The Historical Development of Philosophy

New Philosophy

Philosophy of the 19th Century

The doctrine of Kant concerning the opposition between theoretical knowledge and practical action sparked various attempts to develop it further, attempting to bridge the chasm that Kant himself hastily spanned by positing that the realm of the beautiful and the sublime serves as a mediating factor between pure reason and the practical. These attempts inevitably diverged further from Kant's original premises, as they were compelled to understand the spiritual development of humanity as a unity, inherently belonging to the sensory world and subject to fundamental laws common to both knowledge and will. Among the thinkers inspired by Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762—1814) aligns most closely with his perspective, introducing the premise in various expositions of his "Wissenschaftslehre" that the diverse practical and theoretical manifestations of the human spirit form a continuous series of free acts, the highest of which is the activity of will. These free acts of spirit emerge from one another according to an immanent dialectical law of development, wherein each concept contains within it the moment of its negation and, consequently, a new positive concept. Thus, Kant's forms of intuition and categories, laws of knowledge, and imperatives of will in Fichte's philosophy transform into a series of successive, fundamentally immanent stages of development, commencing with pure self-consciousness as the necessary prerequisite for all thought and action, subsequently progressing through an immanent movement of thought into the non-self, and finally ascending towards the union of both through a function that connects them according to the law of foundation and consequence. From the repetition of this process, which seemingly returns once again to the self, both the forms and material of knowledge evolve, encompassing both the theoretical and practical functions of the spirit. Fichte sees the final result of this development in the moral world, which arises from nature becoming material for duty and ultimately for the realization of moral will. Therefore, despite his fundamentally idealistic tone, Fichte's philosophy, especially in its earlier phases, is distinctly a philosophy of reality, in contrast to Kant's philosophy, which establishes a sharp distinction between the sensory and the intelligible worlds. In this sense, Fichte defined God himself as the moral order of the world, realized in society and history, vehemently refuting the theistic view that understands God as a personality, and thus as an anthropomorphic being. Over time, Fichte's philosophy took on an increasingly mystical-pantheistic character; alongside this, in his writings on philosophy of law, he presented a vision of state socialism based on the idea of a national state. This political ideal, however, despite the changes primarily affecting Fichte's religious worldview, is a consistent development of the thoughts presented in "Wissenschaftslehre" in its original form. Since for Fichte the free moral will is the creative principle, subduing both the cognitive powers of humanity and external nature, this elevated and practical view of life leads him to a doctrine of the state and society that sees the primary task of governmental life in common goals and primarily in the education of future generations, enabling them to achieve ideal perfection. In this description of the best form of government, Fichte's later doctrine of the state resembles Plato's ideal state.

Fichte's doctrine of the self-movement of thought, which, according to the dialectical trichotomy, always passes through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in the speculative development of philosophy aligned with Kant, remains the dominant methodological principle, with the only changes being partly in the starting point—Schelling and Hegel chose "being" instead of the "self"—and partly in the strictness of logical connection between the elements of the dialectical process. In this regard, both Fichte and Hegel sought greater rigor than Schelling, who became almost completely immersed in a fantastical combination of concepts. However, the significance of these thinkers is as little founded on their method as Kant's significance is based on the external architecture of his system; rather, their importance lies in the content of their philosophy, expressed in this form and often distorted by it. The views of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel differ in that Fichte founded his philosophy on the practical tasks of life, Hegel on the theoretical examination of the development of the world, and Schelling primarily on the realm of artistic intuition, which lies between the theoretical and practical domains. Consequently, the main focus of Schelling's philosophy is natural philosophy, though its foundation does not consist of explaining nature in the usual sense, but rather an aesthetic examination of it.

Thus, Schelling (1775—1854) objectifies the self-movement of concepts in thought established by Fichte into the idea of the lawful development of natural phenomena. In his various expositions of the philosophy of nature, he constructs, according to the external scheme of the dialectical method, both ascending and descending sequences of phenomena, which he terms series of potentials, as each level in the series is to potentially contain the next one immediately following it. This understanding is entirely fantastical, yet it has contributed to the articulation of the concept of development. It should be noted, however, that Schelling perceives development everywhere as ideal, meaning that given forms of nature can be arranged in order, rather than as real, wherein the more perfect would actually arise from the simpler. Ultimately, this natural philosophy of Schelling culminated in the form of a system of identity, a Spinozism transformed through the addition of the idea of development: the real and ideal sequences of phenomena must be parallel forms emerging from an absolute being, which contains them still in an undivided state. However, over time, Schelling's views underwent significant transformation. His later philosophy evolved into theosophical mysticism, which, however, is not original and hardly influenced subsequent thought.

The influence and significance of Hegel’s system (1770—1831) far surpass that of Schelling’s natural philosophy. In contrast to Schelling's system of identity, which rests on the idea of metaphysical parallelism, Hegel posits that nature and spirit are successive forms in the development of a singular absolute being, which, in its highest forms, achieves self-consciousness as a thinking mind. Thus, according to Hegel, nature is a stage in development that precedes spirit, embodying an unconscious striving of reason that gradually elevates itself to self-awareness through human consciousness, predominantly manifested in humanity’s products—in the state and history, in art and religion—ultimately achieving, in philosophy, an understanding of the entire preceding development in a necessary, internally law-like connection. The individual works of Hegel, structured according to this framework, vary significantly in their importance. In natural philosophy, the pale, formulaic construction of concepts, derived from Schelling’s framework, lacks any scientific merit. However, in aesthetics, philosophy of religion, and history, one finds a wealth of valuable ideas scattered throughout. The guiding principle of development, intrinsic to spiritual life itself, imparts to Hegel’s system a universal significance in these domains, highlighting the spiritual laws governing society and history. At the heart of Hegel’s system lies the historical-philosophical idea that any concept, in the immanent movement of the entire spiritual life, transforms into its opposite, then unites with it in a higher unity, traversing a series of stages in spiritual development. Thus, the final product of subjective spirit, will, containing the element of freedom, simultaneously serves as the starting point of the most general of objective products of spirit, namely law. Morality opposes freedom with obligation as its complementary counterpart; morality is as individual and concrete as law is public and abstract. Law and morality subsequently unite in the forms of objective morality: in the family, civil society, and the state, where each successive member, being higher, encompasses the preceding ones. Therefore, the state, as the highest realization of objective spirit, demands all prior stages as means for its own ends; Hegel thus aligns with Plato’s idea of the state, according to which the individual exists for the whole, rather than vice versa. However, the state itself also enters into the historical process of the development of world spirit, of which individual nations are the bearers, each of which embodies a specific idea in its evolution. Above history rises the absolute spirit, which emerges from objective spirit in the eternal forms of art, religion, and philosophy. In art, spirit is understood predominantly in the form of sensory contemplation; in religion, it ascends to representation, hovering above concrete sensory impressions; and finally, in philosophy, it culminates in the concept.

In each of these realms, development, according to Hegel, occurs sequentially, revealing the lawfulness of the complete self-movement of spirit. In his efforts to demonstrate this lawfulness, Hegel adeptly employed contrasts that frequently manifest in historical life (revolution and reaction, mysticism and enlightenment, etc.); of course, the psychological significance of the law of opposition is somewhat obscured by the dialectical schematism that often led him, even in the realm of the philosophy of spirit, to strained and contradictory constructions. Nevertheless, Hegel's system holds considerable importance, as it was the first to propose an internal connection among all spiritual sciences and the notion of strict lawfulness governing all spiritual existence. Thus, despite its abstract and theoretical methodology, his philosophy is fundamentally a philosophy of reality, aimed at establishing a lawful connection between phenomena by dissolving the opposition between phenomenon and "thing-in-itself" that prevails in older rationalist systems and in Kant. This being, for Hegel, is not a static substance, as in Spinoza; it represents the development of world spirit in history and the spiritual products of humanity.

Alongside these currents, closely aligned with Kant, other philosophical trends emerged in the 19th century, which, while partially reverting to older systems, could not entirely liberate themselves from Kant's influence due to their origins in German philosophy. Thus, Herbart (1776—1841) returns to the fundamental thoughts of Leibniz's monadology, while striving to clarify and articulate the concept of individual simple essence more precisely. His "real elements" (Realen—a term for monads) are conceived as absolutely simple, existing merely as qualities devoid of any relations, and consequently also without any quantitative determinations. However, as monads, they are self-sufficient substances impervious to external influences. As a result, Herbart deduces from the "violations" and "self-protection" arising from the coexistence of real elements both the spatial phenomena of the external world and the processes of consciousness, which, in his view, must consist solely of the movement of representations. Certainly, the "violations" and "self-protections" are merely alternative terms for interactions that have been eliminated in favor of the concept of substance. Compared to Hegel's system, Herbart’s offers the advantage of seeking precise, albeit hypothetical, methods of study in both natural philosophy and psychology. Its shortcomings stem from a lack of historical character and an incomplete, purely formal discourse on aesthetics and ethics—areas in which Hegel was well-armed with experience and ideas.

The second thinker of this period, who stands in external opposition to Herbart, Schopenhauer (1788—1860), intertwines the notion of universal being, as defended by Spinoza and later Schelling, with Kant's doctrine of the supersensible nature of will, thus arriving at the metaphysical "will to live" as the ultimate foundation of the world of phenomena. This world will manifests in nature as an unconscious action and striving until, at the highest stage of natural development—in the bodies of animals and humans—it creates organs through which it generates representations, and in these representations, the world of phenomena; behind this illusory veil lies the actual being of things—will. Through the same brain activity that produces the world of phenomena, will itself enters, as conscious will defined by representations as its motives, into the causal nexus of the world of phenomena, which holds significance for all representations. If, up to this point, Schopenhauer’s philosophy can be seen as a necessary continuation of Kant’s teaching on the intelligible will as the "thing-in-itself," then, in transitioning to describe the relationship between the principle of the world and the world of phenomena, it metamorphoses into a metaphysical fabrication that expresses a general mood of the time and Schopenhauer's personal sentiment elicited by the former; as a philosophical endeavor, it holds value only in its isolated, scattered insights, primarily regarding aesthetics. In the struggle of forces dominant in the world of phenomena, the will's striving to return to its true, common, and unconscious being must simultaneously emerge—a process expressed in the sorrow, pain, and suffering that pervade life. Hence, the constant struggle of the will, in which it, tormented, seeks the tranquility of its unconscious existence, constitutes the true essence of life. The world, as the arena of this struggle, is not the best but the worst of all worlds. This drive of the will to return to its common being reveals itself in two phenomena: in the process of reproduction, where the individual seeks to reproduce the common, the species; and in compassion, the source of all morality, where the individual recognizes itself as part of the kind in similar creatures. Thus, the universal, the idea, as taught by Plato, is the real; individual ideas are merely stages in the actualization of will itself. Therefore, the more a person detaches from their individuality and ascends to the universal, the more they liberate themselves from life's sufferings. This liberation may occur through two pathways. The first pathway represents the elevation above suffering through art, which, as a symbolic representation of the common objective manifestation of will, allows the spirit to forget life’s adversities in pure, impartial contemplation. The second pathway offers liberation from suffering through the denial of the will to live, which can occur relatively—through asceticism—or absolutely—in the voluntary renunciation of life.

Although the systems of Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer differ significantly in their methods and ultimate conclusions, they share a speculative nature, all acknowledging the right of philosophy to stand as a science, developed independently and fundamentally distinct from other disciplines. In this regard, they face a countercurrent, emerging from the empirical philosophy of the Enlightenment, which developed in a distinctive manner throughout the nineteenth century: positivism, which arose almost simultaneously in England, France, and Germany. This movement sees its task as constructing a philosophy of reality, which not only aims to explain existence, as in the metaphysics of Hegel or Herbart, but bases itself firmly on the facts of that reality. With such exclusive recognition of facts as the foundation of philosophy, Auguste Comte (1798—1857) termed his philosophy "positive": he believed that the task of philosophy should be limited to synthesizing the main results of the positive sciences. If, initially, at the theological stage of knowledge, humanity sought to explain all phenomena by the actions of individual beings, and then, at the metaphysical stage, by substances, causes, and forces, it has now, at the positive stage of understanding, finally achieved the explanation of these phenomena exclusively through the laws discovered within them. Positivism, understanding "science" as limited to the natural sciences, regards psychology as a branch of biology alongside Comte, and replaces historical sciences with the natural-scientific "sociology," or, recognizing, alongside John Stuart Mill (1806—1873), the independence of psychology and the sciences of the spirit, it seeks to uncover universal empirical laws for these fields of knowledge through natural-scientific methods. Ethically, positivism proclaims that the individual or humanity must be the sole aim of moral action, simply because nothing can be known beyond the general concept of humanity. In this context, Comte even sketched a plan for a new religion, wherein "the supreme essence" is humanity.

Similar views are defended in Germany by Ludwig Feuerbach (1804—1872), who emerged from the Hegelian school. However, his thought focuses exclusively on religious-philosophical and ethical problems; he meticulously examines religious concepts, which he, from his anthropological perspective, explains solely in terms of human desires. At the final stage of his development, Feuerbach begins to lean toward materialism, which, however, had not yet taken on a fully defined form and which later evolved in two directions: in the form of natural-scientific materialism that emerged in the mid-century, represented by Moleschott, L. Büchner, and others, which, compared to the French materialism of the Enlightenment, offered nothing new; and in the form of the economic materialism brought forth around the same time by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which traced all spiritual development back to the "material basis" of economic life, aiming to justify a socialist philosophy of history and theory of social existence based on this premise.

Finally, in England, Herbert Spencer, partly relying on Comte and partly on Darwin’s theory of evolution, developed a concept of science as a whole in the spirit of positivism in his extensive work "The Synthetic Philosophy" (1862—1896). However, unlike Comte, he allows for the "unknowable" as a boundary concept with religious significance, and he recognizes psychology as an independent science, which, in the end, is also constructed on a physiological foundation. The influence of contemporary natural-scientific views is evident in Spencer's dogmatic formulation of his system, according to which all phenomena must undergo development and destruction, along with corresponding transformations of forces—a formulation attempting to unite the idea of evolution with the principle of conservation of energy. Spencer differs from German economic materialism in his strict individualism. Besides these particular forms, positivism, in the moderate version that John Stuart Mill articulated, finds innumerable defenders among scientists, who are generally influenced in the field of epistemology by Hume or Kant.

In all these respects, the current state of philosophy bears the imprint of a transitional period. This is particularly evident in two phenomena: the striving for eclecticism, on one hand, and the inclination toward a philosophy of mood, on the other. Both of these currents are influenced by more external than internal conditions: eclectic philosophy is shaped by traditional doctrines, while philosophy of mood is influenced by prevailing tastes in life and art. Frequently, however, these tendencies intertwine. This is clearly observable in Schopenhauer. Herman Lotze (1817—1881) garnered respect in scholarly circles mainly due to the combination of his often witty, detailed critique of problems with a tendency toward constructing a comprehensive worldview, which, having its starting point in the need to reconcile faith and knowledge, fundamentally aligns with Leibniz’s conception of the universe; it differs from the latter only in that it emphasizes the religious aspect of monadology, highlighting the direct connection of the individual soul with God. Moreover, the vagueness of these thoughts, by rendering the poetic arbitrariness of Lotze's system less conspicuous, imparts to them even in the eyes of those who critically scrutinize everything and are reluctant to abandon a strictly philosophical method, an appearance of ideas truly fruitful for resolving the mysteries of existence. Conversely, the genius of Gustav Theodor Fechner's philosophical creativity, akin to poetry, does not enjoy such favor, perhaps precisely because he, proceeding from a conception of life pervading the entire world and emanating from divine consciousness, sought to express his principle, analogous to Lotze’s, in a more definite and vivid form. Fechner's ideas significantly approach those of Schelling's natural philosophy, although Fechner, wishing to avoid, due to the complete collapse of the latter, a very understandable prejudice against his system, endeavored to transform his philosophical creed in such a way that it would never contradict the results of positive science; in this sense, his worldview may be termed an improved, purified version of Schelling's natural philosophy. In a different manner, Eduard von Hartmann, who continues to work increasingly deeper in this direction even today, attempts to build a metaphysics along with a corresponding religious philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics by integrating Schopenhauer's doctrine of will with elements of other philosophical systems, in accordance with the results of the positive sciences. In his depiction of differentiating the "unconscious" into antithetical will and a world of representations inclined toward logical coherence, this philosophy inevitably transforms into poetry in concepts, wherein will and representation are somewhat hypostatized into personal beings, standing in full contradiction to their psychological nature. The driving motivation behind the creation of this mythologizing philosophy is, of course, again a mood, specifically, the desire to overcome Schopenhauer's pessimism, which represented an expression of the mood of a time dissatisfied with itself and its ideals, from which a new generation gradually began to liberate itself. By seeking to replace pessimism with moderate optimism, Hartmann simultaneously forms a transition to that thinker whose philosophy is and wishes to be solely a mood and nothing more—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900). Due to this characteristic, Nietzsche’s philosophy could not attain a stable form and develop in logical succession. It is a mutable image, an expression of the poet's and thinker’s mood, as well as of the spirit of the time and specific currents dominant during that period, reflecting the impressionable personality responsive to the sentiments of the age. Like Hartmann, Nietzsche arises from Schopenhauer's pessimism. However, while Hartmann, with his schematic dogmatism, achieved, albeit with great effort, a reconciliation of pessimism with optimism, Nietzsche not only rejects any philosophical construction that follows well-trodden paths but also any constraints that method and philosophical tradition might impose in any respect. Thus, his philosophy at every moment expresses his own conviction, which, in turn, at every instant also embodies the mood of his spirit. Therefore, in the form it takes at the end of Nietzsche’s activity, it stands, despite its self-sufficiency, as more a child of its time than any other system: it provides an instantaneous reflection—not of the mood of the entire era, but of the spiritual current that, in opposition to the social aspirations widely spread in ethics and social science, proclaimed the value of the individual personality, and in contrast to the dominance of tradition in morality, religion, and history, foregrounded the will of the free individual. Two pithy expressions from Nietzsche, "the master morality" and "the revaluation of all values," succinctly encapsulate these two tendencies, particularly evident in the art of our time.

However, the philosophy of sentiment, despite the profound interest it arouses as an expression of the cultural condition of its time, has, in the grand scheme of scientific development, held only negligible significance. The brilliant ideas of Nietzsche, it seems, will exert as little influence on the course of philosophical thought as did the "thoughts" of Blaise Pascal or the paradoxes of Pierre Bayle.

Alongside eclecticism and the philosophy of sentiment, a third direction emerged in the recent past—philosophy of authority. Following the neokantian appeal of “back to Kant,” which timidly attempted to engage with Kant’s ideas without completely abandoning further independent development, the philosophy of authority asserted itself fully in neoscholasticism, the latest of many attempts throughout history to restore the scholastic philosophy of the thirteenth century. Since the encyclical "Aeterni Patris" by Pope Leo XIII, the system of St. Thomas has become the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, a fact supported by extensive literature. This phenomenon holds considerable interest in a cultural-historical context; philosophically, however, it is of little significance.

In which direction philosophy will develop in the future seems to be a matter of certainty, if one may draw conclusions from the past regarding the future. Two prominent phenomena of the past century, despite their inherent shortcomings, appear to contain genuine seeds of development: Hegel’s philosophy of spirit, on one hand, and positivism, on the other. Hegel’s merit lies in being the first to recognize the independent significance of the spiritual sciences alongside the natural sciences for philosophy. What hindered him from achieving his aim was his aspiration to comprehend the development of spirit, the development of things in general, through a specific logical dialectical scheme. This is compounded by his insufficient acquaintance with the natural sciences and, finally, the complete absence of psychology and theory of knowledge in his system; the former would have aided him in explaining the actual foundations of spiritual processes, while the latter would have allowed him to critically assess his own constructions. Just as Hegel pays attention exclusively to the spiritual sciences, positivism equally restricts itself to the natural sciences. This oversight leads it to ignore the distinctive nature of the content of the spiritual sciences and to endeavor to reduce the latter in its attempts to create a “sociology” to the level of natural sciences. Hence, it is also ill-equipped to provide a solid psychological foundation or a robust theory of knowledge. In positivism, psychology either becomes a subset of physiology or a study of associations based on inadmissible transfers of a natural scientific perspective into the realm of the spiritual sciences. The theory of knowledge is either altogether absent in positivism or merely represents a revival of earlier dogmatic empiricism. An inevitable consequence of this is the dogmatism based on arbitrary assumptions, attempting to replace the vital connection of phenomena with a lifeless external schematism, wholly akin to Hegelian dialectics. The scientific philosophy of our time must therefore seek to address these deficiencies in both of the aforementioned directions of recent history, which hold significant historical importance, and to rigorously apply general principles and requirements of scientific knowledge.