N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
PART ONE
The Problem of Knowledge and Objectification
CHAPTER I
i. A metaphysical interpretation and critique of Kant. Two Worlds: appearance,
and things-in-themselves, nature and freedom. Kant, Plato, German mysticism, German
idealist metaphysics after Kant. 2. The dialectic of German idealism from Kant
through Hegel to Nietzsche. 3. The problem of freedom in French philosophy of
the nineteenth century. Themes of Russian philosophical and religious thought.
4. The emotionally passionate character of cognition. Existential metaphysics
as the symbolism of spiritual experience. 5. Truth which is beneficial, truth
which is ruinous, and sai'ing truth. Truths and the truth. The criterion of truth
Man finds himself in the world, or has been thrown into it, and as he stands facing
the world he is confronted by it as by a problem which demands to be solved. His
continued existence depends upon the world, and he perishes in the world and by
the action of the world. The world nourishes man, and it destroys him. The world
environment into which he is cast in mysterious fashion from some source or other,
everlastingly threatens man and arouses him to conflict. And man devotes himself
to the extraordinarily venturesome task of getting to know the world and that
which may to some extent be discovered behind it. Man is small in comparison with
that which he wants to get to know, he is small compared with the world. He is
terribly small if he is looked upon as one of a number of objects.
Nor is there anything more astonishing, more touching and more disturbing, than
these efforts of the human spirit to break through darkness towards the light,
through what is meaningless, towards a meaning, to break its way through the servitude
which necessity imposes, towards freedom. Man measures his powers
3
with the universe, and in the act of knowing seeks to rise above the limiting
conditions and the solid massiveness of the world. He can recognize light, meaning,
and freedom for the sole reason that light, meaning and freedom are there within
his very self. And even when man regards himself as merely a creation of the world
environment and as wholly dependent upon it, even then he rises above it and reveals
in himself a higher principle than the data which the world provides, and unveils
the presence within him of a stranger from another world, from a different idea
of the world.
The knowledge would not be possible if man belonged solely to nature, if he were
not spirit also. The acquisition of knowledge is a struggle, it is not a passive
reflection. Philosophy, which has aimed at integrated knowledge, has sought not
only to know the world, but also to change it. It is futile for Marx to appropriate
this idea to himself, it forms a part of all true philosophy. Philosophy not only
wants to perceive meaning, it desires that meaning shall be triumphant. Philosophy
will not come to terms with a meaningless world datum, it seeks either to break
through to another world, a world which has meaning, or to discover the wisdom
which brings light into the world, and changes human existence in it for the better.
Thus the most profound and most distinctive philosophy has, behind the phenomenon,
the appearance, discovered the noumenon, the thing-in-itself; behind the necessity
of nature it has revealed freedom, and behind the material world, spirit. And
even when philosophy denies the 'other', the noumenal, world, it still projects
upon the future a better world, a higher condition of the world in time to come,
and this is, after all, in some sense noumenal.
From the time of Greek philosopny men have given the name being (ousia, essentia)
to the subject matter of profound knowledge. We shall see all the difficulties
which are connected with ontology. Ontolpgism does not appear to me to be the
highest philosophical truth. But accepting the conventional terminology it may
be said that in seeking knowledge, the philosopher has
4
sought to solve the riddle of being. And there are two paths, or two starting-points,
in seeking a solution to the mystery of being. Either being is known and unriddled
from the side of the object, taking the world as the starting-point, or it is
known and unriddled from the side of the ego, that is from man. This ought to
form the basis of distinction between different tendencies in philosophy. But
in the history of philosophical thought this distinction is complicated and involved.
In reality the philosophy of the ego, as distinct from the philosophy of the world
begins with the revolution brought about by Kant,1 although he had his predecessors,
such as for instance St Augustine and Descartes,, and in some material respects,
Socrates and Plato. A fundamental discovery in philosophy was made by Plato and
Kant who must be regarded as the greatest and most original philosopher in the
history of human thought.
After Plato and Kant the philosophers who followed them in part developed their
ideas and in part distorted them, and it is of great importance that this fact
should be grasped. But Plato's philosophy, as indeed Greek philosophy as a whole,
was not yet a philosophy of the ego, it was not the apprehension of being from
the point of view of the subject, and arising out of the depth of human existence.
Greek thought was directed to the object and it is German thought alone which
has turned towards the subject. But it did in fact succeed in discovering in the
object the world of ideas, through the subject, through the participation of man
in that higher world.
A naive realism is the general outlook of the greater part of mankind. It would
not be true to say that it is the general view of the world taken by mankind in
its primitive state. That view was extraordinarily complex, it was a myth-creatingprocess,
animism,
1 See R. Kroner: Von Kant bis Hegel. 2 Vok This is the best history of German
idealism. I am much indebted to it in the understanding and interpretation of
Kant and the great idealists of the beginning of the nineteenth century.
5
totemism and belief in magic. But the power of workaday prosaic experience over
man inculcates a naively realistic acceptance of the world. This visible world,
this world of the senses, this world of phenomena, as philosophers were in due
course to call it, exercises too much compulsion upon man, it subjugates him too
much to itself, for it to be easily possible for him either to harbour any doubts
of its true reality, or to rise above it. Yet all profound philosophy begins from
such a doubt, and takes its rise from an act of spirit which lifts itself above
the data which the world provides.
Is the true, the most real thing that which most insists upon one's acknowledgment
of it? Philosophical knowledge is an act of self-liberation on the part of the
spirit from the exclusive claims of the world of phenomena to be reality. And
this is the amazing fact: the world as a whole, as the cosmos, is never a datum
in our experience of the phenomenal world of the senses. The phenomenon is always
partial. The cosmic whole is an image which is grasped by the intellect. The power
of the world over man as he seeks to know it is not the power of the cosmic whole,
it is the power of phenomena, which are shackled to necessity and the ordered
rhythm of nature.
A naively realistic distortion of the world is always based upon confusion, the
constructions of the mind enter into it. This com-pulsorily perceptible world
which is the only real world for prosaic workaday experience, and the only 'objective'
world, is a creation of man, it expresses the direction in which his mind tends
to move. When the ordinary everyday person naively says: 'I regard as real only
what I can perceive with the senses' he is, by so saying, and without being aware
of the fact, regarding the reality of the world as dependent upon himself. And
that is why philosophical empiricism was a form of idealism. Naive realism is
subjectivism at its worst.
The only real world of appearances is this human world of yours, and it depends
upon your limitedness, upon the self-alienation of the spirit within you. Man
exteriorizes his own enslave-
6
mciit, lie projects it upon the external, and he pictures it to himself u constraint
exercised by an exterior reality. Purely intellectual criteria of reality are
impossible, reality depends upon the dialectic of human existence, upon a dialectic
which is existential, not Intellectual. Being is anxiety, as Heidegger says, because
I am in a Itatc of anxiety and I project it upon the structure of being. When
I say that the world is matter, and spirit an epiphenomenon of matter, I am saying
that I am overwhelmed and enslaved by the materiality of the world. The phenomenal
world, so staggeringly real, is dependent not only upon our reason but to a still
greater extent upon our passions and emotions, our fear, our anxiety, our interests
and our sinful slavery. Transcendental passions and feelings exist, and it is
they above all that create our world, our reality.
At a certain stage in human self-consciousness, philosophy emerges out of dualistic
thought, out of the distinction between the world of sense and the world of ideas,
of phenomena and noumena, of appearances and things-in-themselves. Such an emergence
was achieved by Plato and Kant, and this is the reason for their surpassing importance
and depth of thought. The philo-lopher discovered that the world of the senses,
the phenomenal world, is not the true world, nor is it the only world. But Plato
and Kant deduce from this different and flatly contradictory conclusions about
the act of knowing. In Plato's view true knowledge (epistema) was possible of
the world of ideas only, of the noumenal world. Knowledge of the world of sense
is not true knowledge. Kant's opinion, on the other hand, was that real knowledge,
scientific knowledge, is a possibility only in regard to the phenomenal world.
So far as the noumenal world is concerned knowledge is an impossibility; it is
only moral postulates that are possible. Here the scientific spirit of the modern
writer made itself heard. But we have already seen that Kant's philosophy was
two-sided and inconsistent and thus lent itself to different interpretations.
Kant has been regarded sometimes as an idealist and sometimes
7
as a realist. At times he has been accounted a metaphysician and at other times
an anti-metaphysician.
I am convinced that Kant has not been accurately understood. He was a metaphysician
and he ought to be interpreted from a metaphysical point of view. He was a metaphysician
of freedom, even, it may be, the only metaphysician of freedom, and in this respect
my attempt to set forth my own metaphysics of freedom will be derived from Kant.
When Kant appeared the tragic side of the act of knowing came to light. It was
an important event in the history of European thought. It is essential to grasp
his vital and existential meaning. Epistemological optimism was a property of
Greek philosophy, as it was also of mediaeval scholasticism as well as of the
rationalist philosophy of modem times. The perceptional activity of the reason
was taken in no naive way, it was accepted dogmatically. Even earlier philosophy
had turned its attention to the reason and investigated it. Greek philosophers
had even discovered reason, but they had a dogmatic belief in the capacity of
reason to apprehend being, in the correspondence between the concepts devised
by reason and the object which is perceived. They saw reason in being itself,
and it was that which made rational knowledge possible. According to Plato the
nou-menal world or the world of ideas is an intellectual and rational world. In
St Thomas Aquinas it is only the intellect which comes into touch with being and
apprehends it, since being itself is permeated by intellectuality. Spinoza and
Leibniz believe in being in the same way. Universal reason apprehends things with
the help of general concepts.
In this there was a naive self-confidence on the part of the reason which
lasted until the time of Kant. But the doubt arises whether the reason did not
communicate its own properties to the object of its perception. And may it not
be that its perceptional ontolo-gism is based upon this transference to being
of that which is a matter of its own devising and owes its origin to concepts?
Is not the activity of the reason which has not been subjected to criticism a
source of its impotence?
8
Kant, with his extraordinary critical acuteness was the first to note the confusions
which might be engendered by the reason and to reveal its contradictions. The
doctrine of transcendental illusion which owes its origin to reason is perhaps
the aspect of his teaching in which his genius is most conspicuously displayed.
Kant's doctrine of antinomies ranks among the greatest discoveries in the history
of philosophical thought and merely requires amplification and development. With
clear insight Kant perceives the confusion between the process of thinking and
being, and the way in which thinking accepts as objective being that which it
itself produces. He overcomes the power of the object over the subject by bringing
to light the fact that the object is the offspring of the subject. Kant's great
discovery which makes a sharp cut in the whole history of human thought and divides
it into two parts, consists in this, that what refers merely to appearances and
phenomena must not be transferred to what is noumenal, to things-in-themselves.
Kant's dualism was not a defect; it is quite the greatest merit of his philosophy.
What was to be a defect in his followers was their monism. It is not true to say
that Kant makes an end of all metaphysics; he merely makes an end of metaphysics
of the naturalistic rationalist type, metaphysics which are derived from the object,
from the world, and he reveals the possibility of metaphysics based on the subject,
of a metaphysics of freedom. There is eternal truth in the distinction which Kant
draws between the order of nature and the order of freedom. It is precisely Kant
who makes existential metaphysics a possibility, the order of freedom is indeed
Existenz.
It is generally supposed that Kant seeks only to give a secure basis to science
and morals, but it is not only that, he has also a metaphysical interest and he
wishes to make a stand in defence of freedom, he would see in it the essentiatnature
of the world. The thing-in-itself is unknowable from the side of the object; from
the side of the subject it is freedom. It would seem that those who re-
9
gard Kant as the foe of all metaphysics, allow the possibility of naturalistic
objective metaphysics only. But another path for metaphysics opens out. Man is
aware of himself not only as a phenomenon. The establishment of the frontiers
of reason at once reveals also the ground of a different sort of knowledge. The
old uncritical metaphysics was based upon a confusion of subject and object, of
thought and thing, and for that very reason it was permeated with a false objectivity.
It is an absolute mistake to interpret Kant's philosophy as 'subjectivism' and
psychologism or to confuse his theory of knowledge with the phvsiology of the
organs of sense.
People see in Kant a false 'subjectivism' precisely for the reason that they are
under the sway of a false 'objectivism', and within the objectified world which
arises from the subject. Critical philosophy is, of course, philosophy of the
subject not of the object, and just for that reason it is not 'subjective' in
the bad sense of the word and is 'objective' in the good sense. It is bound to
arrive at setting spirit in opposition to being in its 'thingness', and creative
dynamic in opposition to congealed being.
The subjective necessity of scientific knowledge and the moral law is, according
to Kant, linked with the fact that the subject in his view is transcendental mind,
spirit, that is to say, true 'objective' being. The relations between the 'subjective'
and 'objective' are entirely paradoxical and throw the ordinary terminology out
of gear. But here Kant is not completely consistent or thoroughgoing and the concept
of the object is with him especially weak and unstable.
Kant's criticism of the ontological proof of the existence of God is of great
importance. It is directed against false ontologism in general. Ontological proof
is based upon a confusion of the logical predicate with reality, of the idea of
being with being. Kant strikes a blow at the old metaphysics which were based
upon a confusion between the product of thought and reality. It is interesting
to note that in Kant the limitations and metaphysical
10
weakness of reason are associated with its cognitive activity. Reason is not active
in cognition only. It is active also in the formation of the object-world itself,
of the world of phenomena.
Pre-Kantian philosophy had an inadequate view of this activity of reason and,
therefore, accepted its metaphysical claims to reflect real entities. Kant's criticism
denied the applicability of concepts to things-in-themselves. They can be applied
only to appearances. Transcendental ideas have only a regulative, not a constitutive
application. But there is in idealism a danger of regarding reason as concerned
only with itself and thought as having immediate apprehension only of thought.
Such is one side of Kantian criticism; but there is also another. Kant is the
central event in the history of European philosophy. But the spirit of the philosophy
of modern times as a whole is different from the philosophy of the Middle Ages
and of antiquity. With Nicholas of Cusa, with Descartes and in part with Spinoza,
with Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, a new orientation of philosophical thought
begins. The relation between the philosophies of modern and mediaeval times must
be understood in a different way from that which is commonly accepted. The view
usually adopted is that mediaeval philosophy was Christian, whereas the philosophy
of modern times is non-Christian or even anti-Christian. But in actual fact it
is rather the reverse of this which is true. Mediaeval scholastic philosophy was
fundamentally Greek; it did not pass beyond the bounds of ancient thought; it
was a philosophy of the object, that is to say it was cosmocentric. Modern philosophy,
on the other hand, has become a philosophy of the subject; it is anthropocentric
and its centre of gravity is transferred to man. But this means that Christian
emancipation from the power of the objectified world over man had not yet made
its way into thought in the Middle Ages, whereas in modern times Christianity
does enter into thought, it carries on its work unseen within it and leads to
the autonomy of man and of his thought.
11
The philosophy of the ego, of the subject, in German philosophical thought has
a Christian basis and its theme is Christian. A truly Christian philosophy cannot
be one which expresses a servile dependence of man upon the object and unon the
world. St Thomas Aquinas was, of course, much more of a Christian than Hegel was,
but in its theme and in its line of direction his philosophy was less Christian
than Hegel's, not to speak of Kant's. That philosophy did no more than add an
upper storey of theology to a purely Greek philosophical foundation, and that
theological storey was infected by Aristotelian categories of thought. The scholastic
metaphysics was naturalistic.
It follows as a matter of course that a different spirit made its way into philosophical
thought. It is to be found above all in St Augustine who was a predecessor of
the philosophy of modern times. It was in St Gregory of Nyssa too, and among the
great scholastics, to some extent in Duns Scotus. According to Duns Scotus man
rises above nature, not through the intellect but by the will, the intellect is
determined from without, whereas the will is self-determination.1 And our attitude
to the age of the Enlightenment also requires some re-valuation. It has been settled
too much by the reaction of the Romantic epoch. The Enlightenment is an important
moment in the history of the spirit, in the dialectic of reason, and it ought
not to be identified with the superficial French Enlightenment of the eighteenth
century. Enlightenment is not the same thing as rationalism, although rationalism
played a great part in the age of the Enlightenment.
Kant gave us a profound definition of the Enlightenment. According to him it is
man's way out from the impossibility of using his reason without the help of another.
It means that man, having been set free from his swaddling clothes, begins to
make use of his own reason.2 Kant was of the opinion that we are still not living
in an enlightened age but only in an age of enlightenment.
1 See Landry: Duns Scotus, and Seeberg: Die Theologie des Johannes Duns Scot.
8 See Kant: Der Frage Beantwortung:' Was ist Aufkliirung?'
12
But this is a contradictory dialectic process. In an age of enlightenment the
reason is permeated by self-conceit which weakens it. It limits itself by the
fact that it regards itself as having unlimited power.
Kant not only proclaimed the truth of enlightenment as against the enslaving power
of authority, but he also marks out the limitations of the Enlightenment by weakening
the principle of rationalism and setting free the sphere of faith. He admits the
claims of reason only in the sphere of phenomena and not in the noumenal sphere.
Man stands in his full stature only when he arrives at his years of enlightenment,
that is to say when he begins to make independent use of his reason and ceases
to rely only on the authority of others, in other words when he discovers freedom
of spirit which is the value and dignity of the image of God in him. And let there
be an end of saying that this means rationalism, for that is just boring and commonplace.
The philosophy which I wish to present in this book is certainly not rationalistic.
It will probably be found to be even irrational-istic, but I cherish the hope
that it is enlightened philosophy in the Kantian sense of the word. There is a
further error which sets the spirit ofsobornost1 in opposition to freedom. Free
spirit is a corporate spirit, not that of the isolated individual. Sobomost cannot
but be free. We ought to appraise Kant afresh and get new understanding of him;
but this presupposes a criticism of him also, albeit from a different point of
view than has hitherto been the case.
Kant denied intuition in metaphysical apprehension. Contemplation presupposes
the presence of an object, but the transcendent object, the thing-in-itself, is
not present in contemplation. At the same time Kant recognizes intuition of the
noumenal world as the world of freedom. He admits only pseudo-scientific metaphysical
knowledge and submits it to doubt and exposes its illusions.
But why should another sort of knowledge be impossible, one which is not open
to the Kantian criticism? Such a knowledge is
1 See page 131 for the meaning of this word.
13
implied by Kant himself. He does not explain why knowledge of the world of appearances
is true scientific knowledge while at the same time it has nothing to do with
true reality. It is not only the transcendental dialectic of reason which gives
rise to illusions. The scientifically knowable phenomenal world also is itself
an illusory world as the philosophy of the Upanishad recognizes. The upshot is
that the truly real world (things-in-themselves) is unknowable whereas the unreal
world (appearances) can be known.
Kant recognized that there is a metaphysical need implanted in our nature; it
is deeply inherent in reason. But he repudiates spiritual experience as a basis
of a possible metaphysics. Or rather, to put it more accurately, he reduces spirituality
to practical ethical postulates which open up another world to view. But Kant
would not acknowledge outright that non-conceptual, spiritual, existential apprehension
of a noumenon is a possibility. He was right only in the negative sense: the whole
apparatus of our knowledge by concepts is applicable only to the world of appearances.
It is a curious thing that in the denial of the possibility of intellectual contemplation
without external sensations, in the recognition of such a possibility only for
higher beings than man, Kant was akin to St Thomas Aquinas.
The criticism, however, of purely intellectual contemplation seems to me to be
true. If intuitive knowledge is possible it cannot be purely intellectual, it
can only be integral, concrete, that is to say it must also be emotional and volitional.
Thinking and knowing are always emotional, and the emotional is the deciding element.
Judgment presupposes freedom and a choice of the will. Judgments of value are
emotional and volitional. It was a fundamental mistake in Kant that he recognized
sensuous experience, in which appearances are the data, but he did not recognize
spiritual experience, of which the data are noumenal. Man remains, as it were,
corked up in the world of phenomena; he is unable to break out of it, or able
to break out only by way of practical postulates. Kant regarded man as, from man's
14
point of view, an appearance; man was not revealed to himself as a noumenon.
But in what does the source of the impotence of reason lie? The reason is divided.
It has metaphysical needs and metaphysical claims, and at the same time it is
fitted to know only the world of appearances and these are its own creation. Kant
revealed this dividedness of the reason and to him it was a tragic experience.
But, while admitting metaphysical presuppositions for the practical reason, Kant
by the very fact of so doing acknowledges that there may be knowledge which is
not intellectual but volitional and emotional. He admits a very great deal; he
creates real metaphysics. This metaphysical interest plays a part in him in no
degree smaller than that of scientific interests or purely moral interests; it
was even existentially fundamental for him. The noumenal world was revealed to
him as the world of freedom. He knows what the thing-in-itself is and it is only
in respect of method that he gives the impression of knowing absolutely nothing
about it. Kant was not a phenomenalist, nor was he in the least degree a noumenalist.
He set a very high value on the thing-in-itself and placed all his hopes in it.
For that reason he could not be a thorough-going idealist and he repudiated the
name 'idealist' as applied to himself.
Kant's critics have above all exposed the contradictions in the very concept of
the thing-in-itself. One of the first to do this was Solomon Maiman. But in Fichte's
rejection of the thing-in-itself the profound dialectic of German idealism came
to light. In the Kantian recognition of things-in-themselves there was much difficulty
and it gave rise to contradiction. But the subsequent development of German philosophy
rejected things-in-themselves much too lightly, and this has had fateful results.
Kantian dualism in which a great deal of truth was brought to light, was replaced
by monism. Reason cannot by itself arrive at the thing-in-itself not even as at
a concept which marks a boundary.
What is most contradictory and inadmissible was in Kant's view to regard the thing-iu-itself
as the cause of appearances since to him
15
causality is the transcendental condition of knowledge of the world of appearances
only. This has often been pointed out. It introduces complications into the Kantian
distinction between form and content. Content is given by the thing-in-itself
while form is given by reason, by the transcendental mind. But if the thing-in-itself
can be revealed, this can take place only from the side of a subject; from the
side of an object it cannot be revealed. Behind appearances, behind objects there
are no things-in-themselves at all; they are behind subjects only. Things-in-themselves
are entities and their existence. The thing-in-itself is not the cause of an appearance;
the thing-in-itself (if indeed we are to retain that not entirely satisfactory
name) is freedom, not a cause; and as a result of a certain line of direction
taken by freedom it gives rise to the world of appearances. This was how Fichte
was thinking when he wrote of the primary act of the ego. We shall see the sort
of consquences which followed from this.
The most thorough-going idealist was Hermann Cohen to whom thinking and its product
are all that there is. The mistake of thorough-going idealism has lain in this,
that to it the ego was not the individual entity, not personality. It was the
error of imper-sonalism and that is what is basically wrong in German metaphysics.
Given that as the case it was easy to deny the difference between appearance and
the thing-in-itself, in the divine intellect which performs the act of knowing.
Kant was not an impersonalist. On the contrary his metaphysics are personalist.
But his mistake lay in the very admission of the existence of pure reason and
pure thought. Pure thought does not exist; thought is saturated with acts of volition,
with emotions and passions and these things play a part in the act of knowing
which is not simply negative; they have a positive role to play.
But this is not the main point; the main point is that Kant uses the words 'object'
and 'objectivity' inaccurately and inconsistently. In the end, objectivity is
with him confused with reality and truth; he aims at getting to know things objectively
and he
16
seeks to find a basis for objective knowledge. To him the transcendent itself
was not free from association with the name of object, but if there is such a
thing as the transcendent there is nothing which is less an object than it. Kant,
like the majority of philosophers, still fails to discover the truth, which is
a paradox in form, that the 'objective' is precisely 'subjective' while the 'subjective'
is 'objective'. For the subject is the creation of God while the object is the
creation of the subject. The meaning which Kant puts into the words 'object' and
'objectivity' contradicts that philosophy of the subject, of the ego, which is
fundamental to his thought. Objectivity was accepted as identical with general-validity.
But it is that general-validity above all which convinces me of the truth of my
understanding of objectivization. And at the same time it is clear to me that
general-validity is sociological in character. The transcendental mind cannot
be regarded as immobile; it is moblie and depends upon the social conditions which
obtain among human beings. But social relations among human beings do not belong
only to the world of phenomena; they belong to the world of noumena, to primary
life, to Existenz. The transcendental mind of Kant is very different from the
transcendental mind of Attila, and they were faced by totally different worlds.
But the mobility of the transcendental mind does not mean a denial of the
truth that the Logos shows through in it. The degree to which the Logos permeates
the mind depends upon the spiritual state of human beings. The distinction between
appearance and the thing-in-itself lies not in the relation between subject and
object but in the actual things-in-themselves, in a qualitative condition of that
which is called being. But in any case the object is always appearance.
2
German philosophy as a whole was inoculated with German
17
mysticism, and it is possible to show the underground activity of this mysticism
in it. Kant shied at it, but Hegel recognized the fact and had a very high opinion
of Boehme. German mysticism introduced the idea of newness into the history of
spirit. Originally this had not found any philosophical expression. The effects
made themselves felt in philosophical thought only at the end of the eighteenth
century and at the beginning of the nineteenth. The speculative mysticism of Eckhardt
and his followers was still in the line of descent from neoplatonism. But in Boehme
a new feeling for the world becomes evident.
Boehme was not a neoplatonist in any forthright sense, and was a stranger to the
tradition of both ancient and mediaeval Latin thought. He was inoculated with
a strain derived from the Kabbah. What was new in him was the interpretation of
cosmic life as a passionate struggle between diametrically opposed principles.
In the depth of being, or rather before being, is the Ungrund, a dark, irrational
bottomless depth—the primordial freedom. The eternal cosmic order envisaged by
ancient and Latin thought is melted down in a stream of fire. The only writer
of the ancient world who was a kindred spirit to Boehme was Heraclitus.
To Latin thought, reason, like the light of the sun, lay at the foundation of
the objective world order, and that same reason was to be found in the apprehending
subject. To Boehme, an irrational principle lies at the basis of being, primordial
freedom precedes being itself. Thus a new theme is stated for German mysticism,
a theme which went beyond the confines of Greek thought. The voluntarism of German
metaphysics is associated with this. This voluntarism is to be seen already in
Kant. Kant maintains that freedom is a primary principle. We see the same thing
in Fichte also. The primordial act of the ego is connected with freedom, which
precedes the world: it comes into actual effect out of the Ungrund. Hence Goethe's
saying—'Im Anfang war die Tat'.
According to Hegel, in spite of his panlogism, the becoming of the world is impossible
without non-being. Hegel, as Kroner put
18
it, irrationalized even the concept itseif and introduced a passionate dialectical
struggle into it. The link which existed between Baader, Schelling, Schopenhauer
and the theme propounded by Boehme, is clearest of ah1. Being is irrational, but
man is called upon to bring a rational principle into it. In Hegel's view, God
arrives at self-consciousness in man, in the philosophy of Hegel himself. In E.
Hartmann's opinion too, God, who in a senseless, unconscious, outburst created
the pain of being, nevertheless arrives at self-consciousness in man.1 German
metaphysics rationalized the theme of Boehme's mystical gnosis, it was in that
that its strength was to be found, but therein lay its weakness also. At the very
outset German mysticism revealed the divine depth in the primary foundation of
the soul and thereby transferred the centre of gravity to the subject (Eckhardt
and Tauler).
Thus the spiritual ground for a philosophy of the subject, of the ego, was already
created, and it became possible to supersede the ancient and mediaeval Greek and
Latin philosophy which was directed towards the object. When the matter was stated
in purely philosophical terms, it was inevitable that thought should pass through
a period of dualism, of which there was none in the neoplatonism of Eckhardt though
there was in Boehme. It is to this moment that the philosophy of Kant corresponds.
And in Greek thought the passage through dualism in Plato is analogous to it.
And further, just as the philosophical thought which came after I'lato sought
to overcome dualism and pass over to monism, so in the same way the like process
of overcoming dualism and establishing monistic systems, took place in the philosophical
thought which followed Kant.
By the dualism of the world of the senses and the world of ideas in Plato,
a question was posed which subsequent Greek philosophers endeavoured to decide.
Aristotle already seeks to overcome dualism and later on Plotinus and neoplatonism
do the same. The Platonic doctrine of two worlds was converted by Aristotle
1 See E. Hartmann: Die Religion des Geistes.
19
into a monistic doctrine of one world within which there exists the distinction
between form and content, between act and potentiality. Plotinus also is a monist;
according to him, everything moves from above downwards by way of emanations.
In the monist system this world is an unfolding of the other world, the other
world is immanent so far as this world is concerned. Plato regarded being as an
attribute of perfection: being, in his view, is a derivative from the Good, from
the Supreme Good. There is, therefore, a strong ethical element in his philosophy;
it cannot be called ontological in the exact sense of the word. Dualism and an
ethical line of approach are always associated with one another. Aristotle constructed
a system of ethics which had its influence even upon Thomas Aquinas, but his philosophy
did not have an ethical bearing as a whole. The wrong-ness in this world of the
senses was a cause of suffering to Plato, but there is no such feeling in Aristotle.
In Plotinus everything is reduced to mystical contemplation. In the neoplatonists
lamblichus, Proclus and others, there is an attempt at a mystical revival of paganism,
Plato's ideas become gods. To Plato the life of a philosopher is the practice
of death. Aristotle wishes to live in this world, and has the sanction of the
higher world for life in this. Form and act are the higher elements operating
in the lower, acting in matter, in potentiality. It might be said that Aristotle
was the Hegel of Greek philosophy, while Plotinus was the Schelling. They both
alike moved away from the Platonic dualism towards monism. It is impossible to
deny the services which Aristotle rendered, and the importance of Plotinus, who
was a very great mystical philosopher. But the development of Platonisirr towards
monism was a mistaken solution of the question that had been raised. Unity was
not attained.
Christianity also overcomes the dualism of Plato, but it acknowledges the fallen
state of this world and, therefore, that to pass through dualism is unavoidable.
A new eschatological element appears in Christian thought. This has not been sufficiently
brought
20
to light, but it makes all forms of monism impossible within the Confines of this
objectivized world. The philosophy of Plato was • philosophy of species. Eidos
is species. The problem of the person •tid of individuality, therefore, did not
arise within the limits of tint philosophy. Plato was disquieted by the plurality
and mobility ol ilic woild of sense. But what is still more disquieting is its
fritcrcd condition, its necessity and its impersonality. Monistic Unity is unattainable
from and through the object, it is only in the liibjcct and through the subject
that it can be reached. Kant starts, •i Plato did, from the dualism of phenomenon
and noumenon, of ippcarance and the thing-in-itself, and for the new age of thought
from the dualism of nature and freedom. It was in this way that the theme which
the Great German metaphysicians developed was stated. I repeat, that a process
of thought took place which was mulogous to what had happened in Greek thought
— a development in the direction of a false monism. The thing-in-itself was if
t aside. The subject, the self, the universal ego became the archi-tri i of the
world. It might be put in this way, that post-Kantian ulc.ihstic metaphysics regarded
the transcendental subject as the ihmg-in-itself. A hypostatization of 'consciousness
in general' took I >lai c. As Nicolas Hartmann puts it, consciousness is not
confronted by the thing-in-itself, the thing-in-itself lies behind it. It is on
this soil that the new metaphysics spring up.
German idealism, of Kant and the rest, differs from neoplatonic, it is transferred
to the subject, to the inward. It is not the ideas, but the apprehension of them,
which is the distinguishing mark of knowledge. In Plato the ideas are archetypes
of the world of sense, in Kant the same relation holds good between the ego and
the world of sense. Apprehension of the transcendental conditions of knowledge
becomes for the German idealists the apprehension of metaphysical being. Kant
did not aim at a total knowledge of nature, to him the world as a whole was not
a datum in experience. Hegel and Schelling do have such an aim. There is a firm
grip upon moral principle in Kant, and also in Fichte. The ethical
21
knowledge of self lies at the basis of even the logic of Kant. It is moral responsibility
which creates the ego. The unconditioned is in the sphere of obligation. Man is
free not as belonging to nature but as being endowed with the power of practical
reason. Morality does not depend upon the object. German idealist metaphysics
are not concerned with the object, nor with the world, nor with being, but with
the subject, with reason, thought, and with responsibility.
Fichte's monism is ethical pantheism, he wants to re-make the world. In Kant the
metaphysics of freedom are dualist. In Fichte they become monist. In his system
there are no longer two worlds, as there are in Indian thought, and in Plato and
Kant. There is only one world, postulated by the universal ego. Freedom of thought
exists only in rational beings. The act of the spirit, as recognized by us, is
called freedom. The only source from which freedom flows is conscience. Fichte
maintains the supremacy of conscience. It is simply thanks to the bidding of duty
that the world exists. My will is the first thing, it must operate through itself.
But in contradiction to his monism of the ego, Fichte sees in the world the interplay
of self-acting and independent wills. To German metaphysics as distinct from Latin,
reason in itself is essentially irrational. In Fichte, the ego postulates for
itself an antithetic non-ego, and by this means acquires its content. Einbildungs-kraft
produces empirical objects. But nature is merely a hindrance to the ego. The relation
between the individual empirical ego and the Absolute ego, is left unexplained.
It was here that Fichte's monism broke down. Which ego performs the primary ac
? Fichte confuses the creation of the world by God and an act performed by man.
Neither does he distinguish between evil and good infinity. An endless output
of effort—that is Fichte's last word; Spirit exists to the extent in which it
actualizes itself. Consciousness rests upon the intuition of the act.1
In Schelling thought and being are identified. In considering
11 am not speaking now of the Fichte of the period of Anweisungen zum seeligt'ii
Leben.
22
(he dialectic of thought after Kant, the early writings of Schelling are of particular
interest.1 Knowledge cannot be based upon the object. The object exists only for
the sake of the subject, for the lake of knowledge; object and subject exist for
the sake of each other. The unconditioned cannot be a thing; it lies within the
absolute. The ego is anterior to the antithesis of subject and object. Appearance
is a conditioning of the ego by the non-ego. The Absolute is not appearance, nor
is it the thing-in-itself. The essence of the ego is freedom, and freedom is the
beginning and the end of all philosophy. The concept refers to objects only. The
ego is not u datum in the form of a concept. Intellectual contemplation is not
directed upon the object. The ego is one only, there is no other ego for it. The
ego, the basic principle of philosophy, is God, the Absolute. Kant wrote the Critique
of Pure Reason, but he did not reveal the way to another metaphysic of reason.
In Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, reason becomes divine. It is only on that account
that dualism passes into monism. But the Absolute ego is not transcendent. Egress
from the ego would be transcendent. I )ogmatic metaphysics had seen reality in
the non-ego, not in the ego. After Kant it was possible to see metaphysical reality
only in the ego. The thing-in-itself is not an object, it is a subject and, therefore,
not a thing. According to Schelling the source of self-consciousness is in the
will.
Without contemplation we should have no knowledge of movement. It is only by freedom
that freedom is recognized. The 'I' can become T only through the 'thou'. Schelling's
philosophical thought is informed by aesthetic contemplation. He passes from a
philosophy of the ego, to a nature-philosophy, combining a criticism of Kant's
capacity for judgment with the scientific teaching of Fichte. Kroner says truly
that in Schelling Spinoza has conquered Kant. The monist tendency leads towards
Spinoza.
Hegel is the most consistent of idealists, and in him idealism passes into
a special sort of realism. He seeks to return to reality
1 Especially his Vom 'Ich' als Prinzip der Philosophic.
23
and the concrete by means of a dialectic of understanding. Hegel brings the dynamic
of life into thought and conception. He gives new life to the law of identity.
An antithesis which is thinkable is to him an antithesis which can be overcome
(Aufhebung'). Movement is itself existent contradiction. 'Only the absolute idea
is being, unceasing life, which knows itself to be truth and the whole truth.1
Reason itself is truth revealing itself to itself. To Hegel, philosophical idealism
means that the finite is not regarded as the truly existent. Freedom is true necessity.
There is a changed attitude to reason in Hegel, it is no longer the reason of
Kant. Thinking, ratiocination, becomes the dialectical life of the Deity, of the
world Spirit. Logic is turned into ontology. According to Hegel's logic the concept
submits to passions and is endowed with a mysterious life. Hegel is the first
in the history of human thought to introduce the dynamic into logic; he breaks
with the thousand years' reign of Aristotelian logic. There is absolutely no dualism
in Hegel, but there is antithesis, as the law of thinking and being. Philosophical
thought in the past had been aware of dialectic—it is to be found in Plato, in
Nicholas of Cusa and in Kant. Heraclitus was already aware of the idea of antinomy.
Antinomy and antithesis are by no means evidence of weakness of mind. On the contrary
through its fixing of boundaries it represents a great achievement of reason.
According to Nicholas of Cusa docta ignorantia is the highest form of knowledge.
The dialectic of antithesis is to be found in Zeno, Heraclitus, Plato, Nicholas
of Cusa, Boehme, Hamann and Kant. But as contrasted with Nicholas of Cusa and
Kant, in Hegel the identity of opposites is attained by dialectical development.
He introduces a new element.
Hegel's philosophy is a philosophy of the spirit. It maintains the supremacy
of spirit over nature. The potency of spirit is in nature. Spirit is the unity
of subject and object, of the self and nature, of the process of thinking and
the outlook which results from it. It is the essence of Hegelian monism that spirit
organizes itself as re-
1 See Hegel: The Science of Logic. Part 2. Section 3. Chapter 3.
24
ligion, art, the State, the soul, and nature. For him, therefore, objective spirit
exists, and that I regard as the principal error of Hegel and of the monistic
doctrine of the spirit. Kroner insists that Hegel has irrationalized the concept
and has, therefore, introduced the irrational into the history of philosophical
thought. Dialectic is the unrest and the life of the concept. But the unrest is
brought to an end, the contradiction is overcome, the dialectical process comes
to an end in a higher synthesis. It was here that Hegel broke down.
The self-directed movement of thought is revealed in dialectic, but it is consummated
within the confines of this objective world. The contradiction disappears, it
does not lead on to the end of this world. But Kroner denies that Hegel was a
panlogist. Everything is spirit, the world is spiritualized. To Hegelian universalism
the whole is the truth, and separate propositions are true only as part of the
whole. Spirit sets itself in opposition to nature. The absolute reason carries
its antithesis within itself. The Absolute is the surmounting of the opposition
between the inward and the outward. The opposites are identical. The self-alienation
of spirit takes place in Hegel, and that perhaps is the most remarkable thing
about him. But the Hegelian universal monism failed for this reason, that the
Absolute is actualized in the form of absolute necessity. Because of that, however
much Hegel may have talked about freedom, he does not know freedom. Hegel asserts
the identity of spirit with philosophy, his own, the Hegelian philosophy. This
is the most dreadful philosophical pride which the history of philosophy knows.
Kroner speaks of the eschatological and prophetic character of German idealism.
There is truth in this. There is the idea of an end in German metaphysics, there
is striving towards an ultimate consummation.
But this final consummation is thought of in an immanentist manner, within the
confines of this world in which spirit is decisively revealed by way of dialectical
development. What was fundamentally wrong about those idealist systems of metaphysics
was their monism, which is an impossible thing within the
25
limits of a fallen world, their mistaken, anti-personaUst conception of freedom.
Kant was more in the right with his dualism, his metaphysics of freedom and his
ethical personalism. In Hegel's view the idea stands high above everything. But
the living creature ranks higher than the idea. To Hegel the most exalted thing
of all 'was history in which the victorious march of the world-spirit is disclosed.
He wrote about the cunning of reason in history. He does not understand the conflict
between personality and history; history is not a tragic thing to him; he was
an optimist.
Schopenhauer makes a different deduction from Kant. He preserves the Kantian thing-in-itself
and in this he was right. He understands objectification in a different way, not
upon optimistically evolutionary lines, and in this also there was much that is
true. But he arrives at monism from the opposite end, at monism of the Indian
type; and he certainly does not understand history, just as Indian thought does
not understand it either. Indian philospohy is monistic in so far as it regards
the plurality of this world as unreal and illusory.1 This is of a different type
from Hegel's. Hegel w^s a typical European and in him the German strain is combined
with the Hellenic. If German idealism developed Kant's theme in the direction
of monistic metaphysics and reveals creative philosophical genius, nee-Kantianism
develops it in the direction of an entire repudiation of metaphysics: it is under
the sway of an age of scientism, and reveals a decline in philosophical creativeness.
But they all, in fact, distort Kant; no-one has been true to the Kantian metaphysics
of freedom which presupposed dualism.
The most thorough-going and extreme neo-Kantian, Hermann Cohen, affirms pan-methodism.
For him truth is method, and idea is obligation. Another neo-Kantian, Rickert,
denies the two-fold nature of the world which both Plato and Kant acknowledge.
But there is much truth in his position that the act of knowing is above
11 must defend myself by admitting that there have been pluralist systems in Indian
philosophy, but it is monism that has been predominant. See R. Grousset La philosophic
indienne.
26
all an act of valuing, and that it is only a judgment of value which can be either
true or false. In his view a priori is a form of mind which has transcendental
rather than psychological significance. This is neo- Kantianism.
But in the last resort the philosophy of values turns into anew scholasticism;
and there is a deathly pallor about it. Phenomenology is in danger of turning
into the same sort of thing. The opinion has been put forward that Kant was not
a metaphysician, that he reduced philosophy simply to the theory of knowledge
and to ethics. The value of this judgment needs drastic reconsideration. The controlling
motive in Kant was metaphysical; it was the defence of the world of freedom from
the power of phenomena.
Kant's dualism cannot be overcome by the monistic idea of a development of spirit
in the world. Spirit (noumenon) is not revealed and does not develop in a continuous
uninterrupted process in the world of history (phenomena). It only breaks through
into the phenomenal 'objective' world, but it is then that freedom of the spirit
overthrows the necessity of the world. Kant was inconsistent but essentially he
was more in the right than Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Evolutionism (albeit of
the spiritual and not the naturalistic type) is just as mistaken as monism.
The optimism of this evolutionary monism is certainly not justified by the real
and actual process of the world and of history. There is no such thing as objective
spirit. There is merely the objectification of spirit, and that is a distortion;
it is estrangement from itself and it is an adaptation to the world as we have
it. Spirit, which is freedom, is objectified in the historical process, in culture,
but it is not revealed, it does not come to light in its existentiality. The creative
fire of the spirit cools down. Objectification is a process of cooling. We shall
see that the dualism of Plato and still more of Kant raises tire subject of eschatology:
monism is possibly only in an eschatological setting.
There are three ways of overcoming dualism and attaining to
27
unity. Either you regard the world of sense and plurality, the mobile phenomenal
world, as an unreal and illusory world. Real knowledge may be only knowledge of
Brahman and this knowledge is possible because Atman, the subject in the act of
knowing is identified with Brahman. Or you regard the spiritual noumenal world
as unfolding itself and developing within this phenomenal world: nature and history
are stages in the self-revelation of spirit. This is metaphysical evolutionism
which may turn even into materialism. Or again there is a third possibility. You
may see spirit and freedom merely breaking through in this phenomenal world, that
is to say you refuse to see in this an uninterrupted process. You see a process
which is liable to be broken off, and you connect the attainment of monistic unity
with the coming of the end of this world of phenomena and with the Kingdom of
God.
In that case the end and die coming of the Kingdom of God are not conceived as
belonging only to the other world. We come into touch with the end in every creative
act of spirit. The Kingdom of God comes not with observation. The noumen operates
in phenomena, but this is not uninterrupted ev jlution and not the true rhythmic
order of necessity. The two first types of surmounting dualism appear to me to
be erroneous, and in my opinion only the third type is true. Monism is a metaphysical
heresy. It is the denial of the existence of two natures, two principles, the
denial of the operation of God and of response to God in the creative act of man.
Faith is possible only if it be granted that dualism exists both in the visible
world, the world of compulsion, and in the invisible world, the world which is
revealed in freedom. In Kant the foundation stone of true metaphysics was laid.
In the affirmation of German idealism that God is obligation, and that in the
process of the world and history there is a becoming of God, there is a measure
of truth is spite of the religious and metaphysical error which this teaching
contains. It is true that God is the supreme value, the supreme good, truth and
beauty. God is not a
28
reality in the same sense and of the same kind as the reality of the natural world.
God is spirit, not being.
During the nineteenth century in Germany a dialectic of idealism was developed
by one genius after another, from Kant, through Hegel and Feuerbach, to Max Stirner
and Nietzsche. It was not only a logical dialectic, or simply an evolution of
thought. It was the unfolding of a vital existential process across an abyss of
contradiction. In Kant's philosophy a turn is definitely made towards a philosophy
of the ego, of the subject, as against a philosophy of die world, of the object.
This presupposes to begin with a dualism between appearance and the thing-in-itself,
between the order of nature and the order of freedom. Fichte is absorbed in the
subject and its creative act, the thing-in-itself is set aside, the ego presents
itself as the Divine Ego, and through the subject monism is reached. In Kant a
distinction is drawn between being and obligation. In Fichte obligation swallows
up being. In Schelling and 1 Icgcl, on the other hand, it is obligation which
is swallowed up.
Schelling (not, however, in his first period) turns again towards the object,
and towards Spinoza. The dialectic of subject and object reaches its climax in
Hegel who discovers becoming as the identity of non-being and being. The concept
turns into being in its uniqueness, it experiences a vital unrest and dialectic
passions. The world process is a dialectical development and through it the self-revelation
of the Spirit takes place. Reality, therefore, is rational and only the rational
is real. This is monism, and it cannot be called a philosophy of the ego, of the
subject. The Universal Spirit completely engulfs personality and turns it into
one of its instruments. The cunning of reason in history makes use of the human
personality and of every individual way of deceit. Hegel Itrove after concreteness,
and he arrived at the abstract at its very height, in which human existence vanishes.
Great concreteness is to be found only in the Phenomenology of the Spirit.
29
Schopenhauer followed another route which led from Kant. At the outset he was
true to Kant's dualism of appearance and the thing-in-itself. But through the
subject he discovers a single metaphysical principle of the will, and also arrives
at a monism in which man, personality and individuality vanish. Schopenhauer's
philosophy is more concrete just because of its extreme inconsistency. It does
not stand up to logical criticism just because of its great existentiality. But
Schopenhauer stands apart, he is outside the unfolding destiny of German idealism.
There comes a glut of metaphysical systems, and a violent reaction of thought
against metaphysics in general. There comes a turn towards reality, the concrete
reality which had disappeared, material reality though it may have been. Hegelianism
dialecti-cally passes into its opposite and gives birth to dialectical materialism.
A transition from Hegel to materialism was plainly possible, whereas such a transition
from Kant would have been out of the question. Feuerbach made his appearance,
and then Marx, both deriving from Hegel. The philosophy of the subject which maintains
the primacy of thought over being leads to the assertion of the supremacy of being
over thought and to extreme objectivism. Thus is the dialectic of the destiny
of thought fulfilled. Feuerbach raised a lament over man who was disappearing.
In his anthropological philosophy there was a presentiment of the possiblity of
an existential philosophy.1 Feuerbach's materialist deviation was not only not
necessary to his anthropologism, but is clearly a contradiction of it and threatens
a new disappearance of man. Man may vanish not only in idea, in concept, in abstract
thought, he can disappear even more in matter, in society which is controlled
by economics, in the life of the race. Feuerbach's religion of humanity is a religion
of race, not of personality.
In Max Stirner the dialectic reaches the limit of individualism and anarchism.
The philosophy of the ego is turned into the deification of the ego. Here, he
says, is this unique, this given T. 1 See in particular his Ctundsatze der Philosophic
der Zukunfi.
30
Stirner justly rebels against the idea of mankind, against the power of the breed
over the individual. The whole world is the property of the single ego, nor is
anything higher than it. The single ego refuses to be a part of the world or of
society or of anything at all; everything is simply a part of it. And in all this
there is a great measure of truth although it is set forth in a false and weak
philosophy. In Stirner the tones of German mysticism can be heard and echoes of
the Renaissance doctrine of man as a microcosm. I Icre the development of one
side of German idealism to the extreme limit is to be seen.
Fichte had taught a doctrine of the primary sovereign ego which was not the individual
but the universal ego. Stirner definitely identifies the individual ego with the
universal and maintains its priority and supremacy. It declines to be made subordinate
to any-tliing or anybody whatever. The ego which does not seek to know another,
whether the ego of God or the ego of other men, is bound to reach the position
of Max Stirner. That is an inevitable dialectical movement. Thought had to pass
through this experience; it is one of the boundaries of thought. If there is no
God, then the self is God and in that case not the self in general and not mankind
within my ego, as in Feuerbach, but my separate unique ego. And further, another
question comes into view; on what are the claims of this ego based? It can hardly
be merely a natural phenomenon dependent in all respects upon natural and social
environment, and an insignificant little part of this world. Stirner's anarchism
hangs in the air.
The dialectic development from Hegel and Feuerbach to Marx takes an entirely different
direction, it moves not to the limit of individualism but to the limit of collectivism.
The labouring society, the social collective, is regarded as the only thing, and
everything as its property. In Max Stirner concrete human persons disappear in
the universal claims bf the Unique One; the limit of universalism swallows up
the individual which has no support in anything. There is no difference between
saying that
31
there is no-one and nobody except myself and saying that there is no "I".
In Marx the concrete human person disappears in the universal claims of the
social collective, of the perfect society which is to be achieved in the future.
Both points of view are alike anti-personalist. The anti-personalist spirit of
Hegel is hidden away in them, the anti-personalism of monism. Marx started from
humanism and his original themes were humanist. In his early work he rebels in
the name of the dignity of man, against the process of dehumani-zation which is
due to the capitalist regime, but in the last stage Marx's humanism passes into
anti-humanism.
The most extreme and the most audacious case was Nietzsche. His appearance
was an important fact in the destiny of mankind in Europe, not only in the intellectual
sphere but in the existential too. Nietzsche was a man whom the Christian message
touched to the quick, but he broke with the ethics of the Gospel as he did also
with humanistic ethics. He proclaimed a morality of the lord and master. Nietzsche
revolts against logical universalism and general moral obligation, against the
dictatorship of logic and ethics: he deifies the force of life and the will to
power. He opens up a Dionysiac world, a world which is passionate and tragic,
which has no desire to experience happiness, like the 'last people'. Nietzsche
wanted to be a man exclusively of this world, to be true to this earth. But his
theme is a religious one and his thought is controlled by a passion which is religious.
The idea of superman is one which belongs to the religious order and in it both
God and man disappear, while a third sort of being makes his appearance. Thus
the dialectic of humanism is completed in the period in which he struggles against
God. Dostoyevsky reveals this with all the force of his genius and he had already
propounded Nietzsche's theme. Philosophically speaking the most important point
was that in Nietzsche the attitude to truth is drastically altered. Truth is created
by the will to power. This was a crisis in the very idea of truth, to which philosophers
had remained faithful. Pragmatism
32
has popularized Nietzsche's idea of truth and made it trivial, as lomething
which can be created in a conflict for power, as a weapon at the disposal of the
forces of life.
If we are to understand Nietzsche it is most important to grasp the fact that
he had by no means any eager desire for the realization of a final victory of
the will to power. The will to power does not build empires. What interested him
was simply the experience of the uplifting impulse and ecstasy in the struggle
for power. Afterwards ruin and disaster might follow. His pathos was linked with
amor fati. But in the dialectic of German thought in the nineteenth century Fichte,
Hegel, Feuerbach, Max Stimer, Karl Marx and Nietzsche were anti-personalist, albeit
in different ways; it was not within their power to rescue the value of personality.
The genius and the existential significance of this thought are not to be denied.
But in it the heresy of monophysitism came to light again, the acknowledgment
of one nature only and of one principle. It was the engulfment of man, of the
personal human features, by the world-ego, by the self- revealing world-spirit,
by the human race, by the Unique One, by the social collective, or by the superman
and his will to power. It was this system of thought which prepared the way for
and made possible existential and per-sonalist philosophy. But it could not itself
effect a transition to it. It was in a different dialectical movement. The service
it rendered was that it came near to the problem of the end and touched upon eschatology.
The return to Kant which came afterwards with the neo-Kantians was a transition
to a central position. It was a fact of little significance and it reflected the
dominance of scientism, whereas in Kant the possibility of existential and personalist
philosophy had been disclosed and that is the only way out from the crisis in
philosophical thought. Behind the crisis in philosophical thought is hidden a
crisis in life. It will be clear that what I understand by existential philosophy
is not the philosophy of Heidegger and
33
Jaspers. I attach value to these but I do not regard them as existential philosophers.
The French philosophers of the nineteenth century did not display the metaphysical
depth or the creative philosophical imagination of the German. There was no such
development of the genius for dialectic in French thought. It was more individual
and that by fits and starts. French philosophical thought does not get into touch
with ultimate problems, with those that lie on the frontiers; it is not eschatological.
The vital destiny of man does not come into view in it.
But there is a greater psychological subtlety in the French thinkers. There are
no such violent outbursts among them; and they are not under the sway of the seductive
lure of monism. Per-sonalist tendencies find greater expression among the French
(compare Maine de Biran with Fichte, or in another field Proud-hon with Max Stirner
and Karl Marx). It was in fact French philosophy of the nineteenth century which
raised the problem of freedom and interpreted freedom in a different way from
that in which Hegel had understood it, for Hegel had regarded freedom as the child
of necessity. It was an anthropological philosophy rather than cosmological. Maine
de Biran, the Swiss Secretan, Renouvier, Lecky and BouToux fought against determinism
and defended the philosophy of freedom.
At times the problem of freedom is confused with the traditional problem of the
schools about the freedom of the will, and this was due to an anthropological
tendency in psychology. But the independence of man is defended in the teeth of
cosmic necessity. To German metaphysicians life appeared as a cosmic mystery and
in this same cosmic mystery the personal features of man are easily lost to sight.
French philosophy has come nearer to Kant although it has frequently interpreted
Kant's philosophy too much from the psychological point of view. Hegel's universal
determinism in which freedom and necessity are identified was alien to this philosophy.
Renouvier was particularly incisive in his
34
criticism of Hegelianism. In so far as French philosophy was rationalist, this
rationalism was a limiting influence. There was no process of irrationalizing
reason as in Hegel. French philosophical thought maintained its equilibrium in
a central position. Neither Max Stimer nor Karl Marx nor Nietzsche could have
appeared in France.
The French philosophers' critique of freedom is often just, but the realization
of destiny does not make itself felt in it. In Heidegger there is a sense of something
fateful, there is nothing fateful in Bergson. The English genius found its outstanding
expression in literature and poetry, not in philosophy. The ultimate problems
and final breaks come to light only in German and Russian thought. But the eschatology
of Russian thought and its concern with ultimate problems were revealed in the
great literary figures of Russia rather than in its professional philosophers.
This concern with ultimate problems and eschatology is to be found in Dostoyevsky
and in Tolstoy, in the outbreaks of Russian nihilism, in K. Leontiev, in Fyodorov
and in Vladimir Soloviev (in the last in a confused form) as well as in a number
of thinkers at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Our creative philosophical thought has been tinged with a religious spirit, and
a yearning for the Kingdom of God is disclosed in it, together with a sense of
the impossibility of reconciling oneself to this world. Its fundamental problems
were not questions about the theory of knowledge, about logic or abstract metaphysics.
They were problems concerned with the philosophy of history, the philosophy of
religion and ethics. Certain themes can be shown to be specifically Russian. Among
such themes I place the subject of God-manhood and of eschatology and again the
theme of the end of history.
A keen criticism of rationalism was associated with the interpretation of the
act of knowing as an act of the integral mind, in which a combination of the spiritual
powers of man plays its part, and not only of the individual man but also of man
in his corporate
35
capacity. With the philosophy of history was connected the specifically Russian
problem of the conflict of personality with world history and world harmony. This
is a subject which finds expression in terms of the greatest genius in Dostoyevsky.
The problem of theodicy is present in all Russian thought. It takes possession
of the Russian soul and governs it. It is to be found in Russian anarchism and
in Russian socialism.
The opposite pole was the suppression of personality in Russian political institutions
and in the form taken by Russian Marxism. In Belinski there was a revolt of personality
against the world-spirit, world-history and world-harmony, and the new enslavement
of personality to society in the social harmony that was to come. The idea of
God-manhood, the development of which was principally due to Vladimir Soloviev,
and the religious philosophy of the beginning of the twentieth century means the
mutual penetration and the union of two natures, the Divine and the human, while
the distinction between them and their independence is preserved.
The doctrine of God-manhood presupposes commensurability between God and man,
the presence of the divine principle in man, and at the same time it does not
admit monistic identity. The divine-human process not only occurred individually
in the God-man, it ought also to take place in mankind, in human society. In Soloviev
the doctrine of God-manhood assumed too evolutionary and optimistic a character
and was not sufficiently free from the influence of Hegel and Schelling, but this
is not a fundamental aspect of it. The actual act of knowing may be conceived
as a divine-human process in which the two principles operate.
This is distinct from the monistic interpretation of knowledge, in which it is
either a divine process (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) or one which is exclusively
human (positivism). In Russian thought also the way was prepared for the possibility
of existential philosophy, and in this respect the greatest significance attaches
to Dostoyevsky's anthropology and the problems with which he dealt.
36
The discovery of reason by Greek philosophy was an important event in the history
of knowledge. Man brought into the light forces which had hitherto been in a dreamlike
state within him. I Ic took possession of his reason and reason became independent.
Tlic emotional life of man had depended upon his impressions of the world of sense
and his thought was entirely under the sway of mythological feelings about the
world and of tradition. Reason, however, is both itself free and it is a liberating
agent; it both enriches man and impoverishes him.
The philosopher believed that reason lifted him up to the world of ideas, to the
noumenal world. This opinion Kant subjected to criticism. But almost throughout
the history of philosophy the apprehending mind remained faithful to the conviction
that cognition is a purely intellectual act, that there exists a universal reason
and that reason is always one and the same and remains true to its nature. But
in reality cognition is emotional and passionate in character. It is a spiritual
struggle for meaning, and it is such not merely in this or that line of thought
or school, but in every true philosopher even although he may not recognize the
fact himself. Cognition is not a dispassionate understudy of reality. The significance
of a philosophy is decided by the passionate intensity of the philosopher as a
man, as one who is present behind his effort to know. It is decided by the intensity
of the will to truth and meaning; it is the whole man who takes knowledge of a
thing. Dilthey who was one of the forerunners of existential philosophy, lays
with truth that thinking is a function of life. The whole man, not reason, constructs
metaphysics; it is not the autonomy of the intellect which needs to be asserted,
but the autonomy of ipirit, the autonomy of the knowing person as a complete being.
The process of thinking cannot be separated from the person who thinks and the
person who thinks cannot be separated from the corporate experience of his brothers
in spirit. The know-
37
ing person may, as an effect of his cognition, attain to an objective coolness
of expression, but this is a secondary process of objecti-fication. What is primary
is the man's intuition as one who exists in the fullness of existence. Man apprehends
emotionally to a greater extent than intellectually, and the view that emotional
cognition is 'subjective' in the bad sense of the word while intellectual cognition
is 'objective' in the good sense is entirely wrong, and in any case it is expressed
in terms which are inaccurate. To quicken the subject matter of knowledge into
life is in any case a process which is emotional rather than intellectual in character.
The intuitivism of Bergson and Scheler as well as of Schelling, to say nothing
of Nietzsche, is non-intellectualist.
Purely intellectual discursive knowledge constructs an objectified world out of
touch with reality. What is decisively important in knowledge is not the logical
process of thought, which ranks as an instrument, and which takes control only
in the centre of the path, but the emotional and volitional tension is attributable
to the spirit as a whole. Knowledge is a creative activity, not a passive reflection
of things, and every act of creation includes knowledge. Intuition is not only
the perception of something; it is also a creative penetration into meaning; and
more than that, the very existence of meaning presupposes a creative condition
of spirit.
Phenomenological philosophy requires passivity on the part of the subject. Existential
philosophy, on the other hand, requires activity and passion in the subject. The
world of ideas, the nou-menal world, assumes this activity and passion of the
spirit; it is not a congealed world which is devoid of the movement of life. An
act of cognition is an act of transcendence; it is a way out from the closed circle
and a way which opens out upwards. It is possible to conceive of the transcendent
only because of the existence of such a transcending act. But the transcending
act is an intense effort of the whole being. It is its uplifting power and its
state of exaltation.
38
The pursuit of a metaphysics which is completely scientific in form, of metaphysics
as a strict and objective science is the pursuit of A will o' the wisp. Metaphysics
can only be the apprehension of »pirit, in spirit, and through spirit. Metaphysics
is in the subject, which creates spiritual values and makes a transcending act,
not Into the object but into its own self-revealing depth. Metaphysics in empirical
in the sense that it is based upon spritiual experience. 11 is a symbolism of
that experience. Philosophical knowledge is knowledge attained by means of images
to a greater extent than knowledge reached through concepts. The concept is important
only as playing a secondary part. In Hegel the concept does not possess its traditional
logical significance; it acquires not only a metaphysical but even an almost mystical
meaning.
The principal and decisive thing about the philosopher has not by any means been
the assertions which he has contributed for objective use. The apprehending mind
has never discovered truth by the assistance of the logical apparatus by which
he endeavours to convince others. Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge of
truth, of what is true and right, not of being, for the apprehen-lion of truth
is an uplifting movement of the spirit towards truth; it is a spiritual ascent,
an entering into truth. There is, however, a locial aspect of knowledge and too
little attention has been paid to it. Knowledge is a form of communication and
intercourse among human beings. At the same time knowledge is above all a gesture
on the part of him who seeks it, which places him face to face not with some other,
or others in general, but face to face with truth. It is to stand facing the primary
reality which philosophers have been fond of calling 'being*. Human knowledge
and philosophical knowledge in particular, depends upon the spiritual condition
of men, upon the scope of their minds, and the forms of communion and community
which exist among men have an enormous part to play in this.
Philosophical knowledge is personal in character and the more personal it is the
more important it is. But the personal character of
39
knowledge does not mean the isolation of personality. Personality gets to know
things in communion and community with the world and with men; it enters into
union with world experience and world thought. Knowledge is at the same time personal
and social. The degrees of spiritual community which hold among men are here of
very great importance.1 All this leads to the fundamental truth, that knowledge
is anthropological, but this will not by any means denote relativism.
There is one very important truth which must be recognized in the theory of knowledge,
and that is that the person who knows is himself existent, that he himself is
'being', and that the recognition of the meaning of the world is possible only
in the subject, not in the object, that is to say in human existence. It is indeed
in this that the truth of existential philosophy is to be found. If it is not
to be naively and unconsciously anthropocentric, philosophy must be consciously
and critically anthropocentric. Philosophy is anthropocentric but the philosopher
ought to be theocentric.
Comprehension of the mystery of the world in human existence is a possibility
only because man is a microcosm and a microtheos. There is no cosmos in the object
world of phenomena. There is no God in the objective world order, but there is
a cosmos in man. God is in man, and through man there is a way out into another
world. That protagonist of the humanist theory of knowledge, F. S. Schiller, says
with truth that a depersonalization and de-humanization of knowledge has taken
place and that the personalizing and humanizing of it is imperative.2 Man is the
measure of things, but there is a higher measure than man. St Augustine was perhaps
the first to turn to the existential philosophy of the subject. He set forth the
principle of interior experience and of the credibility of the mind to itself.
He recognized doubt as a source of
11 have written a great deal on this subject. See in particular my Solitude and
Society. * See F. S. Schiller: Iztude stir I'humanisme.
40
Credibility and as a proof of one's own existence. To him the soul was the
whole personality.
The theory of orderly and regular development ir. knowledge docs not settle accounts
with the invasion of individuality. It may be taken as beyond doubt that the act
of appraisal which has such an immense part to play in cognition, is performed
above all by feeling not by the intellect. Nietzsche, who did his philosophizing
With a sledge hammer, said that the philosopher ought to be one Who gives instructions
and imposes commands. This means that in philosophical knowledge a rearrangement
of values and die Creation of values take place. Philosophy seeks to break out
from the slavery of this world into another world, towards a perfect free life,
and deliverance from the suffering and ugliness of the world II we have it. To
strive after objective knowledge is an illusion and in any case it is a mistake
in terminology. Dispassionate knowledge there cannot be and never has been among
real philosophers; it can only exist in dissertations which are devoid of any
creative gift. Even in Spinoza himself knowledge was nothing if not passionate.
Intellectual passion may be a source of perceptual transcendence. Plato, the greatest
of all philosophers, was an erotic philosopher. There was an erotic pull in the
rationalist Spinoza, and in the panlogist Hegel, to say nothing of such philosophers
ai Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
The philosopher has fallen in love with wisdom. In real true-born philosophy
there is the eros of truth; there is the erotic attraction of the infinite and
the absolute. Philosophical creativity is intoxicated with thought. Philosophical
cognition can only be based upon experience, upon spiritual experience, and within
that it is the spirit as one whole which accomplishes the act of cognition. There
is bitterness in knowledge. But knowledge is by nature a liberating agent. Philosophical
knowledge is called upon to set man free from the power of the objectified world
and from his intolerable servitude to it. Not the will to power but the will to
meaning and to freedom is the driving force of philosophical
41
knowledge. As a system of concepts metaphysics is an impossibility, it is possible
only as the symbolism of spiritual experience.
The conflict between subject and object, between freedom and necessity, between
meaning and the lack of it is, in the language of metaphysics, a symbolic conflict
which in 'this' provides symbols of'another'. Behind the finite the infinite is
concealed, and it gives signs of its presence. The depth of my ego is steeped
in infinity and eternity and it is only a superficial layer of my ego which is
illuminated by the mind, rationalized, and recognized on the basis of the antithesis
between subject and object. But out of the depth signs are given, whole worlds
are there, and there is all our world and its destiny. Hartmann is right when
he says that the problem of cognition is a metaphyscial problem, and Heidegger
is right when he says that we understand the Existenziele as an interpretation
of our own selves. But what is truth? That is the eternal question. The answer
that the Gospels give to this question has its importance even in philosophy.
The aim of philosophical knowledge certainly does not consist in the knowledge
of being, in a reflection of reality in the mind of the person who knows. Its
aim is the knowledge of truth, the discovery of meaning, its purpose is to give
an intelligible sense to reality. Philosophical knowledge, therefore, is not passive
reflection, it is an active break-through, it is victory in the conflict with
the meaninglessness of world reality. What I want to know is not reality but the
truth about it, and I can recognize this truth only because there is in me myself,
in the knowing subject, a source of truth, and union with truth is a possibility.
The fact that there is in front of me a writing-table and I am writing with a
pen on paper is not truth. It is something received by the senses and a statement
of fact. The problem of truth is already posed in my writing. There is no truth
of any sort in the object; truth is only in the subject.
42
Truth is related not to the phenomenal world but to the nou-menal, to th, world
of ideas. Truth is a relation, but this relation is by no means the one between
subject and object; it is not the repercussion of the object in the subject. Truth
is not to be understood in the spirit of epistemological realism or at any rate
if it is to be taken as realism, then it is realism of an entirely different kind.
Truth has two meanings. There is truth in the sense of knowledge of reality and
there is truth which is reality itself. Truth is not only an idea, and a value,
it is also an entity, something which exists. 'I am the Truth'. Truth is not that
which exists; it is the meaning of that which exists, the Logos of it; but this
meaning is that which, or he who, exists.
According to Heidegger truth exists only to the extent that Dasein exists.
Truth does not exist outside and above us; it is a possibility because we are
within it. Heidegger is of the opinion that absolute truth is a remnant of Christain
theology, but in point of fact it is precisely Christianity which must deny truth
outside that which exists and outside him who exists. Truth is a creative act
of spirit in which meaning is brought to birth. Truth stands higher than the reality
which exercises compulsion upon us, higher than the 'real' world. But still higher
than truth is God, or to put it more truly—God is Truth.
A thorough-going materialism has to reject the idea of truth as pragmatism
has to reject it. Marx, still preserving some connection with German idealism,
has a divided mind in this matter; Lenin is naive; but their descendants refuse
truth and so do Nietzsche's. Nietzsche was alone in boldly acknowledging the truth
of illusions, the offspring of the will to power, but he still recognizes an aristocratic
quality which those who have popularized him deny. There is in truth an aristocracy
of ideas and meaning. But the idea and the meaning are not to be torn away from
the existent and existence. Truth is the meaning of the existent, and meaning
is the truth of the existent. This found its expression in the doctrine of the
Logos which is not bound to be tied to the limits of Platonism
43
and to a static ontology. Truth is meaning bom in God before all ages, in God
the existent One. And this birth is repeated in all who exist, and because of
it personality emerges into view.
Personality is not the offspring of a generic process; it is the child of meaning,
of truth. There is a concrete universalism in truth which not only is not opposed
to personality but presupposes its existence. Truth is not a reflection of the
world as it is and as it appears, it is a conflict with the darkness and evil
of the world. The apprehension of truth is a self-kindling of the light (the Logos)
in existence (in being) and this process takes place in the depth of being; it
is not in opposition to being. I use the word 'being' in the conventional sense
before investigating the essence of the problem of'being'.
Truth is certainly not knowledge of the object. Truth is a victory over objectification,
in other words over the illusory and transparent nature of object being. Truth
certainly reflects nothing, just as the reality of spirit reflects nothing. Truth
is spiritual, it is in the spirit, it is the victory of spirit over the non-spiritual
objectivity of the world, the world of things. Spirit is not an epipheno-menon
of anything, everything is an epiphenomenon of spirit. Truth is the awakening
of the spirit in man; it is communion with spirit.
It may be supposed that all that I have just said refers to Truth but not to truths,
not to those partial and relative truths which science discovers in the natural
phenomenal world. What is there of the noumenal in such truths as 'twice two are
four' and 'all bodies expand when heated'? Is meaning revealed in such truths?
There is Truth with a capital letter and there is truth with a small letter. This
needs elucidation. All the little and partial truths receive their light from
the whole major Truth. All rays of light come from the sun. Philosophers have
in their different ways expressed this in the doctrine of the Logos, of universal
reason, of the general validity of transcendental thought.
But transcendental thought is mobile and its structure depends
44
Upon the character and quality of the cognitive mind and upon the lubject matter
to which cognition is directed. The Logos is a sun which shines down upon a fallen
objectified world, and the logical apparatus of cognition is worked out to correspond
with the state of that world of objects. This is epistemological adjustment to
the world for the sake of victory over the world. If science is under the sway
of determinism, if it is looking for casual links and docs not discover primary
creative movements in the life of the World, the blame for this does not He with
science but with the Itatc of the world. But the light which science sheds upon
the World arises, albeit not in a direct line, from the primary source of the
Sun of Truth, The lie begins with the affirmation of scientism, that is to say,
with a false philosophy.
Hut can the acknowledgment of the one whole entire Truth of the universal Logos
be combined with the existential type of philosophy? If philosophy has to be personal,
if it is based upon personal experience if the subject puts his own experience
with nil its contradictions into the act of knowing, does not universal Truth
disintegrate into partial truths and do we not fall into the power of relativism?
The usual and generally accepted views on this point must be dismissed. They are
due to the limitations of rationalism. The old antithesis between the individually
personal and the individually common is false and has to be superseded. Truth
lies outside that antithesis; the individually personal is the most existential
of all things and perhaps the most universal too; it is the most spiritual, and
it is that which is most closely linked with meaning. The ego is steeped in its
own depth and there it comes into touch with the noumenal spiritual world. This
has been better understood by mystics than by philosophers.
But the universality and entirety of self-revealing Truth is certainly not the
same thing as general validity. General validity exists precisely for the objectified
world, for the world of phenomena. It indicates forms of communication within
this disconnected world. It is an adjustment to a fallen state. What is of
45
general validity is due to discontinuity, it is communication within discontinuity.
The whole logical apparatus of proof exists for the sake of those who are disconnected
from me, and do not see the Truth which is perceptible to me; it exists for those
with whom I am not united in the Truth. There is an analogy between general validity
in the field of logic and general validity in the field of jurisprudence. Truths
which are of general validity and are proved are, therefore, just those that are
least universal; they are under the power of objectification. Universal Truth,
on the other hand, lies outside the process of objectification. It is in the highest
degree existential, and it is derived from spirit, not from the world. In spirit,
that is in spirit which has not been objectified, the universal and the individually
personal are united. Truth is not revealed through objectification nor through
subordination to the world; it is revealed through the transcending act, through
a way-out which lies beyond the confines of the antithesis between the subject
and object. Truth is not objective, it is subjective, but subjective in the sense
of spiritual depth, removed from that superficial subjectivity which stands in
opposition to objectivity.
Where, however, is the criterion of truth to be sought? Too often this criterion
is looked for in something which lies on a lower level than truth, it is sought
in an objectified world with its general validity. People look for the criterion
of the spirit in the material world, and thus they fall into a vicious circle.
Discursive thought can provide no criteria at all for final truth; its place is
wholly in the middle part of the road; it is unaware of that which belongs to
the beginning as well as of that which belongs to the end. All proof rests upon
the undemonstrable, upon what can be postulated, perceived and created. There
is a chance but there is no guarantee. The very search for guarantees is a false
line to take: it means the subordination of the higher to the lower. The freedom
of the spirit knows nothing of guarantees.
The one and only standard of truth is Truth itself, it is the radiant light of
its sunshine. All other criteria exist only for the
46
objective world of the commonplace and for the sake of social Intercourse. I never
demonstrate truth for my own sake. I have to demonstrate it only for the sake
of others, In regard to knowledge
I live in two worlds, on the one hand in a world which is primary, c x istcntial,
and in which communion with Truth is possible, and on the other hand in a secondary
world, an objectified world, in which Truth is communicated to others and is demonstrated,
a world in winch Truth is crumbled into a multitude of truths as a conse-i|iirncc
of adjustment to the fallen state of the world. Florensky says that the credibility
of truth is given potentially, not actually.1 I'Ins means that the Truth is within
me, in the depth of me, in the depth of the knowing subject, since I have my roots
in the noumcnal spiritual world. But it is within me in a drowsy state and j waking
of it demands a creative act on my part. The awakening of die spirit within me
is an awakening to truth. The criterion of until is in the spirit, in spirituality,
in the subject which has come 10 recognize itself through the spirit. It is not
in the object. Truth i* not received from without, it is received from within,
The knowledge of truth makes me free. But the actual knowledge of truth cannot
but be free itself. Every external criterion of truth winch is derived from the
lower world is opposed to freedom of ilie spirit in the apprehension of truth,
and it does not liberate. I'ruth is not due to the object, not even to 'objective
being'. It is <lnc to the spirit. Spirit is in the subject, not in the object,
in the iioinncnon, not in the phenomenon. And science which knows (he world of
phenomena, the object world, the world of necessities, moves out of the spirit
and down from it, descending by degrees of objectification, by stages of dissociation
and general validity.
Pragmatism was an attempt to provide a new answer to the t|ne!*tion of the
criterion of truth, by starting from the true proposition that knowledge is a
function of life. Pragmatism is right in regard to the technical results of science,
but truth is nevertheless in direct opposition to pragmatism. A vitally flourishing
state of
1 See his Pillar and Ground of the Truth.
47
affairs, success, profit, interest, all these things are marks rather of falsity
than of truth. Truth is certainly not a useful and serviceable thing in this world;
it renders no services, it may even be destructive and ruinous to the ordering
of the things of this world; it demands sacrifices and has even led to martyrdom.
Truth does not so much liberate and save within this world as liberate and save
from this world. The thorough-going acceptance of the truth of the Gospel right
through to the end, an agreement to bring it to effective realization, would lead
to the destruction of States, civil-zations, and societies which are organized
according to the law of this world. It would lead to the perishing of this world
which is in every respect opposed to the Truth of the Gospel.
And so people and nations have amended the Gospel. They have filled it up with
'truths' that belong to this world, 'truths' which were really pragmatic because
they were a lie and an adjustment to a lie. The recognition and confession of
Truth have no connection with use and profit; their connections are with hazard
and danger, But pragmatism in all its forms has no knowledge of Truth, which stands
above the world and judges it. It is only the tragic pragmatism of Nietzsche which
is free from this adjusting optimism, if indeed it is in place to speak of his
pragmatism. The pathos of Nietzsche is due to his amorfati and with him victory
is associated with ruin. Bergson's philosophy of life and his biological metaphysics
are likewise optimistic.
Existential philosophy must be distinguished both from the philosophy of life
and from pragmatic philosophy. It is associated with the experience of tragic
conflict. There is in it no cult of life as the highest criterion; it is not biological
in character. Life has judgment passed upon it by Truth-and-Right. What is important
is not the quantitative maximum of life, not its flourishing condition in the
world, nor its power, but the quality of it, its intensity, its moving and pathetic
character, which carries over and beyond the frontiers of life.
The recognition of Truth does not by any means indicate a
48
primatively joyful blooming of life and an increase of its strength. It may mean
the exposure of the fallen state of the world, the testing experience of the pain
which accompanies all life, the conflict between personal destiny and the destiny
of the world, between existential experience and enslaving objecrification, the-struggle
ot freedom with the necessity which it encounters. Truth is saving, but it saves
for another world, for the eternal world which begins in temporal life, but begins
with suffering, with grief and frequently with what seems like hopelessness. The
acceptance of Truth right through to the end, to the last of its vital deductions,
is to give assent to the perishing of this world and to its coming to an cud.
I am not speaking of truths which denote adjustment to the world of phenomena,
to the inevitable process of objecrification, but I am speaking about Truth, as
the primary source of light, as what is true and right in its entirety. Knowledge
within the objec-ulicd world does admittedly reveal truths. There is a reflected
li^lit in it which helps us to take our bearings in the darkness of (Ins world,
but it does not reveal primary and original Truth, which is the beginning and
the end. It is science, not philosophy, winch is die discoverer of principles
and laws which give men ihnr bearings within reality. But supreme Truth is eschatological
.itul by this very fact exposes the conventional lie of pragmatism, llic falsehood
of an optimistic cult of life.
Truth is not of the world but of the spirit. It is known only in the transcendence
of the object-world. Truth is the end of this ol>|rct-world, and it demands
assent to this end of it. Such is the Tinth of Christianity when freed from social
adjustments and tluinrtions. But such also is in essence the Truth -which was
to some extent revealed to the messianic prophetic thought of ancient hurl, to
the religious philosophy of India, to Persian dualist en lutology and to many
thinkers, such as Plato, Plotinus, !',(khardt, Boehme, Pascal, Kant, Schopenhauer,
Kierkegaard, I )o»toycvsky and Tolstoy.
49
All philosophy, theory of knowledge, ethics, philosophy of history should be constructed
with an eschatological outlook, but, as we shall see, by no means eschatological
in the sense in which the word is usually understood. Knowledge seeks the Truth
and truths; it ardently seeks to be purified from all that darkens and distorts
the process of knowing, to achieve the self-purification of the subject. But he
who knows may know the falsehood of the world, its defilement and pollution. Knowledge
may be the discovery of the truth about a lie. In that case truth is a judgment
upon the falsity of the world, it is light which exposes the darkness. And the
proclamation of the Truth is the end of the world of falsehood. In every true
act of knowing the end of the world comes, the end of enslaving objectivity.
There have always been different types of philosophers. They have been distinguished
from one another by a varying structure of the mind behind which lay different
directions in which the spirit moved. In Greece there were Parmenides and Heraclitus,
Democritus and Plato; they endeavoured to establish types of philosophical world
outlook.1 The distinction among the types depended upon what principle was taken
as the basis of classification. One and the same philosopher may fall into one
class in one connection and in another connection into another class. Dilthey
proposes to recognize three types of philosophical world-outlook: naturalism,
objective idealism and idealism of freedom. In this conventional classification
I should decidedly be placed in the class of idealism of freedom. On the same
grounds this might be called realism of freedom so long as reality is not understood
in a naturalistic way. I would suggest the following series of antitheses:—
1. Philosophy of the subject and philosophy of the object.
2. Philosophy of the spirit and naturalistic philosophy.
3. Philosophy of freedom and determinist philosophy.
1 See, for example, Jaspers: Psychologie Aer Weltanschauungen, and also
Dilthey's works.
50
4, Philosophy which is dualistically pluralist and monistic philosophy.
5. Philosophy which is creatively dynamic and statically ontological philosophy/
6. Personalist philosophy or the philosophy of personality and the philosophy
of universal common sense,
7. Eschatological philosophy, the philosophy of discontinuity and evolutionary
philosophy; the philosophy of continuity.
Within this list of antithesis I define my own philosophy as |iriiiЈ of the
subject, of spirit, of freedom; as being dualistically jiliiralist, creatively
dynamic, personalist and eschatological. Up to (lie present time philosophy has
to a very small extent been «i hatological. Eschatology has been related to the
sphere of irligion only. But eschatology can have and ought to have its p pistcmological
and transcendental metaphysical expression, and I •lull aim at such an expression.
It is imperative to build up a philosophy of the End. This has little in common
with the various interpretations of the Book of the Revelation and it does not
imply »n expectation of the end in some definite year. Eschatological philosophy
springs from a philosophical problem raised already by Pluto.
Philosophical monism was an attempt to solve the eschatological problem within
the confines of this world, to assert a unity without Inking the end into its
purview. In my opinion the central thought nl eschatological philosophy is connected
with the interpretation of the Fall as objectification, and of the end as the
final and decisive victory over objectification. The choice of the type of philosophy
It settled by the spirit of the philosopher as a whole, by decision and emotion
rather than by the intellect. But the human intellect itself is also inseparable
from the existence of the whole man, from choice of his will and from his emotional
experience.
CHAPTER II
1. Subject and Object. The subject as that which exists. The mystery ofobjectijlcation.
Genesis of the world of appearances.
2. Existential experience. Primary intuition and the social character of knowledge.
The concept, as a limitation and protection. Orientation in the environmental
infinity. 3. Illusions of consciousness. Transcendental illusion (Schein) in Kant.
Dualism and revolution of thought. Two worlds. 'The other world'
I
From the days of Kant German philosophy has always taken the relation between
subject and object as its starting point. The problem has been stated as that
of the relation in which reason, thinking, the mind stands to being. From this
point of view the object has frequently been represented as being, while the subject
has not been taken as being, but simply as standing face to face with being. The
object, so to speak, stands over against me, it lies outside me. Objectivity has
been almost identified with what is true, and what is true with general validity.
The paradoxical nature of the position lay in the fact that the guarantee of objectivity
was not in the object but in the subject. It was in the subject that those transcendental
a priori's lay which alone made knowledge even a possibility, and it was they
which constructed the object. Subject and object are correlatives. According to
Kant transcendental forms are applicable only to phenomena. But the pre-eminence
of the subject over the object is evident. The object exists simply for the sake
of the subject, but the subject possesses an inner existence of its own.
The terms 'object' and 'objectivity' have been left in a very
52
shaky, precarious and uncertain state. Formerly, in Duns Scotus, for instance,
that which refers to the concrete subject-matter of thought was called the subject,
while that which referred to representations was given the name of object. Even
in so critical a writer as Kant the use of the word 'object' is ambiguous. Hegel,
in contradiction of his own point of view at the outset, recognizes i the existence
of objective spirit, whereas he should have recognized only the objectification
of spirit. In any case the accepted use of the word 'object' is contrary to the
redirection of philosophy from object to subject, from the world to the ego which
was brought about by Kant and German idealism; and it is surely necessary to recognize
that the object is not the thing-in-itself, the nubjcct is the thing-in-itself.
The object, on the other hand, is only u phenomenon and an appearance for the
sake of the subject. To be the object means to be for the sake of the subject;
the object is always that which makes its appearance for the sake of another.
'I'he world of appearances is the outcome of objectification. Objcctificaton,
however, is brought about by the subject and it indicates the trend and the condition
of the subject.
There is no greater mistake than to confuse objectivity with reality, The 'objective'
is that which is least real, least existential. The Thomists in particular are
fond of setting their metaphysical realism in contrast to phenomenalism. But it
would seem that they entirely fail to admit the existence of the realism which
is based upon recognition of the metaphysical reality of the subject as noumenon,
as spirit.1 The transcendent cannot be in the object and cannot become the object.
It is in the subject, it lies beyond the very antithesis of subject and object.
It was an error in Kant to think that in the contemplation of ourselves we act
upon ourselves in such a way that our subject apprehends merely an appearance.
Subject and object are correlatives only in an epistemological tense. There is
no such correlativity in the metaphysical sense. The lubject is also that which
exists; it is not only the transcen-1 This is particularly striking in Gilson.
See his Le Realistne Mithodique.
53
dental a priori as a condition of sense experience and of the possibility of
knowledge of appearances. Truth is hidden in that which exists, and therefore,
truth is subjective, not objective. The truth is the ego and not the non-ego.
One must definitely refuse to apply the adjective 'objective 'to truth. What is
called objective truth is that which is furthest removed from the Truth. The ego,
man, can be a source of truth, when he is steeped in his own depth, he can be
in the truth, whereas the object, on the other hand, cannot be in it. Hence we
shah1 see that the knowledge of truth is dependent upon the social relations which
obtain among men.
In the phenomenology of Husserl the intentional act liberates from the individual
and becomes the basis of objectivism.1 But in this way Husserl denies the human
character of knowledge, and this is one of the results of Platonic universalism.
The transcendent light in the world issues from the subject, which is man and
not God, although it includes a divine element within it, whereas social adjustment
to the condition of this fallen world issues from the object. Knowledge may be
understood not as dependence upon the object but as the universalizing of the
subject, as the revelation of a universe within the subject. The epistemological
subject is an abstraction; subject has before all else an existential meaning.
Absolute knowledge about a thing, about an object, is impossible. That which is
created by the subject itself can be absolutely known, Such is the metaphysical
result of German idealism.
Thinking does not set itself over against something which is alien to it. It transcends
itself and by so doing remains itself. This would be true if we were to speak
not of thinking but of the whole subject as that which exists, as man. Behind
man as a phenomenon stands man as noumenon. Hence the twofold character of human
nature. An object changes, it depends upon the state of the subject, upon the
correlation of the phenomenal and noumenal in man, of
1 See Husserl: Ideen zu finer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen
Philosophic.
54
the superficial and the profound. Dilthey says very rightly that the abstract
relation of subject and object must be replaced by the vital relation of creature
and environment. A metaphysics of the object is impossible, but a metaphysics
of the subject is a possibility. We must not think of the totality of the world
as an object: that totality is in the subject. Objectification, as we shall see,
ought to have been replaced by the expressiveness of life, by the expres-lion
of it in the external. Only the whole man himself, the active human spirit should
have been acknowledged as a priori.
Rickert makes an attempt to give precise meaning to the concept of object, and
he makes it very complex. The first interpretation of object is spatial; it is
the external world. My body also is an object. Tlic subject is my mind and its
content. The object, on the other h.md, is that which is found outside my mind;
this is the transcendent object. The object is also notions, impressions received,
feelings, and desires; whereas the subject is that which produces the notions,
receives the impressions, feels, and desires. This is the immanent object. The
subject is my ego, my soul, my mind with it* content, my mind as contrasted with
its content.1
There is truth in Rickert's classification, but he takes his stand entirely on
an epistemological interpretation of the problem. He is mistaken in allowing the
existence of a transcendent object as what ll outside my mind. But the transcendent
is discovered on a path directly opposite to movement towards an object, directly
opposite ili.it is, to objectification.
Without explaining for the moment the concept of being, it must be said that
the subject is not in opposition to being, as that winch is outside being. The
subject is itself being and intimately ivuuiatcd with it. Thinking and reason
are immanent in being. I hr rational is submerged in the irrational or the supra-rational.
I his is admirably shown even by philosophers not of the existential type such
as N. Hartmann and S. Frank. Kant himself still took an inadequate view of the
transcendent aspect of the transcenden-
1 Rickert: Der Gegenstand der Erkenntms.
55
tal mind. Since the knowing subject is himself being, is himself in the highest
degree existential, knowledge can be understood as an event in being itself, in
existence, as a relation of being to being. In the existential sense, the subject
is the correlative not of the object but of other subjects.
Prince S. Trubetskoy says with truth that in every act of his life man goes out
from himself towards another. But he goes out from himself as one who exists.
The subject is he who exists, he who is rooted in the noumenal world, and in that
fact the existentiality of philosophy has its source. N. Hartmann says that being
is the common sphere in which subject and object stand in antithesis to one another.1
The subject, as it were, recognizes its dependence upon the object. In my view
the subject itself introduces objectifi-cation and gives rise to the world of
phenomena, and does so not only as he who knows, but above all as he who exists.
It is essential to grasp the mysterious process of objectification. I live in
two worlds, in a subjective world which is my own proper world, and also in an
objective world, the world of objects, which exists for my sake and at the same
time is alien to me. This fact that I am cast into an objective world which acts
forcefully upon me, has not merely an epistemological meaning, it has a metaphysical
meaning also. Kant gave no explanation of why the world of appearances comes to
be and why reason is limited to the knowledge of this world of appearances, which
is not the true world. The true world of things-in-themselves is not open to perception.
Does the thing-in-itself reveal itself in appearance? In the phraseology that
I use this means that Kant did not explain the mystery of objectification. He
leads up to the subject, but does not himself deal with it.
The objectification of the world takes place through our agency and for our
sakes, and this is the fall of the world, this is its loss of freedom, and the
alienation of its parts. It might be expressed by saying that the freedom of noumena
passes into the necessity of
1 See N. Hartmann: Grundziige finer Metaphysik tier Erkenntnis.
56
phenomena. The world of appearances acquires a grandiose empirical reality which
exercises compulsion and force upon us.
According to Hegel 'objectivity is a real concept which has moved out from its
own inwardness and passed into existence". To him an idea is 'an objectively
true concept, something which is true, as such'. Hegel makes the mistake of ascribing
a sort of freedom to objectivity, whereas in fact it denotes the loss of freedom.
He fails to understand that the self-alienation of spirit in objectivity is a
fall. He is an optimist. He is mistaken in recognizing the existence of objective
spirit instead of acknowledging only the objectification of spirit. It is along
that line of thought that the Kantian dualism has been overcome and a transition
made to monism. This comes near to St Thomas Aquinas and his ontologism again,
though from the other direction.
In Hegel's view, objectivity having passed through the critical act of knowledge,
issues from the subject. According to St Thomas Aquinas objectivity precedes this
critical act. He teaches that the jubject-matter of knowledge is real and objective,
that it does not depend upon the subject, but that it does not exist in nature
in a universal form; it is thought which adds that to it. The abstraction of the
mind converts thought into act.
Bodi in Hegel and in St Thomas Aquinas there is in principle the same ontologism
which is unwilling to see in objectification the fall of the world. There is in
each of them the same erroneous elimination of that dualism which is a picture
of die tragic position of man in his effort to know. But it was more naively expressed
in St Thomas Aquinas. In Hegel it was put more critically and it moves to a greater
extent through a dialectic of thought. The logic of St Thomas Aquinas is static;
Hegel's logic in dynamic. Aquinas starts from objectivity as a datum provided
by nature and it remains with him unimpaired right to the end. Hegel on the other
hand begins with subjective spirit arid arrives at objectivity and objective spirit
as the result of a dialectical process. To St Thomas there is in fact nothing
irrational; the Latin mind illumi-
57
nates the life of the world without any oncoming of night. But to Hegel the irrational
does exist. His panlogism is not to be identified with objective rationalism.
With him the irrational is rationalized and the rational becomes irrational.
Schopenhauer, the most inconsistent of philosophers, left the Kantian dualism
by another route. What he teaches about the objectification of the will contains
a greater element of truth than there is in Hegel's objective spirit, for he does
recognize that the objectified world is not the true world and that it is a world
wliich 'lieth in evil'.
My inward spiritual experience is not an object. Spirit is never object: the existence
of that which exists is never an object. It is thought which determines the objectified
phenomenal world. The primacy of the mind over being can be asserted. But this
is not the final truth. The mind itself is determined by the noumenal world, by
the 'intelligible freedom' (in the Kantian sense) of that primary world. What
also needs to be asserted is the supremacy of the primarily existent, of that
which initially exists, over the mind. Idealism passes into realism.
Husserl remains within the limits of the conscious mind which in his view is more
primary than subject and object. He should have arrived at a metaphysics of consciousness.
But with him all consciousness is consciousness of something or other, the essence
of consciousness is the transcending of self in 'intention'. Noesis is the subjective
side of 'intentionality' and Noema is that which the conscious mind recognizes.
Phenomenology is the sympathetic descriptive science of the working of the mind.1
But this would not justify a belief in the metaphysical roots of the conscious
mind. The 'intentional' character of consciousness is a doctrine which Brentano
took over from scholasticism and it is obliged to give pre-eminence to objectivity
over subjectivity. The transcending of the self in 'intention' must needs be objectification
and an onrush towards the objective world. But in the phraseology which
1 See his Ideen.
58
I
I propose, the act of transcending follows a path which is diametrically the opposite
of objectification. It is the path towards the noumenal world, to that which truly
exists. There are two 'intentions' of the conscious mind, one which leads to the
enslaving world of objects and to the realm of necessity, the other which is directed
towards the truly existent world, the realm of freedom.
The natural world of phenomena is symbolic in character. It is full of signs of
another world and it is a symptom of division and alienation in the sphere of
spirit. There is no natural objective world in the sense of a reality in itself;
the only world there is is the world which is divinely and humanly free. The object
world is enslavement and fall. But the whole cosmos enters into the true free
world, whereas there is nothing of it in the world of appearances, the world of
objects, How the two stand to each other may be put in this way; appearance is
the objectified world, the natural and social world of necessity, servitude, enmity
and dominance; whereas the noumenal world is spirit, freedom and creative power;
it is the world of love and sympathy; it is the whole cosmos. What is called the
other world is not an 'other' world to me it is pre-eminently my world.
There is a tendency in the reason to turn everything into an object from which
existentiality disappears. The whole of Kant's critique is connected with this
fact. The thing-in-itself is not an object or 'non-I', it is a subject, or 'Thou'.
The subject is not, as in Fichte, the Absolute or the Deity. The subject, the
human T and 'Thou', are turned into objects and things as a result of a fall in
the relations between us. That fall is a matter of importance in the theory of
knowledge. Objectification and the unauthentic character of the phenomenal world
are by no means to be taken as meaning that the world of men and women, animals,
plants, minerals, stars, seas, forests and so on is unreal and that behind it
is something entirely unlike it—the things-in-themselves. It means rather that
this world is in a spiritual and moral condition in which it ought not to be,
it
59
is in a state of servitude and loss of freedom, of enmity and alienation, of ejection
into the external, of subjection to necessity.
Objectification is the ejection of man into the external, it is an exteriorization
of him, it is the subjecting of him to the conditions of space, time, causality
and rationalization. But in his existential depth man is in communion with the
spiritual world and with the whole cosmos. The thing-in-itself can only be the
thing-for-my-sake, and it is only the thing-for-my-sake about which I can think.
Objectification is the uprising of an exteriorized 'not-I' in place of the 'Thou'
which exists interiorly. The subject matter of thought is the creation of thought
itself; and that is the objectifying act.
To Kant, the way out of this situation is simply through the practical reason,
which does not objectify and, therefore, breaks through beyond the world of phenomena.
There is nothing, no things of the external world outside the subject which thinks
them. Thus the impress of thought lies upon reality. But 'things in-them-selves'
do exist and in them the spiritual element in thought is inherent, and the irrational
is inherent too. Objectification is not only a creation of thought, of the reason
and its categories. At a deeper level than that is the fact that it is a result
of a certain condition of the subject, with whom exteriorization and alienation
are taking place. The object depends above all upon the will of the subject. There
exists a transcendental will.
The most remarkable thing is that the Objectification of the constructions of
the mind begins to live an independent life and gives rise to pseudo-realities.
In this respect the antidote should have been Kant, who showed that the existence
of an idea does not imply the existence of a reality. This is a very strong point
with him. Objectification is rationalization. But it is not merely a perceptional
process, it is still more an emotional process, the socialization of feelings
and passions. And rationalization may itself be a passion.
Levy-Bruhl maintains that pre-logical, primitive thinking does not objectify,
it is subject to the loi de participation, that is to say the
60
person who thinks and apprehends is united with the subject-matter of his actual
thought and knowledge.1 Levy-Bruhl himself is of opinion that at the summit of
civilization, to apprehend means to objectify, that is, it makes the subject-matter
of knowledge into something alien, it does not unite with it nor become a partner
with it. This throws a light upon the nature of objecti-fication.
What we may for the time being call existential philosophy marks a transition
from the interpretation of knowledge as objec-tification, to understanding it
as participation, union with the subject matter and entering into cooperation
with it. The loi de participation among backward and pre-civilized peoples may
denote a condition in which clear consciousness is not yet fully awake; it may
denote the superstitious attitude to the world and the practice of magic, in which
mankind was steeped at its origin.
The awakening and development of the conscious mind was accompanied by division
and alienation. Man had to pass through a stage in which he subjected his thought
and reason to a critique. To pass through Objectification is the fate of spirit
in this world. Moreover objectification has a positive significance also in a
fallen world. It is capable of arming man and defending him. But at the summit
of consciousness, where it comes into touch with the supra-conscious, the reverse
process may be set on foot, and apprehension may become union and cooperation;
yet in conjunction with all that has been gained by the conquests of criticism
and enlightened reason.
German idealism marks an important stage along this road. But the word 'idealism'
cannot be retained, because idea does not denote real existence, as was shown
by Kant himself. The mystery of objectification has to be made clear. In it the
mystery of this world lies hidden, and in it is the source of the evil and suffering
which belong to the life of this world.
The problem of objectification, as I understand it, has nothing 1See Ldvy-Bruhl:
Lesfonctiom mentales dans les sociftls inftrieures,
61
in common with the problem of perception, of sensation, or of the relation between
the psychological and the physical, or even of the ordinary relation between the
subjective and the objective. The problem of objectification lies in a different
region from that of the criticism of naive realism and the defence of idealism.
It is an existential problem and it is concerned with the disintegration and the
fettering of the world, with estrangement and the chains of servitude. It is a
problem which arises as a result of the fall of the existential subject, for whom
everything is exteriorized and subjected to necessity.
What are the marks of objectification, and the rise of object relations in the
world? The following signs may be taken as established: (i) The estrangement of
the object from the subject; (2) The absorption of the unrepeatably individual
and personal in what is common and impersonally universal; (3) The rule of necessity,
of determination from without, the crushing of freedom and the concealment of
it; (4) Adjustment to the grandiose mien of the world and of history, to the average
man, and the socialization of man and his opinions, which destroys distinctive
character. In opposition to all this stand communion in sympathy and love, and
the overcoming of estrangement; personalism and the expression of the individual
and personal character of each existence; a transition to the realm of freedom
and determination from within, with victory over enslaving necessity; and the
predominance of quality over quantity, of creativeness over adaptation. This is
at the same time a definition of the distinction between the noumenal and the
phenomenal world. Phenomenon and nou-menon are settled by the process of objectification.
The fight against the power of objectification is a spiritual revolt of nou-mena
against phenomena, it is a spiritual revolution.
Such an interpretation of the relation between the noumenal and phenomenal worlds
is very different from Platonism, and moves out beyond the limits of Kantian dualism.
The noumenon is spirit, personality, freedom; it is the creative energy which
is
62
active in this world. The task before man is to achieve liberation from his state
of externality, and his subjection to necessity, from the violating power of 'objectiveness'
in nature and history. It is to discover spirituality and freedom as being the
plenitude of real existence, which, at its highest point is always personal: personal
and at the same time experienced in common with other men. This is a sign of the
transformation of enslaved nature by the power of die spirit. Spirit is the antithesis,
not of nature, but of the enslaved state of nature which is in a disintegrated
condition inwardly while outwardly it is fettered and bound. If this world is
my objectification which sets up idols and illusions of consciousness, I can in
that case create a new and better world. Victory over the sway of objectification
is a messianic hope.
The thing-in-itself, the noumenon, is not a necessary cause of the appearance,
of the phenomenon; the cause of the appearance may likewise be merely an appearance;
necessary causal relations exist only in the phenomenal world. The noumenon, however,
is freedom, and if causality is a possibility here at all, it is causality only
through freedom, as Kant understood to some extent. But noumenal freedom operates
in this phenomenal world as a creative power. Objectification enslaves man and
it is from a world other than the phenomenal world that emancipation comes. Objective
nature and objective society have no power to set diemselves free, it is spirit
alone that liberates
Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from
itself. And exteriorization gives rise to necessity, to determination from without,
The horror which Pascal felt when confronted by the endless expanse of space is
the horror of objectification, the horror of strangeness. Simmel has a good passage
in which he speaks of the inhuman automatism of the objectification of culture,
and of the conflict between life and form which makes for congealment.1 But the
source of evil is-not in the apprehension of the world of phenomena—the world
of the 'natural', nor in the 1 See Simmel: Lebensanschauung. Vier metaphysische
Kapitel,
63
epistemological subject himself, who has built up 'objective' science. It lies
in the existential condition of man and the world, in alienation and the loss
of freedom. Indeed, scientific knowledge itself has an emancipating value in this
world, and it enslaves only when it is turned into scientism.
Kant brought to light the epistemological aspect of objecti-fication. Idealist
metaphysics went further, but objectified the subject, the ego, spirit, and concept.
Thinking begins to present itself as something other than itself. The subject
is converted into an object. Absolute idealism moves out beyond the confines of
objecrification, associated always with the division into subject and object,
but it attains this by a premature and illusory monism.
The case is the same in Indian thought. The Absolute is neither subject, nor object.
Subject and object are identified in Atman. Brahman is the subject in cognition.
Indian thought has shown an insufficient appreciation of the whole burden of objectification
and the whole difficulty of overcoming the breach. Its sense of the illusory nature
of the world has been stronger than its sense of the world's evil and sin.
Three types of knowledge may be established: the knowledge of the subject by itself;
that of the subject by another, qualified as object; and the knowledge of the
subject by intuitive sympathy and love. We are much in the habit of calling what
we apprehend an object. But this is conventional terminology, and we might call
what we apprehend the subject, and apprehend the subject behind the object, we
might apprehend outside objectification.
The weak side of the old 'spiritualist' metaphysics consisted in the fact
that it naturalized spirit and interpreted it as substance. Traditional 'spiritualism'
was a return to the philosophy which preceded Kant, Fichte and Hegel, it went
back to the philosophy of Leibniz. But the reality of spirit is not merely a reality
other than that of the natural world, it is reality in a different sense.1 The
'spiritualist' metaphysicians of the nineteenth century, for instance 1 See my
Spirit and Reality.
64
Teichmiiller and Koslov, set themselves the problem of the relation between noumenon
and appearance. The recognizing and apprehending subject is a substance. It is
that for which the appearance appears. Matter is only an outcome of the relation
between sub-itances. Material things are signs of spiritual substances.
At the same time a distinction is drawn between the simple recognition which precedes
acts of thinking and the complex recognition which is knowledge. It all amounts
to the traditional problem of the relation between spirit and matter, which is
not an exact designation of the issue. The corporeal world possesses a sort of
reality and we are in a very high degree dependent upon it. My body enters into
the whole make-up of me, it is a constituent part of my personality, I am not
a bodiless spirit. But the bodily constitution of man lies within that state of
the natural world which is the outcome of objectification, that is, of exteriorization,
alienation and enslavement.
The corporeal world is capable of issuing out of objectivity and entering into
subjectivity, in other words of entering into spirit, into a spiritual condition.
That is the padi along which the transformation of the natural world takes place.
It can be said that the whole material world, the whole natural world, is a symbol
of the spiritual world, a sign of events which take place in the spiritual world,
of division, alienation, and ejection into a state in which causality operates
from without.
But the difficult and tormenting question remains: what sort of relation exists
between the appearance and that which appears, that is to say, the noumenon? The
very word 'appearance' points to the fact that somebody or something appears or
reveals himself or itself. But is it the thing-in-itself, the noumenon, the noumenal
essence which shows itself, and reveals itself in the 'appearance'? If the world
of appearance, 'this world' is a world which is fallen and enslaved, there is
a sort of viciousness in that appearance and self-revelation. The noumenon does
not simply appear, merely reveal itself in the phenomenon, it also, so to speak,
falls away
65
from itself in the phenomenon, it is ejected into the external. And for that reason
it may be said that the phenomenal world is not the true world of entities, of
that which really exists, The nou-menon not only reveals itself in the phenomenon,
it also slips out of sight and hides itself away.
Another method of appearance is possible, a different way of self-revelation by
the truly existent, one that is not in 'appearance' in the phenomenon. A method
of finding expression for entities and existences which differs from objectification
in the phenomenal world, is possible. The expression and revelation of freedom
is a possibility without subjection to the power of necessity. This is a fundamental
problem, and the problem of creativeness also is connected with it.
It may be put in this way. There is the possibility, not of symbolism, not of
a symbolic embodiment of spirit in the natural world, but of realization, of a
real embodiment of spirit in a world which is being set free and transformed.
Objectification is not true realization, it is merely a process of symbolizing;
it presents us with signs but not with realities. And that has a telling effect
upon all human creativity and upon all that creativity produces.
The world of noumena, which is the world of creative entities, not the world of
ideas, can express itself in a different world than the world of phenomena; but
it is a mistake to imagine that the noumenal world and the phenomenal world are
absolutely isolated and cut off from one another. There are no such frontiers
that cannot be crossed just as there are no impassable frontiers to human consciousness.
A break through of noumena into phenomena is possible, of the invisible world
into the visible, of the world of freedom into the world of necessity. And all
that is most significant in history is due to that fact. There are in the life
of the world not only 'appearances', but noumena also; and the manifestation of
these cannot be called merely an 'appearance'. It is from the noumenal world that
the prophet and the creative genius enter into this world. They are ambassadors
of the Spirit.
66
But there is no uninterrupted evolutionary process, the process is a creative
one, and it is subject to interruptions and breaks. The new way of understanding
the relation between noumenon and phenomenon is to interpret it from the eschatological
point of view. But the interpretation of eschatology must also itself be a new
one; it must become creatively-active and I shall deal with the basis of this
in my last chapter.
Nicolas Hartmann, with his inclination for subtle distinctions, proposes that
we should distinguish the trans-subjective from the transcendental, and from the
trans-intelligible. One of these terms —'trans-subjective'—I should like to retain
to replace 'objective'. The apprehending mind ought to issue out of the closed
circle of itself, not into the objective, but into the trans-subjective. That
is not objectification, but an act of transcending. While objectification is a.
movement outwards, the trans-subjective may mark a movement inwards and the discovery
within of everything, of the whole, of the universe.
The creative subject expresses itself symbolically in the object and the objective,
but it can express itself really in the trans-subjective. The doctrine of Brentano
and Husserl about the 'intentionality' of the mind is still within the sphere
of objectification and does not reveal the twofold nature of the outward movement
of the mind towards an other.
The fundamental question is this: does the conversion of'things-in-themselves'
into 'appearances' take place in the process of knowledge and arise from it, or
does it precede all cognition and occur within the actual 'things-in-themselves',
in the primary reality itself, in existence itself, and is merely reflected in
cognition? If the world is in a fallen state, the fault does not lie in men's
apprehension of the world, as Shestov, for instance, would have it. The fault
lies in the depths of the world's existence.
And there is a further question. When things-in-themselves
67
have been turned into appearances, have they then ceased to exist, has the noumenal
world finally gone away into the phenomenal world? Such an exhaustion of noumena
in die disclosure of phenomena is not to be supposed, it is certainly not an emanation
or efflux. We could more easily picture it as the passage of the noumenal subject-entities
through a process of splitting, division into two, alienation. This is a suggestion
which implies a particular kind of cognition to correspond with it. Consciousness
and cognition pass dirough die division into subject and object, but the primary
reality does not on that account cease to exist and does not finally lose the
possibility of a return to unity and relationship.
There remains in man the possibility of intuitive knowledge. Schelling thinks
that in intellectual intuition subject and object are identified. But intuition
cannot be intellectual only. It would in diat case be die passive reflection of
somediing, and that would mean that it would not overcome division and objectification.
Intuition is also emotional and volitional, it is die activity, the intense effort
of die spirit as a whole. Real contemplation is not directed upon an object. Philosophical
apprehension presupposes a primary act, an act which precedes all rationalization,
an existential act, and the measure of it is gauged by the depdi and breaddi of
that act. Philosophical apprehension can be passion, it may be tears and exaltation,
or suffering born of die awareness of the meaning of life. Such it was even to
Spinoza himself. Amor intellectualis Dei is a cognitive passion.
The dispassionately intellectual is a figment of die imagination and a pretence.
The results of knowledge are received emotionally and primary intuition itself
is above ah1 emotional. Emotional thinking exists (Heinrich Mayer is a case in
point), but die emotional element is absolutely separable from die intellectual
only in abstraction. The state of passion, emotional tension, is determined by
die encounter widi reality, widi primary life. It is only dunking which is steeped
in self and never emerges from self
68
in any direction, which can be completely passionless and devoid of emotional
intensity. In Hegel die concept is full of passion.
There is no reality widiout a creative attitude towards it on die part of the
subject. Perception itself is creatively synthetic in character, spirit is active
even in sensuous perceptions. The power of impression, without which diereisno
perceptional penetration assumes a condition of creative passion, a state of possession.
That is why it is possible to say that true philosophy is an art. But even purely
scientific discoveries presuppose passion, inspiration and power of imagination.
In the early discoveries of science the emotional impulse played a much greater
part dian is commonly supposed.
Since knowledge is a part of life, and reason is a function of life, die appearance
itself, the object of apprehension (objectification) is conditioned by the totality
of life, by feeling, by the passions, by maladies of spirit. Primary life, the
noumenal depth of existence determines the structure of the mind, and upon dial
die way in which the world presents itself to us depends. Upon a mind which had
changed, die world would make a different impact. But this change presupposes
a change in the character of existence, in primary life itself. Primary life (noumenon)
itself, however, is not pre-eminently intellectual in character, which is the
Greek point of view. It is to a greater degree passion, noumenal passion, which
precedes the very distinction between good and evil.
Buddhist sympadiy, Christian love, Schopenhauer's will to life and Nietzsche's
will to power, are all noumenal. To the majority of men, die real world, 'reality'
(in odier words—diat which acts upon them) is identified widi the limits of die
average and normal mind, that is, a mind which is already objectified and objectifying.
And die average objectified mind is a matter of adjustment to the social conditions
of existence.
Kant was disturbed by the problem of how to arrive at die universality, die general
validity (Allgemeingiiltigkeit) of knowledge. But diat is a matter which belongs
to the sociology of knowledge, a theme which he did not develop. Kant did not
69
acknowledge the mobility and variability of the transcendental mind as the sociology
of knowledge has to acknowledge it. It is not only primary intuition which is
socialized, The rationalized consciousness too is exposed to the process of socialization,
the apprehension and the very perception of the world depends upon the social
relations which hold good among men and the degree to which the spirit of community
is attained.
No form of human creative power in the field of knowledge or in any other field
is of a social character on the ground of its origin, even when it is directed
towards social life. But it is liable to socialization in its dealings with men.
Cognition has a social character in its products, as a means of communication
among people. The realm of objectification is a social realm, it is made for the
average person, for mankind in the mass, for the ordinary and hum-drum, for das
man. The 'objectivity' of perception and representation is social in character.
It might be said that man receives in a certain way a picture of the world which
depends upon the forms assumed by his social relations with other people. There
are for that reason particular worlds which disclose themselves to religious confessions,
to nationalities, to professions, estates and classes. In this is to be found
the measure of truth which belongs to the class ideologies of Marxism, but the
way in which it is expressed is philosophically worthless. One can only speak
of true creative inspiration when man is moved by the spirit and not by society,
when he is determined from within and not from without, when he does not depend
upon social suggestion and social imitation.1
The average man's picture of the world, as he takes his way through it along a
middle path, does not present itself to him in an individual and personal manner
but in a social and collective way. Thus the sin of human servitude is objectified.
The extent of this includes not only people's opinions, which are always very
1 See a book by Tarde which is in many respects remarkable: Les Lois Ae I'imitation.
70
much socialized (in public opinion, the opinion and honour of the nation, the
class, regiment, profession and so on) but covers also the actual perception of
the world, primary impressions received from it, which are conditioned by the
family and environment. The most fundamental perception of the picture which the
world presents, basic opinions and judgments formed of it, depend upon the degree
of community that people have attained, or upon the extent to which they lack
it. Even scholars who should, as a class, be bent upon the discovery of truth,
have their own worlds and dieir own judgments upon them, which are settled by
academic traditions, doctrinal prejudices and learned routine. There is much that
is hidden so far as that class is concerned. Socialization sets up a process of
fossilization in various degrees.
Different relations among men, a high degree of spiritual community among them
and a lofty sense of their brotherhood would create a different world, another
world would disclose itself to men. One single 'objective' world does not exist,
it is nothing but social adjustment. Various worlds have already been revealed
to various types of culture in the past and they have been revealed in various
ways. The world presented itself in different ways to Hellenism, Judaism, to the
Persians and the Indians. The criteria adopted by general consent for the establishment
of truth, of which great use has been made by socialized religion and its armoury
of theologies, are not criteria of truth, they are merely standards of what is
useful for society.
Truth is aristocratic, it is revealed only to the few, the dissemination of
it takes for granted a violent shock to the mind, it involves the melting and
the burning up of the petrified and ossified state of mind, of a petrified and
ossified world. This is not to say that truth exists only for the sake of the
few, it exists for all men, for the very last one of them. But for the time being
it is revealed only to the few and to them it administers a shock. The majority
are too much conditioned by the limitations of their minds, by social imitation,
by what they find of service in the struggle for life.
71
The most highly socialized thought is that of primitive, pre-civilized people;
it is entirely group thought, the thought of the clan or the tribe. The primitive
kindly and gracious 'nature' which Rousseau and Tolstoy regarded as the antithesis
of the evils of civilization, is noumental nature, not phenomenal. Civilization
creates new forms of social imitation and adjustment, and the processes of objectification
are associated with it, but at the same time it reveals the possibility of growth
in the conscious mind and of freedom of thought among the minority, and of raising
personality to greater heights.
A new aeon will come in which truth will be revealed to all, when all will pass
through the experience of shock, not only the living, but still more those who
have died. But in this era of ours, in this objectified, objective world, philosophy
in a universal and healthy sense, discovers, not truth, but the socialization
of truth, it discovers the necessary thing, that which is needed and useful for
the life of society. The objectified world, the world of phenomena, is not conditioned
by the individual reason, nor by divine reason, nor by an individual, universal,
general sensitiveness, but by socialized reason and socialized sensitiveness.
The objectified world, which is regarded uncritically as the 'objective' world
is conditioned by the transcendentally social.
It is a mistake to think that truth is revealed to the generic mind. Truth is
revealed to spiritual awareness, which lies on the border line of the supra-conscious;
spirit is freedom, an exaltingly creative impulse, it is personality and love.
There is such a thing as the history of the conscious mind, of its stages and
periods. This is a problem of which Hegel was better aware than anyone. Boldwin
suggests the following periods of thought—pre-logical, logical and immediate,
and supra-logical.1
But this supra-logical thought is possible at all times, it is intuitive thought,
creatively original, it comes near to primary reality, it is not objectified.
Pre-logical thought is very different
1 See I. M. Boldwin: Theoriegenetique de la rialitL
72
from supra-logical, for the primitive individual is not a distinguishable being
who identifies himself; the social group constitutes the only 'ego'. This is what
Levy-Bruhl thinks also. The stage of growth of the mind contributes to the separating
out of personality and its distinction from the social group. But as the conscious
mind increases in strength, personality both becomes more isolated and at the
same time subjected to new forms of the conscious spirit of community.
Knowledge takes two directions and has a twofold significance; it is on the one
hand an active break-through towards meaning and truth, as it rises above the
world, and on the other hand it is adjustment to the world as we are given it,
to social dull routine. But even when it is of that second type, knowledge is
a reflection of die Logos, it is a descent of the Logos into die world. In that
fact the source of the high achievement of science, and of its independence is
to be found.
Some of the greatest difficulties of knowledge are due to language and this is
particularly telling in the case of philosophy, in which the problem of terminology
has so vast a part to play. There is die interior logos, the inward word, which
is in close proximity to die depth of one who exists, it is hard by the primary
reality. And there is the exterior logos, the outward word which is orientated
to this world and adjusted to its fallen state. In the first sense die word is
not objectified, it is meaning. In the second sense, the word is objectified and
alienated, remote from primordial meaning. Human language has its basis in the
primordial un-objectified word and for that reason only it has meaning. But language
is also a social fact and it is the chief means of communication among men. It
is dianks to it that die existence of society is possible. Language is socialized,
and the stamp of conventionality lies upon it; it bears die impress of enmity
and of die limitations of all social organizations. The multitude of human tongues
is the disintegrated, self-alienating primordial word—die Logos.
Language makes understanding and communication possible
73
among men. But language also estranges them and makes them incomprehensible to
one another. There is also a single philosophical language associated with the
Word, the Logos, and for that reason alone the history of philosophy is not merely
a story of erroneous opinions, but even a revelation of truth. But philosophers
also understand one another badly, because they often speak in different philosophical
languages. I am speaking now of philosophical languages, not of the various tongues
spoken by the nations and tribes of the earth.
All this leads to a trenchant statement of the problem of the sociology of knowledge,
and with it the problem of logical general validity is also connected. The objectified
world which is called objective is a world which has fallen into ruin and alienation
and at the same time it is a world which is unified by compulsion, it is fettered
and determined, it is a socialized world, a world of the commonplace. It is precisely
in such a world that everything has the seal of the common upon it, everything
is generalized. In spite of the assertion of Platonism, it is in the noumenal
world that everything is individualized, the principium individuationis operates,
and everything is linked with personality. Personalism is the basic property of
a world which is not objectified. Objectification is above all depersonalization.
General-validity in knowledge, which is of so much interest to Kantians, is not
only logical but also sociological in character. It means apprehending in common,
a sense in the apprehending mind of community with others, with everyone. Its
attention is turned not to the subject-matter of apprehension, but to other people,
and it is concerned with what is convincing to them. But the degree of general-validity
does not depend upon the apparatus of logic, it depends upon sharing the vision
of reality in common. Logic is social. In the truth of his knowledge and in his
primary perceptional acts the person who apprehends depends very little upon a
logical process. He is not aiming at thinking consciously and knowing logically.
It is a mistake to think that it is necessary
74
to prove anything to oneself, what is necessary is to prove it to someone else.
Florensky very truly says that the law of identity (A = A), that is to say the
fundamental law of logic, is death, desert and nothingness. He also says that
a concept is static whereas a judgment is dynamic. But to Florensky subjectivity
is illusory, while objectivity is ontological, he is still under the sway of objectivism
and ontologism.
Logic requires a new sociological clarification, but not on any account in the
spirit of the sociologism of Diirckheim, but in a metaphysical spirit. The logical
apparatus of knowledge is an outcome of objectification and corresponds to various
degrees of the sense of community and of estrangement. The construction of a .,
system of logic is an adjustment to the violent compulsion which the world as
we have it exercises upon us. It is above all a means of protection in the struggle
for life in this world of objects. i There is in this connection a certain amount
of truth in prag-', matism. But this truth which it contains is not about truth
nor i about a criterion of truth; it is concerned with something else. The 3 objectified
world, as I have said more than once, is a world in which things are strange and
unknown, and this element of strangeness exists in varying degrees. Getting to
know things has its place as a means of communication for an estranged world.
Man struggles against this estrangement. He tries to establish an environment
which is akin to him, a religious environment or a national, one formed by a social
group, and by the family. For such environments there are different degrees of
cognitive general-validity.
At the same time the degree in which man introduces the universal varies. General-validity
has a different meaning in the case of a mind which is in the highest degree opened
out to universal content, from the meaning it bears for a mind which is contracted
and of small capacity. A medium degree of general validity holds for the consciousness
of the narrow-minded and those with little space into which to receive. Man is
a microcosm.
75
There is eternal truth in the teaching of Nicholas of Cusa that all is present
in everything,1 and of Leibniz on the monad as a universe. But man is a microcosm
only potentially and as a possibility, in a deep-lying stratum of his being which
is in the case of the majority of people covered up and compressed.
The cosmos as nature is disclosed outside the process of ob-jectification and
this disclosure presupposes the re-establishment of a sense of kinship and communion
of man with nature, and of people among themselves. The secret of cosmic life
remains hidden from the ordinary ways of knowledge and science has no interest
in it. The revelation of the cosmos and the mystery of creation is still to come
and is bound to come, and it is connected with a revelation of the sense of human
community, with the overcoming of the estrangement which is an outcome of ob-jectification.
The fundamental contradiction in human existence is that man is a finite being
possessed of potential infinity and an ambition to strive towards infinity.2 The
empirical world is partial, not a whole, and it cannot without contradiction be
thought of as either infinite or finitely consummated. So far as this world is
concerned the insight of the physical and mathematical sciences is a possibility,
and it is the most exact, it is of the greatest general-validity, and it is susceptible
of verification. But this generally-valid insight does not penetrate into the
mystery of cosmic life, it corresponds to the disintegrated and estranged condition
of human beings from one another and from the cosmos. Spiritual insight on the
other hand, knowledge of the things of the spirit, is not an activity in the world
of extraneous objects.
I will not repeat what I have already written in Solitude and Society and other
books. The empirical world is given to us not as a passive, reflected, experience,
and not as one whole cosmos, but
1 See M. de Ganddlac: La philosophic de Nicolas de Cues. 8 To Heidegger death
is the last word in the finite existence of man, because he denies this element
of infinity in man. See his Sein und Zeit.
76
as an evil infinity in which we are lost and have to find our bearings. 'Objective'
scientific knowledge is itself such a taking of bearings. In that is to be found
the meaning of the formation of concepts.
This is an opportune moment to amend the term 'thing-in-itself'. Existential reality
always presupposes a relation, in other words, an impulse to issue out of the
self in common with others in a community. The 'thing-in-itself' is real in so
far as it is related to other things-in-themselves. In other words, it is not
accurate to call it a thing in itself, or for itself; it is also for anodier,
it issues out of itself. The knowledge of things in themselves, therefore, takes
for granted a realized sense of spiritual community, and a 'melting-down' of the
isolated mind. General-validity, which is always external and related to objectivity,
is replaced by a sense of community, spiritual kinship, and reciprocal penetration
of feeling. But spiritual intuition which comes from widiin is to the world of
objects and the world of compulsion, the least generally valid and convincing
in appearance, although it is the most universal. For this reason the position
of metaphysics has always been precarious and open to suspicion.
The possibility of metaphysics is linked widi the possibility of knowledge which
is not objectified and not reached through the concept. Hegel turned being into
concept and concept into being. But Hegel was a metaphysician of genius and his
own metaphysics were certainly not knowledge through the concept. The Hegelian
dialectic was not merely a logical dialectic of the spirit, that is to say, it
was an existential dialectic. Such was the 'phenomenology of the spirit', the
most notable thing his mind produced.
Concepts give us our bearings in the dark infinity of the object world which surrounds
us. The concept is an intellectual defence, and at the same time a restraint which
prevents us from upsetting the complex nature of the world. It rationalizes the
subject-matter of knowledge and such rationalization is the application of reason
to the world of phenomena. Such rationalization is of no use to
77
the world of noumena. At the same time the concept generalizes, leads up to the
universal and never lays hold upon individual reality. But its task is a different
one, its task is pragmatically instrumental. The Logos acts in the concept, but
it acts in application, in going out to the alienated object world. The concept
does not get to know what is individual, nor does it apprehend freedom, and therefore
it does not apprehend noumena, nor the secret of existence.
This has sometimes been expressed by saying that it is impossible to apprehend
irrational reality through rational concepts (Rickert) or that intellect cannot
apprehend life and movement (Bergson). But in so far as there is necessity and
regularity in the world of phenomena, it displays the rational 'reality' which
corresponds to the rationality of knowledge. Causal relations and regularities
belong to generalizing thought and at the same time the phenomenal world is subordinated
to causal relations and regularities. The difficulty of this problem which is
encountered by epistemology, is due to the mystery of objectification.
It is a mistake to think that objectification occurs only in the sphere of knowledge.
It takes place above all in 'being', in reality itself. The subject introduces
it, and it does so not only as that which knows but also as that which exists.
The fall into the object world took place in primary life itself. The effect of
this was that only that which is secondary, rationalized and objectified was regarded
as reality, and doubt was cast upon the reality of that which is primary, unobjectified,
and not rationalized. Such is the structure of the mind which belongs to a fallen
state, to alienation into the external.
Knowledge is an event which belongs to the intellectual sphere. How can something
which is entirely non-intellectual, a material object, become an intellectual
occurrence within the subject? How can a rational apprehension of the irrational
be a possibility? The irrational itself has two different meanings. It can mean
either the irrational in the phenomenal object world, or the irrational
78
in the noumenal world, in the spiritual depth of the subject. The irrational of
the first kind is regarded as a boundary line, but it functions as knowledge which
gives men their bearings through a concept. A process of abstraction consists
of this. It moves away from reality, but it also subordinates reality to itself.
But this reality is by no means the primordially existent, the primary reality,
which lies in the depth of the spirit, it is an exteriorization.
The object world is manifold, but personality is lost in it. It is infinite, but
eternity is lost to sight in it; in it the commonplace is triumphant, but there
is no unity; it is rationalized, but it is full of evil irrationality, which is
the antithesis of meaning. It is such a world as that in which we live, and we
are aware of it. But it is not a world which has perished beyond hope. The sun
shines on it, albeit from without and not from within as it ought to have been.
There is vigorous and growing life in it, although death brings that to an end.
Flowers bloom in it, although they fade. The creative acts of man break through
into it. The human face is here, and at times with a wonderful expression in the
eyes. The heights of holiness and genius are attained, but so are the depths of
moral ugliness and crime. Love, pity and self-sacrifice emerge, and yet how much
cruelty and murder as well.
In this world, spirit has, as it were, fallen away from its own self, an estrangement
has taken place, but the link with spirit has been preserved and spirit is active.
This world is godless, but there is witness in it to the existence of God. If
in objectivity there is a fall, there is in the concept a descent of reason towards
that fallen state. The concept therefore has a limited application. It ought to
yield place to unobjectified knowledge.
The critique of knowledge has brought to light a confusion of concept with being,
with reality. It is a confusion which played an enormous part in the old metaphysics.
Kant has done more than anybody in the service of criticism. We shall see that
knowledge has left its mark upon 'being' itself and that 'being' is to a remarkable
degree the outcome of the concept. The fallen state of
79
the world has had its repercussion upon the conception of being. The socialization
of knowledge in aiming at the establishment of general-validity for the average
normal mind of the majority of men has a limiting effect upon both knowledge and
reality itself. It is bent upon crowding out everything which demands a great
spiritual effort and a sense of spiritual community. The average man, and human
society especially, is always exercising violent pressure upon men. They find
shelter from danger, they find self-preservation, in concepts and laws of logic
in the field of cognition, in the laws of the State, in fossilized formulae of
family life, of class, of the external life of the Church as a social institution.
In these defensive measures, intuition, inspiration, love, humanity and living
faith are crushed and stifled, the flame of the spirit is extinguished.
Feuerbach was right in his stress upon anthropology, in his revolt against the
power exercised over man by all forms of ob-jectification and estrangement which
claim to be metaphysical reality. But Feuerbach was wrong in this respect, that
in endeavouring to raise man, he took too low a view of him, and looked upon him
as nothing more than a material, natural creature. Thus the whole existential
dialectic of man and of his relation to God, was demolished and lost its meaning,
for it makes sense only in relation to man as a spiritual being.
The mind must be given a line of direction, and be brought into correlation with
the world environment. The conscious mind struggles against psychical chaos, an
example of which we see in dreams; it synthetizes the life of the soul. But it
is painful by nature, and it causes suffering, by dividing man into two parts
within its own actual synthesis, even though man endeavours by great exertions
of mind to free himself from suffering.1 It is not only that the 'unhappy consciousness'
of 1 SeeJ. Wahl: Le malheur At la conscience dans la philosophic ie Hegel.
80
which Hegel wrote exists, but in fact all consciousness is unhappy.
The cause of this unhappiness lies in the fact that consciousness is linked with
a division into two, with the falling apart into subject and object. And man,
in order to get the better of his unhappiness and pain, sets himself either to
rise to supra-consciousness or to sink down to the subconscious. Consciousness
is a path along which man goes, and it lies between the subconscious and elemental,
and the supra-conscious, the spiritual. Man is a suffering being because he is
a divided being, one who lives both in the phenomenal world and in the noumenal.
Man is an appearance, a creature of nature and subject to the laws of this world.
At the same time man is also a 'thing-in-itself, a spiritual being, free from
the power of this world. Consciousness is in an intermediate state, hence its
twofold nature. But it accomplishes a great work and in it there is light.
To overcome the unhappiness of consciousness through the supra-conscious is not
a rejection of consciousness. The positive acts of consciousness enter into the
supra-conscious (this is, in fact, Aufhebung in the Hegelian sense).1 But the
structure of the supra-conscious corresponds to the noumenal world, just as the
structure of consciousness answers to the phenomenal world, but not as a whole
and not decisively. It is with a gap through which light from the other world
is admitted, and it is with the possibility of a break-through. Consciousness
recognizes as transcendent to itself that which would be immanent for the supra-conscious.
For that reason I can say that die transcendent is not outside me but on the contr?ry
within me. Mysticism, die very^possibility of mysticism, is based upon that truth.
But in consequence of the fact that the structure of the mind is concerned widi
this phenomenal world, diere takes place the exteriorization and objectification
of that" which is most inward
1 On the relations between consciousness and the supra-conscious, see my book
The Destiny of Man.
8l
and spiritual. Primitive people make no distinction between this world and the
other, to them everything is miraculous and supernatural. That is explained by
the weakness of the conscious mind in its unawakened state. The supernatural and
miraculous as distinct from the natural order, exists for a higher degree of consciousness.
The very perception of the world of the senses has not always been one and the
same. The forms and colours of the 'empirical' world depend upon the state of
the mind, upon the direction it takes, and upon its weakness or strength.
Consciousness not only gives us our bearings in the world environment, not only
gives us light; it also builds up a vast quantity of illusions. There are the
illusions of the primitive mind which is still in a very feeble condition. Unhappy
illusions are associated with them, and a large number of myths. And there are
other illusions belonging to the higher and more civilized mind. There may be
less falsity and more truth in the primitive mind than in the civilized mind.
There may be more of reality in a myth, than in civilized reality. The societies
into which people are grouped create a series of illusions which are necessary
for their existence and development. And these are perhaps the most durable of
illusions. Society objectifies human existence and inspires man with alarm as
he faces its 'sanctity'. The English sociologist Kidd1 developed the very piquant
idea that society and the evolution of society, if they are to be maintained and
flourish, require creeds and sanctities which by no means correspond with truth.
Breed suggests to the individual person illusions of consciousness which are necessary
to the breed. Schopenhauer also spoke of the illusions of love which made the
individual the plaything of race. Social illusions take the form of class illusions,
illusions of sectional prejudices, which distort the mind.
Hegel put forward a theory in which genius is displayed, the theory of the
cunning of reason (List der Vernunft) in history. As a monist and an optimist
he thought that the cunning of reason is
1 See his Social Evolution.
82
an instrument in the revelation of spirit in history. But it ought, in fact, to
be regarded as a source of bitter pessimism.
Breeding and birth create illusions which are necessary for the generative process,
for the triumph of the common over what is individual, of species over the individual
person, and of the collective over personality. And such illusions assume the
forms of stable and established beliefs and sanctities which lead to the adoption
of an idolatrous attitude towards them. This too is the objectification of human
existence: it is to precipitate man into the world of constraining objects. The
constraining power of socialization is exercised through the conventional lie,
which is deep-rooted in the mind. Illusions and falsehood shape the structure
of the mind to correspond with the object world.
But the lies of 'civilization', the falsehoods of society and history must be
opposed not by 'nature' as Rousseau and Tolstoy inaccurately put it, but by spirit,
by spirituality, by the noumenal world. This can produce changes in the mind and
break into this world as a transforming power. Over against the conventional he
of the phenomenal world there is the rightness of instinct, but the roots of that
instinct lie at a greater depth than what is commonly called 'nature'. Noumenal
'nature' in man is a priori in relation to external phenomenal nature.
The genius of Kant is most clearly displayed, not, as is usually thought, in his
transcendental aesthetics, nor in his transcendental system of analysis, but in
his transcendental dialectic, in his doctrine of the transcendental Schein and
of antinomies. Reason, if it is used in the wrong way, gives rise to illusions.
But Kant regards the whole dialectic of the reason as illusory. And he may be
right if what is being discussed is reason apart from the whole life of the spirit,
reason separated from existential experience. Where is the source of the transcendental
illusions, Schein, which may arise from the dialectic of reason? Illusion arises
as a result of accepting as real anything which can be thought of, and of
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transferring to noumena that which relates to phenomena. I should put it that
illusions arise as an effect of objectification, of the projection into the object
of that which has real existence only in the subject. This is a result of the
power of the world of objects over human existence.
A concept gives rise to illusions if it is wrongly applied. It would not be true
to say that reason is not qualified for a real existent dialectic. But it is distorted
and loses its capacity in consequence of its fall. This fall, moreover, denotes
a loss of completeness and of spirituality, division into subject and object,
and thinking about the noumenal world in terms of adaptations to the world of
phenomena.
It would be interesting to speculate upon how Kant would have criticized Hegel
and his dialectic. Hegel at one time made his criticism of Kant, and it was his
desire to get beyond him. He sought to communicate fullness of life to the concept
and to convert the dialectic of the concept into an existential dialectic. He
entirely parts company with Kant in the interpretation of the nature and the limits
of logic. To Kant, dialectic is an imaginary organ of general logic, and its ability
to convince is imaginary. Dialectic is the logic of illusions which extends the
application of categories beyond the boundaries of the empirical. To Hegel logic
is ontology and dialectic in logic is a dialectic of being. He seeks to overcome
the Kantian antinomies.
Hegel's introduction of the dynamic into logic was a stroke of genius. He affirms
self-movement in the concept, and the attainment of the identity of opposites.
Truth is one whole thing. Hegel avoids the mistake of the old naturalistic metaphysics
of accepting appearances as things-in-themselves. But the overcoming of antinomies
is illusory, it is a new form of transcendental Schein. For Hegel remains within
the circle of immanence, within a false monism, and an optimistic interpretation
of the world process. With him there is no real transcending, and that is why
it was possible for dialectical materialism to take its rise from him. The
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antinomy remains in force till the end of the world. If it is to be overcome,
it can be by nothing but eschatology.
The mistake which Kant made, however, was to confuse and identify experience widi
that which relates only to appearances, which is to deny the possibility of spiritual
experience. Illusion is not bound up with the transcendent but with the immanent.
It is precisely the transcendent which is the least illusory. The antinomies of
pure reason are connected widi infinity. A third factor may be admitted, distinct
from both thesis and antithesis, but this third factor is not revealed in dialectical
development in this world: it is disclosed in transcending die confines of this
object world. The objectified world is not presented to us as one whole thing,
and, therefore, there is no truth in it in the Hegelian sense.
Since this world is not a thing-in-itself, not a noumenon, it does not exist either
as an infinite or as a finite whole. The cosmological antinomy is overcome only
by the fact that die world of appearances is not presented as a totality. But
it is just in such a world that antinomies cannot be resolved. Kant was right
in his dualism of two worlds and in recognizing diat die antinomies involved in
that dualism are unavoidable. But die explanation of diis may be different from
Kant's interpretation of it.
Consciousness is not to be thought of as static. It is only relatively stabilized.
In principle change and a revolution in the mind are possibilities; consciousness
can expand and it can also contract. It is possible to break dirough objectification
which creates the lasting illusion of this unchangeable world. Images and pictures
seen in dreams are connected widi the loss of power on die part of the conscious
mind, so also die shapes and pictures of the empirical world which presses upon
our daytime awareness do not show us primary reality itself, but merely signs
of it. Dreams have also a symbolical meaning. But at die same time the true, primordially
real world of freedom, creativity and goodness does act widiin this deceptive
and illusory world. We cannot make the decisive effort of the mind, and exertion
of spirit to awaken our-
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selves from the deceptive, the illusory and the unreal which mark the empirical
world of appearances. The structure of a mind adapted to the conditions of this
world is too strong. But it is a mistake to regard movement and plurality as deceptive
and illusory, as Zeno and the Eleatic philosophers did.
Indian philosophy has its own truth. It is more powerful than Greek and European
philosophy in its recognition of the unreality and deceptiveness of the world
of appearances. But it has not understood the meaning of man's passage through
this world, nor has it been sensitive to the meaning of history. It is an interesting
fact that Buddhist philosophy and European empirical philosophy alike acknowledge
only fluid appearances, and, behind them, nothing. The former, however, is pessimistic
whereas the latter is optimistic, and the former is more profound than the latter.
Indian thought has created a remarkable metaphysics, but no science. Science is
a creation of the European West. The creation of science presupposes not only
the independence of reason and proficiency in the use of it, but also a special
sort of attention to the phenomenal world. The mind is not only directed upon
it and adjusted to it, but is also set free from that fear in the face of this
world, which made scientific knowledge impossible for ancient man, tormented as
he was by demonolatry. The original meaning of'holy' was 'taboo', and panic the
first sacred thing.
But as his conscious mind developed man ceased to venerate as sacred this objectified
phenomenal world which menaces him. Thus fearless science and technical knowledge
came into being. In this fearlessness, in this quest for incorruptible truth lies
the majesty of science and its link with the Logos. Science recognizes no taboos
at all; they were due to a diseased state of the mind. Henceforward, man has to
search for the holy, he has to seek for God, in a different sphere, in the spiritual
world, the world of interior existence, not in the object, but in the subject.
The proud philosopher Fichte said that man must have an aim beyond the confines
of this life.
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But one must not think of the other world, the better world which lies beyond
the confines of this life in naturalistic and ob-jectivist terms, though traditional
theology has not been free from that. One must think of it above all as a change
in the direction taken by the conscious mind and in its structure. One must think
of it as the world of spirit, which is not another and different 'nature'.
This world, which I call the world of objectification, denotes a self-estrangement
and an exteriorization of spirit by which it is ejected into the external. There
is no ontological dualism which gives rise to objectification in the same way
that monism does. There is a dualism of modes of existence, of qualitative states
in man and in the world. The distinction between the worlds does not make itself
known through an objectifying concept, but through pure, integral intuition which
penetrates into the secret of existence by an existential act of spirit. According
to Descartes error is due to the will. But from the direction taken by the primordial
will, not only errors in cognition occur, but errors also in die very perception
of reality, in the very construction of worlds. Knowledge and science have their
own worlds, religion has its own world, so have art and politics. This does not
in the slightest degree mean that the world of science is a world of phantasy
and is devoid of reality. It is of immense importance to man as he takes his way
through life, and science plays an enormous part in the liberation of man and
in the development of his powers. This is particularly so in the case of historical
science which sets men free from die illusions and errors of the mind in its less
developed stages.
But die seductive lures which enslave are always lying in wait for man. Such an
enslaving lure which distorts and disfigures science is 'scientism', which is
a conversion of die scientific attitude to the world into something unique which
reigns supreme and alone. Scientific knowledge ought to be set free from die oppressive
weight of'scientism', in other words, from a false philosophy, the
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view of the world taken by materialism, naturalism and positivism. Such a liberating
movement needs an understanding of the secret of objectification.
Is such a theory of knowledge to be called idealism or realism? It would be alike
inaccurate to call this point of view either idealism or realism, because that
would be to state the question wrongly and to express it in terms of the old categories
of thought. It is idealism in one respect and eminently realism in another. Existential
philosophy is the one authentically real philosophy. But it is not the realism
of the old ontological school which was under the sway of objectification and
was a form of naturalism. At the same time it surpasses the idealism of German
philosophy at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But it does this in such
a way that what was true in that idealism enters into it. We are now faced by
the problem of being and existence.
PART TWO
The Problem of Being and Existence
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