determine practice directly. Rehberg’s essay follows Kant’s three-part structure, criticizing the prioritization of theory over practice in morality, right, and cosmopolitanism.40 In the case of morality, Rehberg accepts that the highest moral law, which he takes as Kant’s Formula of Universal Law, is a valid a priori rational law. However, the problem is that this law can only be formal. The highest fundamental law of morality cannot be anything other than a formal one, precisely because it must originate from pure laws of reason.—This highest law, which Professor Kant puts perfectly well as: Act in such a way that the maxim of your will can always be considered as a principle of universal legislation, is sufficient as a rule for the moral evaluations of human decisions. Everything that I can will everyone be allowed or commanded to do in the same circumstances, is unfailingly allowed or commanded of me as well. However, from this rule of assessment, no objective determination of human actions, on which a system of individually determined duties could be built, can be derived. That rule only says that reason should govern all human endeavors, but not what the purpose of those endeavors should be. To this last question no answer can be derived from the pure law of reason itself other than this: complete agreement of all purposes—so again, something merely formal, whereby the duties in view of their objects are not determined. Rehberg 1794, p. 11741

Thus, Rehberg insists that the law of morality can only legislate that whatever system of purposes we have, those purposes must be in agreement with one another, or, in other words, that the system we choose be a consistent one. However, in order to get concrete duties, we must add to the formal law something empirical and concrete, which Rehberg calls “the expression of freedom in a sensible world, the act of free power in a sensible substance” (Rehberg 1794, p. 119). After all, human beings are not purely rational, but are also sensible beings that act in accordance with arbitrary purposes in circumstances that they

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Rehberg’s response was originally printed in Berlinische Monatsschrift 23, 1794, pp. 114–43 and reprinted in Henrich 1967. Here I will cite Henrich’s edition, following my own translation of the essay (Rehberg 2020). See also Gregory, forthcoming, for more detail on this point.

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did not choose. Thus, attempting to apply the highest rational principle to the sensible external actions of human beings in general in order to create a comprehensive system of moral action is hopeless. This is equally the case in external rights, where some material substance needs to be added to the formal, moral law in order to give us concrete determinations of right. Rehberg insists that, in order to get the a priori rational constitution that Kant wants, Kant would have to prove the possibility of some metaphysically perfect property that would give the formal law an a priori object.42 But, . . . such a property does not exist anywhere in our world. The physical laws to which rational beings are subject in their association with sensibility create conditions which they cannot escape; and this eliminates the possibility of an absolutely unconditional property. Rehberg 1794, p. 122

The sensible nature of human beings means that we are subject to physical laws that shape our purposes and desires. These empirically defined purposes, shaped by circumstance and arbitrarily acquired property, give us the material that we can then build into a consistent system. As Rehberg says elsewhere, “[i]t is the Human Vocation to control the nature that surrounds him” (Rehberg Schriften I, p. 89). Thus, the basic laws of civil society should be derived from the “observation and experience of the needs and conduct of human beings in civil circumstances,” and so are derived not from necessity but from judgments about what is beneficial (Rehberg 1794, p. 127). To ignore this fact about human nature (that we necessarily express our freedom in the sensible world) is to give laws for civil society that can only be valid for “a republic of gods,” (ibid) since such laws cannot be for human beings with both rational and sensible natures. Thus, the only option is to look for inevitably arbitrarily situated human beings to create a system of civil laws based on situated judgments about what is beneficial in their circumstances.43 Rehberg equally dismisses Kant’s treatment of cosmopolitanism as hopelessly naïve if his principles cannot even determine a priori justice on the rational level. In addition, in the international sphere, there is no way to determine the trajectory of the moral world simply because this comprehensive picture of an a priori moral system is unfounded.44 42 43

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Maliks 2014, pp. 70–6 and Gregory, forthcoming. See also Gregory, forthcoming. Here I give an overview of how Kant responded to Rehberg’s critiques and argue that Kant comes closer to Rehberg’s own insistence on the relationship between sensible and rational components in politics. This does not mean that Rehberg could not have an idea of cosmopolitanism that is based on the mutual agreement of nations in accordance within their natural circumstances. He hints at this in the review (Rehberg 1794, p. 130).

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Rehberg’s critique is obviously a continuation of his previous critiques of both Kantian formalism and Mendelssohnian perfectionism. Although the idea of moral perfection in Kant is sufficient to require that all purposes are in agreement, this formal doctrine is compatible with all sorts of systems of purposes that must ultimately be shaped and defined by circumstantial, empirical factors. These factors allow us to create for ourselves, in the weaving together of our given purposes, a coherent system to which we can strive to become more in conformity with. As Rehberg sums it up, “[t]hinking is the Human Vocation (Bestimmung des Menschen), not knowledge: one may take this vocation as one wills” (Rehberg Schriften I, p. 268). By “thinking” (Denken), Rehberg means to point out that the human vocation is one that is built out of the world, by the interaction of our judgments with the specific and inescapable circumstances with which we are confronted. Therefore, opposed to what was meant, on the Kantian picture, to be a comprehensive picture of civil law based on a priori valid principles of practical reason, Rehberg erects a picture in which various equally valid systems of civil law are possible under the formal principle of morality.

III Conclusion In conclusion, I will briefly look at the way in which the two debates that we covered, the human vocation debate and the theory-practice debate, are similar in both structure and content. In this paper, I have attempted to show the similarities of both debates by tracking the contribution of A.W. Rehberg, who offered his own distinct form of skepticism to both debates. In the debate over the human vocation, Mendelssohn defended the enlightenment view about man’s vocation as a divine calling to cultivate certain faculties in order to perfect the eternal soul. This view attempted to lay out an ethics of perfection in view of our higher, rational soul. As we saw above, Mendelssohn defended Spalding’s view against the doubts of both Abbt and Herder, who questioned the prioritization of a disembodied, rational soul, and wondered how we could know or define a standard of perfection apart from our situated world. I then attempted to show that Rehberg contributed a distinct view, though years later. Rehberg insisted that the universal picture of perfection is both ignorant of the way in which we form our purposes and desires and also exclusionary of pictures of perfection that do not adhere to the rationalist/

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contemplative picture. Instead, perfection is itself a creation of this world, something that man stitches together from his situated desires and purposes. Perfection, as Rehberg puts it, is simply the agreement between my various desires. In the theory and practice debate, despite the many differences between them, Kant takes up the mantle of the ethics of perfection. Indeed, Kant speaks of moral perfection, or a state of perfect external right, but the movement is essentially the same. Kant’s vocation is towards the perfect fulfillment of duty or right, for which human beings have universal predispositions. For Rehberg and his other conservative critiques, this is just a reiteration of the ethics of perfection. Again, they would say, we have a version of perfection that is both naive about the way in which moral purposes are adopted and also exclusive of various forms of moral and political perfection. Indeed, in the introduction to the second volume of his Sämmtliche Schriften, Rehberg insists that the problem with Rousseau, the intellectual father of the French Revolution, is that he “had misled his readers in their ideas of the Human Vocation (Bestimmung des Menschen) in the world” (Rehberg Schriften II, p. 4).45 Rehberg’s critique is the same as his critique in 1780, though perhaps armed with more sophisticated tools. The a priori principle can only tell us that our purposes must be in agreement, but not what those purposes should be. This formality gives rise to various forms of political life that, if coherent, are equally valid. Rehberg’s picture of perfection, again, must be built from the situated desires and purposes we are given into a coherent whole through prudential judgments. In the 1790s, the debate on the human vocation takes on a political tone. It is no longer the picture of perfection for a human soul, but pertains civil laws in political communities. But, the structure between the two debates is similar, a central figure advocating a perfectionist view, while more radical thinkers raise substantial doubts. More importantly, the two debates are similar in content. Both are an exchange about the merits or possibility of applying a theory of perfection removed from historical and anthropological concerns to actual societies of men, despite their inherent differences. In both debates what is at stake is the nature of mankind and what kinds of principles, political or ethical, are appropriate to him.

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Furthermore, given that Rehberg says that Kant is essentially Rousseau with different language (Rehberg 1794, p. 127), this critique could be extended to Kant.

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Rehberg finds this later political manifestation even more absurd than the old ethics of perfection. Political communities are defined by essentially arbitrary external action that makes the idea of a divine and universal vocation in the political realm undefinable and useless. With the contemporary philosopher Alistair MacIntyre, Rehberg might be seen to be asking in both debates: “Who’s vocation, Which man”?46

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This is taken from the title of MacIntyre’s book Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Although a comparison with Rehberg’s theory is obviously out of the scope of this discussion, MacIntyre’s traditionalist approach to neoliberal theories of justice is reminiscent of Rehberg’s critique.

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Religious Anthropology and Pluralism: Herder on the Bildung of Humanity1 Niels Wildschut

Johann Gottfried Herder’s Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (1774, This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity) has led discussions about the vocation of the human being in a decidedly historical direction. Not only did it install a German tradition of formulating grand philosophies of history (including Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, and Karl Marx), Herder also formulated the historicist account of human nature, which would be expanded upon by J.G. Droysen, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Wilhelm Dilthey. He did so by stating: human nature is no divinity self-sufficient in goodness – it has to learn everything, be formed through progressions, step ever further in gradual struggle [. . .] in a certain respect each human perfection is national, generational [säkular, M.F.], and, considered most exactly, individual. People form to greater fullness only [Man bildet nichts aus, als, N.W.] what time, clime, need, world, fate give occasion for. Herder 2002, p. 294, translation modified; FHA 4:35

In the early twentieth-century German debates about the crises of modernity, Auch eine Philosophie was interpreted as the “Grundbuch des Historismus” (Stadelmann, 1928, Meinecke, [1936] 1946), inaugurating an extreme historical relativism. In the Anglophone history of ideas, Isaiah Berlin has similarly popularized Herder as one of the first thinkers to recognize the incommensurability of value-systems and to challenge the universalist foundations of Western thought (1976, pp. xxii–iv). Apart from the label “relativism,” Berlin connects Herder’s ideas to the philosophical doctrine of “pluralism” (1990, pp. 70–90). Both subsequently found their advocates in the secondary literature on Herder’s views on human 1

Work on this paper was supported by the European Research Council (Project: The Emergence of Relativism, Grant number: 339382). Unless otherwise indicated translations are my own.

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nature and the historical and cultural diversity of moral, political, and aesthetic values. In this paper, I present a different angle on Herder’s understanding of human nature and of the vocation of humanity. I focus on his biblical hermeneutics of the period 1766–1776. My claim is that Auch eine Philosophie, rather than anticipating the crisis of historicism, in fact expresses a theological understanding of humanity and its vocation within history. I will substantiate this claim by identifying the main historical and anthropological ideas that Herder formulates within his early biblical hermeneutics, and by exhibiting that his 1774 philosophy of history builds upon these ideas.2 I conclude that, from this angle, we should not interpret Herder as a relativist. Accordingly, his pluralism appears to be of a more deflated sort than Berlin and others think. I start by discussing recent attempts in Herder scholarship to situate his concept of humanity vis-à-vis his historicism, pluralism, and/or relativism. Subsequently, I reconstruct the central argument of Herder’s early writings on the book of Genesis: I present his hermeneutic approach to the Hebrew Bible and I interpret his thesis regarding Genesis 1 as the oldest document, ultimate origin, and prototype of human culture. Thirdly, I analyze the conclusions that Herder draws from his biblical interpretation regarding the human vocation. I submit that because of his optimistic interpretation of the Fall, Herder holds that the vocation of humankind lies within rather than beyond history: it is to develop humanity into the greatest possible diversity of human forms, and to integrate these into a more general (ideal, sacred) humanity. The historical process, through which the human being may fulfill its vocation, is the Bildung (development, education, formation) of humanity. Finally, I argue that in his Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, Herder adopts exactly this position. Since it derives from his monogenetic, metaphysical theory of the prototype, I conclude that Herder’s pluralism has a monistic basis and a universalistic tendency.

I Herder’s Concept of Humanity The debates over Herder’s relativism and pluralism often take as a starting point his stressing the historical diversity and individuality of cultures and their values.

2

Previous interpreters of Herder who observed this link include Pfaff 1983, vom Hofe 1984, 1987, and Menze 2000.

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Scholars generally agree, furthermore, that his concept of humanity—particularly as he develops it in Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784– 1791, Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humankind) and Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität (1793–1797, Letters for the Advancement of Humanity)—circumscribes the possible extension of historical diversity. Berlin influentially argued that for Herder, the “recognizably human”—i.e., whether people are still “fully human for us”—limits Herder’s pluralism of values ([1980] 1990, pp. 83–4, 87). Important studies by Vicki Spencer (2012b, 112–28), Sonia Sikka (2011, pp. 19–25, ch. 2), Michael Frazer (2010, esp. pp. 157–67), and Sankar Muthu (2003, pp. 221–38) explore the moral and political dimensions of Herder’s concept of humanity. They analyze how Herder reconciles incommensurability with a “minimally common human nature” (Sikka 2011, p. 22) or “the minimal moral framework provided by his concept of Humanität” (Spencer 2012b, p. 126). Furthermore, they develop the ethical principles that Herder formulates within his fundamental normative project of promoting “human flourishing” (Spencer 2012b, p. 114; Sikka 2011, pp. 19–20). Spencer interprets Herder’s political philosophy as based on “Humanität as a normative concept” of “human nature par excellence” (2019, p. 210); a “thin universalism” connected to this concept serves to assess the promotion of “human welfare” (ibid., p. 212), and to ensure “that ‘value’ is not reducible to what a culture holds to be of value” (ibid., p. 100). Spencer discusses different ethical principles that Herder formulates within his normative project. These principles revolve around the freedom for human beings to satisfy basic wants, develop capacities in culturally specific ways, and thus realize (what Herder from the 1780s would call) their Humanität. Sikka likewise states that a “minimally common human nature” (2011, p. 22) supports Herder’s normative project of promoting “human flourishing” (ibid., pp. 19–20), criticizing inequality and oppression, and ensuring that certain desires be satisfied. However, Sikka stresses that the concrete features of human nature can only be determined empirically, through anthropology (ibid., p. 41). Michael Forster takes a different route: he criticizes attempts to reconcile Herder’s universalism about humanity with his moral relativism.3 “Herder’s appeal [in the Ideas] to a supposedly universal moral value of humanity is in the end little more than a desperate relapse into [. . .] empirically false moral universalism” (2018, pp. 218–19). Forster thus proposes to ignore Herder’s idea of humanity as a universal moral value altogether. 3

Forster considers Sikka’s (and by implication other scholars’) attempt at a reconciliation “not only interpretively problematic (Herder usually just vacillates here without synthesizing), but also philosophically unpromising” (2018, p. 219 n. 39).

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In the following, I aim to contribute to the project of understanding how Herder reconciles the universal value of humanity with the value of particular practices and projects. Unlike Forster, I take this project to be interpretively legitimate and important; attempts at reconciling and synthesizing humanity’s universal moral value and its diverse particular expressions are absolutely central to Herder’s philosophy. Furthermore, this issue helps to make some progress in the debate over Herder’s relativism and pluralism: The concept of humanity is understood either as qualifying Herder’s relativism (Sikka 2011; Gjesdal 2017), or as underlying his pluralism, while setting Herder’s position apart from relativism (Spencer 2019). According to Sikka, Herder’s relativism involves the idea that the goodness of individual lives is constituted by meeting culturally relative goals and ideals; that cultures must be understood internally; and that values cannot be ranked according to some transcendent standard (2011, p. 4). According to Spencer’s interpretation of Herder as a pluralist, the plurality of (incommensurable) values derives from a minimal moral framework that is based on the existence of certain common and ultimate principles (2012b, p. 100). I will argue that Herder’s anthropology is more monist than both the relativist and the pluralist interpretations have it. In my reading, transcendence does play a role in Herder’s anthropology, changing the character of his pluralism.4 Central questions in this context are: How malleable is human nature according to Herder, and how minimal or thin is (the derived normative concept of) humanity? And how do individual human beings relate to humanity (which may refer to a humanistic moral ideal, a religious ideal of the human vocation, or a broader normative understanding of human nature being valuable)? These questions have been discussed in scholarship on Herder’s aesthetics, anthropology, and hermeneutics. For example, Hans Adler, starting from postmodern discussions of humanity and the problems with “master narratives,” interprets Herder’s concept of humanity as entirely immanent to historical experiences of humankind: as “made by human beings themselves” and “experienced in manifestations, in actions of human beings” (1994b, 62). Nonetheless, Adler

4

There exists no consensus on how these terms should be defined, and there are concerns about anachronism in relying on modern definitions. For example, Sikka disagrees with Spencer relying on a definition of relativism from modern ethics involving equal validity (2011, p. 4). And in her review of Sikka’s monograph, Spencer (2012a) castigates Sikka for calling Herder both a pluralist and a relativist. If Sikka intends to use “pluralism” in a more deflated sense, then her way of combining the labels is not principally inconsistent (as Spencer suggests, 2012a, p. 232). This inconsistency does occur if we follow Spencer’s definitions of pluralism and relativism. However, no matter the merits and weaknesses of these definitions (cf. Sikka, 2011, pp. 39–40), I will argue that Herder’s 1774 position is still more deflated even than the “weak pluralism” that Spencer (2012b, pp. 100–1) attributes to Herder.

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concludes that the concept picks out and unifies phenomena: “since the purpose of human nature [. . .] is the unfolding of abundance, that is, the development of the greatest possible variety of individuals, ‘humanity’ must be viewed as the precondition of this variety which comes before every valuation of its creations” (ibid., p. 65). John Noyes (2015, pp. 103, 220–1) relies on Adler in arguing that “Herder found himself in pursuit of a new understanding of Humanity” (ibid., p. 106). Noyes frames this as an “aesthetic” form of anthropology, where “[i]t is essential for Herder that this common Humanity be developed out of experiences of difference” (ibid., p. 134).5 Kristin Gjesdal seeks to spell out how for Herder, “feeling represents an openness toward a shared humanity as it is realized by individual others and, as such, it transcends the either-or of subsumption under generalizing laws [. . .] or a merely particularizing response” (2017, p. 117). In her analysis of this openness, Gjesdal states that Herder aims for a “move from the particular to the universal, but without a universal at hand by which this move is preordained” (ibid., p. 163). Rather, Herder treats humanity as a “notion of a particular (part) that contains, as it were, the universal (whole) within it [. . .] the ideal of a totality or whole that is seen as dynamic and growing in and through the interaction between its parts” (ibid., p. 163). Gjesdal explains that “the relationship between humanity and its concrete manifestations is that of a unity in diversity, an organic codependency between the whole and its parts” (ibid., p. 118). The interpretations of these scholars address important aspects of Herder’s anthropology: Adler rightfully stresses the importance of unfolding of abundance; Noyes is correct about the significance of experiences of difference; Gjesdal perceptively analyzes Herder’s holism. However, I argue that within his religious anthropology, Herder still holds “a universal at hand” in synthesizing particular forms. Herder finds this universal in deep history and interprets it as the absolute origin of human culture: the divine prototype and primordial source of all historical development. In a complicated hermeneutic argument, which I will disentangle below, Herder proclaims that this universal ultimately consists in the human form. In other words, I will argue that despite their great insight, the cited studies do not sufficiently expound on the metaphysical nature of Herder’s concept of humanity, and on its connection to the divine. This is not

5

Robert Leventhal (1994, pp. 232–3) goes still further in arguing against a metaphysical interpretation of Herder’s notion of humanity. He concludes it is only a “performative, interpretive hypothesis,” “a way of reading, [. . .] a way of interpreting the historical, psycho- and sociogenetic linkages between disparate cultures” (ibid., p. 233). In my (2018) discussion of the systematic function of the Proteus metaphor, I argue why I advocate the interpretation criticized by Leventhal.

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to argue that Herder did not recognize the plasticity of human nature. But, I intend to offer an alternative interpretation of its shared core and of the human vocation of developing abundance, and, consequently, I question how thin Herder’s humanistic universalism actually is. In order to achieve this, I will now discuss Herder’s early biblical hermeneutics and the way it informs his philosophy of history.

II Biblical Hermeneutics Unlike previous consensus, I interpret Herder’s writings on biblical hermeneutics from 1766–1776 as forming a continuity rather than being divided up in a “secular” and a “religious” phase (Forster 2010, pp. 45–50; Weidner 2005; cf. Otto 1989). This also means that the forerunner to Herder’s notorious Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (1774–1776, Oldest Document of the Human Species), the unpublished Über die ersten Urkunden des Menschlichen Geschlechts (1768/1769, On the First Documents of the Human Species) has apologetic motivations—and that both works are of systematic importance for Herder’s historical thought and philosophical anthropology (cf. Gjesdal 2017, pp. 59–65, 186–7; Beiser 2011b, pp. 110–13). Regarding the issue of whether Herder’s work, in the different periods of his career, was more historical or theological, I agree with Daniel Weidner that “[b]oth interpretations are insufficient, as they tend to force Herder into either theological or profane categories that are, for him, not mutually exclusive” (2005, p. 175; cf. Schmidt, 2017, pp. 198–201; FHA 9/1:861). My aim is to interpret Herder’s own notions of the human, natural, and historical and take into account the extent to which Herder conceives these categories in biblical terms. The assumption that these categories perfectly correspond to ours is what gives rise to the dichotomy in question. Following his own hermeneutic method, Herder relies on biblical exegesis in spelling out his conceptions of both humanity and divinity. I will explain how he consequently conceives of the human and the divine as hardly separable. Herder’s biblical hermeneutics may be contrasted with three contemporary directions in interpreting the Old Testament and its context. First, J.D. Michaelis (1717–1791) advocated historical Bible criticism.6 He helped to organize Carsten

6

Jonathan Sheehan (2005, ch. 7) provides an excellent account of Michaelis’s project.

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Niebuhr’s expedition to the Arabian Peninsula with the aim of gathering concrete data about the geographic and historical context of the Hebrew Bible. Michaelis also represented a new direction in biblical exegesis in that he sought to liberate philological science from theological dogma. His Bible scholarship and grand translation project of the Old Testament aimed to forge a text neutral to any particular confession (1770, p. 13). Second, Robert Lowth (1710–1787) argued that the Hebrew Bible contains a poetry that has its own rules, different from later (classicist) poetics. He found these rules revolve around “parallelism” (Norton 1993, pp. 68–73; Prickett 1986, pp. 109–10). Lowth’s theory made it possible to appreciate the autonomous aesthetic value of the Bible vis-à-vis classicist poetics. However, Lowth also claimed that the sacred poetry of the Hebrews was a ready-made product of divine inspiration. David Hume (1711– 1776) and Voltaire (1694–1778), thirdly, presented more critical Enlightenment perspectives on early religion. Hume argued in his Natural History of Religion (1757) that religion is the product of fear and superstition, and started out as polytheism.7 Voltaire criticized biblical culture for its despotic organization, and argued against biblical history that the origins of humanity were divided into different races (polygeneticism).8 Like Michaelis, Herder considers it superstitious to believe that the authors of the Bible were directly divinely inspired: he wants to read the Bible as a human book and as the product of particular historical contexts (FHA 9/1:31, 33; FHA 5:28). He also challenges the idea that Moses was the sole author of the Old Testament (FHA 5:305–14). Instead, Herder isolates different documents and speculates on their much older provenance in a “pre-Mosaic” tradition of poetic “Urkunden” (documents). Furthermore, Herder dismisses Lowth’s claim that Hebrew poetry was an already perfect product of direct divine inspiration (Bultmann 1999, p. 41). He wants to trace the historical development of this tradition of poetry. Thus, Herder proposes to historically interpret the Bible as a product of humans, in particular historical contexts and as a collection of poetic

7

8

Herder admired Hume’s naturalistic analyses of early mythology and religion, and affirmed some of his theses in early versions of his biblical hermeneutics, but ended up with radically different conclusions (see FHA 5:11, 252; FHA 9/1:102; cf. Bultmann 1989, pp. 65–6). On Voltaire’s Bible criticism, see Weidner (2011, pp. 140–52) and J. H. Brumfitt in his introduction to the Oxford edition of La philosophie de l’histoire (2004, pp. 50–3, 58–64). Herder frequently identified “Voltaire and those who are of his opinion” as responsible for the culturally arrogant dismissal of the culture of the “patriarchs,” “Orientals,” and “Hebrews” (FHA 1:279–80; FHA 2:456; FHA 4:15). Voltaire’s 1765 La philosophie de l’histoire was the main target of Herder’s argument in Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (Treatise on the Origin of Language) against skeptics regarding monogeneticism (Wildschut 2018). Auch eine Philosophie starts by rebutting the notion of an “oriental despotism” (FHA 4:15).

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documents and rites. He aims to pay special attention to the Hebrew mode of thought, which he understands as sensuous, poetic, and structured by the parallelism that Lowth had identified.9 What is more, Herder follows Lowth in asserting that a historical understanding of how parallelism structured Hebrew language and thought in general helps to appreciate the structure of the poem (cf. Prickett 1986, pp. 106, 110). He sees the structure of the poem and the Hebrew mode of experience as closely connected in a “poetic scheme of sensuous ideas” fitting their natural way of life and national tradition of songs (FHA 5:47).10 Here is what Herder proposes: A tradition of poetic documents preserved humankind’s primordial religion. Its documents were compiled by Moses into the book of Genesis. The cosmogony of Genesis 1 to 2.3 is the oldest document of the human species. Herder finds traces of this document in all ancient religions. Furthermore, although he insists on his historical approach to Bible interpretation, Herder still assumes that a divine instruction supported the production of this oldest document; not through a direct inspiration of its author, but by God revealing Himself in nature. Herder claims that God accommodated his revelation to the ancient mode of experience. Only by attending to this mode of experience can the potentially revelatory character of the Hebrew Bible be uncovered. In the Hebrew mode of experience, Herder locates a core of human psychology: the “true form of the sensuous human being” (FHA 5:16). By referring to human sensuousness, Herder aims to connect the (religious and non-religious) poetry of peoples around the globe and throughout world history.11 Herder claims that in their “childhood,” nations, like people, are much more alike: “thus a single soul-form [Gestalt der Seele] reveals itself in all peoples almost in the same manner” (FHA 5:11). Moreover, Herder aims to confirm empirically and historically that all nations around the globe compiled similar documents and theorized in a similar way about the origins of the universe 9

10

11

In the 1769–1776 texts I discuss, Herder uses the terms “Orientalisch,” “Morgenländisch,” and “Hebräisch,” largely interchangeably in discussing what he considers to be humankind in its “childhood.” This raises various issues regarding how Herder’s pluralist history and philosophy of religion is, and how his orientalism should be interpreted. I cannot deal with these issues here, but see Osterhammel (1998) for different eighteenth-century possibilities for imagining the Orient, and cf. discussions of Herder’s conception of the “savage” and “primitive” by Sikka (2011, ch. 2) and Spencer (2012b, pp. 79–84). On the notions of “Hebrew” and “Jewish” in Herder’s political thought, see Gjesdal 2017, pp. 197–201 and Beiser 2017. Herder had theorized the connections between, respectively, Hebrew way of life, history, tradition, religion, poetry, and language in Fragmente über die neuere deutsche Literatur (Fragments on Recent German Literature, FHA 1:277–91). For more detailed explorations of Herder’s idea that poetry paradigmatically expresses the particular characters of peoples and simultaneously unites all of humanity in its exercise, see Menges 2009; Irmscher 1996; Adler 1996; Norton 1991, pp. 71–80.

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(FHA 5:15). He aims to find in the cosmogonic songs of all ancient peoples not just the individual character of nations, but also what they have in common: he states that he searches for the characterizing traits of the human spirit (FHA 5:16; cf. FHA 2:456 and FHA 3:68).12 According to Herder, the sensuous human necessarily shapes itself into the most national and individual form. Through history, this Bildung (education, shaping, formation) of humanity accounts for the increasing complexity of human culture and for the increasing diversity of human forms. This creates a distance, for example, between primitive, sensuous humanity, and the overly intellectual eighteenth-century milieu that Herder considers himself to inhabit. To this distance, Herder responds by arguing that humans still share their sensuous way of relating to their surroundings. He thinks of a basic sensation and affective response connected, for example, to experiencing the sunlight. The Hebrew’s sensuous universe is still available, even if our daily concerns have changed. Herder continues this line of thought when he states that poets from all centuries may recognize the creative forces that shape nature everywhere: same as human beings, nature is dynamically organized in processes of Bildung, and it is these processes (of continuous and active creation) that poets should recognize behind the changed shapes that form their (natural, historical, and societal) environment (FHA 1:448–9; vom Hofe 1986, p. 76). Herder argues that his contemporaries should recover from such “Naturpoesie” (nature poetry), “Volkslieder” (folk songs), and “Schöpfungsgesänge” (songs of creation) the method of the recreation of nature in sensuous poetry, and apply this mimetic method to their own (natural, historical, and societal) circumstances. He asserts this mimesis of nature’s Bildung-processes as a natural aspect of human sensuousness (vom Hofe 1989, p. 207). For Herder, this is what the Volkslieder of nations around the globe exemplify. He thinks that the great poets of different ages stand out in virtue of their capacity for emulating the sensuous view on nature. And he demands from his contemporaries: “Go forth, O reader, millennia back, in the old times of the Hebrews [. . .] position yourself as a sensuous cosmopolitan on one of their plains, or their heights, and look” (FHA 5:59–60). Herder here presents himself as just as cosmopolitan as many of his contemporaries. But rather than reason or the principles of morality, for Herder

12

Herder makes similar statements about the ancient poetry of “wild peoples” in his 1773 letters on Ossian. There he follows the “analogy of all wild peoples” (FHA 2:455) in order to compare songs from nations around the globe and discover their sensuous spirit “not as a curiosity, but as pattern, as nature” (FHA 2:472).

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it is “sinnliche Anschauung” (sensuous intuition) that is universally shared (FHA 5:63). In his interpretation of Genesis 1, Herder relies on this psychological/aesthetic position when he argues that the oldest document presents a sensuous view upon the creation of the universe. The perspective of this view is Genesis 1’s “between the heavens and the earth.” Herder calls it “the sensuous universe” where human beings enjoy light and warmth, and fear the dark and cold (FHA 5:49–53; cf. Bultmann 1999, p. 44). By evoking the “sensuous universe” that the ancient Hebrews inhabited, Herder claims that Genesis 1 truly documents the creation. How does this universe look? Herder claims to have found that the seven days of creation together form a parallelistic structure. This parallelism concerns the antithetical relations between the second and third day of creation (between heavens and earth), as well as between the fifth and sixth (between the creatures of waters and sky and the creatures of the earth; FHA 5:45; cf. Gen 1; Coogan 2010, pp. 12–13). In a second step, Herder also suggests that days one, four, and seven form a (synonymous) parallelism (of light, lights of sun, and moon, Sabbath), with days four and seven synthesizing the opposites that precede them in the sequence into a new position (think of heavens and earth being synthesized into the lights of sun and moon; FHA 5:46). Thus, Herder interprets this sequence as a hieroglyphic structure of antitheses that are reconciled into more complex positions, forming a condensed picture of the cosmos: through documenting the seven days of creation, Genesis 1 preserved the ancient Hebrews’ “Schöpfungshieroglyphe” (hieroglyph of creation) (FHA 5:284–5). Herder understands this hieroglyph as their first attempt at written language, mimicking the hieroglyphic structure of creation itself (FHA 5:269). Furthermore, Herder finds that the first four days together present an image of daybreak (FHA 5:246–57). He suggests that the Hebrew poets used the experience of daybreak to evoke the process of the creation of the universe. Daybreak presents a succession of images mirroring how the (general process of) creation is structured according to a movement of inner differentiation, namely, by subsequently differentiating between darkness and light, heavens and earth, and sun and moon (cf. Auerochs 2006, pp. 329–31). Experiencing daybreak may stimulate historical empathizing into the Hebrew mode of experience (FHA 5:252–6). This empathizing should then trigger us to emulate the religious experience documented in the text. The poetic expression of the awe experienced at dawn bridges historical distances because it represents the universal core of the human being’s sensuous grasp of nature’s intelligible order. This provides a concrete example for Herder to illustrate that the sensuous standpoint can still

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be taken, and thus provides a way of “transporting oneself back” into Oriental times (FHA 5:49, 53, 58, 63). From this standpoint, one may grasp nature as an ordered whole; the parallelism of the poem presents a primitive form of knowledge of nature in general (cf. Auerochs 2006, pp. 312, 328). Herder interprets the natural religion of the Hebrews as “Naturreligion,” as a positive revelation through nature. He states that creation itself is of a hieroglyphic structure; by pointing humanity’s attention to this structure, humanity was educated simply by recognizing creation as divine (FHA 5:248). Thus Genesis 1 contains God’s primordial instruction of humanity, the start of its education. Subsequently, the primordial (and universal) religion develops into different forms. Hence religion may look different depending on peoples’ stage of development. Nonetheless, because the document of Genesis 1 is the oldest, Herder thinks its hieroglyph is the purest expression of God’s education of humanity. Herder’s main aim in Älteste Urkunde is to prove that all religion derives from this hieroglyph.13 This seems a liberal and pluralistic way of understanding religion. It means that all religions are ways of grasping God’s presence, even when they present particular moments of this presence as discrete deities. However, in interpreting the hieroglyph as the concrete origin and essence of religion, Herder sticks to the primacy of the Judeo-Christian Bible. The document of Genesis 1—the Schöpfungshieroglyphe—is for him the source of all religion. To sum up, Herder envisions an ancient historical tradition of aesthetic responses to nature. He argues against Lowth that there exists no divine poetry that was perfect without reference to any historical process of development. But then, with the hieroglyph, he singles out an ahistorical structure for all poetry and religion. Furthermore, Herder advocates a historical approach to the Bible, but he thinks that Michaelis’s scientific and naturalistic approach fails to 13

The sources that Herder relied on in this project—regarding the alleged uniform ancient tradition of primeval wisdom and theology (a branch of literature on the so-called prisca sapientia or theologia, stemming from antique Christian apologetics)—were outdated and suspect already in the eighteenth century (see Nisbet 1989; Bultmann 1999, pp. 167–9; Häfner 1995, pp. 247–53, 261; Auerochs 2006, pp. 333–6). This tradition had, since Late Antiquity, attempted to establish the uniqueness of Christianity by arguing that its key doctrines were reflected throughout the most ancient texts and informed all antique philosophy and religion. The Church Fathers claimed that this pointed at the absolute historical priority of Christianity, with Moses or even Adam as the sole father of human culture. The texts they relied on—by, for example, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, and Pythagoras— had not by far the old age that they ascribed to them, and their arguments readily mixed resemblance and causal influence. Still, important Renaissance thinkers (Giordano Bruno, Pico, Marsilio Ficino), the Cambridge Platonists, as well as various early modern Hebraists and theologians (Pierre Daniel Huet, John Spencer, Athanasius Kircher), kept formulating new versions of the prisca theologia idea (Harrison 1990, pp. 130–8), and Herder certainly would not be the last German Orientalist and philosopher of history to draw inspiration from it (see Marchand 2009).

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recognize the religious significance of its oldest document. Finally, against Hume and Voltaire, Herder affirms what they had doubted: all natural religion does attest to the one Creator, including polytheistic forms of religion, and all of human culture does share a single origin.

III Religious Anthropology In the previous section, I have pointed out how anthropological ideas support Herder’s biblical interpretation, and I have mentioned some features of an essential humanity that characterize the pre-Mosaic poetry and religion. Now I turn to the anthropological conclusions that Herder draws from his interpretation of Genesis 1. Herder’s account of primordial revelation and its historical tradition has consequences for his understanding of natural religion and (the origins of) human culture. As such, it also influences his philosophical anthropology, as well as his view of the human vocation, i.e., the Bildung of humanity in and through history. Through a close reading of some of the more challenging passages of Älteste Urkunde (particularly the conclusion of part one, FHA 5:294–301), I will discuss these (indeed quite wide-ranging) implications.14 I will also highlight the tensions, already indicated above, between Herder’s biblical hermeneutics as a project of historical scholarship and of metaphysics, and between Herder’s stressing the historicity and the universality of the human form. In his interpretation of Genesis 1, day six, Herder portrays the Oriental’s sensuous grasp of God’s presence in nature as the direct consequence of God’s own “Vermenschlichung” (humanization). According to Herder, God achieves the sensuous unity and purposiveness of All only when he creates humans, who synthesize their impressions and distinguish between present, past, and future, and thus connect and order aspects of creation (FHA 5:231–2). Especially because of their flexibility, their collecting, recognizing analogies, and expanding sympathy and love for aspects of creation, humans give meaning to what would otherwise remain a plethora of unconnected dots (FHA 5:230; cf. Bultmann 1999, pp. 143–4). Herder states that the human creature is the “highest sensuous unity of everything visible” (FHA 5:230). Humankind passes down inventions

14

Buntfuß 2004, pp. 63–6 and Bultmann 1999, pp. 167–99 propose alternative ways of evaluating the systematic weight of these passages.

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and continues projects, and thus has the vocation of becoming one as a species (FHA 5:232–3). Furthermore, Herder asserts that through their striving towards totality, their organizing and modifying their environments and passing on their (artistic) productions, humans emulate their creator (FHA 5:236). However, because they never fully reach their goals, their divinity remains hidden; they are always becoming human, never fully finished (FHA 5:232, 283). Herder interprets humankind’s flexibility and openness for new developments as expressing creation’s tendency towards realizing all its possibilities and achieving the greatest possible diversity of forms. That is, Herder puts forward an anthropocentric version of the idea of plenitude: the human shape appears as the integrating and diversifying prototype of creation (cf. Lovejoy [1936] 2001, esp. ch. 9). All human forms reflect this underlying “Urbild” (type). Herder interprets the creation of humankind in the image of God as God’s most condensed expression in creation. He infers from this that the human being is itself the hieroglyph of creation (FHA 5:293–4), alluding to the idea of the human being as microcosm. But Herder also qualifies how this notion applies when he calls the human form the “desecrated image of God,” as well as the “weakened and torn prototype [Inbegriff] of all creation” (FHA 5:294). With the notion of “Entweihung” (desecration), Herder invokes the orthodox principle of Sin. Although this suggests a qualitative break, separating humankind from its original state, Herder does not actually connect to the Fall a strong notion of Sin. He argues that the Fall is a necessary phase in humankind’s historical development and the only way in which humans may develop their humanity so that they may seek to become what they are: divine (FHA 5:604–6.; cf. Cordemann 2010, pp. 203–18; Bultmann 1999, pp. 163–4). Hence also humanity’s reflecting all of creation, its role as the Schöpfungshieroglyphe must be historically developed. In the following, I explain how this notion of humanity as a divine prototype and ideal, informs Herder’s conception of history. First, although Herder demands of his readers to start imagining primordial religiosity, he recognizes how they are limited by their own historical circumstances in similarly grasping revelation. Herder conceives of the divine instruction of Genesis 1 as fractured twice: even primordially, it was already accommodated to human sensation, and it is further allayed by the difficulty in empathizing into the original human sensuousness (FHA 5:254). In a way, Herder is qualifying his view of how humans receive revelation when he states, in the conclusion of the first part of Älteste Urkunde, that humanity is the image of the whole of creation. He complains:

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If we had enough sense and view [Sinn und Blick] to oversee the whole creation [. . .] – no image in all of nature would suit us as humanity suits us currently! Image of God in all its forces, applications and stimuli; simultaneously symbol and prototype [Sinnbild und Inbegriff] of the whole visible and invisible world! Thus the great creation of God would be for us! FHA 5:298

I interpret this conclusion as stating that, as a whole, humanity is indeed this hieroglyph of creation, and that individual human beings never have enough “sense and view” to oversee humanity in its totality. Second, Herder also relies on human finitude in order to explain why he holds that God’s primordial revelation had to provide the seeds for all the manifold subsequent developments. I motivate this important point with a longer quote from the same concluding pages. Since the final ends of human knowledge and education [Bildung] are not within our reach [. . .] and God the father of all instruction [. . .] knows how to wrap all education in one nucleus, to create and order the world [Weltgebäude] according to the grasp of a single rule, to guide and form [bilden] a human being, body and soul, so infinitely diverse in forces, members and goals, into the Infinite Unity of the One species – how will the instruction, this God’s first positive education to this whole species have to be? One in All! and All in One! a universe of education! a nucleus, out of which all had to develop, toward infinity! FHA 5:297–8

Herder invokes the infinite diversity of human forces and goals in order to suggest that their One origin necessarily contained the seeds for them All. Systematically, the original absolute unity of human knowledge functions as the necessary precondition for recognizing particular developments as instances of human knowledge. Thus, Herder’s monogeneticism is not simply an expression of the orthodox intention to defend biblical history, but rather has the systematic function of securing the identity underlying all historical diversity (cf. Cordemann 2010, p. 55; vom Hofe 1989, pp. 200–1). At this point, it very much sounds as if Herder aims to deduce a metaphysical theory out of his biblical exegesis. This would contradict his stated intentions and historical method (FHA 5:193–9). Although it remains my principal aim to demonstrate that Herder’s philosophy of religion has serious systematic implications for his philosophical anthropology, l briefly indicate some interpretive options before I continue delineating Herder’s theological concept of humanity.

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Herder argues that he has discovered a verifiable historical location for the unity of human culture. This location can be empirically approximated when using the right hermeneutic method in biblical exegesis combined with a properly extensive history of ancient religion. Herder’s enthusiasm about the significance of the Schöpfungshieroglyphe, reflected in the conclusion of the first part, mainly stems from his historical inquiries into all ancient religions (which he puts through in parts two and three). He thinks to have discovered that the hieroglyph’s seven-step structure underlies all these religions’ doctrines and symbols. Thus he announces that in the second part, he will expand on the hieroglyph by discussing the testimony of other peoples and sages (FHA 5:293). Herder does not intend to propound the “One in All” idea as the formal principle of a metaphysical system. However, according to Herder’s hypothesis that history is guided by the hieroglyph, his decision to let other nations speak about the human form as microcosm does not qualify its universal validity. This universality is precisely what he wants his inquiries into the history of religion to corroborate. Still, this decision does attest to his resolve not to turn his biblical exegesis into a metaphysical system. Herder seeks the empirical confirmation of all ancient religious documents for his historical thesis to gain in probability. He intends his thesis to obtain the character of an empirically verifiable historical truth. Herder describes the human creature as a microcosm reflecting the All, as “image [Nachbild] and hieroglyph of creation,” and as “example [Vorbild] for the first hieroglyph” (FHA 5:292–3). As the prototype that is universally reflected throughout creation and history, the Human is Herder’s principal unifying notion in connecting disparate phenomena of world history. Furthermore, his idea that the human being unifies creation also supports his thesis that as much as the “Weltgebäude” (world-building) is providentially organized, so too is the “Fortgebäude” (building-forth) of human Bildung over time. History remains guided by God’s primordial revelation in virtue of developing humanity. Herder sets up his discourse on the “One in All” by comparing the synthesizing force of human self-awareness with God’s primordial synthesis, and argues that it must contain All, because it should “engage all senses and forces of the human being, and incite and guide its whole soul along the eternities of the species” (FHA 5:297). Herder concludes that indeed, this revelation had to provide all education at once. But importantly, this revelation keeps guiding humankind in the long run in developing this seed in all possible directions. Hence the notion of the prototype—despite Herder’s unconvincing proof for its actual omnipresence in ancient religions—actually offers some relief regarding the contradiction

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between Herder’s historical-particularizing hermeneutics and his universalist conception of humanity (his mixing exegesis with metaphysics). After all, the human prototype contains all human knowledge only as potentiality. It is within history that all its potentials are actualized; and the historical understanding of humankind deals with these actualized forms and aims at explaining how they have developed. The structural criterion provided by the prototype remains possibly thin; a hidden seed germinating into specific forms (cf. Häfner 1994, pp. 91, 95). H.B. Nisbet (1989, pp. 224–5) points out that the later Herder’s theory of the type (Urbild, Haupttypus) retains the function that the hieroglyph has in Herder’s 1774 biblical hermeneutics. Indeed, Herder’s conception of the hieroglyph guiding humanity through history matches his theses in Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humankind) regarding comparative anatomy as well as regarding the human understanding always finding its own image in history (FHA 6:75, 652, 14–17, cf. 666, 669–70). Nisbet is correct in observing that the hieroglyph thus offers a “timeless natural science” after all, which contradicts Herder’s own polemics against physical interpretations of Genesis 1 (1989, pp. 212, 219). However, the weight of this contradiction depends on the extent in which the structural criterion predetermines future developments, and the extent in which the structure may adapt to new circumstances. To sum up: Herder’s concrete way of finding the seven-step structure in all religious symbols indeed appears “schwärmerisch” and has irritated readers of Älteste Urkunde ever since its first publication (Sauder 1989). But systematically, the idea of the prototype is crucial to Herder’s way of reconciling the One and the Many. This idea ensures that the underlying identity of humanity may be recognized at any time and place. Furthermore, the single nucleus of human culture, being imparted into multiple directions, preserves a form of continuity in world history.

VI The Bildung of Humanity Through History It is time to start answering the questions, posed in section one, regarding Herder’s concept of humanity and the human vocation of developing abundance. From the angle of Herder’s early biblical hermeneutics, I have come to a different interpretation of how Herder reconciles the universal value of humanity with

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the value of its diverse particular expressions. I will now exhibit how this anthropological position informs his 1774 philosophy of history. I will start by summing up three important ideas belonging to Herder’s theological conception of humanity. First, Herder’s conception of humanity is interwoven with his theology of creation. For Herder, being human means occupying a central position in creation and bringing unity to the whole through searching for the fullest understanding of, ultimately, oneself. As God’s image, the human being is an Urbild or prototype that organizes the creation and thereby also history. Second, Herder circumscribes what it means to be historical also, with reference to the primordial revelation of all human culture and the ancient tradition that transferred its seeds over time. This tradition accounts for the diverse human cultures all sharing a single origin. In the long run, the seeds of God’s revelation necessarily develop creation’s richness, i.e., the greatest possible diversity. Third, developing the greatest possible richness of human forms through time and space is part of the telos of humankind as a species. According to Herder, it is part of humankind’s holy vocation to learn to appreciate this diversity, and to recognize and, over time, realize its hidden unity.15 The task of history, on this view, is to prepare for new forms of human being by investigating the richness of the past and the present. For Herder, this task is religious in two senses: it relies on the idea that God’s revelations permeate history, and it is part of humanity’s shared aim of preparing for a better future (see Auch eine Philosophie, FHA 4:95–7, 101–2). In sum, these ideas qualify Herder’s value-pluralism by circumscribing how values are created and providentially distributed through history. First, Herder’s religious manner of connecting the human prototype and creation in its totality explains his (prima facie bewildering) trust that a “scrupulous fidelity to the particulars of historical circumstances could [. . .] provide the foundation for a legitimate historical anthropology” (Norton 1991, p. 157). According to Herder, the diversity of human cultures is in fact a function of the unity of creation and points at its providential organization. This is why an expansive, centrifugal inquiry into historical phenomena will lead the way to 15

Rudolf Stadelmann interpreted Herder’s “Humanitätsidee” as the secularization and humanization of a certain form of mysticism, based on “Humanitätsgewißheit” and in search of “Humanitätsvertiefung” (1928, pp. 30–1). Stadelmann problematically kept this “secularized mysticism” apart from Herder’s theology (cf. ibid., pp. 57–8, 73–9). Although playing down the significance of its explicit theological grounding (ibid., pp. 59, 73), Stadelmann interpreted Auch eine Philosophie as the “Gipfel eines irrationalen geschichtlichen Sinnes” (summit of an irrational historical sense) with a tendency towards “extreme relativism” (ibid., pp. 142, 59). In the first half of the twentieth century, this extremely positive stance towards anti-rationalist ideas had political connotations (cf. Träger 1979, pp. 36–8).

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discovering their harmony. Furthermore, Herder’s idea that God based the hieroglyph on the human form provides a metaphysical foundation to Herder’s account of Einfühlung (empathetic understanding) (cf. Buntfuß 2004, p. 63). This foundation consists in the certainty that valuable forms of human being abound. This certainty informs the tasks of self-understanding, understanding historical and cultural others, as well as working towards a universal history and an encompassing understanding of humankind in all its diversity.16 In all these projects, Herder presupposes that human sympathy has an ontological grounding attested by Genesis 1’s anthropogony. This grounding accounts for both the shared core of potentials and the flexibility of humanity; Herder’s conceptions of understanding and of historical Bildung (of formation through confrontation with others) are founded upon it. Hence, contrary to how Michael Frazer puts it, it is not “human feeling and sympathy” alone that provide the “magic mirror” in which humans recognize the identity beneath their manifold shapes (2010, p. 154). Herder holds that the “magic” of the human mirroring capacity was primordially initiated through God’s own act of doubling. Because of this, humans may put their trust in perceived analogies and commence the dynamic process of Einfühlung (Wildschut 2020, p. 165). Because the human shape is God’s most condensed expression, Herder is convinced that relations of mirroring obtain between different human forms (FHA 4:330). Second, and turning to Auch eine Philosophie, I want to ask: what motivates Herder’s pluralism about the diversity of human forms, what is the systematic feature that defines his optimism about historical and cultural diversity? Herder certainly aims to allow for the greatest possible diversity among the human shapes that developed after primordial humanity spread out in different directions. Striving for new developments is its only way to work towards its vocation, i.e., the ideal of unifying a maximally diverse human species. “The human container is capable of no full perfection all at once; it must always leave behind in moving further on” (Herder 2002, p. 288; FHA 4:29), Herder specifies, making explicit that malleable humanity cannot be pinned down by referencing a single universal ideal. However, Herder presents a specific model or “plan of striving further” (Herder 2002, p. 298; FHA 4:40) through which humanity diversifies its shapes. I submit that this model, according to which diversity is historically achieved, is far from contingent. Herder pictures a movement where different ancient peoples effectively transfer and distribute the seeds that the

16

The central theme of, e.g., Gjesdal 2017 and Noyes 2015; pace Forster 2018, pp. 253–4.

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Orientals received for all human culture. This development goes roughly as follows: Humanity develops out of Oriental roots. Subsequently, it spreads out along the axes of a Phoenician tendency towards economic-political expansion throughout the Mediterranean, and the development of a certain “Völkerliebe” (love of peoples) (FHA 4:25) on the one hand, and an Egyptian tendency to be self-centered and xenophobic on the other hand (FHA 4:23). Subsequently, the Greek form of government reconciles these extremes of “Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit” (unity and multiplicity) into their harmonious whole of citystates (FHA 4:28). Then Roman imperialism once more expands the reach of the antique tradition by connecting many more peoples into one empire (FHA 4:31), upon which, after Rome’s fall, a new era of increased particularization commences.17 In the subsequent epoch, Christianity profits from Roman expansionism and partly becomes (or should become) a “Religion des Weltalls” (religion of the universe) (FHA 4:47). In sum, Herder seeks to point at the rough outline of an intelligible and effective plan according to which humankind develops the greatest possible variation through time while also preparing to be unified again. Third, Herder depicts the process of increasing pluralization as one unified development motivated by what it essentially means to be human (i.e., recognizing connections, expanding sympathy, developing traditions, pursuing the Bildung of self and environment; cf. FHA 5:230–6). This process is itself part of the providential organization of creation, that is, “God’s temple throughout all centuries as it is in its building-forth [Fortgebäude, N.W.]” (Herder 2002, p. 341; FHA 4:89). In Auch eine Philosophie, Herder integrates his theology of creation into his philosophy of history: If the residential house reveals “divine picture” right down to its smallest fitting – how not the history of its resident? The former only decoration!, picture in a single act, view! The latter an “endless drama of scenes! an epic of God’s through all millennia, parts of the world, and human races [Menschengeschlechte, N.W.], a thousand-formed fable full of one great meaning!” Herder 2002, pp. 334–5, translation modified; FHA 4:83

Of course, Herder insists that no historian can take the absolutely right viewpoint on this endless epic and extract its meaning (FHA 4:32–3, 35, 40, 81–3). Still, despite Herder’s epistemological caution and his critique of the assumptions and 17

On this dynamic between concentration and expansion in Herder’s 1774 account, see Johannsen 2016, pp. 165–7 and Pfaff 1983. I further discuss this in the context of Herder’s notion of prejudice in Wildschut 2020.

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generalizations of rival Enlightenment philosophies of history, he does hold that the diversity of human forms participating in history is required by the theology of creation. This is because it is the primary way in which God Himself acquires a visible form; nature being only decoration in comparison. What is more, Herder in this quote alludes to his interpretation of the creation of humankind— the moment where the “hero” of Genesis 1 becomes visible, and the “drama of His presence” fully takes off (FHA 5:300; cf. vom Hofe 1989, pp. 208–9). It is a key feature of Herder’s conception of historical development that he describes this drama as “God’s course among the nations” (Herder 2002, 340; FHA 4:87). I submit that it is mistaken to interpret Herder’s statements about the providential course of history as marginal to his historicism. Interpreters of Herder’s philosophy of history betray an incomplete understanding of the theological background of Herder’s conceptions of humanity and history when they state that, although God might have perfect oversight of the historical process, this does not alleviate the sense in which humanity is left with nothing but a plurality of individual developments.18 For Herder, human finitude and the providential development of humanity are essentially connected. When human beings recognize how their own historical existence makes up only a small portion of the immense variety of possibilities for developing a human way of life, they thereby increase their understanding of the providential organization and richness of history (FHA 4:83–4).19 This is one way in which human finitude does not render the theme of providence less significant to Herder’s conception of the vocation of humanity in history. Connectedly, individual human beings may grasp how humanity and all of creation/history are one even when they do not have oversight over world history at large and over God’s intentions. Through inquiring into their own history and through relating themselves to their historical others, they may recognize that also their own particular historical situation is part of the divine historical tradition (FHA 4:102, 105–6). Herder’s insistence, “human being always remains human being, in accordance with the analogy of all things nothing but human being!” (Herder 2002, p. 334; 18

19

Gjesdal 2017, pp. 177, 152–3 relies on the finite human being’s historical situatedness to dismiss the significance of the role of providence in Herder’s philosophy of history altogether. Spencer 2012b, pp. 120–3 sharply distinguishes between God and the created world in order to interpret Herder’s understanding of human action in history as completely autonomous and secular, and to argue that “history is never more than the aggregate of individual human actions” (2012b, p. 121). Muthu similarly states, “Although Herder uses the language of providence, humans themselves create, sustain, and transform their diverse cultural beliefs, practices, and ideas” (2003, p. 236). Muthu does not discuss how this language of providence relates to “the internal disposition towards humanity” Herder claims was created when God “impressed upon humans his image, religion and humanity” (2003, pp. 237–8; Muthu cites Ideen). This point has been sensitively analyzed by Litt 1942, pp. 100–9, 125–31.

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FHA 4:81), shows that in his 1774 philosophy of history, Herder does not separate the nature of the human from the general order of creation. Likewise, he argues for the general continuity of human development through cultural transfer by pointing at analogous cycles of growth in nature. This “progressive development [fortgehende Entwicklung, N.W.]” attests to a “guiding intention on earth” (Herder 2002, p. 299; FHA 4:42). Herder makes it explicit that the ground of his conception of history is “the analogy in nature, God’s speaking exemplary model in all works” (Herder 2002, p. 299; FHA 4:41–2). Furthermore, Herder in 1774 connects God’s leading intention for history with His primordial revelation to humanity. After all, in Älteste Urkunde, he formulates the aim of this revelation as follows: “incite and guide [the human being’s] whole soul along the eternities of the species” (FHA 5:297). Hence I disagree with interpreters of Herder who separate his early “critical” and/or “historicist” philosophy of history from his later more speculative vision of history, informed by his more pronounced philosophy of nature (Zammito 2009; Düsing 1984).20 In Herder’s philosophy of history from the 1780s, his philosophy of nature provides the (pantheistic) vision of nature and history as an intelligibly organized unity. In 1774, he draws his inspiration from his interpretation of Genesis. Immanuel Kant, having made preparations for reviewing both Älteste Urkunde and Ideen, was correct in observing that the latter retained the metaphysical view of a unified nature and history that Herder had held already in 1774 (AA 8:53–4). Finally, also regarding the ever-changing notions of happiness and virtue (see Sikka 2011, pp. 34–8), Herder relies on his monogeneticism and the providential plan. He argues that it shows infinitely more solicitude of the father of all [. . .] if in humanity there lies one invisible seed of receptivity for happiness and virtue on the whole earth and in all ages which, differently developed, indeed appears in different forms but [is, M.F.] inwardly only one measure and mixture of forces. Herder 2002, p. 335; FHA 4:82

Particular peoples and ages develop their individual notions of what it means to be happy or virtuous. Hence their forms of happiness and virtue are relative to 20

John Zammito suggests this separation has been common from Friedrich Meinecke’s Die Entstehung des Historismus onwards. But, in fact, Meinecke himself laments that, with the calming of Herder’s religiosity in the 1780s, Herder’s theodicy became less powerful ([1936] 1946, pp. 414–15). That is, Meinecke recognizes how Herder’s conception of providence facilitates his historicism. In this Meinecke follows Stadelmann’s claim that Herder’s concept of development is based on the pantheistic conception of “Gottes Offenbarung als Geschichtswirklichkeit” (1928, pp. 30–2, 58). Although Stadelmann and Meinecke indeed demarcate Herder’s 1774 religiosity from his Weimar period, they both recognize how his theology facilitates his “historical sense.”

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how they have developed these notions, and are “centered” on their particular way of life (FHA 4:35, 39). Still, the human ability to develop happiness and virtue in different ways accords with its susceptibility to different forms of happiness and virtue. This is because the different forms of being happy and virtuous are the effects of the underlying capacity for receptiveness. Herder describes this nucleus as a “kernel of essential nature and of capacity for happiness [Kern von Wesen und Glückfähigkeit, N.W.]” (Herder 2002, 335; FHA 4:82). Rather than being merely relative to specific historical circumstances, the values relating to happiness and virtue develop out of a single core. This core is itself the product of God’s primordial revelation. Furthermore, the historical process of developing this basic ability is supported by God’s providence. Herder’s theological notion of universal humanity thus gives his ethical-pedagogic project of promoting the general Bildung der Menschheit a firm normative basis.

V Conclusion The central question of the debates on Herder’s pluralism is how thin his universalism regarding the normative concept of humanity is, and how minimal he conceives the shared core human nature. This raises the question that concrete features, according to Herder, should all be counted as timelessly “contained in” this core human nature. Although I have mentioned some candidates above, I agree with Sikka, Gjesdal, and others that Herder is not committed to such a list of ahistorical features fixing, e.g., a set of universal moral rules that apply in any context (pace Spencer). Instead of exhaustively determining what is in the core of human nature, I have further specified how Herder thinks about this core, where it comes from, and how it behaves in history and nature. For example, as the hieroglyph of creation, humanity is the agent of providence and a visible reflection of the divine on earth, the One and All. In order to facilitate work towards the vocation of humanity, the common human form is maximally thin. But its core has a single divine origin in deep history that informs all human values, and its historical development proceeds according to a providential plan. Because of this monogenetic view of human culture, tracing the historical development of humanity and understanding others becomes part of an ethical project of the Bildung of humanity. Herder’s theological monism about human nature—no matter how minimal—supports this universalist normative commitment.

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I conclude that the universalism of Herder’s theological anthropology circumscribes his pluralism about values. I thereby do not wish to deny the relevance of “pluralism” as a label that can be employed in Herder’s scholarship. The positive meaning of Herder’s pluralism derives from his efforts to appreciate the radical diversity of human forms. These efforts, however, are entirely universalistic, and informed by an ontotheological monism. Therefore, Herder’s pluralism is different from pluralisms figuring in contemporary political philosophy.21 In addition, Herder’s statements regarding the incomparability of notions of happiness and virtue are not best interpreted as tokens of a historical relativism. These notions themselves certainly always depend on historical developments and cannot be treated as universal standards. But, the metaphysical framework, which makes their behavior—the concrete sentiments and practices of humans who live according to certain values—intelligible and justified, is universal and monistic.

21

On these pluralisms, and their respective application to Herder, see Spencer 2012b, pp. 100–1 and Linker 2000. Spencer draws on Berlin, Joseph Raz, and Michael Walzer; Linker mentions Berlin, James Tully, and Charles Larmore.

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The Doctrine of Palingenesis in Fichte’s Vocation of the Human Being David W. Wood

It’s a mystery in our current life clearly present before everyone’s eyes, but without anyone even noticing it. J.G. Fichte1 Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s 1800 text The Vocation of Man (Die Bestimmung des Menschen), is the philosopher’s most well-known and widely read work, praised by scholars and students alike for its literary presentation of the vocation or place of humanity in the cosmos. The central question of our human vocation is posed in the opening sentences of the book: I believe that I am now acquainted with a substantial part of the world around me, and I have certainly employed sufficient care and effort in acquiring this knowledge. [. . .] But – what am I myself, and what is my vocation?2

Despite the popularity of this more than 200-year-old work, The Vocation of Man continues to perplex the scholarship. Researchers repeatedly return to problems of how to understand the book and where to situate it in Fichte’s overall oeuvre. Should it be primarily understood as a religious text, as a reply to F. H. Jacobi and the charge of atheism that had been brought against Fichte in 1798/99?3 As a result of this controversy, Fichte had to leave the University of Jena and move to Berlin, publishing The Vocation of Man as his first work in that new city. Perhaps the book is best classified as a work of popular philosophy, in 1

2 3

J.G. Fichte 1800, p. 294 (FGA I/6:293). I will quote from the original volume of 1800, as well as giving the Gesamtausgabe reference for this and the other works of Fichte (= FGA). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. Fichte 1800, pp. 3–4 (FGA I/6:191). The dispute with Jacobi is of course a key aspect of Fichte’s Vocation of Man. For a recent perceptive reading of the work as a response to Jacobi, see Solé 2022.

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the Enlightenment tradition of J. J. Spalding, from whom Fichte appears to have borrowed the title.4 Or is it basically an autobiographical text, artistically chronicling Fichte’s vocational path from the study of theology and early Spinozistic determinism, to a disciple of Kantian transcendental idealism, and finally to the discovery of his own philosophy of the Wissenschaftslehre? But then why do the headings of the three books of the Vocation of Man move in the opposite direction: from a Cartesian form of “Doubt” (Zweifel) in Book 1, on to “Knowledge” (Wissen) in Book 2, to end in a religious-sounding belief or “Faith” (Glaube) in Book 3? By concluding with faith and not with knowledge, The Vocation of Man apparently breaks with the strict cognitive principles of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre. The most complete presentation of Fichte’s philosophy, the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre), was published in 1794/95.5 The Foundation forcefully defends a system grounded in transparent logical thinking and mathematical self-evidence. Its first principle is modelled in part on the thought of the geometer Archimedes.6 The selfproclaimed goal of the Wissenschaftslehre is decidedly scientific and not religious: “I believed, and I still believe that I have discovered the path that philosophy must follow in order to raise itself to the status of a self-evident science.”7 This is underscored by the name that Fichte chose for his system: Wissenschaftslehre—literally, a theory (Lehre) of science (Wissenschaft). Like with the title of the Vocation of Man, the choice of this name was inspired by a contemporary work, specifically Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In the Preface to the second 1787 edition of the first Critique, Kant historically reflected on the “revolutions” of science, and the scientific pretensions of metaphysics with respect to the disciplines of logic, geometry, mathematics, astronomy, and the natural sciences.8 Kant argued that a revolution was needed in metaphysics similar to the one occasioned by Copernicus’s De Revolutionus orbium coelestium

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7 8

See Spalding 1776. In Fichte’s 1799 text Appeal to the Public Against the Charge of Atheism, he said that it was Spalding who had first ignited his early enthusiasm for philosophy: “Would that you, Father Spalding – whose Vocation of Man sowed the first seed of higher speculation in my young soul [. . .] would you wish to speak up on my behalf ” (FGA I/5:447) English: Estes and Bowman (eds.) 2010, p. 120. The text formed the basis for Fichte’s first lectures on transcendental philosophy at the University of Jena. See Fichte 1794–5 (FGA I/2:249–51; henceforth: Grundlage); English: Fichte (2021), pp. 195– 378 (henceforth: Foundation). Specifically, Archimedes’s injunction: Dos moi pou sto . . . /give me a place to stand (and I will move the world). See Fichte, Über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, 1794 (FGA I/2:119). English: Fichte 2001, p. 163. Fichte, Grundlage (FGA I/2:251); Fichte 2001, p. 196. B vii–xliv.

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(On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres);9 that is, an inversion and transformation of our current manner of thinking.10—Why not seek out a new standpoint, and try “assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition” instead of vice-versa?11 While in the architectonic chapter, Kant summarized that knowledge in science is particularly distinguished from ordinary knowledge on account of its “systematic unity”; the architectonic of pure reason is the “Lehre des Scientifischen”—the theory of what is scientific in our cognition.12 Attempting to further embody the elevation of philosophy’s status, Kant’s theory of scientific cognition or Lehre des Scientifischen, becomes in Fichte the theory of science as such, or Wissenschaftslehre.13 These issues enveloping The Vocation of Man continue to be critically debated in the research.14 Many prominent thinkers now believe that the text not only forms the main transitional work between Fichte’s Jena and Berlin periods, but because of its popular style and religious themes, it constitutes a radical rupture and an irreconcilable break with the foundations of his early scientific thought.15

I Scientific versus Popular Presentations To add to the perplexity, the philosopher himself rejected any such “discontinuity reading” of The Vocation of Man, or of his system as a whole. Fichte considered that his philosophy had always remained rational and scientific, and was a novel extension of Kant’s transcendental project: “The author realizes that he will never be able to say anything that has not already been indicated by Kant, directly or indirectly, and with more or less clarity.”16 What is especially new and original in

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11 12 13 14 15

16

See Copernicus 1543. In the case of Copernicus it was also a matter of returning to an ancient theory and representing it in a modern way. He says in the Preface to his work that he found the Heliocentric theory of the universe already in the Pythagorean Philolaus (via Plutarch’s writings). And like the practice of Pythagoras and his circle, Copernicus was at a crossroads and deliberated whether to keep these “mysteries of philosophy” (mysteria philosophiae) to a restricted group of astronomers and friends, or put them before the public in writing. He eventually published the work just before his own death in 1543 (Ibid., Preface, unpaginated). B xvi. A832/B860. Concerning this title and the nature of science in Fichte, see D. Wood 2022a. For an overview of these and other issues relating to the text, see Breazeale 2013. Scholars holding this view of a turn include Martial Gueroult, Edmund Husserl, Richard Kroner, and Luigi Pareyson. See Breazeale 2013, pp. 6–11. Fichte, Über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, 1794 (FGA I/2:110). English: Fichte 2001, p. 153.

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Fichte is his methodology, and a more consciously complete and systematic ordering of the transcendental content and principles.17 This is why Fichte could also say of the relationship between the Wissenschaftslehre and Kant: “I have always stated, and I’ll state it again, my system is none other than the Kantian: i.e., it contains the same view of the matter (Ansicht der Sache), but its method (Verfahren) is entirely independent of the Kantian presentation.”18 In the Preface to The Vocation of Man, Fichte got a head start on many of his future critics by precisely predicting this interpretation of a supposed turn in his work. Here Fichte placed the burden on the reader, stating that claims of a rupture would just reveal the critic’s ignorance of his main publications. He contended that a careful and discerning philosophical mind, in contrast, would find that The Vocation of Man contains the same basic philosophy as the Wissenschaftslehre, but merely in a style more appropriate for the general public: The content of this book concerns those elements of the newest philosophy that may be useful outside of the university. [. . .] Hence, this book is not aimed at professional philosophers; the latter will not discover anything in it than what has already been presented in the author’s other writings. It should be understandable to any reader who is able to understand a book.19

Because The Vocation of Man is not directed at academics and contains the essentials of his other works, it could be considered as a popular presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre.20 The key Fichtean point is: one and the same philosophy can be written down and communicated in two different ways; either in a more scientific and rigorous form for philosophically trained readers, or in a more popular and literary manner for the general public. The difference between a scientific and popular writing is explained in Fichte’s 1806 Way to the Blessed Life, or also the Doctrine of Religion: “The scientific presentation has to deal with a bias toward error and an ill and distorted spiritual nature; the popular presentation presupposes impartiality, and an inherently healthy, but still insufficiently developed spiritual nature.”21 Thus, although The Vocation of Man does not include the sophisticated methods and abstract argumentation of the

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In the “Zweite Einleitung” (1798) Fichte claimed that Kant had “conceived of ” the completed system of transcendental philosophy, but in his published writings had only managed to present “fragments” and “results” of the system, and not the finished philosophical science itself. (FGA I/4:230). Fichte, Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1797/98) (FGA I/4:184). Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen, iii–iv (FGA I/6:189). When I talk about the Wissenschaftslehre as such, I am generally using it as shorthand to refer to the ideas in the main Jena published version of Fichte’s system, the 1794 Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte, Anweisung zum seligen Leben, oder auch die Religionslehre (FGA I/9:72).

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Wissenschaftslehre, nor attempts to rectify errors by other researchers, the underlying principles and ideas of the two works are identical. In fact, this distinction between scientific and popular presentations is already made on the title page and in the Preface to Fichte’s 1794 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre. The title page specifically designates the work as a “manuscript for his listeners” (Handschrift für seine Zuhörer),22 while the Preface confirms that originally the text was “not actually destined for the public.”23 In addition, in §1 of the Foundation, Fichte references Maimon’s 1793 book On the Progress of Philosophy (Über die Progressen der Philosophie)—and notes how the book seeks to demonstrate that Leibniz likewise had a twofold manner of presenting his philosophy.24 Maimon argues that Leibniz employed a “exoteric presentation” in his writings, which concealed a deeper Spinozistic sense.25 Surely the most celebrated contemporary of Fichte to have raised the public profile of this dual form of philosophical presentation, was G. E. Lessing. According to Jacobi’s On the Doctrine of Spinoza, Lessing too was a clandestine disciple of Spinoza, who furthermore believed that the Dutch philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis was privately an adherent of Spinozism. Lessing claimed to detect distinct Spinozistic traces in Hemsterhuis’s two texts, Sur l’homme & ses rapports and Aristée. Therefore, these texts for Lessing were prime examples of how outer published “exoteric” presentations can actually harbor an inner secret or esoteric core.26 In his 1800 published lectures on Logic, Kant himself notes the exotericesoteric distinction in relation to Pythagoras and his disciples: “Among the teachings [of Pythagoras] there were some that were exoteric, which he presented to the whole world; the remainder were secret and esoteric, only destined for his community.”27 To begin with, Fichte’s classification of his own writings as scientific and popular could be read in the context of these statements by Maimon, Lessing, and Kant. However, just to be clear: there is a practice in the course of history of not restricting esoteric works solely to the members of a select community (as Pythagoras did), but of making them openly available to the public. This

22

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Fichte, Grundlage (FGA I/2:250); Fichte 2001, p. 195. The work was first written for Fichte’s university students. However, the manuscript fell into the hands of a number of other professors and philosophers, including Jacob Sigismund Beck in Halle, who produced an anonymous review of the work. Beck concluded that the Wissenschaftslehre was unserious philosophy and full of “magic circles” (cf. FGA I/2:172). Fichte, Grundlage (FGA I/2:251); Fichte 2001, p. 196. Fichte, Grundlage (FGA I/2:264); Fichte 2001, p. 207. Maimon 1793, p. 37. See Jacobi 1789, pp. 55–6. Kant 1800, pp. 32–3.

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practice of open esotericism has a long and distinguished philosophical heritage. It extends at least back to Aristotle, as Maimon well knew. A text annotated by Maimon28 draws attention to the tradition recorded in Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, where the most metaphysical teachings of Aristotle were initially given to a carefully prepared inner circle of students. These teachings were called “epoptic” and “acroamatic”; that is, for those who “see” and “hear.”29 Although originally intended for his trained students, Aristotle still wrote down these teachings and made them publicly available in books. He was of the opinion that anyone lacking the intellectual background or eschewing the requisite mental effort would just fail to properly understand them. He reportedly also wrote popular philosophical texts, which are no longer extant. Despite being published and openly available for anyone to read, the metaphysical writings still acquired the reputation of being “esoteric,” i.e., hidden or for a restricted circle of knowers. Alexander the Great, a student of Aristotle, complained about the publication of his teacher’s metaphysical works, saying esoteric teachings should not be given to the public. Aristotle’s reply, according to Plutarch, was to say that the doctrines he taught: were both published and not published; for in truth his treatise on metaphysics is of no use for those who would either teach or learn the science, but is written as a memorandum for those already trained therein.30

Consequently, I would argue that Fichte’s twofold approach to writing and publishing philosophy should be placed squarely in this Aristotelian tradition.31 In his 1793 book on the French Revolution, Fichte fiercely criticized scholars and writers who did not think “esoteric” teachings could be presented to the public.32 Many commentators agree with the esoteric-exoteric classification of Fichte’s published writings. As early as 1825, Johann Friedrich Herbart equated Fichte’s strictly scientific works with “an esoteric philosophy as it were.”33 In 1862, in a commemorative address on the centenary of Fichte’s birth, Ferdinand

28 29

30 31

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See Bacon 1793, vol. 1, pp. 205–8. Kant also makes use of the term “acroamatic” in the first Critique in relation to proof. For him, an acroamatic proof is one conducted “by means of mere words (the object in thought)” (A735/B763). Plutarch 1967, pp. 241–3. As a case in point, in this study of Fichte’s doctrine of palingenesis I will only use his published works, i.e., only those he published himself during his lifetime (contained in series I in the FGA). A great deal of further support can be found in his letters and unpublished writings. Fichte, Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische Revolution (GA I/1:233). “Gleichsam eine esoterische Philosophie,” (Herbart 18521, p. 580, in a review of Rükkert’s Christliche Philosophie).

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Lassalle came to an identical conclusion. His address sought to uncover the more scientific ideas of the Wissenschaftslehre in Fichte’s popular 1804/05 text, The Characteristics of the Present Age (Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters). Or as Lassalle phrases it: “our task will be to consider the esoteric in the exoteric” (es wird unsere Aufgabe sein, das Esoterische im Exoterischen zu betrachten).34 Leading modern Fichte scholars, such as Günter Zöller,35 Rainer Schäfer,36 and Daniel Breazeale,37 are in agreement with these determinations: precisely because it is so metaphysically rigorous and scientific, the 1794 Wissenschaftslehre can be called esoteric, whereas the more literary and popular works can be labelled exoteric. Nevertheless, all these scholars also underscore the necessity of highlighting any possible unities, harmonies, and points of intersection between the two types of publications, as well as any genuine contradictions. These considerations on presentation and Fichte’s own declarations about his scientific and popular writings should be borne in mind when judging a work like The Vocation of Man. Especially if these judgments concern criticisms about its different style, methods, language, or absence of transcendental deductions.

II Palingenesis as Our Vocation? Naturally, it is not a matter of naively accepting Fichte’s assertion of philosophical continuity in his work, or of simply deferring to his authority, but of critically weighing up the claims and counter-claims. Accordingly, not all Fichte interpreters share the view of a turnaround 1800.38 For my part, I have recently argued that one of the most widely criticized aspects of Fichte’s Vocation of

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Lassalle 1862, p. 24. “So great was the discrepancy between the careful claims, the pedantic proofs, the rigorous refutations in the esoteric philosophy of the Wissenschaftslehre and the bold assertions, approximations of arguments, and abrupt dismissals in the exoteric philosophy of the popular writings that his contemporaries, among them Schelling and Hegel, . . . took Fichte for a former colleague having turned edifying preacher [. . .]” (Zöller 2014, p. 173). “Fichte research is therefore correct, namely, that it is impossible to separate his popular writings from his scientific works. But it is nevertheless true that the simplifications contained in his ‘exoteric’ popular writings cause misunderstandings and seem to imply differences between these and his more scientific or ‘esoteric’ works” (Schäfer 2016, p. 154). “Fichte’s public lectures [in Jena] were immensely popular from the start, but to his disappointment, his more esoteric private lectures on Theoretical Philosophy were, at first anyway, less well attended [. . .],” (Daniel Breazeale 2021, p. 24). Scholars arguing for continuity include Alexis Philonenko and Ives Radrizzani. See Breazeale 2013, pp. 11–15.

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Man—the conception of faith found in the third book—is compatible with his earlier scientific philosophy.39—Of course, the spheres of faith and scientific knowledge are often rightly opposed. They are fundamentally different, particularly in the domains of cognition and epistemology. But, by taking into consideration Fichte’s widespread deployment of his chief dialectic or synthetic method, a method that seeks to overcome oppositions or antitheses, we see that he is able to find certain points of intersection or syntheses between two entities or domains that are commonly opposed, including those of science and religion. Fichte lamented in January 1800 that philosophers had not grasped the significance of his synthetic method, especially in relation to religion, and that his religious conceptions were now best expressed in his forthcoming publication, The Vocation of Man.40 Fichte’s method of synthesis is repeatedly explained and used in his chief Jena writings on the Wissenschaftslehre,41 but the scope of his method is still underappreciated today. It is precisely the method of synthesis that can shed enormous light on the issue of continuity and rupture. For instance, as a result of this method, Fichte is able to speak of a certain kind of scientific faith, i.e., a faith that is needed in order to progress in scientific knowledge. Here science and faith are first viewed separately or in isolation, i.e., as antitheses, but then possible points of harmony between the two, or syntheses, are sought out. It goes without saying that these intersection points should not be forced or artificial, but inherent and immanent, and not at all contradictory. This positive inclusion of faith into rational philosophy recalls Anselm of Canterbury’s fides quaerens intellectum—faith seeking understanding, or belief seeking rational grounds—as Hansjürgen Verweyen has pointed out in the context of Fichte’s late theory of ethics.42 Moreover, it draws Fichte closer to Jacobi’s philosophy of faith. Fichte always insisted that he and Jacobi shared a great deal in common, praising him as the “clearest thinker of his era.”43 It was one of the merits of Jacobi to have highlighted our reliance on a form of scientific faith when employing first principles, like with the axioms of geometry.44 In Über die Lehre des Spinoza, Jacobi expounded 39 40 41

42

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See D. Wood 2022b. See Fichte’s published text, Aus einem Privatschreiben (im Jänner 1800) (FGA I/6:388–9). For one of Fichte’s clearest explanations of the synthetic method, see: Fichte, Grundlage, §§1–3 (FGA I/2:255–82); Fichte 2001, pp. 200–24. “It is remarkable here how a philosopher for whom nothing else was important besides the systematic explanation of the conditions of the possibility of freedom—which in its sharpest form had even produced the Enlightenment!—came to the conclusion as a result of this work that was entirely analogous to what Anselm of Canterbury had formulated seven hundred years before, in his notion of faith seeking its ‘necessary rational grounds’ (rationes necessariae)” Verweyen 2016, p. 299. Fichte, “Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre” (1798) (FGA 1/4:236n). See Fichte, “Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre” (1798) (FGA I/4:260).

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on geometrical axiomatic thinking in Spinoza, tracing its origin back to Pythagoras and Plato, as well as adopting the geometer Archimedes’s Dos moi pou sto (give me a place to stand) as a motto on the cover of his book.45 We rely on a type of “faith” insofar as the axioms themselves cannot be discursively “proved” or “demonstrated.” In order to avoid an infinite regress in our knowledge, we have to forego all discursive demonstrations of the validity of the axioms, and simply accept them as true by means of direct insight or basic mathematical intuition. In Fichte’s eyes, axioms or geometrical-like first principles are therefore a point of synthesis or harmony between the domains of science and faith. Apart from the controversial issue of faith, there are a number of other highly challenging topics found in Fichte’s Vocation of Man that become less paradoxical when perceived against the background and scope of the synthetic method.— One such topic is the doctrine of palingenesis, metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls. Surprisingly, although this doctrine features conspicuously in Fichte’s 1800 book and in many of his other Berlin writings, it has for the most part been neglected by Fichte scholarship. In addition, the topic of palingenesis was widely discussed by contemporary figures, such as Wieland, Herder, Goethe, and Novalis.46 And most prominently by Lessing, at the conclusion of his 1780 Education of the Human Race. For Lessing, the doctrine of palingenesis is above all a pedagogical issue, since it concerns the further development of our human faculties: But why should not every individual human being have been present more than once upon this world? Is this hypothesis so ridiculous, because it is the oldest? [. . .] Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge and faculties? [. . .] And what do I have to lose? Is not the whole of eternity mine?47

Fichte’s Vocation of Man similarly evokes the doctrine of palingenesis or transmigration of souls in several passages.48 It is perhaps most explicit in Book 3, and like with Lessing, it occurs in the context of a defense of the doctrine of immortality and eternity. Here, Fichte posits that the spiritual or rational element in the human being passes through multiple sensible lives on earth. I will quote these crucial passages at some length:

45 46

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See Jacobi 1789, p. 103. For an overview of the topic of rebirth and palingenesis around 1800 in German see Kurth-Voigt 1999. Lessing 1780, §§94–100, pp. 87–90. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen (FGA I/6:285; 302–9).

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Hence, this is my whole sublime vocation, my true essence. I am a member of two orders, one order is purely spiritual, in which I govern through the simple and pure will, and the other order is sensible, in which I work through my deeds. [. . .]. These two orders, the purely spiritual and the sensible, of which the latter may consist of an incalculable series of particular lives (einer unübersehbaren Reihe von besonderen Leben bestehen mag), are both in me from the first moments of the development of an active reason, and continue on in parallel to one another. The latter sensible order is only a phenomenon for myself and for those who find themselves in the same life; the former spiritual order alone supplies meaning, purposiveness, and worth to the latter. I am immortal, imperishable, and eternal, as soon as I embrace the resolution to listen to the laws of reason.49

These passages do not contain the words “palingenesis,” “metempsychosis,” or “transmigration of souls,” just as little as Lessing’s text does, but do they express the same idea? In my reading of the Vocation of Man, Fichte directly interlinks human vocation with palingenesis. He argues that the originally unified human being can be viewed as partaking of two different spheres, the spiritual and the sensible. He declares that the true spiritual or rational entity of the human being is ultimately eternal and immortal; and once this entity aligns itself more fully with the laws of reason, it can attain knowledge of its own eternity and immortality. And following Lessing, and bound up with our twofold human existence, Fichte also puts forward the possibility that we could pass through multiple lives in successive and separate, sensible bodies. In other words, our eternal spiritual part and our human vocation are subject to the process of palingenesis.

III Palingenesis in Fichte’s Other Berlin Publications The 1800 Vocation of Man is not alone in this regard. Many of the major publications of Fichte’s Berlin period contain reflections on the doctrine of palingenesis. Fichte’s most substantial treatise on the philosophy of religion, the above-mentioned 1806 Way to the Blessed Life, similarly speaks of an entire series of future lives. It does this in connection with the idea of Seligkeit or

49

Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen, pp. 270–1 (FGA I/6:284–5).

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blessedness. According to Fichte, human blessedness is an awareness of our connection with the eternal: “genuine life, and the blessedness of life, consists in the union with the imperishable and the eternal.”50 Clearly in relation to eternity and immortality, there is a profound link in Fichte’s system between our living human vocation and the striving for blessedness. As in the Vocation of Man, this blessed union with the eternal should already be sought here and now in our present life on earth, and not in a future life. Almost imperceptibly, The Way to the Blessed Life then juxtaposes our human striving with the doctrine of palingenesis: It is wholly certain indeed that blessedness also lies beyond the grave for anyone who has already begun to acquire it here in this world [. . .] but one does not attain blessedness by simply being buried in a grave; anyone thinking this will seek it in vain in the future life, and in the infinite series of all future lives (und in der unendlichen Reihe aller künftigen Leben) . . .51

The following year, in another well-known set of published popular lectures, the 1807/08 Addresses to the German Nation, Fichte once more refers to the doctrine of palingenesis. The opening address states Fichte’s aim: to catch the rays of a dawning “new world,” in order to reflect them back to the disconsolate age in the form of a prophetic vision (in einem weissagenden Gesichte). This is done to spur this age to a renewal: “the image of its former life will then doubtless also sink and vanish into this intuition, and the corpse (der Tote) may be borne to its place of rest without excessive lamentation.”52 Then in lecture three of this work, Fichte seems to draw an explicit parallel between his own personal predicament at that time in Berlin, and the situation and destiny of the ancient Hebrew prophet Ezekiel. Fichte invites readers to both hear and see another specific vision: “Let this age hear the vision (Gesicht) of an old prophet that was intended for a no less lamentable situation. Thus speaks the prophet by the river of Chebar, the consoler of those held captive not in their own country, but in a foreign land.”53 This is some of the background to the parallel: in 1807/08 Fichte was lecturing in Berlin, not far from the Spree river, using these addresses to try and comfort its citizens, while the city was surrounded by Napoleonic troops. In the sixth century B.C., the prophet Ezekiel was living in exile, “in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar,” trying to console his exiled fellow citizens, and

50 51 52 53

Fichte, Anweisung zum seligen Leben (FGA I/9:62). Fichte, Anweisung zum seligen Leben (FGA I/9:61). Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation (FGA I/10:116). English: Fichte 2008 , p. 21. Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation (FGA I/10:141–2), Fichte 2008, p. 45.

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had begun to see visions in his thirtieth year (Ezekiel 1, 1–3). These exiles would eventually be liberated by Cyrus the Great.54 Fichte next directly quotes a long passage from the Book of Ezekiel. Which passage? It was none other than Ezekiel’s prophetic vision of the palingenesis of a group of people, in which their dry and dead bones become organically organized anew, and clothed with living flesh and the breath of fresh life (Ezekiel 37, 1–10).55 In lecture four, Fichte explains his use of the polysemic German word Gesicht, which literally means “face,” i.e., one and the same word can have multiple meanings. This leads to the conclusion: from the religious perspective, seeing a Gesicht is having a “vision”; but from the philosophical perspective, it is the grasping of an “idea.”56 In his final Berlin publication, the 1811/12 Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar, Fichte is perhaps the most explicit about an interconnection between the doctrine of palingenesis and the cultural vocation of the human race in general. This text contains another direct echo to the pedagogical and palingenetic theories in Lessing’s Education of the Human Race. Strikingly, Fichte again interlinks this passage with the figure of the seer (Seher).—People who were genuine seers in the past epochs of history, and who especially manifested as prophets and miracle-workers, now reappear metamorphosed in modern times. Because of the further development of our human faculties and the changed historical circumstances, the inspired prophets and miracle-workers of old now become poets, artists, or scientific thinkers: The originally inspired seers, who will continue to exist and must exist until the end of days, and who on account of the relations of humanity were prophets and miracle-workers in that first epoch, completely cease to be like this, because the situation has altered, and they become transformed into another phenomenon, which is twofold, and they are antithetical to the extent that the visions (Gesichte) they see are antithetical. They become poets and artists in general, [. . . or] these seers become transformed into a scholarly and scientific community.57 54

55 56 57

The identity of Ezekiel was shrouded in mystery in antiquity. Based on the report by Clement of Alexandria (second century A.D.), Ezekiel had been conjectured by some scholars to be identical with Nazaratus or Zaratus, one of the teachers of Pythagoras (sixth century B.C.): “He [Pythagoras] travelled to Babylon, Persia, and Egypt and studied with magi and priests. Pythagoras was enthusiastic about Zoroaster, the Persian Magus, and the followers of Prodicus’ heretically claim to have obtained secret books of this writer. Alexander [Polyhistor] in his work On Pythagorean Symbols, records that Pythagoras was a pupil of the Assyrian Zaratus (whom some identify with Ezekiel, wrongly, as I shall show presently), and claims that Pythagoras learned from Gauls and Brahmans” (Clement of Alexandria 1991, pp. 74–5). Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation (FGA I/10:142), Fichte 2008, pp. 45–6. Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation (FGA I/10:148), Fichte 2008, p. 48. Fichte, Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, lecture 2 (FGA I/10:395–6). This cycle of four lectures was given in 1811. The first two lectures were published by Fichte in 1812; the final two only posthumously.

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Fichte again clarifies that the word Gesicht can express in German what is meant in Greek by the word “idea.” Hence, the notion of a Gesicht or face and the accompanying figure of the seer, supplies the inner organic connection or synthesis between two different time periods: between the distant past and the present time. But, if the human race is to progress, the former faculties that once allowed religious prophets to prophesize need to become modified, and the results seized and presented in a different manner, one suitable for our time.— For the author of the Wissenschaftslehre, this belongs to the cultural and historical vocation of the human race: a transition from a state of religious prophecy, which is no longer appropriate, to a striving for genuine artistic insight and crystal-clear ideas. Moreover, it is a personal vocation for Fichte, since in all these Berlin lectures it is the philosopher himself who provides a visible and unique example of such a modern scholar, striving to seize and present Gesichte.

IV Conclusion In conclusion, it could easily be objected: Fichte is not really advocating here in these Berlin writings that our human vocation is intertwined with the doctrine of palingenesis, in the religious sense of the transmigration of souls; much less indirectly intimating that he is the returned prophet Ezekiel. By employing the language of possibilities in The Vocation of Man, Fichte’s reflections on multiple lives are obviously intended to be purely speculative—i.e., palingenesis “may” be a possibility, but it also might not be. Lessing had done exactly the same by labelling his reflections on palingenesis a “hypothesis.” A reply in return could be: to attain further clarity on this point it would be imperative not just to look at the Vocation of Man, but at Fichte’s work as a whole. That is one of the lessons of the 1794/95 Foundation: “I ask future critics of this text to consider it as a whole and to view each of the individual thoughts from the point of view of the whole.”58 At any rate, if the concluding doctrine of “faith” in Book 3 of The Vocation of Man had signaled for many scholars a definitive break with the 1794 Wissenschaftslehre, then one could imagine that the references to palingenesis in his Berlin publications constitute an even more flagrant example of a rupture with his earlier thought. Nevertheless, I maintain that a close and comprehensive 58

Fichte, Grundlage (FGA I/2:253); Fichte 2001, p. 198.

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examination of Fichte’s Jena writings in light of his synthetic method will show that this is not the case, and that the idea of palingenesis may also be implicitly found in the 1794 Wissenschaftslehre. Consequently, these passages from his Berlin period are not the sign of a suddenly changed or transcendent standpoint, but rather that the doctrine of palingenesis can be theoretically traced back to Fichte’s transcendental foundation. Since the doctrine of palingenesis traditionally belongs to the religious sphere, it should not be surprising that it only becomes more explicit in Fichte’s writings on the philosophy of religion. Nevertheless, the key question still remains: can this later religious idea of palingenesis be rationally reconciled with Fichte’s earlier scientific system? We encounter once again an apparent antithesis or contradiction between the spheres of religion and science. A satisfying point of intersection or synthesis still needs to be discovered. All these highly controversial topics of continuity and rupture, the method of synthesis, popular and scientific presentations, palingenesis, and the vocation of the human race, ideally need a broad and detailed analysis, one that would additionally include many more references to Fichte’s central Jena works on the one hand, and an examination of Kant’s scientific and religious thought on the other, to the degree that Fichte is a Kantian. Unfortunately, that cannot be further undertaken here, and will have to be left for another occasion.59 Hopefully the present short chapter has still furnished a number of new research indications as to how these topics may be understood and approached within Fichte’s Berlin period, including the 1800 text, The Vocation of Man.

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For a continuation of this study on palingenesis, see my companion piece to the present text, see D. Wood (forthcoming).

12

The Vocation of Philosophy: Hegel on “Speculative” Science and the Human Good Brady Bowman

[. . .] the human being is aware of God only insofar as God is aware of Himself in the human being; this awareness is God’s self-consciousness, but it is equally His knowledge of the human being, and this same knowledge that God has of the human being is the human being’s knowledge of God. The spirit of the human being, to be aware of God, is only the spirit of God himself. TWA 17:479–50

I Spiritual Striving and Reconciliation: Affinities Between Hegel and Spalding Johann Joachim Spalding’s Vocation of The Human Being is at once both a contribution to theological anthropology and a specimen of what today we might call inspirational literature. In this latter respect, the work’s tenor and style is antithetical to Hegel’s notions of what philosophical writing should be, which, he famously warns, must resist the temptation to be edifying or uplifting (GW 9:14).1 Though Hegel barely mentions Spalding, his remarks on popular discourse about the “vocation of the human being” are dismissive.2 He associates

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2

All translations from Hegel are my own with the exception of the Science of Logic and Elements of the Philosophy of Right (see below). Hegel refers to Spalding by name only once in his published writings, counting him among Nicolai, Mendelssohn, and other representatives of the Berlin Enlightenment, whom he dismisses for their “shallowness of mind and cognition” and their petty opposition “to anything that demonstrated genius, talent, and purity of mind or soul” (TWA 11:279). German proponents of the Enlightenment, Hegel argues, took a fundamentally misguided approach in their attempt to pin down the human

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the topic with the Popularphilosophie of the German Enlightenment, which he holds in general disdain as a “period of transition” and of the “degeneration of thought” during the decades between Wolff and Kant (TWA 20:267).3 Even so, Hegel’s own views on the human essence and its high calling are by no means discontinuous with the tradition of theological anthropology that Spalding represents and which his popular work renewed for German audiences throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth. Spalding asks the question, How should I live, considering the short span of time given me in this world?4 His initial answer is that I should live a life of active resolve to do what I ought according to what I recognize as right and good (Spalding 1794, pp. 70–1). But this answer he finds to be incomplete because it fails to address the finitude and adversity that are inseparable from actual human existence, nourishing the fear that virtue’s lofty idea might be just an “empty thought” (Spalding 1794, p. 96). Intimations of divine providence in the order of nature and human affairs first point the way to a more satisfying answer, but the decisive insight comes with recognition of the utter simplicity, indivisibility, and hence immortality of the I (Spalding 1794, pp. 140–6).5 The certitude that “this visible life does not exhaust the entire purpose of my existence” (Spalding 1794, pp. 145–6) lends courage and resolve to bear the adversities of this life and to find in them a higher, redemptive meaning: “I shall accustom myself always to consider eternity and this present life as a single whole” (Spalding 1794, p. 149). This moral and existential certainty elevates the spirit above all fear of death, which “can no longer disturb my peace and joy”; indeed, death itself plays an essential role in accomplishing the ultimate perfection of my happiness in salvation (cp. Spalding 1794, pp. 158–9). For Spalding, then, longing for reconciliation with the finitude of (outward) human existence is the crucial factor in provoking the question of the human being’s “calling,” “vocation,” or “goal” (he uses all these terms), while insight into

3 4 5

being’s spiritual essence and vocation, because they sought to derive it on the basis of “perception, observation, experience,” and by appealing to various drives, e.g., a “social drive” to explain the existence of society and the state (TWA 20:299). Hegel thinks this fundamentally empirical and piecemeal approach made it impossible for them to grasp the deeper necessity by which such instincts inhere in human nature. On Spalding’s relation to eighteenth century Popularphilosophie see Printy 2013. Spalding 1794, p. 6. Translations are my own. In this passage, Spalding places special emphasis on the first-personal pronoun: “These limbs [. . .] that’s not what I am; they are [. . .] different from me. I am that in me which has representations, judges, decides; and this I is quite certainly not something made up of various parts that are distinct from or external to each other” (Spalding 1794, p. 140). He underscores the pronoun ‘I’ five times in the space of a page, twice referring to it demonstratively as “this I.” The same expression of Cartesian self-certainty will play an important role in the following discussion of Hegel.

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the condition under which alone such reconciliation is possible is itself an essential part of that very calling itself. In the midst of worldly adversities, writes Spalding, he comes to the realization that “the acknowledgment of my relation to the supreme being is one of the ends of my nature, because otherwise one of my nature’s essential needs, namely for assurance and satisfaction, would be lost, and one of its inextinguishable drives would have in vain been implanted in it” (Spalding 1794, p. 129). Consciousness, understanding, and acknowledgment of the human relation to God is thus a defining end of human nature. Deep differences from Spalding’s edifying stye of discourse notwithstanding, Hegel’s philosophy is also a philosophy of reconciliation. That shapes his philosophical anthropology, which Hegel was given to articulating in theological terms, even if the orthodoxy of his views is debatable. And even if his concept of spirit (Geist) is reducible neither to that of humanity nor to that of God, Hegelian “spirit” does imply an understanding of the human as the unique realization and indeed as completing the existence of something authentically divine. Significantly, there is only one place in Hegel’s entire oeuvre where he expressly discusses the vocation or determination of the human being: In the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, under the heading “Die Bestimmung des Menschen,” in his interpretation of the story of redemption from the fall of man to the ascension of Christ. A defining element of this interpretation is the “infinite pain” (TWA 17:263 and passim) inseparable from human consciousness of finitude. On his reading of Genesis 3, the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is an allegorical expression for the emergence of the essentially human consciousness that our immediate existence as finite, natural beings is inappropriate to our inner unity with the infinite (TWA 17:264–5). The “infinite pain” results from a double alienation: Human God-likeness prevents us from finding satisfaction in our merely natural being, while our natural being persistently resists and eludes our attempts to make it conform to the dictates of our higher calling (TWA 17:265). The finite world is thus the arena of constant struggle and dissatisfaction. The Christian religion is special in Hegel’s eyes for the way it integrates the God-forsakenness of the finite world as an essential element in the divine life itself, as crucial to God’s very existence. Rather than seeking or promising liberation from the contradictions and adversities of finite existence, Christianity offers certainty of reconciliation with finite existence by affirming the “infinite pain” as a necessary, meaningful, indeed a timelessly eternal dimension belonging to the plan of salvation itself. This understanding of things bears obvious affinities to Spalding’s recommendation to consider “eternity and the present life

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as a single whole” (Spalding 1794, p. 149), joined by a “simple inseparable bond” (Spalding 1794, p. 156). That should hardly surprise us given both men’s Lutheranism.6 The figure of Christ is the linchpin in this conception, for if, writes Hegel, “the human being is to achieve this consciousness of the unity of divine and human nature, this consciousness of the determination of the human being [Bestimmung des Menschen] as a human being” (TWA 17:274), then it is necessary that God himself become manifest as a human being. Pontius Pilatus’s Ecce homo thus gains a significance comparable to that of the Delphic injunction Know thyself, whose “significance lies in the knowledge of the truth of the human being [des Wahrhaften des Menschen] and of the truth in and for itself — knowledge of spirit as the essential being itself ” (ENZ § 377/GW 20:379).7 These observations have served to indicate the extent to which Hegel’s philosophical anthropology is continuous with the tradition of theological anthropology to which Spalding also belongs.8 However, the architecture of Hegel’s entire system exemplifies this same elevated conception of human destiny as realizing “the absolute spirit” and serving as the element of its very existence.9 In the system’s tripartite scheme, the master discipline of (I) speculative logic (which Hegel once characterizes as “the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite mind”)10 is succeeded first by (II) a speculative philosophy of nature, which then culminates in the transition to (III) a speculative philosophy of spirit. In turn, the philosophy of spirit ascends through the stages of (1) subjective and (2) objective spirit to culminate in Hegel’s exposition of (3) “absolute spirit” in its threefold realization as art, revealed religion, and speculative philosophy. The significance of this scheme lies in its circularity: The system that begins with a fully abstract exposition of the basic structure of reality (the “absolute idea”) ends with an account of the “spiritual” form of cognitive praxis in which that fully abstract exposition has become really possible and emerged as an historically concrete 6

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On the Lutheran background in relation to philosophy in eighteenth-century German and on Spalding’s influence, also see Printy 2013. G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Umrisse (1830) [ENZ], cited by § followed by volume and page in GW. R = Remark, A = Addition. In the division “Subjective Spirit” in his Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Hegel devotes an entire subdivision (§§388–412) to “anthropology” in a narrower sense that is not to be confused with the broader sense in which the term is here intended. See Walter Jaeschke, “Anthropologie und Personalität,” in Hegels Anthropologie [=Hegel-Jahrbuch Sonderband 9] (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2017): 1–15. We can trace the idea at least as far back as Hegel’s early publication Faith and Knowledge (1802) where he characterizes philosophical cognition as a “speculative Good Friday” (Karfreitag) that recapitulates in purely conceptual form the death and resurrection of God. See GW 4:189. Hegel’s Science of Logic. Translated by George di Giovanni (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 29/ GW 21:34. Page references to the Science of Logic are to GW, included in the Cambridge edition.

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existence: In the activity of philosophical cognition, Hegel concludes, it is the absolute idea itself that “eternally actuates itself, produces itself, and enjoys itself as absolute spirit” (ENZ §577; cp. §574). Hegel does not intend this as a point bearing narrowly just on the discipline of philosophy. Under the term “spirit” he subsumes and systematizes the essential dimensions of human existence: embodiment, feeling, cognitive awareness (subjective spirit), but also the institutions of family, social, and political life (objective spirit), and the artistic, religious, and philosophical forms under which human beings express and grasp an essence that is no less their own than it is eternal and divine. When we look at it this way, we see that Hegel’s philosophy of spirit is his philosophical anthropology, whose core doctrine concerns the high destiny of humanity as the site of divine self-revelation. The vocation of the human being is to grasp the existence of “finite spirits” as the element in which that “infinite” or “absolute spirit” is realized. But then philosophy, as a practice, is continuous with the human vocation that it both reflects and also realizes. For Hegel, the vocation of the human being is the vocation of philosophy. It is therefore significant that Hegel thematizes the Judeo-Christian story of the fall and redemption of humanity repeatedly in connection with the most abstract division of his system of philosophy, speculative logic. He finds it “appropriate” to place a discussion of “the myth of the fall of man at the very beginning of logic, since logic is concerned with cognition and this myth is also about cognition, its origin and significance” and its “relation to spiritual life” (ENZ §24 A/TWA 8:88). Similarly, the section of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion discussed above, has this to say about the incarnation and sacrifice, in Christ, of the eternal Son: It is not about representation or conviction, but rather this immediate presence and certainty of the divine. [. . .] This “is ” eradicates all trace of mediation; it is the apex, the final point of light [. . .]. All mediation by feeling, representation, reasoning is absent from this “is ” that returns again only in philosophical cognition through the concept, in the element of universality. TWA 17:275; emphasis added

The remarkable line with which the passage concludes is a reminder that philosophical thought, as Hegel conceives it, is never situated at a distance from its subject matter, but is immediately and actively one with it because that subject matter is rational human thought itself as the actuality and existence of a divine or eternal “reason.” As we shall be seeing in more detail below, Hegel’s speculative logic unfolds from, and has its sole existence in, this “is ” of actual, occurrent

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thought, and it is significant in the present context that he associates this so closely with the same incarnation, crucifixion, and ascension that is central to his discussion of the Bestimmung des Menschen. Among the most famous passages in which Hegel associates the task of philosophy with the redemptive passion of Christ, is this one from the Philosophy of Right: To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy, for what is, is reason. [. . .] What lies between reason as self-conscious spirit and reason as present actuality, what separates the former from the latter and prevents it from finding satisfaction in it, is the fetter of some abstraction [. . .]. To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present and thereby to delight in the present—this rational insight is the reconciliation with actuality which philosophy grants to those who have received the inner call to comprehend [. . .]. GW 14,1:15 f.11

All these passages ascribe to philosophy a task—an end, a calling, a vocation— that is substantially identical to the vocation of the human being as Hegel determines it in the more strictly theological and religious context. Of course, this very fact has, from Hegel’s time down to ours, contributed to doubts about his orthodoxy or indeed about whether he truly embraced a religious faith at all. To many, ascribing to human beings as their calling to act as the element in which the deity itself achieves living, self-conscious personality may seem to verge on a theologically unacceptable humanism, as will Hegel’s corresponding identification of “absolute spirit” with an historically emergent practice of art, religion, and philosophy. Be that as it may, it is beyond doubt that Hegel was convinced that the human calling is authentically divine and that philosophy has an indispensable role to play in answering it.

II Anthropo-Theology in Hegel’s Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God At the time of his death in 1831, Hegel was preparing a manuscript for publication, On the Arguments for God’s Existence, based on a lecture course he had originally

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Quoted from G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Edited by Allen Wood, translated by H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 21–2.

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advertised as an introduction to speculative logic (and not, as one might otherwise assume, as a contribution to the philosophy of religion).12 Here we have a further instance of Hegel’s tendency, noticed above, to explain the content and purpose of his science of logic in overtly theological terms. The instance is all the more striking for Hegel’s treatment of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, which he regards not as formulating grounds for belief, but rather as expressing stages in what he calls “the elevation of spirit.” His central claim: “The human being only knows God insofar as God knows himself in the human being” (TWA 17:480). The basic thrust of the work is thus anthropo-theological. It suggests a path for interpreting Hegel’s intriguing but elusive statement that the immediacy and singularity of the “is ” at the heart of the incarnation, sacrifice, and redemption through Christ “returns again only in philosophical cognition through the concept, in the element of universality.” To appreciate how Hegel conceives philosophical cognition and why he thinks he can ascribe to it the vocation that he does, we need to familiarize ourselves with the metaphysical worldview within which he situates the practice of philosophical cognition. His late Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God were intended for just this purpose. He suggests that the three classical metaphysical arguments for the existence of God—the cosmological, the teleological, and the ontological argument—form a single, coherent sequence of increasingly adequate formulations of the concept of God. The cosmological argument takes as its premise the actual existence of contingent things; their aggregate constitutes the world, which is itself thus equally contingent—hence its traditional designation as the argument a contingentia mundi (TWA 17:412, 417). Something is said to be contingent insofar as the ground of its existence lies outside itself, so that, taken just in itself, it could as easily fail to exist. In order therefore to avoid an infinite regress in the series of merely contingent grounds, we must infer from the actual existence of the contingent that a necessary being also exists that contains the ground of its existence within itself and therefore grounds the existence of the world. The argument concludes by identifying this absolutely necessary being with God. As Hegel sees it, the cosmological argument corresponds to what we might initially characterize as a mechanistic worldview, which he recognizes as having at least a certain limited metaphysical validity. Now, in the terms of Hegelian logic, the definition of the contingent as something whose ground of existence lies outside of it in something other than itself, already implies its finitude. 12

See Walter Jaeschke, Hegel-Handbuch: Leben–Werk–Schule (Stuttgart: Metzler,3 2016), 455–7.

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Because contingent things form a nexus of differential relations extending indefinitely in every direction, or rather: because they are themselves nothing but nodes in such a relational network, whatever degree of independence they attain from the heterogeneous continuum with which they are interwoven is never permanent.13 They originate one from the other, they are continuously passing over one into the other, and so they pass away out of the existence which was never properly their own to begin with. “The hour of their birth is the hour of their death” (GW 21:116). This universal continuity of finite things is apparent in the fact that the existence and qualities of each is always conditioned by that of the others. Each acquires and maintains its determinate being at the cost of the other, as though a single quantum of being, while conserved in the whole, were distributed throughout the qualitatively differentiated continuum in a process of unceasing transformation. From a global perspective, it is true, the alternation of the uncountably many, finite, qualitatively distinct particulars aggregates them into masses that exhibit law-like, quasi-mechanistic regularities (“laws of nature”). From the local perspective, though, their alternation retains the character of an infinitely dense, churning complexity and contingency. It is important to understand that, on Hegel’s view, the cosmological argument’s defining inference from the contingency of finite things to the existence of a supramundane ens necessarium rest on a mere appearance—an appearance grounded in the relation of qualitative difference and mutual externality that is constitutive of the finite things themselves. But precisely because the finite things themselves are nothing above and beyond this very relation, Hegel thinks it is superfluous to assume the existence of an active cause “outside” the world in order to explain the process of transformation that takes place within the world or rather is the world. Hegel follows Kant in holding that a conception of God merely as ens necessarium is incapable of doing justice to the full content of the concept of God (cp. A 588/B616, A 605–14/B 633–42). What Hegel finds here to be missing in particular is the crucial attribute of divine wisdom, which Hegel interprets as teleology (cp. TWA 17:501). Herein lies the contribution of the teleological argument, which expands the world view of the first argument to include the attribute of wisdom. The teleological argument takes as its premise the

13

I adopt the concept of a heterogeneous continuum from Heinrich Rickert (1926), Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, pp. 117–18. Cp. Dieter Henrich (1971), “Hegels Theorie über den Zufall,” in Henrich, Hegel im Kontext, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, p. 170.

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consciousness of particular, externally conditioned means-ends relations as we encounter them throughout human life and organic nature. What motivates the inference to a wise and benevolent creator of the world is the reflection that the purposively arranged activities of the various species relate to each other in an external and contingent way. Bees, for example, gather nectar from blossoms in order to draw from it nourishment for themselves; the fact that by so doing they are pollinating the flowers and thereby helping them to achieve the altogether separate end of reproduction—of this the bees, of course, know nothing. Indeed, that inanimate nature in general should be so constituted that its diverse mechanical and chemical interactions alone should have given rise to and continue to sustain organic life (not to mention intelligent life), would appear to be a coincidence so altogether improbable that it is evidently more compelling to explain it by assuming the guiding will of a wise creator. That, anyway, is the heart of the teleological argument. As before in the case of the argument a contingentia mundi, Hegel rejects the move from inner-worldly relations to an extramundane creator. More to the point, however, he finds that the teleological argument rests on an objectionable view of the relevant purposive relations as obtaining, on the one side, among mutually external organisms and, on the other, between the sphere of organic life generally and the sphere of inanimate matter. It is as though the argument were inviting us to imagine living beings as conceivable in isolation from each other and related only accidentally—or indeed to think of life itself as a cosmic latecomer in a universe where it has chanced to find hospitable conditions. Accordingly, these inorganic conditions are imagined as having a being all of their own, independent of life; they could have existed more or less as they are even if life had never emerged, and they will most certainly endure when all life everywhere has long since vanished from the universe. This implicit conception of things is the reason why, from the natural scientific point of view, life is wont to appear as a riddle. Hegel therefore suggests that we invert the premise in such a way as to obviate the riddle from the outset. Each individual organic being is in constant interaction with an environment that is inorganic relative to that individual, and which we therefore have to consider as a vital moment of life itself.14 When we narrow our scientific focus to include only single organic

14

As Hegel uses the term, anything to which a living being or animal species relates as its nourishment, environment, etc., counts as its “inorganic” nature. In this sense, mice represent an inorganic environmental factor relative to cats, notwithstanding the fact that mice are in themselves equally organic beings that relate in their turn to their own relatively inorganic environment. Cp. TWA 17:511.

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individuals or even groups, species, etc., while abstracting from their qualitative interactions with their (relatively) “inorganic” environment, we blind ourselves to the real and complete context of life. Hegel understands the universe itself (the macrocosm) in strict analogy with this relation of the individual organism to its local “inorganic” environment (the microcosm), invoking the Platonic idea of a “world soul” (17:514):15 This is how things are in truth: the human being is not an accident that gets added to what was there first; rather, the organic is itself what is first; the inorganic has only the mere appearance of being [. . .]. When we apprehend life as it truly is, it is one unified principle, one unified organic life of the universe, one unified living system. TWA 17:512–14

We have already seen how, in the case of the cosmological proof, Hegel reinterprets the supposed relation of external necessity between the world and its extramundane ground as an internal relation of “absolute” necessity. Now we see him introducing the concept of spontaneously self-organizing vitality to reinterpret that absolute necessity, replacing the externally ordering creator with a single, all-embracing cosmic life divine in its own right. As the being in whom that life achieves self-consciousness, the human being has special significance. The teleological argument itself is an unselfconscious, that is: a relatively prereflective expression of that awareness. We come then, finally, to the ontological argument for the existence of God, which Hegel interprets as the expression of a more profound vision of the living totality as a process of continually progressing self-knowledge—that is, as spirit in the Hegelian sense. Hegel presents the argument in a form that has been modified from its classical iterations in Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza: Because there are finite spirits [Geister]—that is the being that serves here as the premise or point of departure —, therefore there is absolute spirit. [. . .] The true form is this: Finite spirits exist, but the finite has no truth; the truth of the finite spirit is the absolute spirit. [. . .] This is the highest form of transition [from the finite to the infinite]; for here the transition is spirit itself. TWA 17:522

Hegel sees the ontological argument as expressing (albeit in a manner distorted and disguised by the “finite categories of the understanding”) a metaphysical world view that is strictly analogous to the vitalistic conception just described. In 15

On Hegel’s reception of the Platonic “world-soul” see Bowman 2021.

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the case of inner purposiveness, the absolute undergoes division into two opposing spheres: the sphere of finite organisms on the one side, and that of their equally finite, inorganic environment on the other. It does so, however, in such a way that the inorganic has from the outset been assimilated into and made subordinate to the organic. The finite organism is thus at once both a product of the diremption of the living absolute, and the agent of its actualization in time and space. The relation between finite lives and the non-finite life of the absolute is thus itself a special kind of organic relation, in which the processual actuality of the former constitutes the existence of the latter. (This is the type of relation Hegel calls “true” or “affirmative infinity”: cp. GW 21:130–2.) Analogously, what Hegel refers to as “the concept” (singulare tantum) undergoes division into the opposing terms of finite subjectivity and finite objectivity. In spirit, consciousness, the concept as such achieves existence as a free concept, distinguished by virtue of its subjectivity from its reality as such. The sun, the animal just is the concept without thereby also having the concept. For them, the concept fails to become objective. In the sun there is no such division. But in the case of consciousness, what we refer to as I is the existence of the concept, the concept in its subjective actuality, and I myself, this concept, am what is subjective. TWA 17:526, emphasis added

Finite, human cognitive activity thus takes on metaphysical significance: The concept as such, insofar as it differs from being, is something merely subjective; that is a defect. And yet the concept is both the highest and the most profound; indeed, to be a concept is this, to overcome this defect of subjectivity, this difference from being, and to objectify itself. The concept is itself this activity of producing itself as objective, as something that exists. ibid.

Hegel thinks we are forced to expand the previously sketched vitalisticteleological picture in this way so as to account for the fact of human reason. To stop at the vitalistic perspective would be to derogate finite cognition itself to the status of an “untrue being”; we would confront a “problem of consciousness” analogous to the “riddle of life” that arises in the context of the mechanistic world view. Were the vitalistic picture the whole story, we would have to count the very fact of our own recognition of the merely apparent, illusory nature of finitude as itself just a further illusion of the same kind. Therefore, if the first two perspectives are to claim even a partial and restricted validity, they must be subordinated to a higher standpoint that can secure the objectivity of thought.

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Hegel grounds the required epistemological standpoint in the metaphysical standpoint just described: “God,” he writes, “is precisely this: the revealing of himself; to reveal oneself is to undergo diremption” (TWA 17:534): A god without manifestation, in other words, is unthinkable. And furthermore, “his manifestation, his being-for-other is his existence, and the element in which he exists is finite spirit” (TWA 17:528): Without the spiritual life of human beings, no god could exist. From the perspective of this highest, speculative standpoint thought— especially philosophical thought—is anything but mere appearance. In the two preceding stages, represented by the cosmological and teleological arguments, respectively, it was nature that occupied the logical role that thought (finite spirit) occupies here; and in each of those cases, finite objectivity qua nature was derogated to the status of mere appearance. In the case of the cosmological argument, the aggregate of finite beings is conceived not merely as contingent, but as utterly groundless in itself, and the inference to a supramundane ground is really just a product of thought’s own reflection back into itself as it is seized by the demand for a sufficient reason. In the case of the teleological argument, not only individual organisms or indeed individual species, etc., but the very distinction between animate and inanimate nature too is conceived as a mere expression, as a stage or “moment” in a single, universally embracing cosmic life—and hence as insubstantial in itself. In the present case, too, the inference to a supramundane purpose can be understood as an unselfconscious reflection of thought itself as it moves from the disparateness and contingency of particular purposes to the conception of a single, unifying “world soul.” Here, however, thought itself finally emerges from behind the scenes and into the inferential foreground. Here thought (consciousness, finite spirit) grasps itself as appearance, namely as the appearance or manifestation of God (absolute spirit). Thus, in contrast to the preceding two stages, in which the ground of the finite sphere is explicitly posited outside that sphere as such, while at the same time implicitly reflecting the movement of thought (finite spirit) itself, here the movement of self-reflection instead becomes explicit: What thought here posits is in fact its own ground in that being “greater than which none can be conceived.” As the appearance of an absolute being—one whose very being and essence is to appear—thought (finite spirit) thus figures as the privileged form in which absolute spirit achieves existence. Human cognition of the absolute constitutes the keystone not merely of the sciences, but of the inner structure of reality itself.

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III “Speculative” Science and the Human Good This final conception of the world expresses the core of what Hegel means when he talks about the concept’s transition from subjectivity into objectivity. The task of providing a systematic exposition of this transition falls to the Science of Logic. However, Hegel does not hesitate in identifying the transition from subjectivity to objectivity with “the proof from the concept, that is to say, from the concept of God to his existence, which was formerly found in metaphysics, or the so-called ontological proof of God’s existence” (GW 12:127). The Science of Logic as a whole takes the place of the ontological argument. For it to do so, however, requires us to translate the traditional language of “concept” and “being” into Hegel’s language of “subjectivity” and “objectivity.” But why, we may ask, and with what warrant? The answer to this question will further illuminate the thought at the core of Hegel’s anthropo-theological project, namely that the immediacy and singularity of the “is ,” originally present in the Christian ecce homo, “returns again only in philosophical cognition through the concept, in the element of universality.”

III A From “Being” to “Objectivity” Throughout his writings, Hegel treats the concept of being uniformly with disdain. Thus regarding Kant’s criticism of the ontological argument he remarks: [I]t would [. . .] be very strange, if the innermost core of spirit (the concept) or if the I, not to mention the concrete totality that is God, were not even so rich as to contain within itself so impoverished a determination as being, which is, after all, the poorest and most abstract determination. [. . .] There can be nothing more paltry for thought than being. ENZ §51 R/GW 20:65

The inference from the concept to being, he suggests, traditionally a matter of so much controversy, is really a matter so trivial as hardly to merit philosophical interest. The opening of the Logic with pure being would seem to confirm this impression. There, Hegel notoriously asserts that the thought of being is the same empty, “untrue” abstraction as the thought of nothing; accordingly, being and nothing are to be considered the same (e.g., GW 21:90). Nevertheless, he

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does choose to begin the Logic with the thought of being and even assures us that the being of the beginning “remains as the underlying ground of all that follows without vanishing from it,” the “ever present and self-preserving foundation of all subsequent developments, remaining everywhere immanent in its further determinations” (GW 21:58). The tension between these statements is unmistakable. The tension eases somewhat when we bring to mind that it is thinking—and more specifically the actual thinking of any single individual who enters the course of the Logic—that begins this way. For this reason, Hegel equally identifies “being” and “nothing” with the “empty intuiting and thinking itself ” (GW 21:69). For simply by virtue of thinking, thought is. And here, where thinking is to begin by or with or from itself, freely, spontaneously, and unsolicited by any further object or content, the sameness of being and nothing is not to be mistaken for an identity of two in some further respect distinguishable terms; rather, the thinking that begins the Logic is—nothing. So the concept is (i.e., is being) in the Hegelian sense of the word from the very outset of the Logic. Being is immediately and inseparably bound up with it in the same way as being is bound up with the “I” in the Cartesian Cogito.16 There is therefore no room for uncertainty about the being of the concept. As soon as I embark on the course of reflection that is the Science of Logic, and just by virtue of my so beginning, the concept is. Only, this being cannot in any sense count as a determination belonging to thinking, inasmuch as thinking as such differs immediately and in toto from being. For thinking as such, or in its purity, is precisely this: namely, in making itself its own self-conscious content, thereby to differ from itself and undergo diremption. Or if being is to count in any sense at all as a determination of thinking, then only to the extent that thinking makes its being into the explicit content of its thought, thereby derogating being to the status of something merely posited, just a subordinate moment in thinking’s own self-determination.17 However, that means in turn that the concept is not there in the full and proper sense that Hegel gives to the term Dasein (being-there, existence), until it has posited itself entirely as its own content and thereby achieved full (that is, fully determinate) objectivation.

16

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Cp. Hegel’s remarks on the Cogito, esp. his rejection of the view that Descartes moves from thought to being by way of a terminus medius: ENZ § 64 R/GW 20:106. On the contrast between being and being posited cp. GW 11:250–2.

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Precisely this positing of itself as its own content is what Hegel understands by the objectivity of the concept. For one thing, that explains why Hegel considers the “being” of the ontological argument to be trivial implication of the concept, in that being is inseparable from any actual thinking to begin with.18 For another thing, though, it explains why Hegel believes he is entitled to replace the traditional metaphysical thought of being with his own concept of objectivity. In the only sense appropriate to the concept, the concept cannot be said to be there (i.e., to exist), until it has fully succeeded in making itself into its own conceptual content, thereby accomplishing its full self-determination. But what could entitle Hegel to transfer that exclusively first-personal certainty of being to the so-called “pure” or “absolute” concept, whose fully realized form he goes on to identify with the deity?

III B From “Pure Self ” to “Absolute Spirit” According to Hegel, the concept of God is necessarily implied in all thought, just as thought is necessarily included in the content of the concept of God. Hegel characterizes thought as the “pure self ” of God, “just as feeling, the empirical, is the particularized self ” (TWA 17:390). How should we interpret Hegel’s talk here, in the singular, of a “pure self ” that undergoes “particularization” in feeling, intuition, representation etc.? Consider the following passage from the Encyclopedia: When I say “I,” I mean Me as this particular one to the exclusion of all others; but what I say, I, is just what everyone is, namely “I who exclude all others from myself.” [. . .] I is universality in and for itself; to be common to many or all, is also a form of universality, but only a superficial one. To be I is something all other humans have in common with me, just as being mine is common to all my sensations, representations, etc. But the I, abstractly and as such, is pure relationto-self, in which we abstract from representation, from sensing, from every particular state and every peculiarity of nature, talent, experience, etc. To this extent, the I is the existence of a wholly abstract universality, abstract freedom. ENZ §20 R/GW 20:65

These statements suggest a certain conception that I will sketch out in two steps. The first step will be to paint a starkly simplified picture, in order then to add the necessary complications as a second step.

18

It is helpful to note that Hegel treats “being” as equivalent to “simple relation to self ”: cp. GW 12:252.

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The simplified picture represents a single, substantial, underlying subject, numerically identical across all the individuals who are conscious of themselves each as a separate self (as an “I”), and whose “particularizing” accidents consist in the various thoughts, sensations, experiences, etc., of the persons whom those particularizing accidents constitute. (This would be roughly equivalent to picturing the human race as a single, transhistorical macro-subject.) The plurality of different persons notwithstanding, this singular I would be identically present in each and all, pervading them in a way analogous to the way Kant suggests the “I think” pervades all my own “sensations, representations, states, etc.” (ibid.; cp. B 132). This simplified picture goes a little way towards capturing what Hegel understands by “objective” and “absolute spirit,” but cannot be altogether right. If it were, we would be forced to assume that the many distinct persons were animated by a single subject, of which they ordinarily remain completely unaware in this form. A self that is unconscious of itself in this way would for that very reason fail to be an I. Hegel rejects the notion of an I outside the bounds of egocentric consciousness—as it were, an “I in itself ”—as nonsense. Moreover, such a notion is incompatible with the demand for personal self-determination, an ideal that is obviously central to Hegel’s thought: It would degrade individual persons to the status of contingent appearances of the one substantial subject that underlies them all. They would err in taking themselves to be the source and locus of self-activity, so that Hegel’s own system would face the same objections he raises against Spinozism and other forms of pantheism. To avoid these consequences, we have to modify the simplified picture. We must not ascribe existence to such a single substantial subject that supposedly underlies individual empirical persons. At the same time, any individual person engaging in “I”-talk thereby also distinguishes themself from their person, and does so in a way that reveals their empirically concrete personality to be contingent in relation to their “I”-talk. My ability to say “I” is not conditioned by any particular quality or determination of my being. Each and every person says it in the same way, regardless of which particular person they mean by saying it. Were that not the case, we would be unable to use the personal pronouns as a means of communication as we do from an early age with the greatest naturalness and ease. Were that not the case, then presumably we would not even have any personal pronouns, for what need could anybody feel to share their thoughts if we did not recognize in every other person the same existence as I? This is the sense in which Hegel characterizes the I, in the passage quoted above, as “the existence of a wholly abstract universality.” It is not as though anyone had undertaken a comparison of all persons, abstracting from their

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particularities and reflecting on what is common, and so arrived at the quality of “I-ness” in the way of empirical generalization. Rather, in saying or thinking “I,” I am conscious of and posit an absolute difference between reflective subjectivity and the contingent qualities of my person. The I is abstract because to differ absolutely from every particular determination belongs to its very essence; it is itself nothing more or less than just this differing. The I is by its very essence negative. This grasping of oneself in the saying of “I” is, I suggest, to be understood as the first stage of the “elevation of spirit.” In the saying of “I”, I distinguish myself from my contingent existence, that is, from the determinate qualities, relations, etc., that constitute my phenomenal person. To this extent I may be said to elevate myself above finitude, in the absence of which talk of personality ceases to have any meaning. But, even so, there is not a single moment at which I could therefore be said to differ from my person in the sense of being something other than my person. I am this person. Far from representing any kind of limitation or restriction on my subjectivity, this person is on the contrary the only way in which my subjectivity is there or exists. So although it is not wrong to say that I am elevated above my natural, finite existence, it is perhaps truer to express this by saying that I find myself elevated to that infinitude that at one and the same time both encompasses my finite existence and is manifest in it.19 Now, there are two distinct dimensions along which this as yet still abstract pure self is open to determination—one real, the other ideal. In the real dimension, persons form a community whose ultimate basis lies in their mutual recognition as “I-sayers” (i.e., as self-consciously self-relating egos). At first in the corporeal existence of other persons, then at higher levels in coordinated action and in the development of political and legal institutions, the pure self objectifies its implicit structures, gives them content, and recognizes itself in them in a substantive way that is impossible inside the bounds of the abstract I. The real dimension coincides for the most part with what Hegel calls objective spirit. In the dimension of ideality, the pure I brings its own constitutive structures before itself in a way that makes evident that they are both objective conditions by which it is bound, and also determinations arising from its own active selfrelating. In the specific case of speculative logic, we may understand this as a

19

We may take Hegel’s meaning in this sense also when he speaks of the “factum” that spirit always actually makes the transition from the finite to the infinite (cp. TWA 17:471). The self-conscious I is itself a concrete realization of what Hegel understands by infinity, specifically infinity in the transition to “being for self ”: see GW 21:147–8, where he points to affinities between the I and the concept of God.

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process of translating the structures that are implicit or potential in the being of the pure self, into a being posited by (the I of) the speculative logician—that is, an ideal content that is present, explicit, and available in principle to any and every person. The rigorously logical exposition of these structures is not ultimately the product merely of a single individual, but of a scientific community that has emerged gradually over the course of its own history and which is comprised of many individual persons. Hegel calls this scientific community the absolute spirit in the shape of philosophy. These last remarks indicate how to understand the numerically identical, universal self that Hegel calls absolute spirit. It is not like a substance that somehow precedes and underlies the finite, individual selves and their activity, as our starkly simplified picture initially suggested; rather, it is the result of an ongoing collective effort. This self exists independently of any of the single human individuals, in whom it is instantiated, and in this specific sense it is free. But its existence is neither independent of individual persons altogether nor do the individuals relate to absolute spirit as they would to an external object or state of affairs. On the contrary, this universal spirit exists only as something to be striven for, realized, achieved, and maintained by finite spirits from within their first-personal perspective. Its whole existence consists precisely in the consciousness of it that finite spirits actively produce, reproduce, and affirm as expressing their own substantial consciousness of themselves. In the Hegelian sense of “infinitude,” absolute spirit thus stands in the logical relation of infinitude to the finite spirits in whose thought it exists. We can apply this result to illuminate the case of speculative logic, which represents a privileged instance of the ideal dimension in which the pure self achieves concrete objectivity as spirit. The question that initiated our present line of inquiry concerned the “mechanism” by which the existential certainty of the individual speculative logician comes to be “communicated” to absolute spirit, understood as God. The answer has to be that there is no real distinction between ideal existence of the universal self (i.e., of absolute spirit) and the perspective of the individual logician, provided that the latter has “resolved,” as Hegel puts it, “to think purely” (ENZ § 78 R/GW 20:118). Absolute spirit exists equally at each state of the elevation. However, the degree to which it is realized crucially depends on the progress that has been made by the community of finite, philosophizing spirits; for it is only in, through, and as their thought that the absolute spirit achieves actual existence. For Hegel, this is what it means to stand in a relation of “infinitude.” The conceptual content of the relevant thoughts is not reducible to the properties of

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the thinkers, which are contingent in relation to that content. Even so, the content is not external to me. On the contrary, I know it with the same sui generis intimacy with which I am conscious of my own thinking and certain of my own being. But although this immediate certainty that I think and that I exist remains abstract, the scientifically explicated and mediated, objectively represented process of the “pure thought-determinations” constitutes an existence that is both actual and concrete. In this sense, the finite spirit’s knowledge of the absolute spirit—of God—constitutes the absolute spirit’s knowledge of itself.

III C From the Ontological Argument to the Idea of the Good In contrast to the cosmological and teleological arguments, the ontological argument does not assume finite existence as a basis from which to ascend to the concept or to spirit. Rather, it starts with the concept itself and moves from there to existence. Instead of beginning from the world and moving from there to a (more or less implicit) conception of spirit, spirit is the explicit point of departure for determining the world. If the cosmological and teleological arguments run in the direction of theoretical reason (from reality to its conceptual ground), the ontological argument runs in that of practical reason, from the concept to a reality that adequately realizes it. Hegel explicitly recognizes this sameness of direction: “The practical faith of Kantian philosophy,” he writes, expresses nothing more or less [. . .] than the idea that reason has an absolute reality; that in this idea all opposition between freedom and necessity has been overcome; that thought in its infinitude is absolute reality, that is, the absolute identity of thought and being. This idea is none other than that which the ontological argument and all true philosophy recognize as the first and only idea, and indeed as the only true and philosophical idea. GW 4:345; emphasis added

This convergence between practical reason and the ontological argument permits us in turn to draw certain conclusions about Hegel’s understanding of theoretical reason. To begin with, consider his criticism of “the ought” and of the concept of the progressus infinitus in (Kant and) Fichte. On Hegel’s view, it results from the fact that the final purpose of moral action is conceived as the determination of an object that is given in advance, but which fails to conform

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to what “ought to be.” On the one side, the relation between subject and object is conceived as an opposition that is insurmountable even in principle. The ultimate end of perfect congruence between them can therefore never be achieved. On the other side, however, it is also the case that if (per impossibile) moral action could ever reach its conclusion, it would by virtue of that very fact cease to be moral, since the opposition of being and “the ought” is taken to be constitutive of morality simpliciter. Therefore, moral agents cannot strictly speaking really will the achievement of the final end, which reveals the absurdity of this way of conceiving moral life. Hegel’s solution is to conceive moral action as determined by internal purposiveness. The meaning and purpose of moral action lies in producing and reproducing “ethical life” itself (Sittlichkeit) in and through each of my particular actions. Moral action does not finally aim at the modification of an externally given “material” object, but at the creation, determination, maintenance, and further development of ethical praxis. The same is true in the case of thought. The final aim of cognition is not to modify the form in which an external object is given to consciousness until it finally conforms to the object itself. If cognition were like that, it would never come to a conclusion. But then neither could we desire it to, for in that case thought would be extinguished in reaching its goal. Instead, our cognitive acts aim, implicitly or explicitly, to bring about a cognitive (scientific, philosophical) praxis, to which they themselves meaningfully belong and in whose framework they come to have meaning and purpose. The material given to us in experience is of course an indispensable condition if a cognitive praxis is to be constituted and maintained in the first place. However, acquiring knowledge of this or that particular truth is not ultimately the point of thought as a cognitive praxis—not even if the particular truths themselves happen to be of the rank and importance of general laws of nature. Particular insights gain their value in the framework of a cognitive praxis to whose constitution and maintenance they themselves contribute. But to be able to say that requires a philosophical perspective on what a cognitive praxis is and what makes it valuable as such. From Hegel’s perspective, cognitive praxis is like ethical praxis in being a mode of self-production, self-determination, self-maintenance, and continuing development of the human essence. Our essential existence is linked in itself with affirmation. But for a being to whom rational cognition and thus being-forself belong, the only existence it can properly affirm is one that itself takes the form of cognition. Beings like us are in the highest degree themselves and hence also are in the highest degree in possession of their own proper good, when they

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possess their own essence in the form of cognition. It is itself at once both the norm and the reality of its proper good. However, universality and necessity are (at least from Hegel’s perspective)20 essential elements in philosophical cognition. No particular insight and no particular theory, to the extent that its universality is limited, can count as cognition in the full sense. The same goes for cognitions or theories in which the necessity of the connections among the various thoughts or concepts is lacking. But, if universality and necessity are essential to cognition, then cognitive beings cannot be content to regard their cognitive activity as a contingent natural phenomenon. Cognition must in some way reach beyond what we might think of as the merely anthropological properties of the human being. To the extent that cognition is part of the human good, this good must be more than a merely human good, for precisely that would undermine its claim to universality and necessity. Therefore, to the extent that cognition is part of it, the human good must, for one thing, include self-knowledge. For without knowing what the human being is, neither can we know the extent of our knowledge and its internal cohesion. For another thing, though, it must therefore also in some sense be more than a merely human cognition. The anthropological self-knowledge of the human being must in itself already presuppose universality and necessity that are required for cognition as such; it must lay claim to them and realize them within itself. Because cognition is part of our finite, specifically human essence, while universality and necessity are in turn part of cognition itself, it is therefore also part of the human essence to go beyond its (nonetheless restricted) nature and to posit an unlimited being, of whose unconditionally binding character I am conscious with the same intimacy with which I am conscious of my own being and consciousness. We must understand human cognition to be of such a nature that it realizes its value and dignity—the value and dignity of the human being— only by virtue of its unconditional orientation towards the constitutive unity of the true and the good. This is the sense in which we are to understand Hegel when he says that the human being’s self-knowledge is at the same time God’s knowledge of himself. It is also the sense in which the travails of finite existence are recognized as the element in which the infinite as such achieves existence, so that here and in this way (to echo Spalding) “eternity and the present life” come to figure “as a single whole” (Spalding 1794, p. 149), joined by a “simple inseparable bond” (ibid., p. 156). Knowledge of the human essence is thus also the site of reconciliation with the fine. 20

Cp. ENZ § 39/GW 20:76–7.

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In such knowledge of the human essence we know two distinct kinds of things. We know that our cognition is part of our finite essence as human beings and is therefore itself finite, fallible, and contingent, just as we ourselves are. At the same time, though, we also know that our actual, fallible cognition not only has its value by virtue of its unconditional orientation towards the true and the good, but also that the true and the good themselves have no reality except through the moral and cognitive life of finite spirits. Only from this elevated perspective, Hegel suggests, does the determination or vocation of the human being come into view. And in this sense we can perhaps understand what Hegel means when he says that human knowledge of God is at the same time also God’s knowledge of the human being.

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334

Index Abbt, T. 1–2, 11–14, 16, 59, 62, 64, 68–71, 73–8, 81–4, 86, 90–3, 96–9, 103–4, 129–30, 134–5, 137, 186, 227–8, 234–7, 240, 242, 245, 253 Doubts 1, 13, 59, 129–30 acting (moral, ethical) 15, 33, 121, 143, 248, 313–15 Adler, H. 10, 116, 260–1, 264 Altmann, A. 10, 103, 129, 236–40 Anselm of Canterbury 288, 304 anthropology 117–18, 120, 125, 130, 168, 186, 210–11, 213, 219, 222, 254, 258–62, 268, 270, 273, 279, 295–9, 315 Archimedes 282, 289 Aristotle 148, 155–6, 159, 163, 231, 286 Nicomachean Ethics 155 Aristotelian 95, 152, 156, 164, 286 Bacon, F. 146, 286 Baumgarten, A.G. 98, 104, 133, 148, 205 Beiser, F. 14, 239, 246, 262, 264 Berlin, I. 257–9, 279 Beruf 4, 121, 125, 144, 164 Beutel, A. 1, 9, 12, 113, 121–2, 145, 147 Bildung 265, 258, 268, 271, 272–8 Brandt, R. 1, 122, 142–3, 146, 148, 153, 193–9, 233 Breazeale, D. 283, 287 Bultmann, C. 263, 266–9 Christianity 4, 9, 113–15, 145, 158, 223, 225, 230, 267, 275, 297–8, 299, 307 Copernicus, N. 282–3 D’Alessandro 3, 9, 127 death 10–14, 49, 55, 57, 66, 80–1, 110, 121, 152, 154–6, 158, 160–1, 243, 296, 302 Descartes, R. 147, 151, 282, 304, 308 (Cartesian 148, 282, 296, 308) Meditationes 147

egoism (Eigenliebe) 76, 89, 109, 119, 182, 209 Epicureanism 75, 145, 151, 158 faith (vs. reason) 4, 9, 10, 66, 113, 121, 148, 153, 155, 287–9, 293 scientific 288–9 Fichte, J.G. 131, 145, 151, 164, 247, 281–93, 313 Addresses to the German Nation 291 and the atheism controversy 281 The Characteristics of the Present Age 287 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre 282–7, 293 Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar 292 and scientific vs. popular method 282–7 and synthetic method 288 Vocation of Man 151, 281–2 Way to the Blessed Life 284, 290–1 Wissenschaftslehre, 282 294 finitude 270, 276, 296–7, 301, 305, 311, 315–16 Forster, M. 259–60, 262, 274 Foucault, M. 108–11, 119, 123 freedom 8, 51, 139–43, 150, 169–70, 179, 188, 194–7, 223, 233–4, 248–9, 251–2, 259, 288, 309, 313 Freud, S. 170, 174–7 Garve, C. 5, 206, 247–8 Genesis (book of) 167, 173, 258, 264, 266–9, 272, 274, 276–7, 297 God’s existence 120, 153 arguments for 158, 300–6, 307, 313 Hegel, G.W.F., 6, 204, 257, 295–316 Encyclopedia Logic 309 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion 297, 299 Philosophy of Right 300

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336

Index

Science of Logic 307–9 and Spalding 295–8 Herbart, J.F. 286 Herder, J.G. 2, 7, 14–15, 90, 167, 203–6, 216, 220, 225, 230–1, 234–5, 237–40, 242–5, 253, 257–79, 289 Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts 262, 267, 269, 277 Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität 2, 259 Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit 2, 231, 257–8, 272, 277 This Too a Philosophy of History 257, 258, 273, 275 Hinske 1, 3, 9–10, 138, 145, 157, 233 hope 1, 11, 73, 80, 82, 129, 149, 151, 153, 155, 158, 169, 183 Humanität 3, 215, 258–9 Hume, D. 62, 167, 203, 208, 263, 268 History of England 65, 167 Natural History of Religion 167, 263 Political Discourses 208 I (Ich) 151, 177, 308–11 immortality 7, 11, 14, 65, 79, 82, 96, 103, 118, 120, 128, 140, 151–8, 160, 235, 243, 250, 296 see also palingenesis inclination (Neigung) 22–5, 30–9, 56–7, 76–7, 88–90, 104, 115, 119, 139, 146, 166, 168, 173–5, 181, 183, 223 infinity 138, 192, 270, 305, 311–12 Iselin, I. 2, 104, 203–32 Jacobi, F.H. 281 On the Doctrine of Spinoza, 285, 288 justice 11, 39, 47, 57, 76, 80 (injustice), 82, 87–8, 93, 95, 114, 171, 179, 210 (injustice), 214, 222 (injustice), 235, 252, 255, 302 Kant, I. 2, 148–61, 163–84, 185–202, 282, 283–4, 302, 310, 313 Anthropologie Friedländer 196 Anthropologie Parow 142 Anthropologie Mrongovius 186 Anthropology, 166, 183 185–6, 188, 196, 199–200 Critique of the Power of Judgement 152

Critique of Pure Reason 282–3 Dreams of a Spirit-Seer 152 Lectures on Anthropology 196 Lectures on Physical Geography 196 Logic 285 Metaphysik Herder 159 Lassalle, F. 286–7 Leibniz, G. W. 4–6, 59, 86, 98, 133–4, 140, 158, 285 Monadology 8 Theodicy 86 Leibniz-Wolffian School 4, 10, 126, 133–5, 236–7, 240, 245 Leibnizian 4, 6, 10–11, 95, 102, 135, 240–1 Lessing, G.E. 5, 64, 203, 213, 231, 241, 285, 289–90, 293 Education of the Human Race 289–90, 292 Locke, J. 2, 77, 146, 150 Lutheranism 107, 112, 121, 217, 298 Macor, L.A. 1, 3, 9, 12, 16, 107, 113, 115, 117, 121, 126, 187, 227 Maimon, S. 286 On the Progress of Philosophy 285 Mendelssohn, M. 1–2, 5, 8, 12–16, 59, 61–3, 67–9, 71, 81, 83–6, 88, 90–7, 103–4, 123, 126, 129–30, 132–8, 186, 190, 204, 227, 234–42, 244, 249–50, 253, 295 Oracle 13, 59, 68–9, 83, 90–1, 129–30, 132 Phädon/Phaedo 12–14, 96, 102, 129, 149, 155, 227, 237–8, 241–2 Remarks on Abbt’s Amicable Correspondence 13–14, 90, 96, 135 Michaelis, J.D. 262–3, 267 Montaigne, M. de 75, 111, 151 Möser, J. 93, 234, 250 Nicolai, F. 64, 67–9, 96–7, 99, 104, 295 Nietzsche, F. 111, 170, 178, 180, 257 nothing, 17 60, 142, 307–8 Oetinger, F.C. 9 organism 137, 242, 303–6 palingenesis 239, 286–7, 289–94 perfectibility 4–8, 11, 214, 218

Index

337

Persius 1, 21, 69, 110–11, 116–18, 121 Pilatus, Pontius 298 Plato 65, 83, 102, 129, 155–6, 159, 289 Meno 150 Phaedon 241–2, 155 Phaedrus 83, 155 Politeia 155 Republic 155 Platonic 10, 77, 152, 156, 159, 241, 243, 304 Platonism/Platonist 112, 145–6, 148, 267 pleasure (Vergnügen) 7, 10, 12, 22–31, 34–7, 39–41, 43, 47, 49, 51, 54, 69–70, 74–6, 79, 83–5, 88–90, 118–19, 127–8, 145, 149, 151–5, 174, 191–4, 213, 227, 229, 235 Plutarch 241, 283, 286 Life of Alexander 286 Pollok, A. 1, 3, 6, 12–16, 59, 61–2, 92, 236, 238 progress 8–9, 13, 67, 98, 109, 138–40, 146–7, 158–9, 171, 179–80, 183–4, 188, 202, 209, 211–12, 214, 219–21, 223–5, 227, 229, 237–9, 249, 257, 260, 277, 285, 288, 293, 304, 312–13 purpose 4, 69, 77, 82, 95, 100–1, 115, 119, 123, 128–9, 132, 141, 152, 164–5, 193–4, 197, 200, 224, 226, 228, 231, 235–9, 242, 244, 248, 251–4, 261, 296, 306, 313–14 Pythagoras 102, 267, 283, 285, 289, 292

Inquiry Concerning Virtue 113, 116, 159, 226–7 Miscellaneous Reflections 111, 116 Moralists 111, 148 Soliloquy 115–16 System of Moral Philosophy 144 Smith, A. 167, 221 Socrates 65, 83, 87, 102, 110, 112, 237, 242 Spalding, J.J. 1, 4, 8–17, 64, 69–70, 73–6, 78, 80–2, 84, 89–90, 107–8, 111–23, 126–32, 134–5, 137, 140, 145–60, 185–6, 227–8, 234–7, 253, 282, 295–8, 315 Bestimmung des Menschen 1, 4, 9, 69–70, 73, 107, 116–17, 126–9, 131–2, 145, 147–8, 150, 159, 186, 227, 235, 282, 295 Spinoza, B. 158, 241, 245, 285, 289, 304 Spinoza debate/controversy 158, 245 spirit (spiritual/ity) 10, 12, 16, 29, 33, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 61, 69, 75–6, 78–9, 81, 86–7, 94–5, 97–8, 100–1, 109–10, 118–20, 131, 134–8, 143, 152, 159, 161, 178–80, 193–4, 209, 213, 217, 227, 238, 243, 265, 284, 289–90, 295–301, 304–7, 311–13, 316 absolute 298–9, 304, 309, 312–13 sublime 172, 185–202

Rehberg, A.W. 2, 233–6, 240–7, 249–55 Reimarus, S.H. 5–6 retribution 88, 93 revenge 80, 87–8 Rousseau, J.J. 2, 5–6, 8, 69, 92, 143–4, 146–50, 152–3, 155, 157, 167, 169, 171, 174, 203, 205, 207–10, 212, 214, 218–19, 222, 226, 254 Contrat Social 148 Emile 5, 155 First Discours 8 Nouveaux Heloise 69 Second Discours 5, 92, 208

teleology 220, 302–3, 305, 306 Tetens, J.N. 5, 206

Schelling, F.W.J. 1, 287 Schopenhauer, A. 111 self-knowledge 157, 304, 315 Shaftesbury 10, 12, 111–18, 120, 144, 146–51, 153, 159–60, 226–8

virtue 7, 10, 12, 49, 63, 87, 114, 152, 155, 157, 159, 172, 177, 178, 277–8 Voltaire 83, 95, 98, 146, 203, 208, 263, 268 Wolff, C. 5, 59, 71, 98, 112–13, 133, 146, 148, 153, 158, 205, 250, 296 Iuris naturae 146 Ontologia 5 Theologia naturalis 5 Wolffian 4–6, 10, 112, 126, 133, 135, 146, 236–7, 240, 245, 250 Wood, A. 171, 181, 300 Wood, D. 283, 288, 294 world soul 304, 306 Zöller, G. 126, 131, 136–7, 148, 240, 287

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339

340

341

342

343

344