Main Philosophical Directions

Directions of Epistemological Theory

Monistic Realism

The system of Spinoza represents a direct transformation of Cartesian dualism into a monistic and, at the same time, realistic worldview. Setting aside its previously mentioned (p. 169) relations to ancient mystical currents and scholasticism, traces of its origin from Cartesian dualism can be easily discerned in Spinoza's system: the starting point of Spinoza's system is the unification of the substances distinguished by Descartes into a single concept; this could only be the concept of God, the infinite substance, and Spinoza was thus compelled to reduce the soul and matter, the two other Cartesian substances that, while opposed, are externally related to one another, to the attributes of the singular substance. In this sense, Spinoza's system reinstates the realistic monism of Aristotle. However, the places of matter and form are taken by extension and thought. Thus, an individual object, composed of form and matter, no longer serves as a substance; due to the boundless nature of the aforementioned common attributes, it represents merely a limitation, a conditional mode of existence within both attributes: since an object is an extended thing, it constitutes a limitation of space; since it is a representation, it is a limitation of thought. Consequently, an individual thing transforms into a simple "mode" of substance; the concept of substance itself applies only to that higher unity which encompasses the attributes in their entirety, and therefore also all their individual modes. Hence, an important basis for the transformation of the real Aristotelian substance into a transcendent concept lies in the transition of both correlating concepts of matter and form into two others, the concepts of body and soul, and in the substitution of the latter, brought about by the elimination of the dualistic mode of representation, by extension and thought. Body and soul, extension and thought are no longer genuinely correlating concepts. One cannot assert of them what Aristotle claimed regarding form and matter, which, according to his teaching, exist only through one another; soul and body, conceived as independent substances, are, for instance, in Descartes, independent substances from one another, between which, therefore, as occasionalism, aligned with Descartes’ philosophy, teaches, one can establish a relationship only through the intervention of a higher substance via "assistentia supranaturalis." However, this already indicates that soul and body, as a relationship is established between them, are no longer substances in the strict sense of the word; only the higher substance, which grants them unity, can claim such a designation.

Thus, the transition to Spinoza's substance is self-evident. All considerations put forth by ontologism regarding the concept of God can be applied to this new concept of substance, and even with greater freedom, for the imperfect representations of finite created substances no longer pose an obstacle: in Spinoza, the real existence of things inevitably merges with the concept of substance and God. From this point, it is not difficult to apply the concept of absolute infinity to the concept of substance, thereby transforming the former into an absolutely transcendent notion, into infinite existence, which in the world of phenomena can manifest only partially and in a form obscured by inadequate knowledge. Thus, dualistic realism, having transformed into monistic realism, necessarily evolves into a transcendent system, which can no longer fulfill the original task of realism—to ascribe equal significance to both sides of reality, the corporeal and the spiritual worlds; both elements of the actual world expand into infinity, such that in their infinity, reality itself disappears. Consequently, realism, when applied to the infinite, returns to transcendent metaphysics akin to Platonic idealism, which recognizes the sensory world only as a reflection of the super-sensory. The concept of empirical reality, held by transcendent realism, does not significantly differ from the Platonic sensory world, apart from the fact that Spinozism transforms the objective relation predominant in Platonism into a subjective one: Plato regards sensory things as vague images of transcendent ideas; Spinoza sees them as imperfect knowledge of reality. This subjectivization is solely the result of a change in the concept of the soul; thus, it manifested similarly in those idealistic systems, such as Leibniz's system, which adopted this new concept of the soul.

Since both substances, matter and soul, through their transformation into the attributes of the singular transcendent substance could no longer serve to explain phenomena, it is natural that in subsequent philosophy, there arose a renewed desire to replace transcendent realism with empirical realism or at least with a direction in which metaphysical concepts of substances retained their original and essential purpose as auxiliary concepts for experience. Under the influence of this desire, a return to Cartesian dualism occurred; this new current found expression in the systems of the 18th century that were not swept away by the materialist tide, particularly evident in the metaphysics of Wolff. However, none of these systems contributed anything significantly new to the dualistic realism established by Descartes. The idea of "pre-established harmony," borrowed from Leibniz, and their inclination towards anthropomorphic teleology represent more religious than strictly philosophical elements. In the Wolffian school, pre-established harmony is conceived as the original miracle of creation; the investigation of the world from the perspective of human goals ultimately rests on a religious foundation, that is, on faith in a cosmic order established for human purposes.

Wolff's dualistic realism retains its significance even today, primarily in the form of practical philosophy, often referred to as "common sense." Its tenets, such as "soul and body are two independent entities," "God has placed the soul in the body, and thus it can again be removed from it and continue to exist independently," and "the world in general was created for the benefit of humanity"—all these beliefs, despite various theoretical shortcomings, are generally regarded by most modern individuals as practical axioms, even nearly self-evident truths, while seemingly overlooking the fact that these propositions in their contemporary form have scarcely existed for more than two centuries.

Following Kantian criticism, new forms of realistic thought emerged once again in philosophy. By making the knowledge of the world of phenomena dependent on ideal forms of knowledge, forms of contemplation, and concepts, transcendental idealism was fundamentally idealistic in nature, although it already contained a realistic tendency, as evidenced by its restoration of Aristotelian concepts of matter and form. This tendency in transcendental idealism could not come to the fore for two reasons: first, because primary attention was focused on the a priori forms of knowledge; and second, because a belief in the world of ideas persisted, understood in the spirit of Plato and based on moral postulates. However, by employing the transcendental notion of the "thing-in-itself" and asserting, in contrast to subjective idealism, the necessity of positing a reality existing independently of the subject and implied in every act of knowledge due to the presence of matter in each sensation, Kant's philosophy simultaneously opened the door for the emergence of new realistic systems. These systems could, of course, proclaim, in contradiction to Kant, the possibility of knowing the "things-in-themselves." The transition to this viewpoint within the philosophy of the 19th century occurred through two paths: first, through the restoration of the individualistic concept of substance, while strictly preserving its simplicity, and in connection with this, a general definition of the concept that allows it to serve as a foundation for explaining the nature and processes of consciousness—thus, through the realistic transformation of Leibniz's monadological idealism; and second, through the restoration of universalist metaphysics, which distinguished itself from earlier intellectualist systems of a similar kind, particularly from Spinoza's metaphysics, by making the concept of will the fundamental metaphysical principle. The first of these paths leads to the monadological realism of Herbart, while the second leads to the voluntarist metaphysics of Schopenhauer. Both of these systems, in a dual sense, form oppositions to each other: the former is individualistic and intellectualist, while the latter is universalistic and voluntaristic. If the first of these oppositions, the opposition of individualism and universalism, has its source in earlier metaphysics—where it found a similar place in relation to the systems of Spinoza and Leibniz—then the second is the result of more recent development: earlier metaphysics, in all its directions, was predominantly intellectualist; only Schopenhauer introduced voluntarism into realistic metaphysics. Finally, both systems, those of Herbart and Schopenhauer, recognize Kant's distinction between phenomenon and thing-in-itself; they merely attribute different meanings to this distinction. Herbart associates with this distinction the assumption that a phenomenon, although it does not represent being itself, nonetheless points to the latter and therefore demands the formation of a contradiction-free metaphysical concept of being. In contrast, Schopenhauer highlights the position that, in Kant's philosophy, will already occupied, as it was understood as an intellectual essence of man, inherently not subject to the causality of nature. Schopenhauer expands this transcendental concept of will into a metaphysical concept of the world, to which he then opposes, as a world of phenomena, the content given in our representations and derived from those concepts. Thus, both systems, along with the entirety of post-Kantian philosophy, share a common understanding of their accepted metaphysical principles not as transcendent but as immanent to the very world of phenomena. In this respect, they differ from a similar monistic yet entirely transcendent realism of Spinoza. Therefore, in both, the opposition between adequate and inadequate knowledge, which played a significant role in earlier realism, loses all meaning: the world of phenomena necessarily—and at least apparently—follows from metaphysical being, and thus, the task of metaphysics is to explain the world of phenomena.

These general premises of both systems already determine their course to a greater or lesser extent. Seeing the goal of metaphysics in establishing a concept of being that is completely free from contradictions, Herbart, of course, could find it only by recognizing being as an absolutely simple substance, that is, as a substance whose essence comprises simple quality. By this, he made the necessary correction to Leibniz's concept of the monad: Leibniz's monad, although it must be a simple essence, is, in reality, complex, even infinitely complex, as a microcosm. Herbart's "real" is truly a simple essence and is, of course, absolutely unimaginable and, consequently, no less transcendent than Leibniz's monad. To explain the world of phenomena from this simply being, opened up metaphysically, instead of the internal self-development of Leibniz's monads, Herbart had to posit an external relationship among "realities." As a result of this dual correction made by Herbart to the concept of the monad, "real" is no longer a psychic being: it can equally be considered as purely physical atoms as well as the foundations of internal psychic processes. In either case, "real" can be understood depending on the relationships that exist among individual "realities" in their co-existence. Thus, Herbart was able to develop both a metaphysical natural philosophy and a metaphysical psychology without presuming that the essence of natural processes consists of psychic processes, as did Leibniz's objective idealism, or that the essence of psychic phenomena consists of material movements, as did materialism. In this sense, Herbart's metaphysics represents pure realism: it acknowledges equal significance for both the physical and the psychic; and, at the same time, it is monistic: it derives both the psychic and the physical from the same common foundations. Its object is the actual world. The concept of God finds no place in Herbart's metaphysics: it is admitted only for the sake of cosmological explanation as a concept that stands on the boundary of knowledge, and for moral demands as a postulate of faith; in the first case, because the metaphysical world of being necessarily presupposes a later foundation for its existence, and in the second, because the moral striving of man demands a supplementation of the sensory world by the supersensory. However, the transcendental ideas obtained through this path lie entirely beyond metaphysics, whose task is limited to explaining the phantom, the world of phenomena, from being.

Schopenhauer's universalist realism, like Herbart's realism, is monistic. However, his metaphysical principle, the world will, does not represent simple being: it is infinite being. Therefore, it is as close to Spinoza's substance as Herbart's "real" is to Leibniz's monads. But just as "real" represents not a being endowed with the ability to represent but a simple transcendental quality, so for Schopenhauer, will is not a thinking, extended being; it has nothing in common with the empirical willful process; it is simply not intellect, an unrepresentable being: it is conceived as a transcendental force that produces the extended world, and in that world—the human being, with his representing brain, which, in turn, creates the world of phenomena, presupposing a subject that represents the world. If Herbart's metaphysics occupies a neutral position between physical and psychic explanations of the world, then in Schopenhauer's philosophy, the transcendental voluntarist metaphysics is closely connected with psychophysical materialism. It differs from the ordinary form of the latter only in that the world will is conceived as a creative force of matter. This initial relationship of will to matter also retains significance in the world of phenomena. Thus, for Schopenhauer, the phenomenon contains manifold indications of being. However, the philosopher did not attempt to derive the indicated relationships from any specific law; rather, he followed his own fantasies and his sympathies and antipathies. Consequently, Schopenhauer's philosophy represents a complete antithesis to the strict development of metaphysics undertaken by Herbart: Schopenhauer arbitrarily selects from various worldviews what pleases him. Following psychophysical materialism in psychology and Kant's teaching on will in the main principle of his metaphysics, Schopenhauer develops his aesthetics under the influence of Plato's doctrine of ideas, while imbuing his entire system with a pessimistic character under the influence of Indian thinkers. Thus, his system occupies a specific position in the general movement of thought, according to its fundamental metaphysical concept, among the realistic directions that developed after Kant; in many particulars, it is built under the influence of individual whims and arbitrariness. Yet, even in this case, it is significant that the arbitrary seems to stand outside the law. It is precisely these arbitrary elements, which harm the coherence of the system, that emerged as products of the general mood of the time, and they revealed the upheaval of philosophical interests that did not arise at the moment of the system's initial emergence but at the time when it began to gain influence.

In contrast, there exists a point characteristic of all post-Kantian philosophy, particularly in the quest to comprehend the world of phenomena—a pursuit that, despite its evident inclination toward transcendental concepts, is clearly present in Schopenhauer’s system. In his framework, there is no room for the transcendental ideas of Kant or pre-Kantian philosophy, which express humanity's yearning and striving towards the supersensible realm. While Herbart regards the concept of God as an idea situated at the boundary of our knowledge and thus outside philosophy, Schopenhauer entirely dismisses this notion. In both ideal-realism, which aligns with Kant, and in these realistic systems, the focus of philosophy is wholly directed toward empirical reality. This is most clearly evident in Schopenhauer, who, in contrast to other systems, especially Hegel’s, which posits that the actual world comprises the totality of human goods, denies any intrinsic value to human life. Schopenhauer perceives liberation from the suffering of this valueless existence not as a transition into a supersensible world of absolute worth, as taught by Platonic and Christian idealism, but rather in the annihilation of existence altogether—in complete oblivion, akin to the nirvana of Indian philosophy. Thus, the pessimism of Schopenhauer’s system is closely linked to the denial of the value of the actual world, a value recognized by the ideal-realism that directly preceded it, and to the loss of the idea of a transcendent realm that could compensate for the devaluation of the earthly world.

Certainly, these forms of realism have not yet exhausted their historical potential. More than any other direction, they hold promise for further development, as they are more responsive to changes in the entirety of scientific knowledge. However, the emergence of these new forms of realism pertains to the present, making them unsuitable for inclusion in a historical overview of metaphysical systems.

It is possible to establish two perspectives that will shape the future development of this movement. The general pattern we have identified in the succession of worldviews allows us to assert that dualistic realism, in all its forms, has already exited the stage, and thus the future belongs to monistic realism. This monistic realism can manifest in two forms: ultimately, at its foundational level, it will represent either materialism or idealism. Given all indications from recent developments suggesting that materialism has outlived its relevance, only the second possibility remains. Therefore, ideal-realism is destined to shape the future of philosophy. This has already been correctly indicated by Fichte and Hegel. However, ensnared in a profound blindness regarding the methods of scientific thought and the relationship of philosophy to the special sciences, they could not establish a vital connection between the principles of the new worldview and the overall development of scientific thought.

Thus, as an additional perspective, we must append a second viewpoint. Philosophy should also be realistic in the sense that it ought not to construct a seemingly logical but, in reality, fantastical system of concepts independently of positive knowledge; to satisfy the demands of genuinely scientific philosophy, it must take as its foundation the real sciences and the reliable methods they have validated. This requirement to be a truly scientific philosophy is now more pressing than ever, given that fantastical concepts, mood-based philosophy, and eclectic movements have long held sway.