History of the 19th Century European Philosophy

Lecture 1 – Introduction
Lecture 2 – Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814)
Lecture 3 – Friedrich Joseph Schelling (Jan. 27, 1775-Aug. 20, 1854)
Lecture 4 – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Aug. 27,1770- Nov. 14,1831)
Lecture 5 – Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Lecture 6 – Max Stirner (1806 – 1856)
Lecture 7 – Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813-November 4, 1855)
Lecture 8 – Friedrich Immanuel Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 24, 1900)

HISTORY OF 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY
© 1999 by Eiichi Shimomissé

INTRODUCTION

Why do we bother to pursue knowledge or the questioning search? More specifically, in particular when such knowledge has no practical or useful relevance to our practical pragmatic everydayness? From the point of view of everydayness and dealing with our mundane concern with everyday practical needs, it seems more likely that instead of pursuing knowledge as such­ truth itself­we would be better off and more successful in our practical lives if the knowledge was instrumental­namely useful and effective for problem-solving­ to make our lives better. (We dare not here ask the question, what is the nature of the better life or the good life.)
Nevertheless, Aristotle said that by nature the human-being pursues knowledge and truth. What did he mean “by nature?” He perhaps means that what makes the human-being human is that predisposition to pursue knowledge also for its own sake. This reduces the level of the question to that of our natural constitution. In this sense, Aristotle’s viewpoint is often characterized as naturalistic. However, this at least helps us to avoid falling into a certain kind of reductionism, in which an explanation is attempted to explicate the pursuit of knowledge by means of something else than knowledge for its own sake, i. e., by means of the elements of practical human existence such as “pleasure,” “happiness,” “desire,” “practical use,” “the well-being of society,” “power or the ability to dominate others,” “control over nature,” and “progress for its matter,” etc.
However, we should not and could not leave the question of the pursuit of knowledge in this manner. Aristotle was not completely satisfied with it at that. Aristotle further elaborates, although he was necessarily naturalistic, that, in our pursuit of knowledge and possessing knowledge itself, we experience pure, intrinsic joy. This joy is to be distinguished from mere sensuous pleasure, though according to Aristotle, sensuous pleasure is one of the joys and perhaps ‘joy” immediate, the easiest, the lowest one. However, that joy or pleasure which “accompanies” the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is not the aim and goal of our pursuit of knowledge, but is a “side effects,” if you will, on our body and sometimes on consciousness; it cannot be the reverse (here we deviate from Aristotle’s position, which holds that the human-being by nature desires happiness (pleasure). Of course, here we are not asking for the cause or the ground for the pursuit of knowledge.
We simply ask ourself how (phenomenologically in particular) the pursuit of knowledge begins, how is it given to us as a concrete phenomenon and what difference the pursuit of knowledge brings about in us in the process.
Let us start describing a most concrete, particular situation of the human-being where one does not pursue knowledge and is quite content with such situation (with a kind of self-conceit in already possessing knowledge) and compare this with the human situation in which we feel the urge to desire, pursue and discover, and possibly even acquire knowledge. As Plato beautifully described this situation in his Symposium, Socrates in the dialogue calls this urge to search for knowledge the “love of wisdom.” On the one hand, this urge in us is driven by the clear awareness that indeed we possess no knowledge. On the other hand, we are led to the search for knowledge that the explicit consciousness of the absence of knowledge directs us to. Intrinsic joy is found in our own pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, in itself as its “value.”
Due to the overwhelming control of natural sciences and knowledge of them, we are very accustomed to the instrumental value of knowledge, which we find useful. However, it is indispensable to note that even in the natural sciences, the search for and discovery of knowledge for its own sake (and not motivated by any particular purpose) is always accompanied by pure joy as an intrinsic value. In this sense, therefore, h fisosophia (philosophy-=love of wisdom and its pursuit) is not for something else, but is pursued for its own sake. Thus, knowledge is to be pursued primarily for its own sake and not for something else (denial of the instrumental nature of philosophical pursuit).
Our next question is then: Why do we study philosophy in a historical perspective? We may perhaps read well the works of Hegel or Schelling or Nietzsche. That is not sufficient to understand the historical development of philosophical inquiry in 19th century philosophy in Europe. This is why we study the history of philosophy. Otherwise, we could leisurely read, say, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind in isolation for a couple of semesters.
Then what is history? Until the 19th century, intellectuals, scholars and philosophers were not interested in history as the domain of investigation, nor did they recognize history as the legitimate domain of reality. Why? For one reason, it is because our intellectual curiosity is directed to nature and its understanding (since the Renaissance in particular) and not to the human-being and its domain of activities (there are always exceptions such as Machiavelli, Pascal, Locke, Hegel and others in philosophy).The other reason is because two mutually inconsistent concepts of time were taken for granted. Thus, the domain of reality called “history” was totally covered up by the self-evidentness (being-taken-for-grantedness) in our understanding. Time is understood in Western “religious culture” (except the Indian and Asian cultures–Zorasterism included— where time was viewed not as linear, but circular) as a linear, uninterrupted development which is supposedly begins with God and Genesis and ends with the Final Judgment. This is called the eschatological concept of time. In this concept of time nothing repeats. The other concept of time taken for granted in the pursuit of natural science when mathematics were applied to the understanding of nature, and pure linear mechanical efficient causality became to be considered the sole principle of reality (=the universe or nature), it is assumed that in time, everything in principle repeats and is repeatable. Nothing new happens, but rather a certain regularity rules among phenomena of nature, thus we are able to discover a law of nature which can and does apply to many phenomena, which are considered essentially the same. (Needless to say, this contention is not consistent with the incompleteness and predictability of scientific law, which also in principle allows change as progress of knowledge.) The celestial bodies repeatedly circle themselves in their own orbits. Four seasons take place one after another. Plant and animal life repeats itself. Only this aspect of Aristotle’s observation of nature was revived (the aspects of value in his conception of nature were ignored). An experiment is possible only under the assumption of this repeated time or repeatable time.
Since the Renaissance, when linear, mechanical causality was accepted as the self-evident principle of reality, this notion of repeatable time (together with linear, mechanical causality) has become overwhelmingly accepted “as self-evident” among the intellectual pursuits in the West. Thus, the eschatological concept of time is pushed aside and perhaps an effort was made to even overlook and forget this eschatological time in the understanding of the universe. When time is understood to be repeatable, there is no way for us to conceive of the portion of reality which flowed in the past as history. History in its principle is supposed to consist in the uniqueness of an event and the nonrepeatability of time, as Neo-Kantians such as Heinrich Rickert made clear. Such understanding came not only from the Judeo-Christian tradition as mentioned above and generally assumed, but also,we must emphasize it has been up to now long ignored that understanding the nonrepeatability and linearity of time is unmistakably rooted in and derived from the “teleological causal” understanding of reality.
History in the primary sense is the history of human activities and incidents resulted from such human activities. Of course, one may say “the history of nature” or “the history of the galaxies.” In this case the concept of history is used in the derivative sense. Therefore, we do not worry about such use.
In the sense of “Geschichte” (history in the sense of what has happened in the past), events which can be called “historical” must involve human actions and activities, whereby the meaning and the purpose or intention of such human actions are crucial to describing the historical “events.” Without taking into consideration these elements of meaning and purpose or intention, any so called “historical events” are in toto indistinguishable from events which merely happen (as natural phenomena). For example, the French revolution occurred in 1789. As a mere event, a mob stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Here we do not know the following: Why they went, their intention, how they got together, or the meaning this event had in the flow of history of French politics and civilization. Amazingly, upon closer examination, the event was described merely as somewhat “violent” movements of people in Paris from the city to Bastille alone and nothing else.
In order to understand the meaning and value of this event we must presuppose in order to describe and narrate it as a historical phenomenon. We neither “create” nor “construct” for our convenience such meaning and value for the purpose of historical narration (history in the sense of “Historie” in German). On the contrary, the historical event, as long as it is historical, hides its meaning and its value behind the superficial phenomenon of a certain event. The genuine task of the true historian is to interpret, take the meaning and value of such an event from the darkness into the light by putting it into the context of historical development. This work of the historian signifies literally what the German word “auslegen” (bring out) primarily denotes.
To “interpret” (auslegen) a phenomenon as historical in this way is to see a certain phenomenon in the relational context of the final causality or the teleological causality.
In the history of Western philosophy, it was Hegel that drew our attention to unrepeatable time and history itself.
What did Hegel attempt to accomplish? Instead of linear, mechanical, efficient causality (causa efficiens), Hegel saw the meaning, the purposefulness and the telos in the understanding of reality. In other words, in reality Hegel rediscovered teleological causality (causa finalis or value) as the principle of reality.
Any entity, any being which exists or existed in reality, according to Hegel, does not happen to be merely by chance. In this case, chance is to be understood not against linear, mechanical causality (which is the basis for mechanical causal determinism), but as chance which is only understood from the meaning and purpose, and signifies ungovernable, ungoverned, unintelligible not by linear, mechanical causality, but by teleological causality. Namely such chance is specifically against the meaning and purpose of reality, teleological causality. On the contrary, any entity, any event which existed, exists or will exist must have some meaning or purpose for it to be. Now the cause is not efficient and mechanical, but teleological cause for an entity to be. Hegel has been misunderstood for too long. From this point of view, too, Hegel’s philosophy must be reinterpreted. Only rediscovering the teleological causality in reality, Hegel was able to deal with history as a portion of reality.
According to Hegel, history is indeed the most important portion of reality which determines whatever happens in the present and possibly in the future (this “determination” should not be understood as by mechanical causality–as Marx understood–, but rather with the emphasis on teleological causality). The concepts of potency and actuality by Aristotle are no longer applied to the repeatable cycle of a biological organism, but now they obtain a totally new significance and role in understanding an unrepeatable and unrepeated portion of reality. Hegel understood that there must be something like the essence or nature of humankind or humanity.
It belongs to the nature of history that history is not synonymous with the experience of past, nor something which has simply passed into the past. In one sense, history can not subsist as a part of reality unless we the moral human beings, understand those events which happened in the past.
It is wrong to assume that history is exhausted by such “Erzählungen” (story-telling) of what happened in the past. In this respect, the so-called postmodern contention of history which intends to reduce all historical phenomena to story-telling shall be found in error. This question must be dealt with in another context (see Phenomenology of the Other and its Priority). Brief as it may be, let us point out that Hegel was absolutely right in shedding light on the historical fact that our understanding of history is not comprehensive and always brings something other with itself. This other cannot be reduced to oneself.
Thus, in the other sense, history is indeed something independent of our story-telling and something which is to be investigated and by means of which we are able to newly discover and understand what really happened historically. History, therefore, can and must be investigated. Therefore, often discovery is made in history. Take for example, for a long time, I was brain washed by the traditional interpretation of Hegel and overlooked this genuine, authentic motivation of Hegel’s attempt. Quite recently, I am more convinced that linear, mechanical causality (causa efficiens), if it should be a principle of reality, must be very limited. Besides causa efficiens, there must be causa finalis, mutual determination, intentionality and even synchronicity in reality. I am more and more convinced with the Humean interpretation of causation and have quite recently come to the conclusion that Hegel tried to discover and understand reality in terms of causa finalis instead of causa efficiens. This would have been totally impossible when history is nothing but a possible totality of story-telling.
In the position in which history may be reducible to story-telling of history, it is implicitly assumed, after the Leibnizian model, that a historical event is not a fact which indeed happened in the past, but is only known to us as a phenomenon dependent on the perspective in which the history is viewed. This is a strange combination of Leibniz’s notion of all possible worlds and the sophists’ relativism. This position also reminds us of Hume’s point of view, in which a universal such as a substance is useless, because we can understand phenomena without assuming any such a thing as substance. According to Hume, it makes perfect sense and is quite sufficient to understand a bundle of impressions or ideas for a substance.
On the basis of the above described, now we may be able to discern what actually was historical and what is told as a story of what historically occurred.
Relationships among so-called historical events have been also misconceived for a long time. In order to discern what belongs to history and what does not, we talk about the significance or importance. And yet, this cause finalis of such a historical event in itself has been completely overlooked in our historical understanding. Instead, we have exerted ourselves in applying causa efficiens to the understanding and explanation of a historical phenomenon. Of course, I do not deny some usefulness of causa efficiens, but this alone will never be able to help us understand what history is all about.
In this context, we must praise Hegel and his insight into this causa finalis (the final or teleological causality) as the principle of historical reality. In short, it may be said that it is Hegel who discovered the genuine principle of reality, that is, of what history is.
Hegel has been criticized in that he tried to see the History of Humankind as a whole. He was also criticized on his view that such a possibility only consists in the influence of Judeo Christian eschatology.
Considering the perspective in which Hegel saw history, we are easily led to the same conclusion as Hegel, that reality must be integrated and unified rather than separate and unconnected. The meaning or purpose always presupposes the whole and its relation to its parts, just as linear, mechanical causality presupposes the relation between cause and effect. Causality (or causation when applied as the logical inference) is a relationship, as Kant correctly considered. In order to establish a certain relationship, it is necessary to have a certain unity. In this sense, Hegel, instead of viewing reality as meaningless, unrelated sequences of bunches of bundles of ideas (like Hume’s view), saw a process of self-actualization of the absolute Spirit which has its own purpose, its goal and its meaning.
Thus, history ,when viewed by one or a group of people as the part of reality which is past, must not be a bunch of insignificant, scattered and unrelated bundles of ideas. On the contrary, there is a unity, there are relationships among them, there is hierarchy of significance and the process of a series of event to tell. ¢Istorein (to tell a story) was indeed the center of history.
History of philosophy, therefore, is the story of the sequence of philosophers who actually accepted the question of the teacher and either elaborated on it, or rejected it or advanced it further. The history of Western philosophy in the 19th century must be understood as an organic whole.
It is not easy for us to comprehend and evaluate the significance of 19th century European philosophy in its proper perspective because we are temporally so little distant from the 19th century. Nevertheless, we may safely say in general that 19th century European philosophy constitutes the peak in the historical development of Western philosophy since the Ancient Greek philosophy. For on the one hand, German Idealism, Hegel’s philosophy in particular, is the ultimate culmination and unification of European Reason.
It is a philosophical culmination of the ultimate principle such that European Reason is so comprehensible and accommodating the principles including that of nonreason that Reason appears no longer merely the principle of two valued logic.
By making the principle of contradiction as the principle of reality, Hegel came so close to the point where European Reason reflects upon itself such that it makes a breakthrough in its own limitation and results in grasping reality in its totality through its historical development. I would like to even contend that Hegel’s philosophy went far beyond the limits of European Reason and discovered a possible direction to what I call the Philosophy of the Other and its Priority.
In this sense, Hegel accomplished not only the total inventory and completion of Western philosophical thoughts, but also opened up a new road to the possibility of choosing and employing principles other than reason more extensively in post-postmodern philosophy. It is Fichte who had already discovered completely anew not reason in the sense of cognitive principle of philosophy, but will and the principle of his philosophical pursuit, although it is also called reason. In Schelling, however, reason was abandoned and replaced by such principles of philosophy as intuition, creative imagination and aesthetic feeling. Schopenhauer thought very highly of Kant’s philosophy and yet he chose the non-rational, to be more precise, the anti rational, “blind” “will” (= World Will which totally alienates itself from cognition of a thing) as the principle of reality and that of its philosophical comprehension rather than reason. Thus, as already evident in the case of Herder, Schleiermacher earlier, in development of the German idealism of Fichte, Schilling and Hegel as well as Schopenhauer who was in opposition to Hegel and his philosophy, several trials in search of a principle other than reason are already evidenced.
Then we must ask ourselves: What is the essential character of 19th century Western philosophy? In order to understand this question, it is necessary to ask the following questions: What happened culturally in Western Europe in the 19th century? Was ist die geistige Situation der Zeit (der Neunzehnten Jahrhundert , to borrow Karl Jaspers’ formulation? How was it related to the preceding century of the Enlightenment movement and what kind of influences did it exercise on the 20th century Western world? What were other domains of cultural phenomena in relation to philosophical ones, which are our main concern.
Let us look at the end of the 18th century in Europe and see what kind of cultural events were taking place first: In philosophy, one year after his death (1779), Hume’s Dialogues of Natural Religion appeared. Immanuel Kant was still active (Critique of Pure Reason in 1781,Critique of Practical Reason-1788 and Critique of Judgment-1790) and Fichte’s anonymously published An Attempt of Critique on all Revelations in 1792 which was first taken as being written by Kant and made Fichte instantaneously famous. Jeremy Bentham published in 1789 Introduction to the Principles for Morals and Legislation. This was the same year in which the French Revolution took place. In 1791, Herder published The Ideas for Philosophy of the History of Humanity and Thomas Paine published his magna opera, The Rights of Man. and The Age of Reason (1794). Not only Herder (by seeing the unity of nature and history with causa finalis), but also Schleiermacher (with his religious philosophy) made a great impression on the contemporary intellectuals.
Politically speaking, Europe was under Napoleon Bonaparte’s reign, in the U.S. Texas and other states joined the Union and in 1781, The first ten Amendments to the Constitution (The Bill of Rights) were ratified. At the end of the 18th century, India and the Far East were threatened by Europeans with colonization for their opium.
In the domain of music, Haydn (his later chamber music and 12 London symphonies as well as his oratorio “Creation”) and Mozart (the last three Symphonies and Six Haydn String Quartets (1785) The Marriage of Figarro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Cosi Fan Tutte (1790)The Magic Flute ) were still active. Against this, Beethoven started studying under Haydn in 1792 and completed his opus 1 Piano Trio in 1795 and Symphony No. 1 in 1799. The great Romantic composer Franz Schubert was born in 1797.
In the field of literature, the period of Skeptical Enlightenment (Voltaire Irene in 1778, Lessing Nethan The Wise) quickly ended, and first the so-called “Strum und Drang,” then Romanticism and Neo-Classicism arose and overwhelmed European literature. In 1761, Rousseau published Julie, our Nouvelle Eloise, while in 1762 Dedrot wrote Le Nouveau de Rameau and Rousseau wrote “Du Contrat Social.” The next year Voltaire wrote Treatise on Tolerance. and Philosophical Dictionary in 1764. In 1765, M. J. Sedaine wrote the play, “Philosophe sans le savoir.” In 1767 Lessing wrote Minna von Barnheim. and yet already Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg had formulated the movement “Strum und Drang” for the first time in 1766. In 1770 Friedrich Hölderlin, the great classic poet, was born in Germany. So too William Wordsworth in the same year in England. Indeed Goethe was contemporary to Kant and was requested by one of his friends to read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, so Goethe (Stella-1776, Italian Journeys-1786, Iphigenie auf Tauris-1787, Don Carlos-1787, Egmond-1788) was active with Schiller (The Thieves-1782, Fiesco-1783, Kabale and Love-1784). Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figarro appeared in 1784 (Mozart’s opera based on it premiered in 1796). In 1789, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence appeared. In the same year, Goethe’s Torquarto and Tasso also performed. It is also interesting to note that in 1793, Marquis de Sade published his La philosophie dans le boudoir. In 1794, Blake published Songs of Experience. In 1796, Wordsworth’s The Borderers appeared. Goethe wrote his poem, “Hermann and Dorothea” in 1797, Heinrich Heine was born, and Hölderlin’s “Hyperion” appeared. August Wilhelm von Schlegel started his translation of Shakespeare in the same year. In 1799, Balzac was born, Novalis’ Heinrich von Otterdingen appeared, Schiller’ trilogy, Waldstein and Schegel’s Lucinde also published.
In the field of fine arts, Gérard, David, and Ingres­the most representative classic painters­ were active, while in the UK Gainsbourgh, Reynolds and other portrait painters painted their works. In Venice, the so-called post-card painters, Cannaletto and Guardi were active. In the U.S., major government buildings including the White House began to be built. At the end of the 18th century, Goya was painting his masterpieces in Spain.
In the field of sciences and technologies, an enormous number of discoveries and inventions took place from 1780-1800. First of all, we must point out James Watt’s invention of the double-acting rotary steam engine in 1782. Together with Matthew Boulton, Watt installed the steam engine in the cotton mill, at Pappelewick, Nottinghamshire. In 1785. Two years later, John Fitch, an American inventor, launched a steamboat! It was the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Louis Daguerre pioneered photography in 1789. Lavoisier, who was executed in 1794, discovered the Table of 31 Chemical Elements in 1790. In America, Ei Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 and mass produced the Musket rifle in 1800. In 1797, J. L. Lagrange published Théorie des fonctions analytiques.
Thus viewed, it becomes obvious that 18th century Western civilization is the period of transition, that of change, that of reform, perhaps the first revolt against the overwhelming rationalism since the Renaissance. It was not reform in the sense that the structure of government or the economic system or the corporate structure was transformed. On the contrary, the principle of reality was radically transformed. A new view of reality (particularly in our society) was opened by removing and bracketting the narrow way of comprehending reality in terms of reason and mechanical causality. Through such a liberation of the narrow interest of human search for knowledge, suddenly the emphasis of philosophical and literary interests shifted from nature to the human-being and society. The metamorphosis from the 18th to the 19th century in Western culture is, limited though it may be, a liberalization of culture from the aristocratic limited few to the more people and expansion of civil society to the bourgeoisie, which the French Revolution ideologically symbolized.
It may be of some interest to point out that the so-called le fin de ciecle (the end of the century) movement at the end of the 19th century. It was the feeling of the end of the real Christian era and even such people as Hegel and Goethe felt that they could not understand what was going to happen in the immediate future, although they felt that something different was coming (cf.my article, “The Crisis of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Crisis”).
Because of the impact of ideology on 20th century politics, Marx and his philosophy seemed to have been overestimated in our era. Considering the nature of his philosophy and paradigm, he is strictly speaking no more than a left Hegelian, although his concept of self alienation of the human-being from oneself which came from Feuerbach’s radical approach to Christianity had a great impact in the further development of the so-called existential philosophy in 20th century European philosophy. Kierkegaard is another philosopher, a right Hegelian, who was able to reach the depth of human existence to essentially actualize the new meaning of Christianity. To Kierkegaard, not reason, but faith in an entirely different and new sense, was to be the principle of philosophy and of our existence.
On the other hand, our awareness of history and historicity made it possible to reflect upon what we have had as tradition in 19th century philosophy. Of course, prior to this period, that is the period of the Enlightenment, the intellectuals defied tradition and tried to see a new way by means of the so-called narrow sense of Reason. This may be considered as the earlier, quite unsuccessful attempt to critically evaluate our understanding of reality. However, we had to wait the arrival of Friedrich Nietzsche for the comprehensive appraisal of European history and its culture. The explicit self-appraisal of European philosophy and culture in history was attempted for the first time in the history of Western philosophy in Friedreich Nietzsche’s thoughts. Nothing cannot be taken for granted, but philosophy makes everything including any presupposition a theme of philosophical inquiry. Asserting the creative power of life, Nietzsche demanded that such concepts as Christian morality and traditional European rational philosophy be exposed to the clear light of truth and reinterpreted as totally meaningless and useless in light of the creative future of humankind.
It is therefore our hope that by this inquiry, we shall learn what was experienced at the end of the 19th century and how such thoughts impact the trends and directions of 20th century philosophical inquiry.
Before, we start investigating Fichte’s philosophy of reflection, however, perhaps it is necessary for us to understand how the philosophical questions were conceived and dealt with from philosophers of the Renaissance to Fichte’s immediate predecessor in German Idealism, Immanuel Kant.
THE BACKGROUND: Historical Development of Western Philosophy from the Renaissance to Kant

It is generally agreed that Western civilization started anew during the Renaissance. Instead of making an exception (at this time, it is not necessary to do so), we, too, start the Contemporary History of Western philosophy with the Renaissance. Why?
Almost all contemporary histories of Western philosophy begin with Descartes, though the reasons are not sufficient to do so. In fact, should we define the contemporary history of Western philosophy as the philosophy of self and self-consciousness, then at least we must say that it begins with Descartes and will end with Kant.
However, we would like to begin with some of the Renaissance philosophers such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Paraclesus, Nicolo Machiavelli, Nicholas Cusanus as well as Ficino and some Aristotelians in Padva. In fact, in the Renaissance, the change in the way we view the universe, from the geocentric to the heliocentric, was an enormous event in the history of the human spirit. However, the change in the pursuit of knowledge from theo-centric to geo-centric and the homocentric approach was more earthshaking.
As we all know, the Renaissance started with the desire and intention of our intellectual life’s change as to its object from God and the church to the secular world of the Ancient cultures and that of their repatriation. In certain areas of our intellectual activities, we had already discovered the Ancient cultures much earlier than the Renaissance. For example, the legal system of Rome was discovered in the 14th century, while mathematics, which was mediated and further developed by the medieval Arabic world, was discovered and introduced via Toledo (Spain) in the 14th century with the help of Jewish intellectuals who spoke both Arabic and Spanish and assisted as translators of these languages.
Massive shifts of interest, discoveries and changes took place in the visual arts, theatre, music, dance, literature, mythology and philosophy of the Ancient worlds. (The pursuit of knowledge may be the best translation of the philosophy until the post-renaissance period‹in the Medieval universities in the Western world, undergraduate studies were divided into moral philosophy‹ethics, economics and social sciences‹ and natural philosophy‹natural sciences‹. At the graduate level, where one could earn a Doctorate degree, there were theology, jurisprudence, and medicine, the former being the theoretical pursuit of knowledge, while the latter two, practical pursuit of knowledge. This distinction may still be found, for example, at Oxford and Cambridge Universities even today.) Not only the clergy, but also many people outside the church were now taught to read and write classic Latin (no longer Church Latin). The ideal of education (paideia) changed in terms of its object (from potential clergies to general, wealthy intellectuals), in terms of its content (from theology and its understanding to that of the well rounded human-being as human (humanitas is the Latin translation of the Greek paideia, which originally signified the Greek and then the Roman who were educated by the culture of that time) and in terms of the means (ancient Greek and Roman culture). In the Ancient Greek and Roman civilization, the object of inquiry was the universe, nature and the human-being, although Aristotle and Neo-Platonists (e.g. Plotinus) considered The Divinity as the center of their ontological investigation. Prior to and during the Renaissance, the interest of the artists were, for example, more directed to human nature (even though they painted or sculpted the Virgin Mother and Jesus as a Child and saints and angels). The landscape and details of the room, human figures and expressions were the foci of the artists. Besides sacred music, much secular music was composed and performed, translated theatre was performed, secular architecture was built.
What then was the primary and uniquely the object of the pursuit of knowledge (=philosophy) in the Renaissance and thereafter?
It was the universe, it was nature and it was the human-being itself. Suddenly, God was no longer the object of our intellectual pursuit of knowledge, although the interest and influence of the church still persisted, He was no longer the dominant object of intellectual pursuit. The most dominant object of our intellectual curiosity and knowledge was and has been indeed nature even to this day. This nature was conceived as the nature, the principles of which are written in mathematical language and only humans who have the ration and rational understanding can decipher the mystery of nature (Galileo). From philosophy (pursuit of knowledge), many so-called natural sciences were born to investigate and pursue knowledge of nature in specific aspects of nature. Yet in philosophical circles in Europe, Scholastic philosophy had still dominant influence. This philosophy was of course theo-centric and was intended to support our understanding of reality other than God.
Against this, many philosophers of the time felt a strong need to articulate true knowledge from false information transmitted from the past. The natural sciences established themselves firmly on the experience of nature and our mathematical, rational ability to ascertain the laws of nature. Some philosophers (Bacon for example) failed to recognize the significance of mathematics in comprehension of nature. Thus, it was of cardinal importance to critically evaluate everything that was considered true, and clearly and distinctly articulate truth from falsehood.
René Descartes appeared at the right time and in the right place. He was well trained in Scholastic philosophy and in mathematics (the founder of analytic geometry) and was intellectually quite sympathetic to both Galileo and Kepler in understanding of the universe. Descartes was caught by a strong impulse to discern the true from the false and ultimately discover the absolute basis for any intellectual pursuit of knowledge. His device of universal doubt, however, led him to the evident knowledge of self and its consciousness. When he was convinced with the dictum that cogito, ergo sum, Descartes made an inexcusable error in believing that, since the immediate givenness of consciousness to itself is indubitable, it is equally self-evident that the existence of such a self is also self-evident, apodeictic truth. By so doing, Descartes was caught deep in the domain of philosophy of self and its consciousness, which resulted in developing Western philosophy only within this philosophy of self and consciousness. Indeed, his intention was to comprehend nature, too, and he even succeeded in providing the basis for the understanding of nature by means of rational knowledge (extension = mathematical, quantifiable mass), but the actual consequence of his philosophy was to trap all philosophical enterprises coming after him within the scope of this dead end street of the self and self-consciousness, at least until Immanuel Kant.
What do I mean by the philosophy of self and consciousness? It is philosophical inquiry to start with the blind, unquestioned assumption of the evidentness of knowledge of self and consciousness of itself, and it is based on the unexamined assumption that all philosophical inquiry is thus based on inner knowledge of self and self consciousness. Hegel was absolutely right when he said that so long as philosophy after Descartes made its cogito (Denken) the principle of philosophy, Descartes was the father of contemporary philosophy. The main reason Descartes and his followers (Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume) were trapped in this inescapable hole of self and self-knowledge of consciousness is because in their approach, Descartes and his followers chose to attack, and solve the ontological questions by way of their investigations on the epistemological domain.
While the rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz) convinced themselves that nature can and must be known to us by reason alone (mathematically and by means of quantifiable masses), the empiricists (Locke, Berkeley and Hume) insisted that the origin of our knowledge of nature must be from our experience, and not reason. Nevertheless, the empiricists, once they defined knowledge, following Descartes, as the relations of ideas, were to investigate the nature of knowledge once again via “ideas” within the domain of our consciousness. It is obvious that Hume ended up with his skepticism that we could neither say yes, nor no about nature itself, for we only know and can explain all knowledge by means of ideas and their relations within consciousness.
It was indeed Leibniz’ “monad” which has no window. Namely, we are able to investigate and know everything with such evidence inside of one’s own consciousness, but we are not able to go beyond the border of self consciousness and communicate with others. Nor is it possible that such consciousness be influenced from the outside world. All the philosophers, whether rationalist or empiricist, who came after Descartes were methodologically imprisoned in self and consciousness. From this perspective, we will be able to understand why these British Empiricists, who intended to secure our knowledge of nature, could not get out from the realm of self and self consciousness (impressions and ideas) and ended up with Humean skepticism. Aiming, too, at knowledge of nature, philosophical enterprise from Descartes through Kant endeavored to provide philosophy with the absolute, indubitable foundation of our knowledge as its method prescribed to investigate only the realm within self and self consciousness, and knowledge of reality as such (=to know nature itself in this case) was forced to abandon the ultimate goal of knowledge itself, while they attempted to find the absolutely knowable self and self consciousness. Kant was no exception, as long as he maintained that what we know is the phenomenal world and the thing in itself is never known to our human intellect. Indeed, the phenomenal world is in a sense no longer within the self, but is projected as on a movie screen, which is far from nature itself, and allows us to not immediately, but only vicariously know nature. In other words, there was no means given to our way of knowing to compare, say, my “idea” of the moon with the moon itself. As the natural sciences did not bother with such a question of the foundation of their knowledge, they immediately were involved in inquiries into a variety of aspects of nature itself rather than their validity. Thus, the fate of making philosophy a scientific inquiry into the foundation of the sciences was already determined by Descartes and we did not have to wait for the Neo-Kantian contention about the nature of philosophical inquiry. However, before we start talking about the Neo-Kantian movements, we must first of all properly understand how Fichte grasped Kant’s philosophy and its problems.

IMMANUEL KANT AND THE END OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHY

Let us briefly discuss the philosophy of Kant, which provided Fichte with his starting point. Kant situated himself in confrontation with British Empiricism and Continental Rationalism. In his pre-critical period, Kant was under the influence of Christian Wolff’s popularized version of Leibniz’ philosophy (without monad) and his standpoint was Speculative Rationalism. In other words, Kant held that genuine knowledge must be rooted in human reason, and experience does not give any appropriate knowledge of nature. Kant firmly believed that knowledge­anything which deserved the name of knowledge­must possess objectivity, i.e., be universally and necessarily valid. Analytic a priori knowledge, whose criterion of truth is contradiction, certainly fulfills this criterion for truth without any qualification. Therefore, he had no problem as long as he lived in the tradition of Continental Rationalism.
However, Kant became well aware of Hume’s philosophy and his understanding of reality which was rooted in two elements: the one was the tradition of British Empiricism, that our knowledge must be also knowledge about nature and this must come from experience alone, i.e., knowledge of the universe­physics, Newtonian mechanics in particular. The other was the radicalization of philosophical approach, that was the philosophy of self in which the starting point and principle were sought in the evident self reflection on one’s own self as the indubitable basis. Hume’s method of inquiry was the extreme radicalization of this philosophy of self, which no longer knows what reality (nature) really is, that Hume ended with skepticism. According to Hume, since our philosophical eye­the eye of self-reflection (introspection) as the method of inquiry­will never be able to provide so much as Locke believed and was never able to get out of consciousness itself, we cannot say (and do not know as its consequence) whether or not our knowledge of nature (the external world from the viewpoint of consciousness) is indeed reality. In fact, sometimes Hume gives the impression that, although what we can know is limited and far less than previously considered, we do not have to have universals, substance, or mechanical causality in reality, but can make our experience of them quite intelligible and explainable. Instead of affirming or denying the knowledge of the universe (as nature) itself, Hume attempted a psychological explanation of our knowledge of the external world, i.e, the universe, thus including such principles as the law of gravitation and mechanical causality. This makes our knowledge of nature merely highly probable, thus knowledge of the universe can no longer be said to be “objective” in the strict sense of necessity and universal validity. Now the center of philosophical inquiry was shifted from substance and causality in reality to the understanding of them purely in consciousness. Although Hume never seriously (=practically) doubted our knowledge of the universe as true (however limited sense it might be), he attempted to “explain” psychologically everything including mechanical causality and the laws of nature. This consequence of Hume’s radicalization of the philosophy of self and Enlightenment philosophy, ending up with universal skepticism was unacceptable to Kant, who was still in the spirit of the Enlightenment and with the faith of reason as the absolute principle of reality. Kant’s grandiose, systematic approach called transcendental philosophy was indeed the last attempt of Enlightenment philosophy to re-establish objectitivity, i.e., the universal and necessary validity of the laws of nature as well as mechanical causality as the principles of the universe as such.
Although Kant humbly and seriously accepted Hume’s challenge itself in his endeavor to argue that such principles as mechanical causality and the laws of nature are merely explainable as psychologically “subjective,” this consequence, of course, Kant could not accept. As mentioned above, Kant must accept the thesis of British Empiricism that knowledge is the knowledge of the universe and he firmly believed that the natural sciences, Newtonian mechanics in particular, are knowledge of nature and possess “objective” validity. Namely, Kant never doubted that such laws of nature must be “objective.” They are, according to Kant’s conviction, not “subjective” in the sense of “personal and relative,” but they must be objective, i.e., they are also universally and necessarily valid.
In other words, for his solution to Hume’s challenge Kant indeed sought that our knowledge in the not trivial, but the most profound sense, must consist of two mutually irreducible elements, that is, the “formal “elements which are to provide the objectivity (=necessity and universal validity) of knowledge and the “material” elements which relate our knowledge to the universe. “Knowledge without form is meaningless, while knowledge without matter is empty.” These material elements must somehow come from and relate to our senses, while the formal elements come from the rational structure of our mind which by definition guarantees the university and necessity in validity. Instead of asking whether or not such objective knowledge of the universe is possible, Kant tried to elucidate rather how and under what conditions such knowledge is possible at all, assuming as a fact that objective knowledge of nature is indeed possible. This philosophical approach is called “critical,” since unlike British Empiricism, Kant did not try to explain the nature of knowledge by means of its origin (tabula rasa and senses), and because unlike Continental Rationalism, he did not attempt to call analytic knowledge the only knowledge with “objectivity” and speculatively develop a philosophical system consisting of this knowledge. On the contrary, Kant was supposed to open the third way independent of British Empiricism and Continental Rationalism and endeavored to elucidate, although his method was logical inference (from the fact that there is objective knowledge of the universe), the conditions of the possibility of objective knowledge of the universe, as long as they are a priori.
Kant’s position was defensible and meaningful as long as his metaphysics is kept in dualism both epistemology and metaphysics, namely 1) knowledge is a composite of the rational form and the material elements given in the sensibility. This is epistemological dualism. Furthermore, 2) his position must be metaphysically dualistic in that it was Kant who tried to see the possibility of reality both (mechanically) causally determined (in the world of phenomenon) and ethically and teleologically “determined” (in the world of noumenon), thanks to human freedom. In Kant’s philosophy, although a solution to Hume’s challenge was found, the so-called dichotomy over (mechanical) causal determinism versus freedom of will became very sharpened. Once again, here too, Kant “distributed” (mechanical) causality to the world of phenomenon (the epistemological world of sciences) and freedom to the world of noumenon teleologically “oriented” or the thing itself which is supposed to be behind the phenomenal world. Thus, Kant also took two mutually inconsistent principles (being and ought) as the basis for this solution of the philosophical a priori. The phenomenon (scientific and cognitive world of nature) and the noumenon (non cognitive, moral reality of the thing in itself) are two realities, which , although they are related, are of two different beings. In this sense, he also may be called dualistic here. Thus, his epistemology is the doctrine of cognitive being (ontologia generalis=metaphysics of nature) and his ethics is dealt with by the doctrine of speculative being–Freedom, Immortality and God– (ontologia speculativa) are unified in not way, but they were rather sharply articulated and distributed to two totally mutually exclusive domains of reality.
In Kant’s philosophy, Fichte saw as irreconcilable those dichotomies between the formal and the material elements of knowledge, between freedom (=teleological causal determination) and mechanical causal determination, and between ethics and epistemology.
Fichte considered these mutually exclusive dichotomies as “faults” of a system of philosophy rather than the strengths of Kant’s philosophy. (In fact Kant himself thought that dualism in his philosophy was an excellent means to overcome both the dogmatic consequences of Continental Rationalism and the skeptic results of British Empiricism.) To Fichte, philosophy as a system of knowledge of the absolute must be consistent and in absolute unity, from which everything else must be deduced by the act of the “I.”
Thus, it is obvious that Fichte saw the incompleteness and inconsistencies of Kant’s system from his own perspective of philosophical problems and attempted to correct those faults in Kant’s philosophical system.
Then, how could and did Fichte attempt to overcome those faults of Kant’s philosophy? First of all, while Kant’s philosophy was more centered around the epistemological questions than the ontological viewpoint, Fichte aimed to reorganize and unify the philosophical system more from the ethical point of view (and yet by “intuition”). That is, Fichte pursued the solving of the problem of accomplishing unity and integrity of the philosophical system by means of the pure, self-reflective, intuitive activities of the I, which obviously may be evidenced first of all in the moral sphere of philosophy.
In other words, in Kant’s philosophy, while reason as the cognitive faculty is dominant in his investigation, Fichte focuses his attention to “will” to answer his philosophical questions, although both Kant and Fichte called cognitive faculty and volition “reason.”
This is the overture of the new direction of Western philosophy in which the cognitive reason as the principle of philosophy was gradually taken over by something else such as “will” (Fichte and Schopenhauer, although they conceived will in two totally different ways), “creative imagination” (Schelling), “intuition” (Schelling), “faith” (Kierkegaard) and “Life” and “Power” (Nietzsche). This shift of the emphasis from the rational faculty and cognition to the non-rational faculty of will or intuition in the principle in 19th century European philosophy must be elaborated upon later in other contexts as it would result in considerable interesting changes in the development of Western philosophy.
For Fichte, Kant already accomplished the task of establishing the transcendental basis of knowledge, although he failed to unify his system. Thus, Fichte conceived his task to correct this fault of Kant’s philosophy.
The birth of German Idealism was motivated to establish the absolute basis of systematical knowledge of philosophy. The boudary of “philosophy of self and consciousness” could not be overstepped, but rather we may say that Fichte attempted to return to the core of such philosophy of self and consciousness not as the source of the epistemological, absolute certainty, but as the source of unity and activity of will. This subtle difference has long been overlooked.

The Contemporary History of the Western Philosophy

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814)
Life
The Early Period:
Johann Fichte was born as a son of a very poor ribbon weaver in the village called Rammenau in Sachsen (Saxony in Eastern Germany). When he was a small child, he learned how to weave ribbon and watch geese and helped his family. Johann was a very unusual child and was able to retell the sermon as he very carefully listened to the preacher ‘s talk. One day, a wealthy farmer from the neighboring village was not able to be to attend the church service on time one Sunday. So someone told him that he should ask that child who attended the geese. As the wealthy farmer heard that child recite the sermon back to him exactly without any problem to him, he was so impressed with his potential that he sponsored this child’s education.
Having graduated from the Gymnasium, Johann Fichte studied philosophy, classical literature and theology at Jena and Leipzig University. When his sponsor died and Fichte’s parents could not provide Johann the financial support to continue his study, Johann Fichte went to Zurich and became a tutor for the children of a wealthy merchant. During his stay in Zurich, Johann Fichte had a chance to get acquainted with an extremely intelligent, strong-charactered young lady called Johanna Rahn and was deeply attracted by her. She later married Johann Fichte and helped him in various ways to further his philosophy throughout his life. Since the parents of the children he tutored were rather vulgar and uninteresting people, Johann Fichte left Zurich and went back to Leipzig in 1790. In order to make his living, he was commissioned to tutor a college student of the well-to-do family in Kant’s philosophy, Johann Fichte for the first time himself studied Kant and his philosophy intensively for this purpose. This encounter of Fichte with Kant’s publications made a decisive influence on Fichte and came to determine his entire life.
In his letter to his then fiancé and later his wife, Johanna Rahn, Fichte wrote, “I have finally acquired a most noble morality and instead of concerning myself with the external things, I am devoting myself to my own inner self. Thus I have been experiencing the peace of mind which I have never before experienced and am living a very happy life.” To one of his friends, Johann Fichte also wrote, “…it is incredulous how profoundly Kant’s philosophy, his moral philosophy in particular, has influenced the total system of one man’s thinking and how decidedly Kant’s philosophy has initiated a revolution in my total philosophical thought. Since I read the Critique of Practical Reason, I am living in a totally different world. The principles that I hitherto believed to be absolutely certain have been totally uprooted and destroyed. What I previously thought to be impossible to explain, for example, absolute Freedom and Moral Obligation are apodeictically demonstrated. An exhaustible joy fills me. It is incredible how great and overwhelming the admiration and the strength to humanity this system gives.”
Next year, Fichte became acquainted with Kant in person in Königsberg in East Prussia (today’s Karingrad). In the hope that his devotion to Kant’s philosophy and his ability in philosophy be recognized by Kant himself, Johann Fichte wrote Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (A Attempt of the Critique of All Revelations) in 1792, in which Kant’s philosophical thought was applied to religious philosophy. Since Kant had not yet published his book on religious philosophy (his Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft appeared in 1798), Kant read Fichte’s work and appreciated his philosophical gift, so much so that Kant found a job tutoring in Danzig and helped Fichte’s work to be published. In 1792 this opus was published anonymously, i.e., but without the author’s name due to some unknown error. Because the position of the book was so close to Kant’s philosophy, the academic world thought that the author of Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung was Kant. Once it was revealed that the book was written by Fichte instead, he became instantaneously famous.
Johann Fichte went back to Zurich to marry Johanna and also got acquainted with Pestalozzi, the famous Swiss pedagogist. During his stay in Zurich, Fichte wrote books on the French Revolution and on the freedom of the press. During his early period, Fichte was deeply involved in practical philosophy.
In 1794 Johann Fichte was appointed as the successor to Reinhold, as Reinhold moved to Kiel University. For five years, till 1799, Johann Fichte was at Jena University devoting himself to the development of his own philosophical system and also exercised a profound influence on his students. On first appearance his first opus looks to be a theoretical philosophy:
Über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre
Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre in 1794.
Further, Fichte wanted to make his system more complete and more intelligible, thus he wrote:
Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre
Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre
Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre in 1797.
Fichte also wrote books on practical philosophy:
Grundlage des Naturrechts nach Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre in 1796.
Das System der Sittenlehre nach der Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre in 1798.
In 1799 the so-called Der Atheismusstreit (the controversy over atheism) took place in Jena whereby the bureaucrats accused Fichte of being an atheist.
Über den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung in 1798.
Johann Fichte argues that the moral order in the world is the most certain proof for the existence of God: The very moral order which is fully active and effective in us is no other than the proof that God exists. We need God solely as the universal moral order and need nothing else in our religion. Beyond and above this universal moral order, according to Fichte, there exists no basis to recognize a Special Being as the (mechanical, efficient) Cause of this universe. Anyone who tries to acknowledge and ascribe Him a certain “consciousness” and “person” in this special Being is to make God rather a finite being without being aware of what he is doing. The self that has consciousness is, according to Fichte, a finite, limited, individual ego.
Against Fichte’s moral argument for God as the Ground for the moral order of this universe (which denies Him consciousness and person, too,), the Government of Kursachsen (Kursaxony), whose capital was Dresden, decided to confiscate Fichte’s books and placed an official complaint to the Government of Weimar that Atheism was taught at the University in Jena, which was a territory of Weimar Republic. In stead of taking a consoling attitude to this political uproar, Fichte was being extremely outraged and wrote a second article with a more radical tone:
Appellation an ad Publikum in 1799
Gerichtliche Verantwortung gegen die Anklage des Atheismus

The Government of Weimar wanted to settle this diplomatic friction rather quietly without both antagonizing the Government of Kursachsen and firing Fichte from the University. Nevertheless, Fichte’s personality did not accept such a procedure (Wasn’t he childish? Yes, Indeed he was.) and he wrote a radical complaint to the Government. Everyone concerned in the Government of Weimar got furious with Fichte and naturally fired him.
In Berlin Fichte wrote books and lectured as a private citizen (he could not get a teaching position due to that “scandal”). During the Berlin period, Fichte tended to be more religious and mystical in his philosophical thinking. The officials in Berlin were friendly to Fichte, people were enthusiastic, and Fichte enjoyed close friendships with such Romantic writers as the brothers Schlegel, Thiek and Schleiermacher.
Fichte wrote:
Die Bestimmung des Menschen
Der geschlossene Handelsstaat in 1800
Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre in 1801
Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters
Über das Wesen des Gelehrten
Die Anweisung zum seeligen Leben oder die Religionslehre in 1806
In 1806 and 1807 Prussia fought against Napoleon and lost the war and Berlin was also occupied by the French army. Fichte gave a series of lectures appealing to Patriotism for the Germans:
Reden an die deutsche Nation in 1808
In 1810 a new university was founded in Berlin and Fichte became professor there.
In 1818 the so-called Freiheitskrieg (The War of Liberation) broke out, Paris was occupied in March and Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. Fichte became a victim of this war, for Johanna Fichte was working as a nurse at the military hospital and contracted an infectious disease from soldiers who were patients there. Fichte also became fatally infected.
Die Tatsachen des Bewußtseins
(his lectures at Berlin University in 1810) in 1817
This is a good introduction to Fichte’s philosophy.
Works
Epistemology and Universal Ontology:
Über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre
Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1694)
Grundriß der Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre (1795)
Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre
Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre
Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1797)
Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800)
Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1801)
Die Tatsachen der Bewußtseins (1810/1817)
Ethics:
Zurückforderung der Denkfreiheit
Über die französische Revolution [1793]
Grundlage des Naturrechts [1796]
System der Sittenlehre [1798]
Der geschlossene Handelsstaat [1800]
Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters
Über das Wesen des Gelehrten [1806]
Reden an die deutsche nation [1808]
Vorlesungen über die Staatslehre [1818/1820]
The Religious Philosophy:
Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung [1792]
Über den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttlichen Wetregierung [1798]
Appellation an das Publikum Gerichtliche Verantwortung gegen die Anklage des Atheismus [1799]
Die Anweisung zum seeligen Leben oder die Religionslehre [1807]
Philosophy

1. Die Wissenschaftslehre (The doctrine of Science)
1. The Objectives
Unfisnished Business of Kant
Completion of Idealism
1.-i. The task unfulfilled by Kant’s philosophy: Radicalization of Idealism:
According to Fichte, Kant’s greatest merit was in his discovery and establishment of Transcendental Idealism (whereby the emphasis is on Idealism). Fichte contended that what Kant had accomplished by Transcendental Idealism was to reverse the philosophical “common sense” orientation such that our thought or understanding (reason) is the source of the universal and necessary validity of knowledge, and not the knowledge’s relatedness to nature (the external world). In other words, Kant elucidated that the idea determines the object and not that the object determines the idea (unlike the assumption of the British Empiricism). Our knowledge does not derive from the external world, but no doubt being related to the external world, our knowledge possesses the universal and necessary validity (as the criterion of its truth) by means of our reason (our mind or consciousness).
In other words, Kant “divorced” the pursuit of knowledge (=philosophy) from its immersion in the external world (nature) and brought philosophy back to the inquiry into the Self itself or consciousness. This is in a senses a regression to philosophy of self and consciousness. Nevertheless, Fichte thought that most philosophers misunderstood the spirit of Kant’s system and intention and adhered to the surface, namely the uses of the words. They were absolved in the thing in itself or the material elements and oversaw that Kant purported the opposite. Kant’s interpreters intended to read their own prejudices into Kant’s philosophy so that they took Kant’s objections for Kant’s thought. In other words, they merely made Kant’s philosophy once again a dogmatism, while Kant had attempted to destroy dogmatism. For example, Reinhold’s interpretation of Kant is a strange conjecture of a naive dogmatism and a decisive idealism. According to Fichte, however, that is inconceivable for the originator of such a great philosophy. Fichte thought that what Kant intended to accomplish in his philosophy was the unfinished business and Fichte’s task was, so he conceived, to radicalize Kant’s position and complete his intention by eliminating the dogmatic elements.

I.-ii. A systematic completion of idealism:
Fichte viewed that the biggest problem of Kant’s philosophy consists in a “cleft” in his system, i.e., the “logical inconsistency” (according to Fichte) in Kant’s philosophy. As Fichte saw it, Kant indeed established the transcendental philosophy to justify the objectivity of our knowledge of nature, and yet he failed to provide the philosophical foundation for Transcendental Idealism itself. What was left by Kant therefore, according to Fichte, was to establish the unity and integration of the system in the transcendental philosophy. The completion of Transcendental Idealism was to Fichte Die Wissenschaftslehre. According to Johann Fichte, in order to accomplish this, he must demonstrate that it is possible to logically deduce the entire system of philosophy from one and the only one principle. This was the subjectivity or “Self.” In this sense, despite Fichte’s contention, Fichte did not perfect Kant’s philosophy as a mere epigonen (imitator and follower), but ended up with developing his own, considerably different philosophy.
2. The Details of Completing Transcendental Idealism:
What was the concrete shape and structure of the completion of Transcendental Idealism?
In the theoretical philosophy, Kant for example takes it for granted that the forms of thought may be applicable to the material elements (objectivity) of knowledge, and yet he did not work out and clarify the ground for its possibility, namely how our understanding which is totally different from its object can be applied to the object so that they would produce an a priori synthetic knowledge. For example, Kant attempted to deduce the category of substance or that of causality from the form of judgment, but according to Fichte, this actually means that the category of substance or the category of causality was not founded on the nature of intelligence, but was obtained from the experience to which Formal Logic applies. In order to authentically understand why reason must think in accordance with the categories, Fichte maintains, those Tathandlungen (the pure activities of the Self or I), i.e., the forms of our thought, must be demonstrated indeed to be the rules of our thinking. In other words, these categories are to be demonstrated as the condition of the possibility of self consciousness. Not only did Kant fail to do this, but he also failed to justify even space and time as forms of sensibility.
Even if Kant might have done this, so argues Fichte, then Kant was not able to provide the ground for and elucidate the origin of the material elements of our knowledge. Unless, before the eye of the philosophizing spirit, objectivity as a whole is “produced,” so argues Fichte, dogmatism can not be completely eliminated. We cannot leave the thing in itself as something totally independent of our thought. According to Fichte, the thing in itself is nothing but that which the subjectivity has to justify and “produce!”
Just as the relation between form and matter of our knowledge has been “modified”, the opposition and differentiation between understanding and senses are to be abolished and to be reduced to a common principle, namely subjectivity. Sensitivity is to be understood now also by the Spontaneity of subjectivity that the subjectivity determines itself.
In his practical philosophy (ethics), so insists Fichte, Kant left many questions unsolved. For example, according to Fichte, the so-called “categorical imperative” is not the ultimate. Therefore, the categorical imperative also to be philosophically justified. The categorical imperative is in itself the principle, but is to be deducible from the other, more fundamental principle. The authentic principle is the imperative of the absolute independence of reason (absolute Selbstständigkeit der Vernunft).
Furthermore, in order to obtain a substantial moral theory and not just a formal ethics, the relationship between moral consciousness and natural impulses must be well elaborated and elucidated.
Thirdly, the relationship between the theoretical philosophy and the practical philosophy in Kant’s thought is untouched by Kant and thus it remained obscure.
What Kant did was that he only distinguished them. This dualism must be overcome.
3. Choice of Philosophical Standpoint (Idealism or Dogmatism?)

Fichte has his own new innovative conception of Idealism apart from Kantian philosophy. According to Fichte, only two logically consistent systems of philosophy are possible, the one is dogmatism or realism and the other is idealism. Namely, the former (dogmatism) attempts to deduce ideas from things, while the former (idealism) endeavors to produce being from thought. Dogmatism is in error regarding its principle (because no one can produce thought from being!). If dogmatism were maintained consistently throughout, then it turns out to be like the system of Spinoza in the sense of materialism.
In this position they cannot escape from causal determinism (and there is no space for freedom of humanity). For everything is of nature or a product of nature and is governed by mechanistic causality. Therefore, dogmatism views spirit as an epiphenomenon of natural process and denies the human spirit the metaphysical and moral autonomy and its immateriality and thus the dogmatism fails to recognize freedom. In reality, thought cannot be produced or deduced from matter, therefore materialism or dogmatism must be erroneous in principle. In other words, being comes from the representation (the idea) while no representation comes from being.
However, Fichte maintains that being can be deduced from the representation, as consciousness (Bewußtsein) is also being (Sein) and yet consciousness is more than being. For consciousness (Bewußtsein) is ein bewußtes Sein (a conscious being). Thus it is obvious, according to Fichte, that consciousness (Bewußtsein) not only contains being but knowledge of being as its moments as well. Idealism can explain dogmatism, but the latter (dogmatism) can not explain the former (idealism). The greatest error of dogmatism is dealing with the empty concepts above and beyond consciousness or self. The concept is empty when it lacks intuitive givenness, but according to Kant, there cannot be intellectual intuition in epistemology (Kant talks about intellectual intuition in Critique of Judgement). Fichte went far beyond Kant’s assertion and contended that there is intellectual intuition which Kant failed to recognize in the human mind. The most pregnant sense of intuition is intellectual intuition which is intuition of the existing self to immediately grasp its own self. (Intuition is a way of cognition in which the object (that which is to be known) is known to the subject (the knower) immediately, I.e., without any mediation.)
Philosophy may be able to abstract and must abstract what is given. Thus philosophy must always behold its object at a higher view-point. However, the correct abstraction is to separate those which appear as a synthesis in our experience. It analyses our experiential consciousness because we must re-construct our experiential consciousness out of its essential elements and it produces the experiential consciousness right “in front of our own eyes.” In other words, the correct abstraction is no other than the actual history of our experiential consciousness. This abstraction with the aim of genetic observation of the self does not go beyond experience, but penetrates into the depth of experience. This analysis of abstraction of experience in philosophy is, therefore, not transcendent, but transcendental, precisely because of the above. Such an abstraction, maintaining the immediate connection with intuition, provides an actual philosophy (die wirkliche Philosophie) in contrast with various formal philosophical systems. By means of remaining within consciousness, i.e., within the self, the significance and advantage of idealism consists in being capable of the correct abstraction without being involved in those empty concepts. This is the theoretical strength of idealism.

The law of morality asserts, “Thou shall be independent.” (Du sollst selbstständig sein!) In other words, independence may be understood as freedom and autonomy of the human-being. Therefore, “You ought to be free and autonomous.” As Kant clearly pointed out, if we as humans ought to be independent, we must be capable of being independent. The ought (Sollen) of being independent presupposes its can (Können). However, if we are of matter or deducible from matter, we are not able to be independent. Therefore, idealism, seen from the practical point of view, is the only philosophical point of view which is consistent with the moral concept of “ought.” From a different way of looking at this, we may say that one who adheres to realism has not yet elevated himself/herself to being free and autonomous, thus to the domain of morality. For in order to be able to know that you are free, you must first of all liberate yourself. Idealism can demonstrate that the idealist is free, and yet to be an idealist it is necessary to liberate oneself as an autonomous agent, to thereby be able to fulfill the moral obligation. “Those who fulfill the moral obligation, and who are free, are those who choose idealism for the sake of freedom. What kind of philosophical position one chooses depends upon what kind of human-being she/he is.”

Was für eine Philosophie man wähle, hängt sonach davon ab, was man für ein Mensch ist: Denn ein philosophisches System ist nicht ein todter Hausrath, den man ablegn oder annehmen könnte, wie es uns beliebte, sondern es ist beseelt durch die Seele des Menschen, der es hat. ‹Die erste Einleitung zirr Wissenschaftslehre [What kind of philosophy one chooses depends upon what kind of human-being one is. For a philosophical system is not a “dead” utensil which one could reject or accept as if it were arbitrary. On the contrary, the philosophical system is enlivened by the human soul that one possesses.]

On the other hand, according to Fichte, it does not repudiate idealism even if the law of morality demands the reality of the external world and that of other spirits, for idealism does not deny realism, namely the reality of everyday life. Idealism explains realism not as the ultimate point of view, but as the necessary viewpoint for our mundane way of life. Contrary to idealism, dogmatism is an attempt to explain the philosophical viewpoint from the vulgar point of view. Idealism is related to the philosophical explanation while the mundane consciousness is to dogmatic realism.
Fichte contends idealism is the only defensible, satisfactory viewpoint both theoretically and practically. Just like the natural impulse and the moral volition in human action, both realism and idealism are rooted in Reason. Idealism is the ultimate philosophical position because idealism is able to explain realism, while dogmatism cannot explain idealism.
4. What is the Science of Knowledge or die Wissenschaftslehre?
What is the nature and aim of the Fichtean Wissenschaftslehre (the doctrine of science = Science of Knowledge)? Die Wissenschaftslehre is the authentically radicalized idealism and elevates Kant’s philosophy to the level in which the science of knowledge becomes an evident and intuitive science as the philosophical basis for the transcendental philosophy. This evident science (Fichte’s philosophy) seeks to eliminate the dualism of intuition and thinking on the one hand and dualism of knowledge and volition on the other so as to attain absolute monism. In other words, this evident science demonstrates both these dichotomies as deducible from one and the only one principle, namely the activity of the sole ego (die Tathandlung des einzigen Ichs).

Why this evident science is called die Wissenschaftslehre is because it adequately and ultimately answers the question,
How is knowledge (Wissen) possible?
and
How is experience possible?
This is not the science about “fact”, but the science about “knowledge” (die Wissenschaft von Wissen). In Kant’s terms, it is the transcendental philosophy. This “knowledge” does not include our everyday practical knowledge and common-sense knowledge, but exclusively deals with the knowledge of sciences. To Fichte, this knowledge (Wissen) includes not only common sense but the totality of all the scientific disciplines. Therefore, die Wissenschaftslehre is to intuitively elucidate the structure of our consciousness functioning both in our mundane life and in all the special sciences. Die Wissenschaftslehre deals with the necessary ideas or the necessary actions, while the other special sciences deal with arbitrary (willkürlich) ideas or action (=behavior). For example, we can arbitrarily represent the idea of triangle or circle, while the idea of space for instance is necessary and cannot be arbitrarily abstracted. Die Wissenschaftslehre intends to deal with those necessary ideas (=representations).
Why did intellect come to term with sensitivity?
Why did intellect come to intuitively know space and time?
Why did intellect create such specific categories as substance and causality?
Kant adequately described the activities of the intuitive spirit and the speculative spirit, but as answers to the above questions, these activities are to be demonstrated as necessary and to be deducted from the basis of all consciousness, i.e., from the Tathandlung des absoluten Ichs. Die Tathandlung is contrasted to die Tatsache. Die Tathandlung is also called pure activity. The self is according to Fichte nothing but this pure activity of the self or ego. Die Wissenschaftslehre deduces everything systematically from the self as the pure activity (Tathandlung). the highest pure activity of the self forms three principles.
The Tasks of The Wissenschaftslehre (Science of Knowledge)
(1) the Tasks Kant had left unsolved (viewed from Fichte’s viewpoint)
a) Radicalization of idealism
b) Systematization of idealism
both of which is supposed to lead to the completion of idealism
(2) The Details for The Completion of Philosophy of Idealism
Theoretical Philosophy
Form and Matter
Form
The forms of thought (=Categories)
The forms of sensibility (Space and Time)
Matter
That which is affected through senses by Thing itself
`
Understanding and Sensibility
Practical Philosophy
The origin of the affirmative proposition
The relation between the Moral Consciousness and
the Natural Impulse
The Relationship Between theoretical and Practical Philosophy

(3) Choice of Philosophical Stand.
The Theoretical Justification
The Practical Justification
The Choice of either
Realism (Dogmatism)
or
Idealism
(4) Nature of Wissenschaftslehre
II. The Three Basic Principles (Die drei Grundsätze)
The highest forms of Tathandlung take three distinct Principles. They are led by the need for self reflection. In the case of thinking, What does the self necessarily do? It is the fact that in case of thinking (being conscious of) anything, the I inevitably thinks (is conscious) of one’s own self and that we are not able to abstract this I or self from this activity at all.
That, I think, means either that the I affirms my self or that the I posits my self. Here it becomes obvious that thereby the affirming I and the affirmed I become apart, the positing I and the posited I, the thinking I and the I being thought of, distinguish themselves within the I or ego. This means further that the I or self is the subject and the object at the same time. The nature of self consciousness consists in the very identity of the representing and the represented. Such pure I or self is not a fact (Tatsache), but an activity (Tathandlung). this activity (Tathandlung) takes place unconsciously and it is by intellectual intuition that the self is aware of this unconscious pure activity. This is the meaning of the First principle. The First Principle says,

Das Ich setze ursprünglich schlechthin sein eigenes Sein.‹Grundlage, p. 98
[The self primarily and directly posits its own being.]

That is, “the I or self (=ego) posits itself”(Das Ich setzt sich selbst. [p. 96]), or more simply, “I am”, (Ich bin. [p. 96]). The nature of the self is no other than its activity that the I posits itself as my own being. The Cartesian “I think, therefore I am”, as well as Kant’s “synthesis” are this Tathandlung itself. Logically speaking, from this Tathandlung, the principle of identity ( A=A ) is deduced. In the categories, Kant’s category of reality may be deduced from this.
This First Principle is that by which the I thinks of itself, and yet in the fact of our experiential consciousness, together with the I’s positing itself, something other, “something opposite and foreign” comes to appear. Needless to say, what is something opposite is no other than opposite to the I itself (for nothing else does exist).
Thus The Second Principle states:
“Against the I the non-I posits itself”.
From this Second Principle, the logical Principle of Contradiction is deduced and the Category of Negation is deducible.
The First Principle and The Second Principle are to be reconciled. Since both the I and the non-I are opposing each other within the (original) I itself, they are to be posited as mutually limiting. In other words, they are to be posited as mutually annulling its own portion, i.e., they are to be posited as being divisible (teilbar).
Thus The Third Principle states:
“Ich setze im Ich dem teilbaren Ich ein teilbares Nicht-Ich entgegen.” [p. 110].
From this Third Principle the logical Principle of Reason (der Satz des Grundes), for that principle contains the reason for the synthesis and unity of the I and the non-I. The Category of Determination (die Kategorie der Bestimmung) is deducible from this.
Simply, the I (without its opposing non-I) as such and the non-I (without its opposing I) as such alone are indeterminate, infinite. By the Third Principle, they are now determined as the divisible I and the divisible non-I and being posited as opposite, they are now mutually determinant and in consequence determined, definite. This is what Kant called the Category of Limitation.
Those three Categories which are deducible from the three Principles belong to The Categories of Quality (Reality, Negation and Limitation).
The I that is the object of the intellectual intuition is the I which serves as the Ground of all beings, and is by no means an individual I.
It is the I-ness, the Spirituality as such (die Geistigkeit überhaupt), the Eternal Reason itself (die ewige Vernunft).
This I as the Eternal Reason is both common to and the one with every I that is. It appears in every thought and exists in it as its ground. To this absolute I an individual I is merely its accident (die Akzidenz), its means or its particular expression. this absolute I is pure activity and not a Substance. The pure I could not be conceived as an entity existing before this pure activity. Being is the accident and the result of this pure activity. The pure activity of the I is primary, the substance is secondary. In Goethe’s Faust in Studienzimmer Szene (1224-1237), Faust opened with the beginning of the Gospel according to St. John in the New Testament, and wondered about the proper translation for the Greek word, “Logos” in the context of “In the beginning was the Word (Am Anfang war das Wort [Luther’s translation]). Instead of “the Word”, Faust tried, “Meaning” (Sinn), then “Power” (Kraft), then finally he settled on the word “Action” (Tat). According to Fichte, this Tat is no other than his Tathandlung, the pure activity of the absolute I.
The three activities expressed by the above Three Principles are isolated, mutually independent activities of the I. To the contrary, these three positings (Setzungen) are but one and encompassing, total activity. It is the beginning of the total system of the unconscious various activities and the inquiry into these various activities is the task of the Wissenschaftslehre.
In the Wissenschaftslehre the thesis (=the position of the I), the antithesis (=the position of the non-I), and the synthesis (=the position of the I and the non-I in mutual limitation) repeatedly appear to elucidate Fichte’s thought and this is the very forerunner of Hegel’s dialectic. This may trace back to what Kant called “eine artige Betrachtung”, his Categories. If we may go further back, we may find it in Jacob Boehme.
Within The Third Principle, there are two propositions included:
1) Das Ich setzt sich als bestimmt durch das Nicht-Ich.
(The I posits itself as determined by the non-I.)
2) Das Ich setzt sich als bestimmend das Nicht-Ich.
(The I posits itself as determining the non-I.)
1) deals with the cognitive activity of the self, while 2) deals with the practical activity of the self.
III. The theoretical I (the I as cognitive faculty)
One of the two propositions,”the I posits itself as being determined by the non-I” which are
contained in the Third principle purports the cognitive act of the self. Furthermore, this proposition contains two more propositions:
1) “The non-I determines the I.” In other words,, the I is “affected” by the other, namely “The I suffers(leidet=is acted upon) by the non-I”.
2) “The I posits itself”, i.e., “the I determines itself”, that is,
the I posits by itself its own determination. Namely,
“The I is active (=tätig)”.
These two propositions are to be reconciled in such a way that a portion of the I is viewed as determining, while the other portion of the I is viewed as being determined. Needless to say, this is based on the Third Principle that reveals that the I is divisible(=teilbar). This “being divisible” means “being capable of quantity.” That one portion of the I is viewed as determining, while the other portion of the I is viewed as being determined is the same as the I posits in itself the negation in as much as posits in the non-I the reality, i.e., the same reality that is negated in the I is to be posited in the non-I. from here the Category of Quantity is derived. Quantitatively viewed, the being acted upon (=leiden) of the I is no other than the decrease of being active of the I. Being acted upon (=leiden) is a certain quantity of being active, i.e., that of the I. Unless the I is active, it is acted upon, or unless the I is active, the non-I is active. In short, the non-I is after all a portion of the I itself. Fichte tried to demonstrate this relationship of the I and the non-I by means of the analogy between the light (das Licht) and the darkness (das Finsternis), Reality, Negation and Limitation. Thus from the Limitation as one of the Categories – the Third Category of Quality, the Categories of Relation are to be derived.
In the propositions, “The I is acted upon by the non-I” and “The I is active”, the relationship between the I and the non-I are carefully examined, then the Three Categories of Relation, namely, 1. Mutual Determination, 2. Causality, 3. Substance,
1. The Category of Mutual Determination (Wechselwirkung):
The Reality, once negated in the I, is posited with equal quantity.
As determinatio est negatio is said, between the I and the non-I the determination is mutually done by negation.

2. The Category of Causality:
The cause of the I’s being-acted-upon is the non-I, and as its result,
the I’s being-acted-upon (suffering=leiden) is produced.
Thus the Category of Causality is derived.
3. The Category of Substance:
The being-acted upon (leiden=suffering) of the I is the limitation of the I upon itself.
Since the I’s being-acted-upon (suffering=leiden) is viewed as an accident at its very portion, the activity of the I is fundamentally the substance. Thus from this the Category of Substance is derived. So subsist the necessary relationships among the three Categories of Relation which are derivable therefrom.
Furthermore, these categories represent three philosophical positions:
1) In view of Causality,
Dogmatic Realism, e.g., Spinoza’s philosophy.
2) In view of Substance,
Dogmatic Idealism, e.g., Berkeley’s philosophy.
3) In view of Mutual Determination,
Critical Idealism, Kant-Fichte’s philosophical system.
That the I possesses Substantiality, while the non-I possesses Causality, can be viewed also as these two functions contained the (absolute) I, or this can further construed as the two, opposite directional powers. This power as a whole is the striving to infinity and it is also said to be the limitless productive power (Produktionsvermögen).
Compare with Kant’s distinction of Imagination;
Die Einbildungskraft
die reproduktive Einbildungskraft = Synthesis by association in accordance with empirical rules.

die produktive Einbildungskraft = Spontaneität.
Its effects: Schemata
The Medium to mediate categories and perception between concepts and intuition
The effect of the productive imagination is the object as such. The totality of the (external) reality is produced by this imagination.
Ohne diese wunderbare Vermögen läßt sich gar nichts im menschlichen Geiste erklären, und auf welches dürfte sich gar leicht der ganze Mechanismus des menschlichen Geistes gründen [Grundlage, p. 208]).

The production of the productive imagination is prior to our conscious activities and unconscious activities. Therefore, we believe that objectivity (the external reality) appears to be discovered. The various representations are the various steps of the unconscious productivity. Thus, from the pure activity of the I, namely from the productive imagination, the fact of consciousness in general must be explained. This Fichte called “die Deduktion der Vorstellung”.
The Deduction of Representations
1) Feeling (Gefühl) or sensation (Empfindung)
i.e., “In-sich Findung”, to find in itself (the I itself). However, The I or self finds (this) as something other and yet finds in itself. In sensation no distinction between the being conscious and the being-conscious-of.

2) Intuition (die Anschauung).
When the I reflects upon its own sensation, and posits that which limits the I and looks at it, this act is Intuition (Anschauung), in which the non-I is intuited, and what is intuited appears as if it were the product of the non-I.

3) The reproductive imagination (= das Nach-bilden).
Taking into itself the intuition the I reproduces(nach-bilden) the intuition. its product is a “picture” (das Bild), i.e., das Nachbild to be exact. While this Nachbild is our representation, its original (das Vorbild) is the thing in itself. Here the thing in itself (das wirkende Ding) and the picture (das Bild) are distinguished. Thus the I reproduces (pictures) the Intuition (its own product as the non-I) in itself. In other words, the I consciously reproduces what the I unconsciously produced. Thus, while the productive imagination produces reality, the reproductive imagination produces representation.

4) Understanding (der Verstand):
According to Fichte what produces the Categories is also imagination. Understanding simply makes the categories applicable to the laws. Fichte even argues that Hume was right in maintaining that Causality is a product of imagination, although Hume erred in failing to recognize the objective validity of causality.
Kant viewed the Categories as the primary forms of thinking, i.e., that the Categories originate from Understanding, and he had to elaborate in the Schematism the Categories in conjunction with productive imagination in order to make the objective application of the Categories possible. In contrast, according to Fichte, Kant was right in the lawfulness of the Categories, and yet erred regarding the origin of the Categories. The Categories are not the products of Understanding, but they arise at the same time as objectivity, (external) reality and solely on the basis of the productive imagination.
Space and Time, too, according to Fichte, have their origin in imagination. While Kant discovered Space and Time as the a priori forms of intuition, Fichte attempts to deduce a priori Space and time. As a result, they are demonstrated as existing in the I.
Understanding solidifies the fluid intuition by means of concepts so that by understanding, the product of imagination becomes objectivity, the (external) reality.

5) Judgment (die Urtielskraft):
Judgment is the free ability (das freie Vermögen) of reflection. It is the ability whether or not to direct reflection to a certain object. It freely abstracts a certain object of understanding and it is an ability to, at will, connect or separate certain characteristics (Merkmale).

6) Reason (die Vernunft):
While understanding is the ability to abstract a certain objectivity, Reason is the ability to abstract objectivity itself as a whole. Reason is conscious of itself as the ability of abstraction which does not direct itself to a particular object. it is the I in its absolute, pure subjectivity. The significance and ability of Reason is Self-Consciousness. The freer Reason becomes from objectivity, the closer the empirical I comes to pure self consciousness.
IV. The Practical I (Das Praktische Ich)
The deduction of the various representations reveals the various steps of our cognition:
Sensation
The Sensory Intuition
Reproductive Imagination
Understanding
The Spiritual Judgment
Reason
In the section on theoretical philosophy, Fichte did not explain why the I, hindering itself from going to the infinity of its own self, goes back to its self. In order that the consciousness or cognition is formed, it was necessary to “give” or “produce” within itself the first limitation or hindrance (Anstoß). By so doing, Sensation was produced, and on that basis Understanding through reflections, the objective world was “built” or produced. Unless, therefore, the I limits its own infinite activity, there would be no representation, nor objectivity itself.
Why does consciousness, representation, or the world exist at all? “Where did the primordial non-I come from? Where did the hindrance (Anstoß) come from which hinders the I from going to infinity and has it return to the I itself?”
As long as we remain within the domain of the theoretical I, we are not able to answer these questions. For the theoretical I itself was born from encountering that hindrance. This hindrance (der Anstoß) has to be deduced, which is only possible in the domain of the practical I. The Primacy of the Practical Reason that Kant emphasized will be able to do so.
To become the theoretical I by limiting itself is, for the I, to become the practical I. There are the ability of representation and the world of representation in the theoretical world because we, as the practical Is, provide ourselves with the possibility of fulfilling the moral obligation. Why we are Intellect is because we may be able to be Will. We exist and, in consequence, recognize (the world), because we must act, and morally act. (To will and to act, it is necessary to have its object to “act upon.”) To act means to give the form to its matter, to “process” and modify objectivity. The objective world is but the means to accomplish our moral end. Thus, “the objective world is the sensory matter for our moral obligation.” It is not possible for the practical I to act, unless there is the objective world to act on. In other words, unless there is a hindrance, unless there is the non I, the practical I cannot act. Thus, the hindrance (der Anstoß) is deduced.
Moral obligation is the one and the only one in-itself (das An sich) in the phenomenal world (the moral ought is the form!). That is to say, genuine reality in the phenomenal world is this moral ought. “The so called Being in itself (das An sich) of the thing is precisely that which we produce (as its form) from that very thing. Objectivity exists in order to be gradually abandoned, because objectivity exists to be processed and modified so that the activity of the I may reveal itself.
By means of the same explanation as the necessity of the external world becomes clear, it becomes apparent that the infinite I diverges itself into many empirical Is’ or into individuals. By the same token we now understand why the infinite I does not immediately actualize its own plan, but has the finite spirits do so as its means. In his later works, Fichte called this infinite I “the universal Life” (das allgemeine Leben) or “the Godhead” (die Gottheit). The moral act can only be performed by the finite, individual I. Without hindrance, i.e., resistance, there is no act, without war (=moral conflict), there is no morality, according to Fichte. Needless to say, this individuality must be overcome (and made into an infinite I) by the achievement of the moral act, for the very reason of which there must exist the individual.
Morality is to overcome both the inner and outer nature.

Now, what does Fichte mean by “nature?” In the practical I, there are to be clarified the various steps of impulse or drive (Trieb). This Trieb (impulse) is the inner nature. The practical I constitutes the system of necessary impulses just like the theoretical I did. According to Johann Fichte, the I is a infinite strife or endeavor (of activity) = ein unendliches Streben. When the endeavor is posited by the I itself as the inner, subjective one, it is called drive or impulse (der Trieb). When this Trieb arises solely out of the I, then this drive is related to and directed toward the I alone. However, the nature of the I consists in reflection, thus the I’s drive is the drive for reflection. The reflection needs its object and its drive is the drive for representation (der Vorstellungstrieb), whose activity does posit the object. That is, therefore, the drive to produce reality (der Produktionstrieb).
This drive for reality is called yearning (das Sehnen), it is thus, further, the drive for satisfaction (der Befriedigungstrieb). This is accomplished when there exists a harmony between the drive and the act. When not matched, dissatisfaction is felt. Sometimes the act to satisfy a particular drive itself a drive. That is the endeavor which discovers satisfaction in its own act itself and not by any consequence. This absolute drive (der absolute Trieb) is der Trieb um des Triebes willen, i.e., das Streben um des Streben willen. Fichte called this den sittlichen Trieb (=the moral drive or impulse). This is in itself the practical I itself. thus various drives are derived. Der kategorische Imperativ means the absolute Law for Law’s sake, “Du sollst…!”

das Ich=das Streben
(I = striving)

der Trieb
(instinctive drive, which is the inner nature)

der Reflexionstrieb = der Vorstellungstrieb
(reflective drive = the drive for representation)

der Produktionstrieb
(das Sehnen)
(desire or productive drive, whose object is the outer nature)

Befriedigungstrieb
(The drive for satisfaction)

der Trieb nach Harmonie zwischen Trieb und Handlung
(the drive for harmony between drive and action)
der absolute Trieb
der Trieb um des Triebes willen
(das Streben um des Strebens willen)
(The absolute drive or the drive for the sake of drive)

der sittlicher Trieb
(the ethical drive)

das praktische Ich
(the practical I)
The primordial I is the I that is striving for infinity. Thus, the practical I is the bridge, the mediator, between the theoretical I and the absolute, infinite I. That is, the I who is in itself not infinite is striving for becoming infinite.
Among obligations, there are universal obligations and mediated particular obligations.
obligation
unconditional or universal obligation
mediated particular obligation
By starting with the immediate, highest principle, the task of the Science of Knowledge is to overcome the dualism between the intuition and thinking, that between cognition and will. Thus, once it is accomplished, the Science of Knowledge is completed.

2. Morallity (Sittlichkeit) And Jurisprudence
In Fichte’s philosophy, the Non-I possesses a negative significance in that it’s role is to disturb or hinder the activities of the I. In Fichte’s system, in this sense, the Non-I or Nature cannot become a philosophical theme as such.
Therefore, there is no Philosophy of Nature in Fichte’s philosophy.
The areas to which the principles of the Science of Knowledge is applicable are such spiritual aspects of reality as Morality, Jurisprudence, History and Religion.
1) MORALITY.
The principle of morality demands to govern the sensory impulse by means of the pure impulse, the absolute impulse (=the impulse for the impulse sake, conf. above). Our sensory impulse, being directed to the fulfillment of pleasure and leisure, makes us dependent on the object (= the external world, the outer nature, = the Non-I).
Contrary to this, the pure or absolute moral impulse, being directed to the self and the pure self satisfaction, pursues the industriousness labor and independence (of the outer nature). In our moral pursuit, the pleasure is not allowed to be the object of our behavior. Morality is the activity for the sake of activity. Just as Kant held, Fichte, too, maintained that, should our will or action produce pleasure by chance, such a will or action cannot be called “moral.” Our moral will or act must be pursued only for the sake of the moral ought.

Das radikale Böse ist die Trägheit!
Die Trägheit (laziness) is the volition which does not heighten itself to the clear consciousness of moral duty and freedom beyond the natural impulse of self preservation. For a truly moral agent, there is no such a thing as leisure (Trägheit) or rest. An moral action will incessantly arouse the next. The moral imperative would be:
Be Independent, behave autonomously and liberate oneself: Make sure that one ought to make each action in the series of actions such that such a series of action will ultimately result in the self’s becoming autonomous.

Fichte’s view of morality is well represented by Goethe’s words in Faust,
“Werd’ ich beruhigt je mich auf ein Faulbett legen, So sei es gleich um ich getran!”
[If I would soothingly lie on the easy chair, I would have finished!] (Faust I. 1692-1693)
The above is the formal, universal moral principle.
Now, needless to say, each individual moral person is given a task peculiar to oneself by the world order. Each individual person ought to do what only that individual person can and ought to do.
Thus,
Do what is one’s own moral task, one’s own ethical share!
Going beyond the formality and abstractness of Kantian moral imperative, Fichte attempted to provide a more concrete imperative peculiar to each individual moral person by establishing the principle of the individual’s self independence.
In order for the self of a concrete moral individual person to attain the freedom, there are 4 stages:
1) At the beginning, freedom exists only in the consciousness of natural impulse. Namely, freedom comes into being, only if one reflects on various possible alternatives of action, this freedom is formal.
2) There is a condition (=freedom) in which one is able to escape from the natural impulse by means of the maxim (self-given law) of one’s own happiness.
3) In this higher stage, one becomes excited and in a sense blind such that one is to heroically sacrifice oneself. It is the condition in which one will act selflessly, i.e., nobly, out of simple inclination.
4) In this stage of the genuine morality, paying an attention to the moral principles, one will act out the moral duty out of the duty itself, and must steadily be conscious of morality.

In order for a human being to free oneself from the laziness (Trägheit) as the original sinn (das radikale Böse), one needs to have an ideal example of moral action. The ideal form of freedom by a genius individual is necessary to be shown to us.
Such an ideal example may be found among the founders of the great religions (e.g., Christ or Buddha). The moral conviction of a religious founder is widely circulated by the church, but the dogmas of the church are to be viewed rather as symbols and not as the doctrines themselves. Therefore, the church is a kind of convenient and temporal institution for morality and die Notkriche (this temporally necessary church) should be taken over by the Church of Reason (die Vernunftkirche) through our moral philosophy.
Fichte established a system of duties or moral obligations.
The end of the moral principles is Reason as such, whereby the purpose of the moral principles is to have the state or government of Reason appear in the midst of the world of sensibility. The means to fulfill this end is the particular, finite self or the empirical individual person. The realization of this purpose depends upon this means’ having the right constitution. Thus, the moral duties must be related both to the end and to the means.
The moral duties
I) conditioned or mediated duties (the means)
I-i) universal moral duties
I-ii) particular moral duties
II) unconditional or immediate duties (the purpose)
II-iii) universal moral duties
II-iv) particular moral duties
I-i) The universal, conditional moral duty:
This is each individual’s moral duty and yet it must be universal.
In order for an individual to live and work as the means for the moral principles, the self preservation of the individual is necessary as a moral duty.
There is a great difference between the self preservation as the right and the self preservation as the moral duty. The former consists in the self preservation to attain the consequences or pleasures of an action, while the latter consists in the self preservation in order to morally act in accordance with the principles of morality, utterly independent of the consequences or pleasures of an action.
Therefore, suicide, for example, is against the principles of morality. (System der Sittenlehre, S. 263-8) According to Fichte, suicide is regarded as unethical (not from the religious reason).

I-ii) The particular, conditional moral duties:
These are moral duties related to each particular individual. In order to act for the end of Reason, one ought not to simply act, but act systematically (plannmässig), i.e., one ought to choose the conditions appropriate to oneself ( in accordance with one’s social standing, e.g. one’s vocation and position, circumstances and class), thus in the moral world, it is one’s particular moral duty to choose one’s own standing and vocation, and yet it ought not be chosen by others or by one’s inclination, but by oneself out of pure duties.

II-iii) The universal, unconditional moral duty:
The moral duties which are immediately related to the ultimate, moral ends. They are universal. In the world of sensibility, Reason must govern each individual individually. They are the duties to others as the humans. Thus,

Behandele den anderen seiner moralischen Bestimmung gemäß!
In other words, this means, “One must not harm others!” For the primary condition of the morality is freedom, so to treat others as moral entities means to treat them as free beings. In order to treat others as moral agents, one must consider to not harm others’ lives and properties. This is the universal, unconditional moral duty.
Do not harm others’ lives and properties!

II-iv) The particular, unconditional moral duties:
They are the moral duties in regards to the ultimate end and yet they are particular. They are particular, as long as they are concerned about the social standing, vocation. Fichte discussed in detail about the duty of the married couple, between parents and children, that of the scientist (=the service to the science with love of truth, i.e., honesty), of the priest (=the ideal example of moral actions), of the artist (= not to be an artist, unless you are a genius, for no moral imperative can command the aesthetic feeling) and of the bureaucrat (=justice). Fichte distinguished among the vocations, the high and the low vocations, namely
the lower vocations are those which work on nature such as producers (farmers, miners, fishermen, hunters), manufacturers (craftsmen) and merchants, while

the higher vocations are scholars, priests, artists and bureaucrats, who work on the group of Rational beings.

2) JURISPRUDENCE
Regarding his philosophy of law, Fichte held the law of nature quite independent of morality (Kant held the same position, although Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechts (The Foundations of the Natural Law – 1798) appeared before Kant’s book on the natural law).
According to Fichte, the jurisprudence cannot be deduced from moral laws. The moral law can sanction a certain concept of jurisprudence and yet it cannot produce it.
A law is valid quite independently of morality. While a law allows to exercise a certain right under any circumstance, morality sometimes forbids it. While the moral law under any circumstances requires good will and would not allow anything else than posited by good will, the law is valid without good will. Jurisprudence is concerned with expression of freedom in the sensible world. That is, such an expression is an external behavior, to which the law is related.
The law can coerce, while morality cannot. The law is concerned about the behavior in the world of senses and is not concerned with “intention” (die Gesinnung) which constitutes the core of morality (and not the consequence or pleasure that the action will bring about).
For philosophical justification, it is necessary to deduce the law as the necessary behavior of the I, namely as the condition for the self-consciousness. According to Fichte, the I must posit itself as a finite Individual, i.e., must posit itself as being related to the finite individuals. By so doing, as a finite individual, I must set itself in legal relation to the other rational, individual beings. In other words, I as finite, particular individuals, a finite I and the other finite Is recognize each other’s freedom and accordingly act responsibly.
A finite rational being cannot posit itself, unless it acknowledges its own freedom in the external sensory world. In order to acknowledge one’s own free activities, it is necessary to further recognize other finite rational beings and other’s free activities as well: That means, a finite rational I is in legal relation to the other rational Is.
Secondly, it means further that a finite I recognizes its material corporeal body to itself and acknowledges itself as being under the influence of the others.
The community of the finite free individual beings is the condition for the individual self consciousness, and yet in order that such a community of the free agents may be possible, the principle of juris.

Friedrich Joseph Schelling (Jan. 27, 1775­Aug. 20, 1854)
Life
On Jan. 27, 1775, Schelling was born in Leonberg In Baden-Würtenberg, the son of a minster of a Lutheran church there. Schelling, like Fichte, was known as a wunderkind since an early age. Having completed his Abitur (High School Diploma), Schelling was accepted to the Theological Seminary (Tübinger Stift) adjunct to the University of Tübingen in 1790 (when he was 15!), studying there until 1795. During this period, Schelling got acquainted with Hegel and Hölderlin (a great Classic poet) as his close friends, both of whom were older than he by five years. Schelling studied Philosophy, Theology and Classic Philology and obtained his Ph.D. in 1792.
In 1795-1798, Schelling further studied mathematics and natural sciences at Leipzig University while making his living as a tutor for a wealthy family’s offspring. In the meantime, Schelling went to Jena and heard Fichte’s lectures, but it is said that he was not too impressed by Fichte’s philosophy at that time. In 1796-97 Schelling became a bureaucrat to two Barons of Eidesel.
Schelling wrote and published his first opus, Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1797)
With Goethe’s strong recommendation, in 1798 (at the age of 23!) Schelling obtained an associate professorship at Jena University. Schelling taught together with Fichte at first (who later lost his position due to n atheism controversy) and was very popular, also together with Fichte, among the students. He taught there from 1978 to 1803, exercising great influence on many students.
In Jena, Schelling became a close friend of Fichte, Schiller, Goethe, August Wilhelm Schlegel (a Romantic poet who translated Shakespeare’s plays into German; his brother was a scholar of Indian Studies) and his spouse, Karoline, who acted as a brilliant and intellectual hostess of their salon of Romanticism. Karoline Schlegel was not only a beautiful and intellectual woman but was always the center among the Jena intellectual circles. Upon encountering Karoline, Schelling immediately fell in love with her, although (or because?) Karoline was 12 years older than he. Karoline was also deeply attracted to Schelling as a person and his highly gifted intellectual brilliance. Soon she divorced August Wilhelm Schlegel and married Friedrich Schelling in 1803.
Because of this incident (it was, of course, considered a great scandal then), Schelling and Karoline were not able to stay in Jena and moved to Würzburg. The books Schelling wrote during his Jena period are:
System des transzendentalen Idealismus
(1800)
Bruno, Ein Gespräch
[Bruno, A Dialogue> (1802)
Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums
(1803, his lecture notes during 1802)
In 1801, Hegel came to Jena, met Schelling again and was deeply influenced by his brilliant, creative philosophical inspirations. Together with Hegel, Schelling edited and published a few articles in the following Philosophical Journal whose title was:
Kritische Journal der Philosophie
(1802-1806)
Although all the articles were published anonymously, according to present philological scholarship, the majority of the articles in them are considered to have been written by Hegel, representing Schelling’s philosophy.
At Würzburg, Schelling taught for three years (1803-06).
When Schelling was 32 years old (1806), he moved to Munich to become a member of Die Akademie der Wissenschaft (The Academy of Science) and lived there for 14 years.Three years after Friedrich and Karoline moved to Munich, sadly, Karoline died (1809). In that year, Schelling published:
Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit.
(1908)
In 1812 Schelling re-married Pauline Gotter and in 1815 he published:
Über die Gottheiten von Samothrake (eine Beilage zu den “Weltaltern”)
(1815)–This was an allegorical interpretation of Gods enshrined in Samothrake,i.e., Axieros (=desire), Axiokersa (=the natural world), Axiokeros (=the spiritual world), Kasmilos (=the mediator).
Then Schelling moved to Erlangen University, where he taught from 1820-27. In 1827 a new university was founded in München and he was invited there, teaching from 1827-41.
When Schelling was 66 years old (in 1841), he was invited to Berline as a member of the Academy of Sciences in Prussia. Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the then Prussian ruler, had a strong affinity with Romanticism and wanted to counterbalance Prussia’s academic world against the Hegelianism which was still dominant there at that time (after Hegel’s death in 1831).
At the University, Schelling gave a series of lectures called Mythology and Revelation in 1843. At some point during this period, Schelling’s lecture notes were published without his permission and against his will. So Schelling was upset and quit lecturing at the University.
On Aug. 20, 1854, Schelling died at the age of 79 in Ragarz, Switzerland.
Works
1) Theological Papers
De prima malorum humanorum origine (1792)
Über Mythen (1793)
2) On Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre
Wissenschaftslehre (1793)
Über die Möglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie (1794)
Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie (1795)
Briefe über Dogmatismus and Kritizismus (1797)
3) Philosophy of Nature
Idee zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1797)
Von der Weltseele (1798)
Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (1799)
Allgemeine Deduktion des dynamischen Prozesses oder der Kategorien der Physik, die Zeitschrift für Spekulative Physik (1880)
4) Transcendental Philosophy
System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800)
Philosophie der Kunst, Jenaer und Würzburger Vorlesungen (1802-1805)
5) Philosophy of Identity
Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, Die Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik (1802)
Fernere Darstellungen aus dem System der Philosophie, Die neue Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik (1802)
Bruno oder über das göttliche und natürliche Prinzip der Dinge (1803)
Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums (1803)
Aphorismen zur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie, Jahrbuch für Medizin (1806)
Aphorismen Über die Naturphilosophie, Jahrbuch für Medizin (1806)
Zusätze zur zweiten Auflage der “Ideen” (18032)
Darstellung des wahren Verhältnisses der Naturphilosophie zur verbesserten Fichteschen Lehre (1806)
6) The Mystical Theory of Freedom
Philosophie und Religion (1804)
Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809)
Denkmal der Schrift von den göttlichen Dingen des Herrn Jacobi (1812)
Antwort an Eschenmayer (1813)
7) Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation
Über die Gottheiten von Samothrake (eine Beilage zur den “Weltaltern”) (1815)
Vorrede zu Huber Beckers Übersetzung einer Schrift Victor Cusins (1834)
Erste Vorlesung in Berlin (1841)
Vorrede zu Steffens’ nachgelassenen Schriften (1846)
Frauenstädt, Schellings Vorlesungen in Berlin (1842)
Pauls, Die endlich offenbar gewordene positive Philosophie der Offenbarung (1843)
Der Weltalter (Nachlaß)
Philosophie der Mythologie (Nachlaß)
Philosophie der Offenbarung (Nachlaß)

I. Philosophy of Nature and Transcendental Philosophy
A. Philosophy of Nature
Idee zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1797)
Von der Weltseele (1798)
Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (1799)
PHILOSOPHY
The basic characteristics of Friedrich Schelling’s philosophy:
1) Schelling’s philosophy was characterized as Romantic, aesthetic, creatively imaginative, non rational, intuitive.
Foremost, Schelling’s philosophy is a most vivid representative and advocate of the philosophy of Romanticism.
Secondly, as a consequence, his philosophy was not based upon reason as the principle of reality nor that of its philosophical understanding (as in the case of Kant), but Schelling’s philosophy was deeply shaped by the power of phantasy or creative Imagination (a clear deviation from traditional European Reason).
Although Fichte considered that reason was still the principle of “reality,” reason was seen from the ethical, practical point of view (as Will) rather than the epistemological one. As a result, Fichte made an unconscious move of taking “Will” and it activities as the principle of reality, thus the emphasis was shifted from the coginitive reason to will or volition in the sense of practical reason. This departure from cognitive reason to something else (volition in the case of Fichte, creative intuition for Schellilng and Creative Absolute Spirit with Hegel) symbolizes the new departures from the tradition of Reason in the history of Western philosophy.
Instead of Fichte’s and Hegel’s logical rigor, however, Schelling possessed an innovative and vivid power of intuition by which he was able to grasp reality with profound empathy. Behind this, there is of course Schelling’s conviction that reality cannot be comprehended by reason (through the rational cognitive method of “reflection,” as the philosophy of Enlightenment had thought), but he demonstrated that reality including the human-being is far more elusive and dynamic and could only be properly grasped by creative imagination. In other words, Schelling was the first 19th century Western philosopher who was able to get out of the frame of self and consciousness ( and of course Reason) and discover an immediate affinity and identity with nature itself in his philosophical imagination.
Schelling attempted to see the unity of the universe, the affinity and the relations between nature and spirit instead of delving into the analysis of reason, rational knoweldge and mechanical causes.
2) From time to time Schelling’s philosophy changed a great deal. Easily accepting influences from without, Schelling often re-molded his philosophy almost completely.
During his Tübingen period, Schelling was well acquainted with the philosophies of Leibniz (positively influenced), Kant, and Fichte (Schelling was critical of their philosophies as the philosophies of reason and reflection) and then later was influenced by those of Herder, Spinoza and Giordano Bruno. At his later stage, Schelling was influenced by Neo-Platonism, Jacob Böhme, Aristotle and such philosophers of Gnosis as Basilides and Valentinus.
a) Organic View of Nature
b) Aesthetic Idealism, Beauty is the centre of his philosophical inquiry
c) Philosophy of Identity (Everything is ssen by means of unity)
d) Liberal Mysticism (His philosophy depends upon creative intuiton)
e) Positive Philosophy (This is often related to Existential Philosophy of the 20th century)

Schelling agreed with Fichte in that philosophy is the science (=philosophy) of the conditions of possibility of consciousness, that is, the transcendental philosophy in Kant’s sense and the science of knowledge in Fichte’s sense. Such a philosophy should be able to answer the question of what must “happen” in order for knowledge to arise. In other words, such conditions for the possibility of knowledge are, according to Schelling, the necessary activities or products of the autonomous, primary Ground, which is in itself not yet the conscious Self, but is becoming such a one.
Also, Nature or the material world is, according to Schelling, a product of such a Self or, to be more exact, one of the stages of development by this autonomous, primary Ground or principle (=the Self). That Nature exists because Self prelimarily was nature and so to speak arises from one stage (Nature) to the other (Self). In this respect, Schelling accepted Fichte’s thought: The self and its activities (the direction is opposite to that of the activities of Fichte’s Self) are the primordial for reality.
On the other hand, according to Schelling, although Fichte recognized the purpose of Nature which assists intellect to obtain its being, he did not recognize the value of nature itself. In other words, Fichte, deprived of Nature’s independence, saw only the import of subjectivity, which Schelling called Kant’s and Fichte’s philosophy the Philosophy of Reflection (consciousness has priority over Nature and philosophical inquiry is to be pursued by “reflection.”): In Fichte’s philosophy, every life, every productive power in Nature is treated as a dead implement, the passive, simply posited non-I. Fichte treated Nature as the mere means for the activities of practical (ethical) Self.
Schelling disagreed with Fichte on that point. According to Schelling, Nature resembles the lowest step of a “rudder” or the primary step from which Self or Spirit ascends to Itself. Spirit (which Schelling did not mean Reason as Kant and Fichte did, but he understood it in a much wider and primordial sense of the active Ground as Nature) develops itself from nature. Nature is not simple objectivity, but already contains something spiritual. Following Leibniz, Schelling considered that Nature, in other words, a sleeping, unconscious, hardened Self, Spirit or Intellect. Even in nature Schelling tried to see the power of Self-Position or of Subjective Being.
Fichte established three principles:
1) infinite, primitive, pure activities of I
2) Nature or objectivity established as non-I
3) individual Self or Subjectivity as an equally divisible I as Nature.
Schelling also recognized these three principles.
In Schelling’s case, however, the subject of infinite, primitive activities is not called Pure Self. Instead, it is called Nature. i) Nature, according to Schelling, is not dead, but is fundamentally primordial and active in itself.
This Nature is thus:
I) productive Nature, i.e., natura naturans. This is Primary Nature.
ii) Secondary Nature is natura naturata, creatures.
iii) By examining the relationship of both, Schelling attempted to “deduce” the Self as the Third Nature.
In other words, we may say that Schelling attempted to show that subjectivity arises from objectivity, that the representation or the idea arises from being, and that Self arises from Nature, although the latter is by no means inorganic, but active, alive and organic in itself (as natura naturans=productive nature).
Schelling viewed objective nature (=produced nature, i.e., creatures) as the product of productive Ground (=natura naturans, creator). The highest among the products as objective nature is the human being, in which the conscious spirit arises and in the conscious spirit, nature (natura naturans) evidences itself.
Here we must clearly note that in Schelling’s philosophy, the most primitively fundamental is not merely being, but also activity.
While in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (the science of knowledge) such a principle as the most primitive Ground was considered an ethical power, the pure activities of Self in Schelling’s philosophy of Nature were viewed as a more comprehensive, primordial physical power.
Despite this difference, both Fichte and Schelling sought the primacy of philosophy not in knowledge, but in something else, and its principle in something other than cognitive Reason. As mentioned above, Fichte saw it in will or pure activity of self (although, under Kant’s influence, Fichte’s will was still viewed as European Reason), while Schelling saw it in the creative power and activity of reality (which he called Nature).
The basic characteristics of 19th century philosophy may be briefly summarized:
This attempt of 19th century European philosophy to view the primacy in cognition or cognitive reason (which had been the European philosophical tradition from Descartes on, or even from Parmenides to Kant, as the means of knowing nature) was abandoned at the turn of the 19th Century in Western philosophy. Instead, the principle of philosophy both in reality and in faculty is sought in other than cognition, i.e., in will or volition (Fichte and Schopenhauer, although they conceived it differently), in creative imagination (Schelling), in power (Schelling and Nietzsche) and in Spirit in the sense of the comprehensive, synthesizilng Spirit (which is subjective, objective and absolute) in its development as well as in faith (Kierkegaard). (E.Shimomissé)

Another important difference between Fichte and Schelling consists in the fact that, according to Fichte, Nature or objectivity as the second moment was ultimately posited as the non-I or non-spiritual by the I, while in Schelling’s philosophy of nature, Nature (natura naturata) is viewed as one stage of the developing process in which Spirit evolves itself to Itself.
Nature attempts to become Intellect by reflecting upon itself, namely this attempt did not succeed at the stage of non-conscious nature, but at the stage of human being. Nature is the life of Spirit’s embryo, thus Schelling contends that Nature and Spirit are essentially one and the same.
What is posited outside of consciousness is essentially identical with what is posited within consciousness.

Nature is not opposite to Spirit, but it is one of the earlier stages of Spirit itself. It was Herder’s thought that recognizes the parallel between the series of idea development and the series of that of reality. Picking up this thought of Herder, Schelling introduced it into transcendental philosophy and established his philosophy of Nature. While the Kantian-Fichtean moralism viewed nature and spirit as its opposition, such an opposition was “limited” by Herder’s naturalism for developing Schelling philosophy of Nature.
Following Leibniz, Schelling conceived that Nature was a priori, and everything in Nature is “pre-determined” (not by efficient causality, but teleologically) by the totality of Nature, i.e., the notion of Nature as such. Therefore, various forms of Nature may be “deduced” from the notion of Nature itself. The philosopher “recreates” Nature and constitutes it.
Speculative physics regards Nature as subjectivity, becoming and productive power, while the natural sciences view Nature as objectivity, being and the products.
Thus speculative physics does not employ reflection and analysis, but intuition. The productive Nature like the Fichtean absolute I, possesses two opposite activities, repulsion and attraction and provides the basis for Nature’s polarity. While the absolute productive power (die absolute produktive Kraft) goes to the infinite production: It does not attain its goal because the product cannot arise without opposition (Hemmung). In order for some object of cognition to arise, an opposition or hindrance (eine Hemmung) to the absolute, productive power must be provided at a certain place. Therefore, all the products of Nature are products of the two opposing powers, the positive, advancing, evolving and universalizing power on the one hand and the negative, limiting, delaying and individualizing power on the other. Nature’s will to produce is inexhaustible and is successively productive. The characters of various things are the places where universal Nature was hindered (gehemmt).Total Nature is a process of development with a structure (einer Zusammenhang). Everywhere in the process are governed by the dualistic principles of the promoting power and of the delaying power, both of which are rooted in the basis of Nature. Besides these two powers, there must be a third power, which mediates them as the copula. From this, there are three divisions in Schelling’s philosophy of Nature. According to Schelling, the magnet is a primordial model for Nature, because the magnet has the unification of the opposing magnetic powers.
Schelling divided Nature into three “stages,” namely organic nature, inorganic nature and universal Nature. This universal Nature underlies the other two and may be called the World Soul (die Weltseele), as it defines the organic and inorganic nature and establishes thereby a pre established harmony between them.
Therefore, universal Nature may be viewed as and is often called “the organizing Nature.” In Schelling’s philosophy of Nature, as in Leibniz’ philosophy of nature, the concept of Life is dominant such that the organic is more primordial than the inorganic. The inorganic nature is to be explained by the organic nature. The organic nature becomes the inorganic nature by extinguishing its life, provided that Schelling did not recognize some magical power of life, but at the same time he opposed the mechanistic explanation of life by means of chemical reactions. The lifeless, mechanistic, chemical power is a mere negative condition for the power of life. As the positive condition for it, the life stimulus must be there as well. The Life activity consists in the “struggle” between the opposing activities. There must be something which stimulates such a struggle for the life process. While the chemical process is striving for equilibrium, life is constantly striving to hinder such an equilibrium. This stimulus or hinderance comes from the “organizing Nature.” In principle, the organic nature or the principle of life primarily governs nature.
In the organizing Nature as the primary Ground, there are three primordial powers or potencies (Potenzen), by means of which Schelling attempted to explain all natural phenomena.
Potencies
Heavy (Schwere)
“Weight” or “heavy” as gravitation does not signify a sensory quality, but this “weight” is the principle for the corporeality (Leiblichkeit) which is the synthesis of attraction and repulsion.
And this results in solid, gas and liquid as three different sets, namely it results in the principle of indefinite, qualitatively same matter with various differences in density.
Light (Licht)
This “Light” cannot be confused with actual light, rather this is the cause and principle of actual light. This is the principle of spirit.
Everything spiritual comes from Light. Light is the primary subjectivity in Nature. Light in the empirical world results in the dynamic processes, namely magnetism and electricity and chemism.
Life (Leben)
Life is the higher unity of “Weight” and “Light” is the connection between them. Life is the principle of the organic, the principle of corporeality (Heavy) which has spirit (Light).
In corporeality with spirit, there are three processes:
a) Reproduction (Plants): Nutrition, growth and propagation
b) Irritability (Animals) : Electricity
c) Sensibility (Humans) : Chemical reactions:
Male (Light)
Female (Heavy)
When Nature attains its purpose it becomes intelligence by sensibility being awakened. Differences among organisms are determined by the proportion of the three potencies.Thus we may differentiate plants, lower animals and higher animals, but all the species of organism are unified by a common life. Each level of organism is no other than the degree of hindrance to the primordial power. In short, Schelling’s philosophy of Nature is very dynamic.
B. Transcendental Philosophy :Philosophy of Spirit (in opposition to Philosophy of Nature)
System des transzendentalen Idealism (1800)
Philosophie der Kunst (Vorlesungen zu Jena 1802-1803)
Philosophy of Spirit or Transcendental Philosophy
According to Schelling, philosophy of Nature attempts to teleologically comprehend the products of nature and to “deduce” them from the concept or task of Nature (note the elimination of mechanical causality as the explanatory principle from Schelling’s philosophy). Schelling tried to understand teleologically the products of nature by means of the task of nature and its fulfillment, i.e., teleological causality. Instead of the mechanical causality of “How,” the task or purpose (“For what”) became the central operative concept of understanding Nature.
Schelling’s philosophy of Spirit asked a similar question to that of Fichte’s regarding spirit, regarding intellectual phenomena, moral phenomena and aesthetic phenomena. Schelling directed his interest to the significance of psychic phenomena and their teleological meaning, instead of searching for the mechanical nature and mechanical causal explanation of our spiritual life. He intended to pursue construction of the psychology of life, going beyond Fichte’s philosophy and the history of consciousness. And yet, in many ways Schelling made Fichte’s approaches his examples.
In this respect, too, 19th century philosophy was to retore the meaning and significance of teleological causality of Aristotle and tried to do away with mechanical causality as the principle of reality.
The major difference consists in the fact that in Schelling’s philosophy of Spirit, the moral elements are taken over rather by the aesthetic elements.
In order to investigate the question of knowledge and truth, there are two distinct approaches. Since in general truth is conisdered coincidence between the idea and its object, or knowledge is viewed as the identity of the subjective element and the objective element, the one approach starts with nature or objectivity to understand how the intellect confirms the object. This is called Naturalism (which is sometimes called empiricism in epistemology or materialism in ontology).
The transcendental approach, on the contrary, considers subjectivity as the primary and investigates how the object coincides to the subject or is conformed to the subject. Thus, transcendental philosophy begins with subjectivity as the absolute and tries to deduce objectivity from subjectivity. This approach, considering subjectivity in its purity, denies the independence of the outer world or the world of nature (objectivity) in a certain sense.
By immediately ascertaining the fact “cogito, ergo sum” (that I think, therefore I am) as absolutely certain, transcendental philosophy then attempts to deduce the necessity of presupposing the existence of the outer world (objectivity). This approach is normally called Idealism.
According to Schelling, to accomplish this task it is necessary for the philosopher to have Intellectual Intuition (die Intellektuelle Anschauung). While Kant did not admit intellectual intuition to finite human-beings (cf. Critique of Judgment), Fichte was the first to admit the necessity of intellectual intuition.
Our normal consciousness, being immersed in its own products, cannot be conscious that our (transcendental) self (subjectivity) primordially posits objectivity. In order to recognize such primordial activities of self (subjectivity), Schelling considers that it is necessary to exercise Intellectual, vivid and live Intuition, while Fichte thought it could be accomplished by reflection on our subjectivity and its activities.
Transcendental Philosophy is, according to Schelling, divided into three portions, namely the theoretical portion (metaphysics and epistemology), the practical portion (ethics and politics) and the aesthetic portion (philosophy of arts).
Transcendental Philosophy
i) Theoretical portion‹metaphysics and epistemology
ii) Practical portion ‹ethics and politics
iii) Aesthetic portion ‹philosophy of arts

i) Theoretical Philosophy:
The philosophy in this domain (=epistemology) attempts to investigate and grasp objective reality by means of pure self consciousness. Within self consciousness, the ideal power is in opposition to the real power. The ideas of reality give rise to the fact that these two powers determine each other in gradation, i.e., step by step. This theoretical philosophy pursues the development of Spirit or Subjectivity. The development of Spirit reveals itself in the process in which Spirit, being first in the limitations and confinements at the beginning, gradually liberates itself as a freer concept and ultimately discovers itself in absolute freedom as the activity of Will. In this, theoretical intellect turns into practical intellect.
This process of Spirit’s development may be divided into three epochs:
The 1st epoch
This is the process in which Spirit from primary sensation becomes productive intuition. In sensation (Empfindung), Spirit finds itself as highly restricted. Here Self restricts itself as the condition for consciousness: While the activity of self restriction does not come into and remains outside of consciousness itself, such self-restriction is found as restriction without the activity of Self itself. In productive intuition, the sensed and the act of sensing are distinguished, namely the thing in itself (Ding an sich) and I in itself (Ich an sich). Here I or Ego productively intuits its own real activities and ideal activities. Because the I in itself and the thing in itself can neither separate from nor co-exist with each other, the phenomenon (Erscheinung) arises as their medium.
The 2nd epoch
The process of Spirit from productive intuition to reflection. This is the process in which the I that has become productive intuition reflects itself as such. When the I reflectively grasps itself in its activity, it is Time. In other words, Time is for I to act, while at the same time, the sensory object appears as the negation of Time, i.e., as Space. When Time and Space are related to objectivity, the object appears as Substance by its spaciality and the object appears as an Accident in temporality. Therefore, we philosophers began to distinguish within I Space and Time, within objectivity Substance and Accident. From the above, Time and Space as forms of intuition are to be explained, while the category of Substance is deduced. Further, the category of Causality and that of Mutual Determination (Wechselwirkung) are to be deduced.
The 3rd epoch
The operation in which Spirit becomes from reflection the Absolute Will. The first step is accomplished by the fact that I make a judgment. To judge is first to separate intuition and concept by abstraction and then to unify them as the subject and the predicate. The final step will be the activity of will, which is the completion of productive intuition. While productive intuition is unconscious production, will is conscious production. By voluntary action, the world becomes objective, and by mutual interaction with other Selves, Self attains the consciousness of the real external world and the freedom of itself.

ii) Practical Philosophy
In Practical Philosophy, Will develops through three stages:
1) Drive (Trieb). The most primitive will or that of the lowest level, appears as drive. When will encounters objectivity and feels contradiction between the objectivity and the ideal, it is a Drive.

2) At the second stage, will splits itself into natural Drive and Moral Law.
3) At the final stage, Free Will (die Willkür) comes into being. Here is the stage where action according to Moral Law and action following natural Drive are possible. That some action ought to be done is limited by the consciousness that an other action can be done. Free Will is the freedom of choice between two opposing actions. It is the condition for the phenomenon of the Absolute Will that freedom appears as a form of Free Will (Die Willkür).

Schelling discussed in Practical Philosophy the Jurisprudence, the State and History. By the law, any action against the law is forced (by blind necessity) to act its opposite. The Law was considered by Schelling as the natural order. Thus, the State came into being by nature as the opposite drive to reckless human actions. The purpose of History is actualization of the mondial lawfulness. In History, individual action is subordinated to the unconscious goal determined by World Spirit. Each one of us is unconsciously participating in the theatre called World History.
Schelling divided History into three phases:
a) The first epoch is the period of fate (das Schicksal) or the tragic period. The divine power is felt as the force of fate.
b) The second epoch is the period of nature or the mechanical period. The divine power appears as the mechanical force.
c) The third epoch is the period of providence or the religious period. God reveals Himself as Providence.

While God is becoming in the first and second epochs, He is at the third epoch.
3) Aesthetic Philosophy
Schelling made use of Kant’s philosophy of organic nature in his philosophy of nature such that the organism produces itself through mutual interaction between the whole and its parts so that the organism itself is viewed as self-purposive (the growth in an organism is understood as teleological).
In aesthetic philosophy, Schelling also employs Kant’s Theory of Beauty. Art is the third of the higher order in such a way that, in art the opposition between Theoretical and Practical action is eliminated, i.e., that in art, the opposition between Subjectivity and Objectivity is sublimated, where knowledge and action, conscious action and unconscious action, freedom and necessity, are all harmonized. The ultimate problem of Transcendental Philosophy concerns genuine identity of the real and the ideal.
Since in the case of Beauty, the infinite is expressed in the finite, the Aesthetic creation reveals in sensory phenomena, the solution of the philosophical problem of the identity of the real and the ideal is evident in aesthetic creative activities and the products of their creative activities. In this sense, art is the genuine organon of philosophy and its “document.” Art reveals the most sacred of reality to philosophy. Schelling contends that Poetry and Philosophy, therefore, resemble each other most. The artist’s aesthetic intuition and the philosopher’s intellectual intuition resemble each other most. In ancient myths, they were indeed one and the same. In the near future, such a period should come in which once again aesthetic intuition and philosophical intellectual intuition is unified. Schelling’s philosophy is most unique in his treatment of Aesthetic Philosophy in his transcendental idealism.
Thus, while they call Fichte’s transcendental idealism as ethical idealism, Schelling’s transcendental idealism is characterized as aesthetic idealism, and Hegel’s philosophy as logical idealism, although these characterizations are rather oversimplified.
II. Philosophy of Identity

Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie (1801)
Bruno, ein Gespräch (1802)
Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums (1803)
While in his previous period, Schelling had contended that in principle, nature and spirit are one and the same, in the second period, this thesis was further radicalized into the principle purporting:
The Absolute which underlies nature and spirit is the unity of the ideal and the real.
In this period the Absolute is no longer used to explain the rest, but is elevated to the ultimate object of philosophical inquiry, and besides the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit, the Philosophy of Identity was added as the third, and higher philosophical discipline. This provides the foundation for Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Spirit.
Imitating Spinoza’s geometrical demonstration in Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, Schelling divided knowledge into two sorts, also following Spinoza: knowledge of reason and the confused knowledge of imagination. Corresponding to these two kinds of knowledge, Schelling divided two forms of being,
Infinite Being of the Absolute in unity
and
Finite beings which appear as the individual’s multiplicity and generations.

The multitude of things which are developing in the phenomenal world exist separately due to our way of looking at things as distinguished, do not have actual reality, but are rejected as illusory by speculative thinking. As an inadequate idea, a thing appears as a particular, but the philosopher views it sub specie aeternitatis (=under the eternal viewpoint), sees it in itself, in its unity, in its identity and in ideality. To constitute a thing is to describe it as if it were to exist in God.
In Absolute (=God), however, everything is one and the same, i.e., identical. In the Absolute, therefore, everything is also eternal and infinite in itself. Hegel called Schelling’s Absolute the dark night in which all the cattle were black. (cf. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Vorrede, which will be discussed in more detail in Hegel’s philosophy).
The Ground of the universe (=the Absolute) or the Principle of the World (der Weltgrund) appears as both nature and spirit, and yet in itself it is neither nature nor spirit. Der Weltgrund (=the Principle of the World), being the unity of nature and spirit, of course, transcends all the opposition and all the distinctions, i.e., is the absolute indifference of subjectivity and objectivity.
While in finite things, Self Identity of the Absolute is split into particular individual beings, the unity of the Principle of the World in itself, however, is not lost even in the phenomenal world of individual beings. On the other hand, each individual being is an expression of the Absolute; as a consequence, the concrete individual maintains the character of identity. Such identity of the individual is of lesser degree and is mixed with the difference.
Der Weltgrund ist eine absolute Identität, eine absolute Totalität,
während das Individuum nur eine relative Identität, eine relative Totalität hat.
while the individual has only a relative identity, a relative totality.>
This individual is neither merely subjective, nor merely objective. Every individual has both subjective elements and objective ones, in which either the subjective elements or the objective elements, are dominant. Such difference resulted from the dominance of either of the two different kinds of elements Schelling called the quantitative difference (die quantitative Differenz). Any natural phenomenon or any spiritual phenomenon is the unity of the real and the ideal, but in actualilty a concrete individual is either more natural or more spiritual. In the natural phenomenon, the real elements are more dominant: In the spiritual phenomenon, the ideal elements are more dominant.
In detail, Schelling’s description of Philosophy of Identity, according to the traditional interpretation, seems to vary depending upon his writings.
a) In his early writings, Schelling thought of the Neo-Platonic “medium” between the Infinite and the finite, namely the Absolute Knowledge or the Self Knowledge of Identity. Self Knowledge of the Absolute is the Form of the Absolute. While in the Existence or Essence of the Absolute, the objective and the subjective are simply one and the same, in Its Form, they are not. In Self Knowledge of the Absolute as Its Form, the objective and the subjective are really (reell) identical, while they are ideally (ideell) in opposition.
b) In his later period, Schelling considered that such distinction exists only in reflection, while in Rational Intuition, such a difference does not exist. In his Bruno, Schelling emphasized the Simplicity of the Absolute in that the Absolute is not only the unity of the opposites, but also the unity between the unity and the opposition, i.e., the Identity of the Identity.
c) Later, the Absolute is called the Identity of the Infinite and the finite. The finite are considered as the real or beings, while the Infinite is considered as the Ideal or Knowledge Itself. Here Schelling saw also the interpretation of the trinity in unity. In the Absolute or in the Eternal, the finite and the Infinite are equally Absolute:
i) God as Father is Eternal. God as Father is the Unity of the finite and the Infinite.
ii) The Son is the finite in God.
iii) The Holy Spirit is the Infinite, the Return of the finite to Eternity.
Das Endliche, Das Unendliche und das Ewige sind drei Möglichkeien Gottes.

On the basis of the Absolute, the real series (nature) and the ideal series (spirit) develop. The construction of the real series, Schelling repeated the content of Philosophy of Nature.
Nature as the real series is to bring the Infinite into the finite, to bring simplicity into multiplicity, essence into form. Contrary to this, Spirit as the ideal series is to bring the finite into the Infinite. In the domain of the Spirit, the Three Divine Primary Potencies are working, while in actuality one of them is dominant.
Schelling divided Spirit into:
a) Intuition (die Anschauung)
In Intuition, the finite are dominant and the Infinite and the Eternal are subordinated to the finite.
b) Thought (das Denken) or Understanding (der Verstand)
Here the Infinite is dominant, to which the Eternal and the finite are subordinated.
c) Reason (die Vernunft).
Reason understands everything under the Form of the Absolute. In Reason, the Eternal is dominant, to which the finite and the Infinite are subordinated.
In short, Intuition is finite cognition, Thought is infinite cognition, and reason is the eternal cognition.
Intuition is further divided into Sensation (die Empfindung), consciousness (das Bewußtsein) and intuition (die Anschauung) in the narrower sense.
Intuition
i) Sensation
ii) Consciousness
iii) Intuition in the narrower sense
Thought or Understanding is further divided into concept (der Begriff), judgment (das Urteil), and inference (der Schluß).
Thought or Understanding
i) Concept
ii) Judgement
iii) Inference (or Argument)

The knowledge of Understanding does not reach the domain of the knowledge of Reason. Speculation as the knowledge of Reason starts with unifying opposites and is beyond the limit of popular logic based on the principle of contradiction.
While in the domain of reality, there were three potencies established, the three stages from matter , motion to organism, in the domain of ideality, there are three steps established, science (die Wissenschaft), religion (die Religion) and arts (die Künste). In the domain of reality, nature attains its height in humanity, while in the domain of ideality, spirit attains its height in the state. Philosophy as Reason is to recover Identity, and is nothing but the Absolute returns to Itself.
Reality (at its height: Human-being) Ideality (at its height: State)
Matter Sciences
Motion Religion
Organism Arts

Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums is Schelling’s Encyclopedia of philosophical sciences, according to which philosophy is the presupposition for all the special sciences.
The task of the university is to properly hold the balancing relationship between the absolute knowledge and special knowledge.
Philosophy as absolute knowledge
Special Sciences
1. Medicine (Natural Sciences: The Sciences of Organism) deals with the real and the finite
2. Jurisprudence (HIstory) deals with the ideal or the Infinite
3. Theology deals with the Eternal

Faculty of Arts which is Philosophical Faculties in the traditional sense. It is the Science of the Absolute.
III. The Doctrine of Freedom
Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809)
Denkmal der Schrift von den göttlichen Dingen des Herrn Jacobi (1812)
Antwort an Eschenmayer (1813)
Following Spinoza, Schelling divided the world into two, the True World of the Absolute Identity on the one hand and the illusory world consisting of different, varying individuals on the other.
Schelling attempted to reduce the latter to the former as the foundation for the latter. However, unlike Fichte, Schelling did not try to “deduce” the latter from the former.

Where do multiplicity and changes of the universe come from?
Where do the imperfection or the evil of the world come from?
These become important problems for Schelling.
Spinoza’s pantheism as (mechanical) causal determinism denies human Freedom of will and action. It also denied the existence of Evil and yet could not explain the problem of the Evil at all.
Now Schelling, holding on to pantheism, tries to explain evil and finitude.
It became necessary to modify the pantheistic doctrine of the Absolute in order to be able to explain Evil, the unique existence of finite beings and their freedom.
There is another opus by Schelling which dealt with the similar problem, though not yet in detail.
Philosophie und Religion (1804)
The work was written under the influence of Eschenmayer. In his opus, Die Philosophie in ihrem Übergang zur Nichtphilosophie (1803) , Eschenmayer argued that, because it is an unintelligible mystery for human thinking that the ideas (= things) come from God and due to this fact, philosophy must give its place to theology.
According to Schelling in his Philosophie und Religion, the origin of the sensory world can only be thought of as a rupture, a leap and an apostasy (ein Abfall). It is this apostasy or “Abfall” by which Spirit, grasping Its own Self in its Selfhood, subordinates its Infinity to the finite, and ceases to be in God. It is through a free act or deed that the (finite) world comes from the Infinite. This is a factum which can only be described and cannot be comprehended or deduced as necessary. It is by Creation (die Schöpfung) that the things becomes independent (from God), and the awareness of itself in contrast to Creation is History in which the world goes back to its origin.
The relationship between the creation and history corresponds to that between the Fall or the original sin (der Sündfall) and resurrection (die Erlösung) of humanity.
Here there are three phases when it is viewed from God.
That is,
to dispose of the world,
to recover the world and
the development inbetween.
These three are necessary for God Himself to become the authentic God. Therefore, God develops Himself through the world. Not only it was Eschenmayer’s influence, but also Schelling’s reading Jacob Böhme that brought Schelling’s thought into this direction. In addition to this, Kant’s thought of transcendental freedom and of its intelligible character affected Schelling’s thought. In this manner, Schelling’s mystical doctrine of Freedom came into being. Sometimes, people calls it Theosophy.
The Opposition in God
The basic thought of Schelling’s Doctrine of Human Freedom may be summarized as follows:
i) In order not to fall into Spinoza’s Causal Determinism, we must recognize something in God which is not God Himself.
ii)It is to distinguish God as Existing from the Mere Ground for the Existence of God.
iii) This Mere Ground for God’s Existence is called “The Nature in God” (die Natur in Gott) following Jacob Böhme.
Even in God, the perfect comes from the imperfect.

God, too, develops. God is actualizing Himself.

Prior to the Actual Perfect God of Wisdom and Good, God’s Potential must exist.

That is the Unconscious, Dark Drive that endeavors to represent Itself.

Ultimately this Primordial Existence is no other than Volition (das Wollen).

The Predicates of the Primordial Existence can only belong to this Volition.

Such Predicates as i) Groundlessness (no cause = die Grundlosigkeit), ii) Eternity (die Ewigkeit), iii) Independence of Time (die Unabhängigkeit von der Zeit), and iv) Self Affirmation (die Selbstbejahnung), can only belong to Volition.

Therefore, the Ground for God’s Existence is the Dark Aspiration (der dunkle Sehnsucht). It is the Drive of the Unconscious to become Conscious. The Goal of this Aspiration is Understanding, Logos, the Word. God finally reveals Himself in Logos, in the Word, in Understanding. When this dark Aspiration (dieser dunkle Sehnsucht) subordinates itself as matter and organ to Understanding, God becomes the Actual God, becomes Spirit and Love.

The Opposition in Nature and Human-being
The world reveals itself not only as the expedient order and beauty, but also as a rupture and disorder. What is perfect, rational, harmonious and expedient in the world is the product of Understanding. Contrary to this, such irrational residues as rupture, irregularity, deformity, illness and death have their origin in the dark Ground. Everything has within itself these two principles.
The egocentric will (der Eigenwille) is rooted in the Nature within God or the dark Ground, while the universal will comes from God’s Understanding.
In God, the dark principle and the bright principle are inseparably unified, while in the human being, these two principles are separated.
Out of these two principles, the freedom of human volition makes the human independent.
The human-being can move from truth to falsity, can bring one’s own egoism to dominance, and can lower the spiritual within oneself to the mere instrumentality.
Or with God’s help, the human can remain intrinsic and can subordinate a particular love (desire) to the universal will of love.
The (morally) good is to overcome one’s opposition. For everything is revealed in its opposites. If the human was overcome by temptation, it is one’s own free choice and is a sin.
The (morally) evil is not a mere absence or non-existence of the (morally) good. The evil is something positive in itself.
The evil is to make the egoism independent, i.e., to reverse the proper order between the particular will and the universal will and separate the one from the other. The possibility of separation of those two wills exists in God’s dark Ground. Namely, the potentiality of the evil exists in the Divine Dark Ground, and yet the actuality of the evil is the free act of the creature. Schelling also construed freedom in the same sense as Kant did and used the concept of “intelligible freedom” (die intelligible Freiheit). Freedom, according to Schelling, is not only far from compulsion, but also is clearly distinguishable from contingency or arbitrariness. The human being chooses his /her own intelligible essence beyond time. At the outset of creation, i.e., since Eternity, the human-being pre-destines (prädestinieren) himself/herself. Therefore, the human being is responsible for his/her own action in the sensory world, which is the necessary result of the free primary action.
The Opposition in History
Just as in nature and the individual, so in the human history, the two primary principles are in strife.
a) At the beginning, there was the innocent Golden Age. This period was such that the humans did not have any awareness of sin, so this period was neither good nor evil.
b) This second period was the Age of the Dark Nature. This Nature,which is the Ground for Existence, governed everything at this period. It was after the appearance of the Spiritual Light in the form of the individual in Christianity, however, that the Dark Nature applied as the real evil. Since then, the strife between the good and the evil began, and God reveals Himself as Light.
c) At the final Age, evil is “reduced” to the state of potency and the Spirit governs everything. In other words, through the development, the Perfect Identity of The Ground for Existence and God is accomplished.

Indifference, Opposition and Identity
Prior to the state mentioned above, namely prior to the state in which the two mutually opposing moments of God are ultimately harmonized, according to Schelling, there existed the situation where those two moments were primordially unified. This primordial, undeveloped unity of those two principles, namely the “God prior to God,” is called by Schelling “Indifference” or “Non-Ground” (Ungrund). In distinction from this, Schelling called the God finally attained through the development, i.e., the Ultimately Developed, More Valuable Unity, “Identity” or “Spirit.” While in this Developed, Absolute Identity, there exists no longer such an Opposition, there existed not yet Opposition in “Non-Ground” which would develop and split into two principles, namely Nature and Light, Aspiration and Understanding. These two split principles were unified by Love and were separated for the Absolute to ultimately develop to the Personal God. Therefore, it is said that God develops from Indifference through Opposition to Identity. Identity is no other than the unification of the Opposite by Love, the Love which the Personal God alone possesses.
It is said that in this manner, Schelling attempted to unify and harmonize Pantheism and Theism.
IV. Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation
Über die Gottheiten von Samothrake (1815)
Vorrede zu Victor Cousin über französische u. deutsche Philosophie (1834)
Erste Vorlesung in Berlin (1841)
Die Weltalter (nachlaß) (Posthumous Work)
Philosophie der Mythologie (Nachlaß)
Philosophie der Offenbarung (Nachlaß)
At his later years, Schelling emphasized the Irrational. Philosophy is the Science of Being (die Wissenschaft des Seienden = Ontology or Metaphysics). According to Aristotle, two moments are to be distinguished in Being:
1) ee eeee (quid sit), Was, essentia, Wesen – essence, potential being.
2) ee (quod sit), Daß, existentia, Existenz – existence, actual being.
Although it is the task of Reason that grasps the essence of being in the concept, Reason has no access to the existence of being. The rational philosophy could only recognize the universal, the possible and the necessary truth. In other words, what is rational is something not unthinkable (das nicht-nicht-zu-Denkende)! The particular, the concrete individual, cannot be comprehensible by the rational philosophy. Reason is short of the concrete, actual existence! Indeed, what the rational philosophy can deal with is ‘If something exists, then it must subsume itself to a so-and-so law.’ According to Schelling, Hegel completely disregarded such a crucial distinction between the essence‹ “what” and the exitence‹”that” of being! Schelling also conceded that his Philosophy of Identity is also merely rationalistic after all. Thus, the rational philosophy is no other than a Negative Philosophy. As the supplement of this, there must be the Positive Philosophy, i.e., Philosophy of Existence.
According to Schelling, what is positive in Positive Philosophy is Positive Religion, Religion given through History. This positive Religion is called by Schelling Transcendent Positive and Positive Philosophy, Metaphysical Empiricism. Positive Philosophy is ultimately his Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation.
Negative Philosophy
Positive Philosophy and Negative Philosophy are complementary to each other. The former shows the universal “What” (the essence) as the form necessary for being, while the latter reveals the “That” (the existence) as its actuality. The former deals with the sine qua non of being, while the latter is concerned with positive creation.
Negative Philosophy is restated in new light as the Doctrine of the Divine Potencies, which would dialectically evolve:
a) das Seinkönnende – What can be Subject – Father “minus”

b) das rein Seiende – What purely is Object – Son “plus”
c) das als solches gesetzte Seinkönnende Subject-Object “plus and minus”
‹What is the unity of potential being and pure being‹
= der Geist – such a unity is only possible in Spirit.
According to Schelling, there is the Absolute which is the root of each mentioned above. This Absolute exists in each as its predicate and is encompassing all the three as Totality. This unity of potency would break, because “What can be” would become independent (= actual) from the potential state. This creates a tension to the other two potencies and “What purely is” would try to bring the former back to the original potential state as well as would together with the third potency bring all three back to the original unity.
In creation, the above three potencies take the following forms:
a) Seinkönnen Möglichkeit causa materialis Indefinite Being
– can-be possibility material cause
b) Seinmüssen Notwendigkeit causa efficiens Determined Being
– must-be necessity efficient cause
c) Seinsollen Zweck causa finalis Self-determined Being
– ought-to-be purpose (value) final or teleological cause
Positive Philosophy
On the basis of his Doctrine of Divine Potencies, Schelling now elucidates Positive Philosophy which is to be revealed as Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation. Philosophy of Mythology refers to pagan religion as natural religion, while Philosophy of Revelation deals with Christianity as the revealed Religion. The relation of the former to the latter is the relation of the imperfect to the perfect religion. The divine revelation in the wider sense may be found in the natural religion. The difference between natural religion and revealed religion consists in the fact that revelation is made perfect in revealed religion. Therefore, when we see the difference between natural religion and revealed religion as the difference of degree, then both can be dealt with in Philosophy of Revelation.
Trinity in Unity
The most primordial form of religion of all is monotheism. However, the genuine monotheism does not reject the plurality of Person among God. Every being is the Divine revelation, the three primary Divine potencies are contained in God. According to Schelling, Trinity in Unity may be found in religions other than Christianity. Because the above three primary Divine potencies are contained in God, many forms of polytheism also arise. Various religions are no other than Divine Revelations. Schelling attempted to show the trinity in other religions:
in Egypt Typhon Osiris Horos
in Persia Ahriman Ormuzd Mithrass
in India Brahman Shiwa Vischnu
in Greece (Dionysos) Zagfreus Bakchos Jakacos

Der Sünfall (Fall of Sin)
According to Schelling’s Philosophy of Revelation, the temporal sensory World arose from human original sin. Namely because a human committed the original sin, the world came into being. Der Sünfall ( The Fall by the original sin) is the beginning of history. It is die Urtatsache (the primordial Fact), der Urzufall (the primordial Accident) and fortuna primigenia. It is das sein und nicht sein Könnende (what can and cannot be).
We could only say that it IS, not that it necessarily is.
This primordial Fact was committed by human free will and yet is an unavoidable Fate (unabwendliches Schicksal). Since we cannot think of or imagine that which was prior to it, it is also called unvordenkliches Verhängnis (the destiny which could not be predicted). The original sin in Philosophy of Revelation that Eve took and ate the fruit of knowledge corresponds to the fall in Philosophy of Mythology that Persephone ate Zakuro in Hades.
Resurrection
The nucleus of religion is resurrection. The resurrection may be found in the other pagan religions. For example, Persephone was kidnapped by Hades, and her mother Demeter searched all over to discover her in the Netherworld and having already eaten the fruit, i.e., she had became Hades’ wife. Nevertheless, due to the infinite motherly love, Demeter “resurrects” Persephone.Thus the pagan resurrection is evidenced in the Eleusian Mystery which was concerned with worship for Demeter and Persephone. Needless to say, in Christianity, the Resurrection is possible by the death of Jesus Christ.
The Church
Schelling views the development of the church as the means of resurrection in three stages:
a) Substantial Unity Roman Catholicism represented by St. Peter
b) Ideality of Freedom Protestantism represented by St. Paul
c) Unity of Both Future Church represented by St. John
Schelling’s philosophy has been succeeded by many philosophers of today. For example, Driesch ‹ Philosophie des Organischen, Ravaisson – De l’havitude, Bergson‹L’évolution créatrice, and Whitehead‹The Concept of Nature have developed Schelling’s concept of organic nature. Aesthetic Idealism may be found in Ravaisson‹La philosophie en France au XIXe siècle and Becker‹Von der Hinfälligkeit des Schönen und der Abenteuerlichkeit des Künsters. Regarding Positive Philosophy, Schelling’s successors are Kierkegaard, Cassirer‹Philosophie der symbolishen Formen, Jaspers‹Die Philosophie der Existenz and Die Geistige Situation der Zeit, Heidegger‹Vom Wesen des Grundes, etc.
Here we enumerate Philosophers who are close to Schelling’s Philosophy.
The Romantics
Friedrich Schlegel (August Schlegel’s younger brother),
Friedrich von Hardenberg, Novalis
Solger (who introduced the notion of irony into aesthetics)
The Philosophy of Nature
Henriik Steffens, Lorenz Eucken, Karl Gustav Darus
The Philosophy of Religion
Franz Baader
Schleiermacher (apart from his Philosophy of Religion, he founded Hermeneutics which were further developed by Dilthey and Heidegger)
Friedrich Krause

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Aug. 27,1770- Nov. 14,1831)

Life
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in a rather traditional old protestant family on August 27, 1770, in Stuttgart in Bad Würtenberg. His father was a bureaucrat in the city of Stuttgart.
Having completed his study at a humanistic gymnasium (high school) in Stuttgart, Georg Hegel went to Tübingen to first study philosophy 1788-1790, then theology 1790-1793. Hegel’s friendship with the classic poet Hölderlin and the younger philosopher Schelling which had started in Tübingen was very important to his life and philosophy. In 1793 Hegel went to Bern as a tutor for a Swiss aristocratic family, where he also experienced some affairs in politics and government of Switzerland.

In 1797 he accepted a tutorship in and moved to Frankfurt am Main. During this period Hegel was very close to Hölderlin again, who was then already a very famous poet, and Hegel wrote several short, rather obscure articles. In the following years Hegel wrote a relatively large work on the Spirit of Christianity and the first presentation of his own thought.

In 1801 Hegel finished his study at Jena University and became a Privatdozent (an Instructor) there. While he worked together with Schelling on the publication of Das Kritische Journal für Philosophie (1802-03), Hegel wrote the majority of the articles published in the journal, although they were anonymous, but above all, Hegel wrote and published Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie (1801) . The basic thesis of this article was to demonstrate that, though Fichte’s and Schelling’s philosophies attempted both to unify subjectivity and objectivity (Fichte tried from subjectivity, while Schelling did more from objectivity – from nature -), the authentic Philosophy of Identity must be beyond the opposition of subjective Idealism and objective Idealism. Interesting enough Hegel placed the die Wissenschaft (Science = Philosophy) at the highest, the Religion at the second, and the Kunst (Arts) at the third. Although Hegel was under the strong influence of Schelling, he showed in this article, in clear distinction from Schelling’s approach, his own independent conception of what Philosophy was about.

In his private life, it is recorded, Hegel had an illicit liaison with a young woman and had a child with her. It is known that Hegel later “legitimized” the child as his own, although he did not marry his mother. It was because perhaps he did not love her, or more likely she must have come from the “lower” social class.

During this period, many handwritten manuscripts must have been produced. They were posthumously published, which reveal in many ways his own unique philosophical ideas in various domains.

At this time, too, Hegel dealt with his Philosophy of Spirit in a “system of morality.” Hegel wrote Glauben und Wissen which occupied Part I of the Volume II of Das kritische Journal der Philosophie, in which Hegel named Kant’s, Jacobi’s and Fichte’s philosophy the Philosophy of Reflection, in which, according to Hegel, the finite and the Infinite are still irreconcilably in opposition. Contrary to the Philosophy of Reflection, however, the true Philosophy of Speculation grasps the Finite and the Infinite in Oneness.

According to Hegel’s letter to one of his friends,
…on the night of October 13, 1806, I saw outside of my study the camp-fires of Napoleon’s occupation forces.
Next day, I saw die Weltseele ‹The World Spirit‹ on his horseback marching through the city of Jena.

Needless to say, Hegel saw in Napoleon the incarnation of the World Spirit (the telos!). It is said that at that very time, the completed manuscript of Die Phänomenologie des Geistes Phenomenology of Spirit- was on Hegel’s desk. The opus was published next year. This magnificent monument as the culmination of the Western Philosophy revealed the Introduction to and Propaedeutic of his own philosophy.

Due to the French – Prussian war and his own financial reasons, Hegel had to leave Jena for Bamberg am Lahn (Babaria) and became Chief Editor of Bamberger Zeitung (Bamberg Times) in 1807. Then next year he went to Nürnberg to become professor (so was a teacher called at high school) and Director (principal) of a Gymnasium there.

His lecture notes for the high school students were posthumously published as Philosophische Propädeutik . During his Nürnberg period, Hegel got married and wrote Die Wissenschaft der Logik (1812-16) – The Science of Logic which is called customarily the Large Logic in distinction to the so-called Small Logic which is the portion of his Die Enzyklopädie der Philosophischen Wissenschaften .

In 1816, Hegel became an Ordinarius, full professor, of philosophy at Heidelberg University.
In 1817 Hegel wrote Die Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse < An Outline of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences>.

Hegel was invited to become Ordinarius at University of Berlin (1818-1831). The largest work published in his Berlin period was Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1827).

In 1831 cholera was epidemic in Berlin and Hegel got it and died on November 14, 1831. It is interesting that contrary to Hegel, the pessimist Schopenhauer who, also teaching at Berlin University as an instructor, quickly got out of Berlin and took refuge to Italy and escaped from getting infected from the deadly epidemic.

Hegel’s philosophy then had become the fashion among intellectuals and, unless philosophy was not Hegel’s philosophy, people thought that it was not philosophy.

After his death, Hegel’s students and friends got together and edited his Complete Works in 23 volumes. Until recently there were only two Editions of Hegel’s Complete Works, the one by Glockner and the other one the so-called Philosophische Bibliothek edition. In the former ‘s edition, Die Enzyklopädie’s Logic section contains a great deal of lecture notes taken by Hegel’s students and they are extremely helpful to comprehend the main text, for we are able to see what concrete examples Hegel had in mind, when he talked very abstractly in the book. The newest, beautiful, most comprehensive edition of Hegel’s Works have been published by Felix Mainer Publishers, Inc., the publisher of the series of Philosophische Bibliothek, in Hamburg.
Published Works
1. Philosophische Abhandlungen
2. Phänomenologie des Geistes ‹Die Phänomenologie der Erfahrung des Geistes was the title of the first edition ‹
3. Wissenschaft der Logik
4.Die Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften Sciences> in 3 volumes
5.Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts
Lecture-Notes posthumously published:
6. Philosophie der Geschichte
7. Aesthetik 3 volumes
8. Philosophie der Religion
9. Philosophie der Geschichte
10. Vermischte Schriften
11. Philosophische Propädeutik
12. Briefe von and nach Hegel
Philosophy
The Standpoint (teleology or causa finalis) and the Method of Hegel’s Philosophy

i) Hegel adopted a new principle of philosophy = Spirit. Hegel’s Geist (Spirit) does develop itself in the perspective of time such that it will completely actualize itself through a variety of stages. Of this notion of spirit Hegel conceived perhaps from Schelling’s intuition, although Hegel severely criticized Schelling’s intuition itself. This Spirit, therefore, has the purpose (telos) and meaning to be actualized. In this sense, his basic conception came from Leibniz and Fichte, or even from Aristotle. Now reality according to Hegel, is to be understood not by means of the principle of the mechanical efficient causality, but teleological causality. This is a great leap in the development of the Western philosophy.

It is generally said that in Hegel’s philosophy, Intellectualism had risen once again with full strength, which, however, must be understood that Hegel often talked about Reason synonymous with Spirit as the principle of philosophy, but Hegel’s Spirit is no longer the same Reason as that of Enlightenment or even as Kant’s notion. The notion of reason according to Enlightenment is understood to be the cognitive faculty of things. How was Hegel overcome the narrow, dogmatic, self-deceptive reason of Enlightenment? Finally in his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel completely discarded the principle of the linear, mechanical causality (causa efficiens) in reality and tried to see rather the meaning and purpose in reality in itself. The most important thing here is that Hegel discovered the telos of reason and called this telos of reason the Spirit or the absolute Idea.
The first edition of the Phenomenology of Spirit bore the title, Phenomenology of Experience of Spirit (Phänomenologie der Erfahrung des Geistes). Spirit develops itself in and through Experience! This will be discussed later more in detail.
Hegel’s most fundamental radical approach is to grasp reality as such not by means of a simple intuition or mere empty concepts (like the reason of Enlightenment). In contrast, in Hegel’s philosophy, it is the Spirit that, in and through Experience, organically unifies the various elements of reality in the process of development through articulating their relationships which both distinguish and relate of its element to each other to the unity at the same time.

Why and how was this accomplished? Here is an important departure of Hegel’s philosophy from its predecessors. Namely, he saw much more clearly the meaning and purpose in reality than any other predecessors. Instead of the linear, mechanical efficient causality (to view a sequence of events as a real mechanical event of the purposeless nature), Hegel replaced it by the principle of the teleological causality. To Hegel, it was his task to overcome and liberate philosophy from the tyranny of the liner, mechanical, efficient causality (with the reason of Enlightenment in reality) and rediscover the significance of teleology and the purposeful, meaningful developments in the nature of reality. It is interesting to note that this has been long forgotten or not noticed despite his obvious endeavors.

This was accomplished by his extremely extended meaning of Reason (which is a result of the synthesis of Schelling’s intuition (which is the basis of the philosophy of identity) and Leibniz’ notion of “la raison” as principle and then Fichte’s use of “Vernunft” as volition) and his pregnant notion and function of Negation. To be sure, Hegel’s method, in comparison to Schelling for example, definitely “intellectualistic” (in the sense in which Logic seemed to become more dominant than intuition and creative imagination) and yet Hegel’s reflections on and elaborations of the new logic are serious, well-thought-out responses to the complexity and the totality of the human reality in the temporal sequence.
By extensively working out the meaning of negation, Hegel was successfully elucidating reality and its principle of Spirit as a gradual, historical process with the series of steps in which Spirit evolves as self-actualizing. Reality is now understood not by either-or, but by the perpetual motion between the contradictories as from one to the other.

It is the traditional opinion that Hegel and Leibniz are the two classic representatives of Intellectualistic Worldview with encyclopedic knowledge. In the midst of “rationalism” in the narrow sense, Leibniz also the philosopher who saw the purpose and meaning of the being and reality.

Despite their similarity of motivation of philosophy, in Leibniz, the ontologically pluralistic viewpoint is more prominent, while in Hegel the objective-cosmological viewpoint seems dominant. Leibniz wanted to see reality in terms of the unique, finite individual spirit. Hegel wanted to see reality in terms of the entire history of humankind as well as the history of intellectual development in terms of philosophy (the pursuit of wisdom). According to Leibniz, the ultimate reality, the monad, was conceived and understood from the viewpoint to the infinite number of the individualistic-unique entities. In contrast, Hegel’s philosophical inquiry was directed toward comprehending reality as the comprehensive, entire process of development in the universe and its variety of expression of the absolute spirit as a whole with its own purpose. This reality was understood as the cosmos in the historical evolution by Hegel.
While Leibniz inferred the nature of representation in all the things from the nature of representation in the individual mind, Hegel attempted to draw from reality the universal, absolute Spirit itself which endeavors to fulfill the purpose and meaning of becoming the expression of Spirit (= Geist) that each individual spirit (= Geist) has its own task at its own stage to actualize itself through the series of thought’s objectification.(In this, we recognize Schelling’s influences)
According to Hegel, what is rational is real (=the full actualization of the potential, implicit nature of Spirit), and what is real is rational (=the reality understood as the pregnant self-expression of Spirit).
Hegel was trying to see reality and its principle by means of the synthesis of two different ideas: The one of the philosophy of identity (from Schelling) and this identical articulates itself in the process of history as the totality of inevitable self-expressions of the identical Spirit.

Was vernunftig ist, das ist wirklich, während was wirklich ist, das ist vernunftig. (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Vorrede §. 17)
a) At first, the Absolute (=the absolute Spirit) – das Absolute oder die logische Idee – exists as the abstract system of concepts prior to the concrete, actual world.
b) Next, this Absolute comes down to or reveals itself at the level of Nature and the unconscious,
c) The Absolute then further actualizes itself and is awaken as Consciousness through the lower stage of cognition to the higher ones such as in the form of Sensation, Perception, Consciousness to Self-Consciousness – Selbstbewußtsein – in the human,
d) It actualizes Itself as the content of that absolute Idea in the social institution,
e) Finally It enriches Itself in Philosophy, Religion and Arts and returns to Itself as the completely actualized and articulated Absolute (Spirit).
Thus, the Idea (the abstract Notion of Spirit) attained the higher, highest Absoluteness than at first.
This, the Highest Product of Philosophy, cannot be expressed in religion, morality, arts as they are pre-stages to that of philosophy.
What is meant by the concept of the Absolute (=Spirit) can only be adequately expressed by Philosophy (Philosophical Analyses and Presentations). This contention has lead many Hegel scholars to the belief that Hegel’s approach was indeed intellectual.

ii) The Three Basic Characteristics
The following three propositions as being contained in the development of the most fundamental theme of Hegel’s philosophy, which purports that all the beings are beings by being thought (gedacht sein) and that all the generations are developments of thought (= Denken or Reason):
a) Idealism
The object of philosophical inquiry and knowledge is the idea (= die Idee, the absolute Idea=Spirit).
Philosophy aims at clarifying the concepts, the purposes and the meanings of various phenomena and further at revealing the places of those phenomena in the system of sciences (= philosophy) as well as in the locations of the universe.
Main concern is directed to elucidate which of the value hierarchy and which stage of the development a certain thing belongs to.
Its method is teleological and critical (evaluative).
The conceptual, teleological explanation is attained in philosophy, instead of mechanical causal explanation.

In short, Hegel’s approach is Idealism.

b) Philosophy of Identity
Everything real is an expression of one and the same absolute, live Spirit, and
if everything is one of the stages of development of or Spirit or thought (Denken),
then thought (Denken= Spirit) and being is one and the same.
In short, Hegel’s philosophy is also ultimately Philosophy of Identity.
To stipulate the differences between Schelling’s and Hegel’s philosophy of identity, there are many. Hegel’s identity is a complex, well articulated whole.
c) The Actualization of Parmenides’ Identity of Being and Thought in the Teleological Development
If the world is thought’s generating process of itself, and philosophy is the expression of this process, then philosophy is the Scientific Doctrine of the Development of the Thought (= Reason or Spirit). Or It is the theory of progress or self-actualization of Spirit.
If any one thing actualizes itself as a certain stage of thought, everything real is rational (as an essential moment of Reason), and if the World Process attains its highest in Philosophy and Philosophy attains the System of the Absolute in Idealism, then what is Rational obtains the actualized form in the Absolute Idealism through the various stages of development.

So What is real is rational and What is rational is real. (“Was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das is vernünftig.” Vorrede zu Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, S. 17>).

Thus Parmenides claim of the absolute Identity of Being and Thought (Reason) is, according to Hegel, ultimately realized in the process of the world history.

iii) The Differences from Hegel’s Predecessors.The three fundamental characteristics of Hegel’s philosophical approach:
1) Idealism of Spirit,
2) Sophisticated Philosophy of Identity,
3) Optimistic, Teleological Progressivism
4) The Further Expansion of the Meaning of Reason beyond the Limit of Tradition
Then, how does Hegel differ from his predecessors, from Schelling in particular?
a) Uniqueness of Hegel’s Idealism of Spirit.
In Schelling’s philosophy the subject of development is Nature, and its ultimate stage is Arts (a clear influence from the Romantic Movements).
Schelling’s Idealism is in a sense physical(=physisch), mystical and aesthetic dynamism.
Fichte’s Idealism is ethical fundamentalism.
In contrast to those two predecessors of Hegel’s philosophy, Hegel’s idealism is the Logicalization of the world (die Logizierung der Welt), i.e., It is often called a Panlogismus. It is an attempt to comprehend reality by means of the totality developed by logical structure.
However, Kroner views Hegel’s philosophy as Philosophy of Life (die Lebensphilosophie) and Irrationalism. Kojièv also took a different view of Hegel’s philosophy such that in the post WWII France, phenomenological movements and existential philosophies arose from Kojièv’s influence.

b) Die Identitätsphilosophie – Sophisticated Philosophy of Identity-
The Philosophy of Identity is a philosophical system which purports that Spirit and Nature, the Ideal and the Real, or subjectivity and objectivity, are ultimately one and the same (in their essence) and they are mere two distinct appearances of the Absolute above and beyond the two.
i) Predominance of Spirit over Nature
During the period of his philosophy of identity, Schelling dealt with the Real and the Ideal as the equals in their rights.
Hegel somewhat revived Fichte’s thought and subordinated Nature to Spirit, the Real to the Ideal, or objectivity to subjectivity, whereby the former is less developed than the latter in a certain sense.
Hegel disagrees with Fichte, however, by insisting on that Fichte “disdained” Nature.
According to Hegel, Nature is neither equal to Spirit, nor a mere means or instrument -das Mittel.
On the contrary, Nature is one of the essential and inevitable stages of the process in which the Absolute (Spirit) goes through in actualizing itself.
ii) Nature as The Idea in other being
Nature is, according to Hegel, the Notion or mere Idea of the Absolute or Spirit which is undeveloped, thus a being or an idea in other being – die Idee im Anderssein.
In this self-alienated mode of being, Spirit itself becomes Nature as one of its necessary stages of development in order to become the conscious, actual Spirit. The Absolute (Spirit) was a mere Notion before it becomes Nature. The Absolute there was der Geist an sich, the Spirit being itself or in its potency, but not yet der Geist für sich, the Spirit being for itself, i.e., being actualized.
The Absolute was the Idea or Spirit. What is idealistic is the dawn of the Real’s night and is the evening prior to the Real’s night. The Absolute in concept begins to develop itself from the stage of das Ansichsein (the being in-self = the being in potency) through the stage of the being-in-other – das Aussersichsein = das Anderssein – to the total self actualization stage of das an und für sich Sein. Reason or Spirit, according to Hegel, develops Itself through three stages and first exists as the logical system of concepts, then exists as Nature (the-being-in-other or for itself), and finally exists in and for Itself as the live Spirit -der lebendige Geist.

Hegel’s Philosophy of Identity differs from Schelling’s in the following three points:
a) Hegel subordinates Nature to Spirit
b) Hegel construes the Absolute at the beginning not as undifferentiated between the Real and the Ideal like in Schelling’s philosophy. On the contrary, according to Hegel, the Absolute reveals Itself explicitly primarily as the Ideal, as the civita de contemplatio aeternitatis.
c) The optimistic progressivism
It is contended that Hegel conceived the process of Reality’s development as modelling after the Judeo-Christian Eschatology, the view by which the history had the beginning and made progress and would come to an end in the sense of perfection. The process of development of the Absolute is such that in that process, the succeeding stage is always higher and more comprehensive than the preceding one. In this sense, Hegel’s standpoint is often called the optimistic progressivism. This characterization is rather superficial and needs more careful examination later.

iv) About Dialectic
Hegel exploited the Principle of Development of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis originated by Fichte, explored further by Schelling. This Principle of Development Hegel called die dialektische Methode – dialectical method – or die Dialektik – dialectic.
a) Socrates used hé dialektiké in the sense that the two souls would pick one tentative definition for what is, and discuss, examine its faults, then further examine various definitions of a universal concept one after another until the two who are participating in the dialogue would ultimately come to a clear understanding of something real, such as truth, justice, good, beauty, etc. It’s process was taken mutually step by step correcting the error(s) at each stage of the definition in the search of the ultimate arrival at the objective true understanding of what it really is.
b) Plato employed the term, hé dialektiké, in the context of the theory of ideas such that it refers to the highest philosophical method to start with a lower, narrower concept, gradually climbing up higher and higher, ultimately to attain the first principle or the highest idea of agathon ‹Good‹ (See The Republic Bk 7 and 8).
Plato rather faithfully followed the way of Socrates, although Plato developed it in accordance with his doctrine of ideas. Thus in Socrates-Plato ‘s use of dialectics had a very positive meaning as the method essential to pursuing their philosophical inquiries into truth.
c) Aristotle used the dialectics in a negative sense. In opposition to analytics or a syllogism, he used hé dialektiké in one sense as synonymous with his notion of induction. In other context, Aristotle even meant by the dialectic to often connote the sophistry, while the analytic’s object is the deduction of the argument from the true premisses (particularly in syllogism). Sometimes in Metaphysics for example, however, Aristotle used the dialectic in the Socratic-Platonic sense in that we would recourse to the most fundamental principle by dialectics.
d) In the Middle Ages, the dialectics meant the Formal Logic. In the similar use may be found in Henri Bergson in 19th Century/20th Century, according to whom la dialectique and l’intuition as philosophical method are put in opposition.
e) Kant accepted Aristotelian distinction of analytics and dialectics and used the dialectic in the negative sense following Aristotle. Contrary to the transcendental analytics which reveals the conditions for possibility of sciences as the critique of understanding, Kant employed the transcendental dialectics to refer to the critique of the transcendental illusion (Schein), namely the critique of the misuses of Reason beyond the scope of our possible experience. Soul, the world, and God are the three transcendental illusion.
f) Hegel used the dialectics in the positive sense that the dialectics is the scientific application of the universal law rooted in the nature of our thinking.
To Hegel, the law of thinking is at the same time further the principle of reality. This principle or the law – die Gesetzlichkeit -has the three stages of development,
the Thesis,
Antithesis, and
Synthesis.
This law itself and its scientific applications are called die Dialektik.
Why Hegel considered that the dialectics was the authentic way of speculative thinking dealing with the Absolute Reason is mainly because Hegel derived the conception of dialectics from his “critical comparison” between the three forms of philosophies dominant at his preceding time: Namely, the one was the philosophy of enlightenment which culminated in Kant, another was Fichte’s activity of Self through dialectic, and the last was Schelling’s philosophy of identity. Both did not satisfied Hegel.
Hegel agreed with Schelling in terms of the content and the materials of philosophy because the object of philosophical knowledge is one and same reality, accepted from the philosophy of Enlightenment the concepts of philosophy which articulate themselves in reality, and finally the principle of reality is, as Fichte considered, is an active Self, which teleological develops itself through dialectic.
Hegel followed Schelling in that philosophy must be a metaphysics, i.e., the Science of the Absolute and its being in the world (das Innersein des Absoluten in der Welt) and Philosophy is the Science of Identity of the Opposites and the Science not only of the Phenomenal World but also of the Thing in Itself.
However, to Hegel, the forms Schelling provided for philosophy seemed to be unscientific, unsystematic. For Schelling founded the scientific knowledge on the genius’ Intuition. However, according to Hegel, no science is possible by Intuition.
On the other hand, what Hegel was in accord with the Philosophy of Enlightenment is its respect for the Formal Rigor (Logic) of Philosophy (the concepts with its system) as The Science.
Science (= Philosophy) must consist of concrete concepts, not of abstract concepts.
However, Kant, together with the other Philosophers of Enlightenment, stood on the basis of Reflection as the philosophical method.
In reflection, the opposition between the being and thinking, the dichotomy between the finite and infinite, may never be resolved.
Therefore, the Absolute is transcendent and the human reason can not recognize the authentic nature of the things.
Hegel would like to synthesize
1) the strength of Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity
2) the advantage of the Philosophy of Enlightenment (the concepts and their articulations)
and
3) dynamic development and teleological evolution of the live Subject (from Fichte)
Shchelling was right, according to Hegel, that he proposes the reality is an evolution of self-identical primary Ground. Although Schelling’s intuition as the philosophical method can only grasp the concrete, particular, immediate or unmediated (unvermittelt – unmittelbar) knowledge, what Schelling was gazing at as the genuine reality as self identical was the so-called live Spirit according to Hegel.
Reason of the Enlightenment was the cognitive faculty of things. The concepts of the Philosophy of Enlightenment can deal only with the knowledge of the empty, the abstract and the universal.
What is to be done is to eliminate the unmidiatedness in Schelling’s intuitive knowledge and at the same time is to overcome the non-intuitive, empty abstractness of the concepts in the Philosophy of Enlightenment.
Thus, the concrete being which is mediated by the universal concepts, namely the concrete concepts (konkrete Begriffe) in the sense of Kantian intuitive understanding, are to be achieved, according to Hegel, in order to truly establish the System of Science (the genuine System of Philosophy).
What we need is, maintained Hegel, the concept which seeks not the empty, mere universal abstracted from the particular, but the very universal which is multiply mediated by and actually related to the concrete particular with articulation in itself.
It would be the concept which does not place the infinite unreachably transcendent from the finite world, nor places and expresses the essence of the infinite behind the phenomena, but reveals itself as it actually is in the concrete phenomena themselves.
This is called the concrete concept.
The philosophy of reflection in which their concepts are abstract and “dead” merely reveals the partial, fragmentary unrelated fraction of reality. Thus such philosophy of reflection looks at the opposition as the irreconcilable, while Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity viewed the opposites as unmidiatedly (immediately) identical and does not see the articulateness and conceptual interrelationship of reality.
In other words, either one of the two positions are by themselves insufficient, as they do not deal with reality as a whole and as it actually is.
The concrete concept transposes the opposite by mediation into the identity and teaches us to recognize the identity as the consequence of a developing process whose universal law purports the three stages of being, the stage of the immediate identity, secondly that of the disruption or the self-alienation of itself from itself and finally that of the reconciliation and the mediated unification of the articulated totality. This process of development and its principle is called dialectics.

4) The Theory of Dialectics.
The universal principle of development and its development itself is called die Dialektik. This is the central operative concept in Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel attempted to eliminate the opposition between the philosophy of reflection and the philosophy of intuition by his conceptual and well articulated concrete speculative thinking.
There are three aspects in this opposition:
i) The Faculty of Philosophical Knowledge
When we look back the history of Western philosophy, there are three elements which may influence Hegel to develop his own Spirit as Subject: a) the reflective understanding (Kant’s philosophy of reflection): b) the mysterious intuition by the genius (Schelling’s philosophy of identity): c) the negating Reason (Fichte’s Science of Knowledge). In addition to these, Hegel inherited from Aristotle-Leibniz-Fichte’s teleological causality as the principle of reality. Thus, the faculty of philosophical knowledge is the live Spirit as the Subject which mediates the other through itself. Although Hegel called it also REason, the meaning of cognitive Reason in the Enlightenment philosophy has been greatly modified that it was not only the practical reason, but also the self-developing reason.

ii) The Object of Philosophical Knowledge:
From Hegel’s point of view, the object of philosophical knowledge may be divided into three: a) the phenomenal world which is relative:b) the Absolute which is static substance-like: c) The Absolute as the live Subject
Hegel chose the c), namely the absolute as the live Subject, which starts with the conceptual identity through the disruption (self alienation of itself from itself) into the opposition and then finally returning from the discrimination to the mediated, concrete identity as the totality of the genuine reality. The Absolute is a dynamic process of development. The genuine reality is no other than this dynamic process Itself. So the philosophical system is the expression of this dynamic process. Indeed philosophy must also be a process of the dynamic thinking itself. Philosophy is a system of concepts each of which proceeds from other and moves into another. The dynamic process of thinking itself of itself is the philosophical system.
iii) The Meaning of Contradiction (which is the same as Das Aufheben)
a) excluding contradiction as meaningless
b) arguing for the sheer identity of the contradictories
c) contradiction is the propulsive energy, the source of the dynamic process of the live reality.
Reality is, according to Hegel, the development of the live Subject Itself. It is called the Subject, because it is not a dead reality, but is a constantly active in the life force. Its driving force is no other than the very contradiction, the dynamic relation (and reconciling each other) between the mutually negative opposite. Without contradiction (and its negative force), reality is without life and change.
The genuine reality is full of contradictions.
Contradiction is a propelling power of philosophical thinking.
Contradiction must not be uprooted, but must be aufgehoben – abolished – regarding its limitations and elevated-preserved of its essentials: This aufheben is often translated into “sublate”. However, it communicates its only one side of the meaning.).
The opposition must be denied in the way that the opposite are negated and abolished regarding their limitations and the higher unity with the richer, more concrete, better articulate content, whereby the preceding two (opposing) moments constitute the necessary elements of the third. Thus contradiction is overcome.
Any concept, being abstract and one-sided, is by nature limited and this limitation is to be overcome by the dialectical motion of aufheben by negation.
In Hegel’s thought the concept of negation accordingly obtains an extremely significant meaning. The negation is the very driving force of the development (which is the same thing as contradiction).

Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis.
In this synthesis all the process and its essential elements are contained as its necessary moments. They are articulate, mutually related, distinguished and brought in an organic unity. This is the live Reality and is also called das lebendige Subject als der Geist(Spirit). The world (=Reality) is only known adequately as this process of dialectical movement. In reality as a whole we distinguish die Idee , die Welt und den Geist,(The Idea, The World and The Spirit), but they are one and the same in the primordial way of this process.

die Idee – The Idea –
die Natur – Nature –
der Geist – Spirit –
der subjective Geist- the subjective Spirit
der objective Geist – the objective Spirit
der absolute Geist – the absolute Spirit
Hegel’s Phenomenology
Die Phänomenologie des Geistes – The Phenomenology of Spirit
This opus published in 1787 may be considered as the Introduction to Hegel’s philosophy. It is at the same time the most fruitful opus from which we are able to learn a great deal for our own philosophical inquiry. Hegel describes the process of the spirit’s development starting from the sensation till the absolute knowledge – das absolute Wissen – as the philosophical knowledge, whereby Hegel saw a parallel with the historic-cultural development of the World Spirit(= der Weltgeist). The dialectical development of Spirit is stated in the light of the human psychic as well as historical sequence.
Needless to repeat, Hegel’s absolute knowledge is not that by Schelling’s intuition in that it is not the knowledge immediately given by intellectual intuition, but the knowledge mediated by thought in the form of concepts.
In his Preface, Hegel called Schelling’s cognition of the Absolute as the “knowledge to recognize the black cow in the pitch black night”2 . Hegel did not name Schelling in it, but it was so obvious and because of his critical remarks by Hegel on Schelling. Schelling was quite annoyed and since then became very distant (they never talked to each other since). However, this is the declaration of independence of Hegel from Schelling in his philosophical pursuit. Hegel objected that philosophy comes immediately (unmediatedly) from the intuitive knowledge of the Absolute.
Hegel intended to show by dialectics that the process from the pre-philosophical consciousness is of necessity to go through many stages and attain the absolute knowledge.
The process of development are divided into six stages:
1. Consciousness
2. Self Consciousness
3. Reason
4. Spirit
5. Religion
6. the Absolute Knowledge (= Philosophy)
Comparing this to that of Die Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften – The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences -, the 1., 2., and 3. respond to the middle of the Subjective Spirit,and the 4. is the Moral Spirit, while the 5. and 6. correspond to the Absolute Spirit.
The Organization of Hegel’s Philosophical System according to:
The Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences:
Philosophy of Spirit
I) Subjective Spirit
I-i) Anthropology (Soul)
Natural Soul
Sensing Soul
Actual Soul
I-ii) Phenomenology of Spirit (Consciousness)
Consciousness
Self Consciousness
Reason
I-iii) Psychology (Spirit)
Theoretical Spirit
Practical Spirit
Free Spirit
II) Objective Spirit
II-i) Law
II-ii) Morality
II-iii) Society Sittlichkeit –
Family
Civil Society
State
III) Absolute Spirit
III-i) Art (Intuition)
III-ii) Religion (Representation = Symbol)
III-iii) Philosophy (Concrete Concept)

(1) Das Bewußtsein – Consciousness
a. Sensation – die sinnliche Gwißheit
b. Perception – die Wahrnehmung
c. Understanding – der Verstand
The consciousness, according to Hegel, develops through these three stages. This does not signify the order of the temporal genesis . The knowledge which immediately appear with the “self evident certainty” is taken as the starting point. This is the immediate certainty of sensation.
a) Any sensation is known to us “this”. Although it appears concrete, particular, immediately certain, but this is the most abstract character common to all sensory experience, for “this” is in contrast to “that” and “this”, thus, abstractly refers to anything particular: In this sense, “this” is very abstract and has no specific content of its reference.
Therefore, “this” contains simply the being of the thing sensed. Although at first this sensory knowledge appeared with the absolute certainty of immediacy, this knowledge, upon careful philosophical examination, reveals itself as the most abstract, fragmentary, one-sided awareness of the immediate experience by the sense. Once this defect is made explicit through philosophical examination, consciousness moves up to the next stage, that is, that of perception.
b) Perception is the sensory consciousness of the concrete. The total content of the sensation becomes a common characteristic of the object of perception, that is, the thing – das Ding.
In other words, in stead of pointing out something as “this” or “that” with immediate certainty of sensation, on this level, our knowledge sees a common feature among many “this” and begins to take them as “many appearances” of “one and the same thing.” Beyond sensory immediacy, one begins to know an object by its “name” such as an “apple”, a “desk” or a “human.” On this level, we are able to have “names” and distinguish objects by their “names.”
c) It is understanding that denies the independence of the thing. For on the previous level of perception, the object of our perception was taken for as an independent, self-identical thing, i.e., as a substance. Contrary to this, understanding negates the substantiality of a thing.
By means of “concepts” – Begriffe -, understanding grasps the force -die Kraft – behind the thing. On the basis of the things, understanding takes as the inner force what perception previously comprehended as an independent”thing.”
What perception previously grasped (as a thing) is now turns out to be merely a phenomenon.
Sensation took notice of “this” or “that,” the particular, concrete character.
Perception views the “sensed” character as belonging to a thing as its character.
Understanding takes the thing a mere appearance of the “inner force.”
By so doing, perception now rises up to Self Consciousness.
(2) Das Selbstbewußtsein – Self Consciousness
Sensation, perception and understanding are faculties of knowledge of things. Now consciousness as a cognitive faculty may also take consciousness itself for its own object.
Here the (recognizing) consciousness and its object (consciousness recognized) are viewed as being in opposition, and the truth is considered to lie on the side of the object- consciousness. Here the question of the other was raised by Hegel and articulated further to elucidate that the other is priori in givenness to oneself. Or In order for the consciousness to obtain the self awareness, it must be first recognize the other as self consciousness, and then will be able to aware of oneself. Now the (recognizing) consciousness is the consciousness which reflects upon itself, i.e., the self consciousness. Here lies truth in the I (consciousness ) itself.
In the self consciousness which knows its own self, the object is, needless to say, the consciousness or the I itself. The consciousness of the object and the object of the consciousness coincide, and truth and certainty coincide, too.
i) For self consciousness, nothing other than its self has truth. The objects which was the objects of sensation, perception, understanding, now come to be discovered as having a negative character. In this negativity, the object of these consciousness shows itself as something other than consciousness and distract consciousness from itself , i.e., to negate consciousness as an opposite to consciousness.
As mentioned above, on the level of self consciousness, consciousness splits into two. Its object is also its own consciousness. Thus, consciousness is here directed to its own self.
As a result, the object of self consciousness is, first of all, pleasure. The pleasure, the object in its negative character satisfies the desire – das Begierde – of self consciousness.
The desire is in itself self contradictory in that the desire affirms the independence of its object on the one hand and denies its independence on the other at the same time.
Therefore, by means of the power of this contradiction, the consciousness pursuing pleasure, the life with desires, having obtained satisfaction of desire, reflects itself deeply into itself.
ii) Whereas what was negated, e.g. in perception, as its object was a thing, that which negates self consciousness is not a thing, but the other human self consciousness. The human (self consciousness) opposes to the other human (self consciousness) in the true sense.
A self consciousness opposes itself to another self consciousness and asserts itself against the other. In other words, the relation of consciousness deepens itself further from the consciousness’ relation to the thing toward its relation to the other consciousness.
Therefore, the world of self consciousness is not the world of the knowledge of self and that of the other self, but the world of interaction between the self and the other self.
The historically primary relationship of such kind is the Relation between the Master and the Slave – Herr und Knecht. This is the relation between one self consciousness as mastering with independence – die Herrschaft – and the other self consciousness as being enslaved without independence.
The Slave labors, while the Master enjoys (= satisfies desires).

iii) The Slave learns to control his own desire in order to serve his Master and further learns to create his own Spirit through his labor.
The Slave learns to create his own self by producing things by his labor.
The Slave becomes thus to know and exercise the Freedom of his own self despite his being shackled. Here the Freedom of Self Consciousness arises.
It was the Stoicism that made this Freedom of Thought (self consciousness) the Principle of Life.
It was further Skepticism (Pyrrhon and his disciple Timon were supposed to be thought of here) that brackets and negates the reality in order to actualize the Freedom of Self Consciousness. They thought that by putting the reality to epoché (bracketing) they may attain the serenity of mind (ataraxia).
This Skepticism contains in itself a contradiction in that the skepticism denies the immutability of the external reality and yet maintains the very immutability of its own philosophy and its way of life.
Iv) Once becoming conscious of this contradiction between the immutable and one’s own individuality which is mutable, the Unhappy Consciousness – das unglückliches Bewußtsein – is born.
While Hegel describes the stoicism and its transition to the skepticism, he had in mind the Downfall of the Classical World (Rome).
Similarly Hegel’s description of the Unhappy Consciousness is the narrative of the three elements existing in the Middle Ages in Europe:
1) die Sehnsucht auf das verlorene Gute – the longing for the lost Good
=the knighthood of the Crusaders.
2) The class of the unfree farmers (the unsatisfactory state of work and pleasure)
3) Die religiösen Mönchen und Orden – The religious monks and order with the absolute abstinence or resignation of one’s own self

At this resignation or abstinence of one’s own, the reconciliation between the abstinent individual (the mutable) and the immutable, the Individuality (mutability) and the Immutability was accomplished by Reason.
Hegel believed that the development of these consciousness as the transcendental conditions for the possibility of the human Spirit finds itself not only within each individual consciousness, but reflects itself in the history of the humankind.
(3) Reason – die Vernunft
Reason is the self-consciousness that grasps the identity of the individuality (mutability) and the Immutability, the finite and the infinite, and objectivity and subjectivity.
Describing the transition to the stage of Reason, The Phenomenology of Spirit indicates the beginning of the Contemporary period in Europe. In the viewpoint of Reason, the consciousness is all that is and the I is the ultimate world. This is the world of idealism. In Idealism Reason merely possesses the certainty at the beginning that all that is my own.
Therefore, it is necessary to raise this certainty to truth.
i) Reason at first appears as the theoretical reason. This reason is called die beobachtende Vernunft – the observing reason -. This stage of reason reveals its rationality in the observation of nature.
This reason distinguishes the attributes and the non-attributes of a thing, attempts to describe the thing (the object of nature) and investigates the laws of nature.
However, this theoretical reason is not capable to completely transform all the natural phenomena into the rational concepts – die Idee – and in the investigation of the law the theoretical reason meets the deadlock in the organic nature. The purposefulness in the organism -die Zweckmäßigkeit des Organismus – may be captured by the external observation and yet to the observing eye, the inner intellect as the organic force is shut off.
So the observing reason secondly attempts to observe the self consciousness in its purity – das Selbstbewußtsein in seiner Reinheit – in order to discover the logical and psychic Laws. In other words, it tries to purely observe the self consciousness. However, the laws of thinking are formal and cannot be grasped in their substantiality. On the hand, the psychic laws often depend on the respective situations or personalities and cease to be laws.
Thus the observing Reason thirdly endeavors to observe the relationship of the self consciousness to its immediate reality – die Beziehung des Selbstbewußtseins auf seine unmittelbare Wirklichkeit. That is, this Reason comprehends its body – die Körper – as its expression or its externality. The observing Reason attempts to interpret the inwardness by means of externality, the psychic by means of the bodily, whose examples may be found in the physiognomic or phrenology – Die Schädellehre -, these attempts prove themselves as shambles, for Reason is not able to see its own reality in itself but in the external physiognomic or phrenology. Indeed, there may exist a close relationship between them, but it is the relationship of the sign and the singed, never that of identity. We never see the immediate expression of Reason itself.
ii) Reason, having ceased to make simple (scientific) observations for the discovery of its own reality, now ascends to the attitude of actualizing the external world that possesses the essence of Reason itself. While Hegel called the theoretical Reason as the observing Reason, he calls this practical Reason the actualization of rational self- consciousness through itself – die Verwirklichung des vernünftigen Selbstbewußtseins durch sich selbst. The relationship of the practical Reason to the theoretical Reason resembles to that of the self- consciousness to consciousness.
ii-a) However, at the beginning, the practical Reason merely seeks for its self actualization. In its search on the first stage, the practical Reason like Goethe’s Faust pursues pleasures: That which searches for and indulges itself in pleasures – Lust – alone would encounter necessity (Notwendigkeit – its necessary negative consequences) and would destroy itself.
ii-b) On the second stage, the practical Reason attempts to incorporate into itself that which opposes it as necessity and would exert itself to thereby actualize the law of heart – das Gesetz des Herzens – the personal happiness – in the world. However, this attempt is ultimately no other than the insanity of self deceit – der Wahnsinn des Eigendünkels.
ii-c) On the third stage, the practical Reason, having given up the pursuit of the happiness of its own (through gratification of pleasures), endeavors to actualize the good in the society. This is virtue – Tugend. However, the virtue crashes with the general convention of the mundane society -Weltlauf. For the mundane society is not necessarily virtuous. On the other hand, the virtue being so divorced from the actuality can no way find its own reality.
iii) Thus rational self-consciousness becomes to try to actualize its aim in accordance with the actual reality. This is not other than the concrete Individuality – die Individualität – an individual Reason that pursues its own aim. The Individuality is, according to Hegel, the synthesis of the observation and the (practical) action, i.e., the synthesis of the practical Reason and the Theoretical Reason.
To such an Individuality in which the opposition between the aim and the reality are already dissolved (reconciled), there is nothing else but to express and manifest its own Individuality. No longer overcoming the reality which opposes the self, Reason at this stage (the rational self-consciousness as Individuality) only shifts itself from the invisible to the visible.
iii-a) On the first stage of this Individuality, the Individuality “enjoys” its own actions just as animals do in the field or the mountain. The Individuality at this stage Hegel called the domain of the spiritual animals (das geistige Tierreich). The consequence of the Individuality’s self manifestation here is a work (die Werke).
iii-b) On the second stage, this domain consists of the opposition between the Producer of the work and its Critic. The critic is the law-giving Reason – die gesetzgebende Vernunft -, i.e., Reason gives itself the law (or the criterion).
However, these laws are not only formal but they are many, that are mutually competing. Thus it becomes necessary to examine which one of the laws is indeed in accord with the truth of Reason.
iii-c) The Individuality on the third stage is the law-examining Reason – die gesetzprüfende Vernunft .
Where could the truth of Reason then be sought as the criterion for such examination? It must be sought in the ethical substance – die sittliche Substanz = der Geist (= Spirit) -, which is way beyond the mere rational self-consciousness. When Reason becomes the objective reality as the ethical substance, Reason is now elevated to Spirit.

(4) Spirit -der Geist
This Spirit is, as mentioned above, the Spirit as the Communal Moral Order, which corresponds to what Hegel later called the Objective Spirit – der objektive Geist.
While Hegel called the Reason mentioned in the previous paragraph as the Reason whose certainty is still in movement to elevate itself to the truth, he called this Spirit the Reason whose certainty has already been elevated to the truth. The Reason at the previous stage merely was the Consciousness with certainty with which it possessed all the reality as its own.
Through the dialectical development of Reason, the certainty with which consciousness possessed all the reality as its own has now been elevated to the truth of Reason, in which Reason has become Spirit. Thus Reason has become Spirit such that now Reason (= Spirit) is conscious of the world as its own and of itself as the World Itself. This Spirit in Phenomenology of Spirit corresponds therefore the objective Spirit in opposition to the subjective Spirit in Hegel’s later opus, Die Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften.
This Spirit would further develop in the following three steps:
1) The Ethical Order – die Sittlichkeit – as the true Spirit –
der wahre Geist
2) The Culture – die Bildung – as the self-alienated Spirit-
der sich entfremdete Geist
3) The Morality – die Moralität – as the Spirit which is certain of Itself –
der seiner selbst gewisse Geist
3-i] The Ethical Order
Der wahre Geist – the true Spirit – reveals itself in the ethical life and its order of the race.

a) The ethical order – die sittliche Welt – has two moments:
the one is the human laws which appear in public through the civil life and male,
the other is the spiritual laws which appear internally through the family life land the female.
The former concerns with the nation and the government, while the latter concerns the family.
b) At the ethical action – die sittliche Handlung -, these two moment of legality sometimes splits, e.g. Sophocles’ Antigoné: The apparent, irreconcilable opposition between the positive law and the Divine (moral) Law arises. In this struggle, however, while the concrete individual perishes, the opposition of the nation versus the humanity, that of the family versus the divine, are mutually recognized and, in consequence, reconciled into the unity in terms of their rights.
c) Once this recognition of the mutual rights has abstractly become a state, the civil state – der Rechtszustand – comes into being. What is in question in the legal, civil domain is not an actual concrete individual, but an abstract legal person. The government of the mere formal laws gives rise to the mere formalism in laws. When Hegel talks about this, he had in his mind the Roman republic – res publica.

The polis – the city state – of the ethical order dissolved itself into the legal, civil state.
3-ii] The Culture – die Bildung –
The Ethical Order – die Sittlichkeit – is now elevated to the self-alienated Spirit – der sich entfremdete Geist.
Describing this, Hegel had in his mind the Renaissance and the Contemporary period, the Period of the Enlightenment in France in particular. It is the split of self by means of reflection into the reflecting self and the reflected self.
The uniqueness of this self-alienated Spirit consists in the fact that for such Spirit, there are two worlds, i.e., the world of reality and the world constructed in the “thin air” of the Pure Consciousness.
3-ii-a) The first attempt to bring about the world which is to be established in the Pure Consciousness by transcending the real world is the culture in the sense of civility – die Bildung.
A man of culture encountering the two powers of the real world, i.e., the power of the state and the power of wealth, could see either both of them as the same as his own nature or as something different from himself. When he viewed them as the same as his own nature, i.e., as the good, and would make himself subservient to them, it is a noble submission.
On the hand, he, viewing them as different, i.e., as the evil and yet would serve them, it is a base – niederträchtig – submission.
Man sometimes would fall into a schizophrenic state between these two submissions. This is well described in Dederot’s novella called Le neveu de Rameau, which Hegel had in mind when he explained this schizophrenic conditions of the self-alienated Spirit.

3-ii-b) The second attempt would be made here to transcend the reality.
This attempt is called Faith – die Glaube.
In stead of recognizing the power of the state or wealth as the major powers, this believes in the Power of God of the Other World.
3-ii-c) What Faith is lacking in this attempt was the Pure Insight. This Pure Insight now revealed itself as the Enlightenment – die Aufklärung.
The power of the enlightenment destroyed Faith as “superstition” and asserted as the highest The Absolute without its predicate ( = the God of Deism) and matter ( = materialism).
The Enlightenment did not see the reality as it really is and viewed it solely in terms of its Utility ( = instrumental values – die Nützlichkeit.). cf. scientific knowledge for technology
The Enlightenment ended up with Negativity in every respect so that even when the Enlightenment leads to the Absolute Freedom (the Leitmotif of the French Revolution – Liberté, Égaiité, Fraternité -), its Absolute Freedom was no other than Freedom of Terror (the Reign of Terror).
As its result, the classes as well as the social institutions were destroyed, the rulers incessantly changed, people died on the guillotine.
3-iii) The Spirit which underwent the terror of death must return to itself. The Spirit that once alienated itself rom itself comes back to itself. This is the self assertive Spirit – der seiner selbst gewisse Geist-, or the Spirit that is certain of itself.
This is the morality – die Moralität.
3-iii-a) The moral worldview – die moralische Weltanschauung – ultimately is the postulate. Namely, the unity of morality and happiness postulates God and its existence for such a unity to be actualized.
3-iii-b) The standpoint of morality also implies pretension – die Verstellung.
The morality of ought (or obligation) – die Moralität des Sollens – contains in itself a contradiction. For unless there exists the harmony between reality and moral ought, the morality could not hold itself.
However, when the ought should become reality, the moral consciousness would disappear.
3-iii-c) From such pretension, the moral consciousness takes refuge in the moral conscience – das Gewissen.
Here the moral certainty becomes the immediate conviction. The laws of morality are no longer abstract order, but they become the concrete one and are contained in the spontaneity of the moral Subject.
Such Spirit that contains in the moral conviction of itself and isolates itself within itself is called die schöne Seele – the beautiful soul. This beautiful soul contains also the evil in itself, forgives and embraces the other’s (moral) crime. The moral Spirit will attain the self awareness through recognition and reconciliation.

Here the morality completes itself and becomes the Absolute Spirit which is explicitly Conscious of Itself as the Spirit.
In religion the Absolute Spirit immediately intuits itself. The completion of the morality, therefore, is religion.
Religion is no other than the intuitive certainty of the Absolute Truth in the Absolute Spirit.
(5) Religion
What Hegel calls religion is neither that in the widest, nor in the narrowest, but the religion in a intermediary sense. In the narrowest sense which is conventional, as Hegel did sometimes, religion stands in opposition to arts and philosophy. The religion in the widest sense is the case in which, Hegel said, arts, philosophy and religion could be subsumed under the title of religion like in Die Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften. Here what Hegel calls religion contains art, but does not include philosophy.
In the previous stages, the unhappy consciousness, the divine appearing in the family (as mentioned above), and the faith in the other world are somewhat religious, and yet religion itself was not the theme.
Religion is the Self-Consciousness of Spirit Itself.
The various forms of religion may be classified in accordance with the forms of Its Absolute.
The Absolute may be intuited in various figures.
Hegel divided religion into three different forms:
1) Natural Religion (India & Egypt)
The religion in which the Absolute is intuited in nature & natural objects,
2) Religion of Arts (Greek and Roman)
The religion in which the Absolute is intuited in arts
3) Religion of Revelation (Christianity)
The religion in which the Absolute is intuited in the true primordial form of Spirit.
1) Natural Religion
The natural religion, first of all, acknowledges the Divine in the Light that illuminates the Dark.
Secondly, it worships the life as the Divine in animals and plants. This may be found in the Indian religions.
Thirdly, the image of the Divinity is elevated to the workmanship (the notion of Werkmeister), namely Spirit appears in the symbolic forms of Understanding such as the pyramids or the obelisks as the decorative arts. In this level, the workmanship remains as the instinctive or impulsive (unconscious) work like bees producing their nest.

2) Religion of Arts
When the workmanship is elevated up to arts, the religion of arts is born. The artist creates work freely.
The religion of arts is the worship for beauty as well as morality.
There are three stages in the progress of arts:
a. The abstract work of art
The ritual worship such as the Divine Idols, the Hymns or the Oracles in the temple secluded from the everyday life
Its abstract nature may be found in its seclusion from the mundane life.
b. The live work of art
In this work of art, the worship is the Live Actuality, such as the Olympian Festival of the Olympic Gods, the Mystic Rituals, the Festivity of Bacchus, etc. The Divinity is experienced inwardly within the live activities of those Festivity.
c. the Spiritual work of art.
This Spiritual art is Poetry.
The Epic (e.g. Homeric) reveals the Fate of the Human as the destiny of the brave soldier.
The Tragedy internalizes the concept of Fate. The agony and fall of the hero is an appearance of the Divine.
The Comedy draws the Divine into the Human and takes off the Mask of the Divine whereby Its Sublimity is lost It tells Irony behind the Mask. In the comedy, the World of Beauty collapses and the Faith in the Law of the Divine is lost. “The God is dead.”

3) The Religion of Revelation.
While The God is dead!” was stated above, death is the destiny of the human.
The God who could die became Human in Jesus Christus. The religion of art that the human had created now elevated itself to the Religion of Revelation.
That God became Human means the fact that God by His Nature possesses the Form of Self-Consciousness. This is the content of the religion of revelation.
In the Religion of Revelation,,i.e., the Absolute Religion,
God is Self-Conscious of Himself as Spirit.
Even in the Religion of Revelation being absolute, Spirit is not Perfect.
Religion is still Intuition and not yet the Concept – der Begriff. For even in Religion of Revelation, the Absolute Spirit is not grasped by its Primordial Form of Itself.
The Absolute Spirit must return to Its Own Absolute Self-Consciousness, negating all its objectivities from Itself.
The Absolute Spirit must attain The (Highest) Level where It captures Itself in Its Absolute Knowledge by the Concept.

(6) The Absolute Knowledge – das absolute Wissen –

The Absolute knowledge is the Science in which the Absolute Spirit Conceptually grasps Itself.
The Spirit which knows Itself in the Form of the Spirit is the Conceptual Knowledge – das begreifende Wissen. In this Science, the Truth is equal to the Certainty, and possesses the Form of the Certainty.
The Substance is now known as the Activity of Subject.
Spirit’s Own Activity constitutes the Object of this Science.
This Conceptual Knowledge or Science is the “anticipation” of All the Forms previously observed and disclosed.
In this very Knowledge what was in the Form of Substance, being experienced, sensed, revealed, transforms Itself into Subject. The Absolute is not a (static, not dynamic) Substance, but Subject who is Self-Active. This Self-Activity of the Absolute is the Activity in Itself, that is, the Entire Reality.
In the Absolute Knowledge, the Content and the Form are totally Identical. The Absolute Content forms Itself in the Absolute Form.
The Dialectical Movement of the Experience of Consciousness
attains the Ultimate.
The Final stage of Phenomenology of Spirit will lead us to the Logic as the Fundamental Science for the Entire System.

Die LogiK (Logic)

The science of logic – die Wissenschaft der Logik – investigates the Idea – die Idee – on its abstract elements for forms.
It investigates solely how the idea is to be thought. On this level, it does inquires yet neither how the idea is intuited in Nature, nor how die idea thinks of itself in Spirit.
The content of the Science of Logic is the truth in itself namely in potency or without the external actualization – ohne Hülle.
Or we might say, Logic is the God prior to His creation of the universe, or in His Pure Essence. Quite clearly distinguished from the normal logic which discerns the form and the content,
the Speculative Logic is the Metaphysics or the Ontology – the Theory of Being.
The Speculative Logic deals with the categories as the real relationships, with the forms of thought as the real forms.
Just as the Being and Thought are one and the same, the Speculative Logic is not only the Science of Thought, but also the Science of Being at the same time.

Three Major Portions of the Logic are:
Being ‹ Objective Logic
Essence ‹ Objective Logic
Concept ‹ Subjective Logic
Being – Sein –
Quality – Qualität –
Being – Sein –
Being – Sein –
Nothing – Nichts –
Becoming – Werden –
Existence – Dasein –
Existence as such – Dasein als solches –
Finitude – Endlichkeit –
Infinity – Unendlichkeit –
Being For Itself – Fürsichsein –
Quantity – Quantität –
Pure Quantity – reine Quantität –
Quantum – Quantum –
Grade – Grad –
Mass = quantitative Quantum – Maß = quantitatives Quantum –
Essence -Wesen –
Essence as such – Wesen als solches –
Phenomenon – Erscheinung –
Actuality = Essence in Phenomenon
– Wirklichkeit = das erscheinende Wesen –
The Inner (Identität) ‹ Possibility – das Innere ‹ Möglichkeit –
The Outer (Untershied) ‹ Accident – das Äußere ‹ Zufälligkeit –
The absolutely Actual = Necessity – das absolut Wirkliche = Notwendigkeit
Substantiality – Substantialität –
Causality – Kausalität –
Mutual Determination – Wechselwirkung –
Concept – Begriff –
Subjectivity – Subjektivität –
Concept as such – Begriff als solcher –
Judgment – Urteil –
Inference – Schluß –
Objectivity – Objektivität –
Mechanism – Mechanismus –
Chemismus – Chemistry –
Teleology – Teleologie –
Idea = Subject ‹ Object – Idee = Subjekt ‹ Objekt –
Life – Leben –
Cognition – Erkennen –
Absolute Idea – die absolute Idee –
=the Unity of Being and Thought
=the Concept Objectified Itself
=Reason
=Inner Teleology (inner Purposefulness)

Hegel called the domains of Being and Essence Objective Logic, while he called the domain of Concept Subjective Logic.
The categories of Quality and those of Quantity are dealt with in the section of Being, while the Categories of Relation and those of Modality are so in the section of Essence.
In Subjective logic (dealing with Concepts), the section of Subjectivity dialectically deduces the Problems of Logic in the narrower sense, the section of Objectivity deals with Philosophy of Nature, and the section of Ideas is concerned about the fundamentals of Philosophy of Spirit.
We may refer to the beginning of his Logic as an example of how Hegel sets the original concept, makes the opposite from it and then produces the third as the synthesis of the first two.
How should the Absolute be thought? or
How should it be defined first?
It is evident, according to Hegel, that the Absolute is to be thought and defined as absolutely presuppositionless.
It is the most universal concept, the Concept whose determinate contents are abstracted from it, the Concept which has nothing more to abstract, namely the most indefinite and most immediate Concept, that is, the Concept of Being – Sein.
Since Being – Sein – which has neither determination nor content is equal to Nothing – Nichts.
While we think of Being in its purity, in fact we think of Nothing.
However, this Nothing cannot be maintained, but will return to and change into a Being again. For as long as Nothing is thought of, It exists as Being Thought.
The pure Being and the pure Nothing are, even if we think of them as “different” and “opposed”, one and the same. Both are indeterminate,i.e., without any definite character – Bestimmungslosigkeit.
To go from Being to Nothing, and from Nothing to Being again, is Becoming.

The Concept of Becoming
In other words, Becoming is a synthesis of Being and Nothing.
Thus, Becoming is the Truth of Being and Nothing. For example, while a child becomes a youth, this child is a youth and not a youth at the same time. Being and Nothing are mediated by Becoming, and they (= Being and Nothing) are preserved -aufgehoben = the past perfect of aufheben – regarding their essential natures, and thus, the concept which was synthesized is produced by the negation of negation.
However, Becoming,too, denies itself in such that Becoming becomes the state of “having become”.
This is a static state, embraced by Nothing.
Hegel called this Existence – Dasein.
This is the Being determined.
Here appears the Quality – Qualität – and it becomes Something – Etwas.
This Something can only be thought in relation to the other Something or Something Else which denies that original Something (in strife).
As long as one is distinguished from and determined by the Other,
Finitude – Endlichkeit – may arise.
The Finitude, when denied, becomes Infinity -Unendlichkeit.
Hegel distinguished two kinds of Infinity:
False Infinity – schlechte Unendlichkeit –
= Endlessness – Endlosigkeit –
True Infinity -wahre Unendlichkeit –
1) False Infinity
Something does not have the Other outside of Itself, but has this Other in Itself.
Therefore, Something is Something and the Other at the same time. In other words, Something changes. Something is understood as Something and simultaneously as the Other.
Something becomes the Other, and this Other as Something becomes another Other which is Something in Itself.and so on. In this manner, the change is endless.
Therefore, change is to be thought as the endless progress.
Thus, in Finitude, Endlessness is contained. Something organic has its end, i.e., is limited by the Other. This Other is also limited by another Other. And so on. Thus Finitude is endless. Always an new limit arises (or exists). There is no such thing as the last limit.
Therefore, the Finite is endless. This Endlessness Hegel called the False Infinity.

2) True Infinity
Contrary to the false infinity, as Something becomes Something else, this Something moves Itself into that some Other. Thus there are no longer Something and the Other. Something is in the Other. As long as Something and the Other are separate they are the Others to each other, but in this motion accomplished, their limit or distinction is negated or abolished – aufgehoben.
The limit that existed there was abolished=preserved limit – aufgehoben. It is the abolished preserved Finitude.

Die aufgehobene Endlichkeit – the abolished=preserved Finitude – is the True Infinity, while the continued – fortgestzt – Finitude is the False Infinity. In the True Infinity, the relation to the Other, namely the Finitude, is negated and abolished – aufgehoben.
The True Infinity is the Infinity Returning to Itself, is the Being for itself – Für-sich-sein. The True Infinity has no limit outside Itself.
At the limit, the True Infinity is not related to the Other, but is related to Itself – auf sich bezogen sein. In other words, it is not for the Other – Sein für Anderes, but is Being for Itself – Fürsichsein.

The most important in Hegel’s Logic is not detailed insights, but the fundamental way of thinking. The totality is not unrelated, but constitutes an organic relations as a whole which is mediated by dialectical movements.
An sich = implicite
hé dynamis = potentiality
acorn = a (potential) oak tree in itself

An sich discovers in itself contradiction or something negative and changes itself into
Für sich

Für sich = explicite
hé energeia = actuality
oak tree = the negation of acorn

Für sich contains in itself the necessity to go beyond itself by negating Für sich.
Therefore,
An und für sich stands as the negation of its negation.
An und für sich = perfect oak tree bearing acorns.
In sich selbst gekehrte Sein or
wiedererhergestelltes Sein. I.e.,
An und für sich is a synthesis of an sich and für sich.
The dialects, i.e., hé dialektiké techné comes from dialegein = to have a dialogue.
dia means to distinguish, separate,
while legein means to
1) to pick up, to select,
2) to say, to express by words.
Dialegein meant
1) put separately, select, distinguish,
2)talk, explain, have a dialogue, discuss.
The title of this opus – Phenomenology of Spirit- at the first publication showed:
System der Wissenschaft
Erster Teil,
Die Phänomenologie der Erfahrung des Geistes
We shall have an opportunity later to discuss the importance of the Erfahrung in his first title.
Later both System der Wissenschaft– erster Teil” – System of The Science–Part I – and der Erfahrung – experience – were eliminated from the title of this book .
cf. Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, p. 14
Philosophy of Nature
Philosophy of Nature reveals the Idea in the Other – Anderssein. We move from the domain of Logic to that of sensory beings. Here the Concept becomes Matter. Why the Idea went into the Other is because the Idea must become actual, and the nature is one of its stage or the Imperfect Actuality that the Idea must go through to attain Its good Actuality.
For Reason to become Nature is for It to ultimately become Spirit.
Externality – Äußerlichkeit – is Nature’s characteristic. The relationship and the mutual influence among the natural matter are and remain external.
Nature reveals necessity and contingency in its beings and the natural matter is governed by mechanical necessity. The contingency of the external influence hinders from its development. Therefore, in nature, Reason is found everywhere, and yet besides the rational, the illogical, the non-teleological, the irregular and the invalid are found in nature. They reveal that Nature’s essence consists in externality. In short, Nature is the Idea’s decay from Itself – der Abfall der Idee von sich selbst – , in It the necessity of the Concept and the contingency of the Individuality coexist. It is the powerlessness of nature – Ohnmacht der Nature – that Nature abstractly possesses the determination of the Concept and depends upon the external formation of the particular finish. As the development proceeds, the insufficiency of the Idea’s actualization is gradually lost and attains Life, where the birth of Spirit is prepared.
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is the least original of his philosophies and its majority is indebted to Schelling’s thought.

Philosophy of Spirit
V-i. Subjective Spirit – der subjektive Geist –
According to Hegel, the essence of Spirit and its determination is Freedom. Gradually becoming independent of Nature, Spirit actualizes its Potency of Freedom.
Philosophy of Subjective Spirit is divided into:
a) Anthropology ‹ investigates the human as natural beings
b) Phenomenology of Spirit ‹ inquires into the I as opposing to Nature as the non-I
c) Psychology ‹ inquires into the I which is reconciled with Nature as opposing to the I.
a) Anthropology
Spirit has not exhorted Itself from Nature in Anthropology which investigates the human’s natura beings.
In this stage, Spirit still is natural Spirit, namely Soul, which is to be divided into:
Natural Soul ‹ exhibits the variety of races and nationalities as the natural characters of the human-beings as the inhabitants of the earth. Further, the variety of the ages, that of the sexes as well as that of awakening and sleep.
Sensing Soul ‹ is the double being of the unconscious whole and of the subject in the individual. Here the fetus, the hypnotic and the insane as well as habit ‹ Gewohnheit ‹ are dealt with. The habit is called by Hegel here the mechanism of the self-sense – Mechanismus des Selbstgefühls.
Actual Soul ‹ The body is the signs for expressing our Soul in the actual Soul. The gestures, the physiognomy and the phonology are discussed here.
Anthropology is the most unique among Subjective Spirit. The Soul of the body, the Spirit connected with corporeality is the object of its investigation.

b) Phenomenology of Spirit
Phenomenology investigates the I = Subject that opposes to Object. This is the Science of the I or Consciousness. The three stages, which correspond to the first three stages of Phenomenology of Spirit:

Consciousness
Self-Consciousness
Reason
c) Psychology
In Psychology, Spirit and Object are reconciled. The I becomes reconciled with Nature as the Non-I. This is the synthesis of the preceding two Sciences. This Science makes Spirit in the narrow sense its Object.

Theoretical Spirit = Intelligence
Practical Spirit = Will
Free Spirit = Will as the Free Intelligence

Logic

Philosophy of Nature

PHilosophy of Spirit
Subjective Spirit
Anthropology
natural Soul
sensing Soul
actual Soul
Phenomenology of Spirit
Consciousness
Self-Consciousness
Reason
Psychology
Theoretical Spirit
Intuition
Feeling = Sense
Attention
Intuition
Representation
Remembrance
Imagination
Memory
Thinking
Conceiving
Judging
Inferring
Practical Spirit
Feeling = practical Feeling
Drive = Emotion, Arbitrariness
Happiness – Glückseligkeit –
Free Spirit = rational Will
= objective Spirit
Objective Spirit
Law
Private Property
Contract
Punishment
` Morality
Motive – Vorsatz –
Intention and Welfare
Good and Evil
Ethical Order
Family
Civil Society
State
Internal State Laws
International State Laws – äußerliches Staatsrecht –
World History
Absolute Spirit = the Unity of Subjective and Objective Spirit
Arts ‹ appears in the Form of Intuition
Religion ‹ appears in the Form of Feeling
Philosophy ‹ appears in the Form of Thinking

V-ii. Objective Spirit
If the Science of Subjective Spirit may be viewed as Psychology in the wider sense, then the Science of Objective Spirit may be called Ethics in the wider sense. This Science contains in it Ethics, Philosophy of Law, political Philosophy and Philosophy of History. (See above!)
Will or Freedom attains in he Law the External (=Objective) Actuality, in Morality the Internal (=subjective) Actuality, and in the Ethical Order the Subjective and Objective Actuality, namely the Perfect Actuality.
a) The Law
The Law is the necessity established and acknowledged by Spirit, so it is the second, higher nature, and yet it is primarily the totality of prohibitions. Even if the law might appear to order, it is merely that what was the negative obtained a positive expression.
The Private Law – Privatrecht – contains i) the right to be a Person and ii) the order to respect the Others as Persons.
The Private Property – Eigentum – is the external domain that Will gives Itself. Without the Private Property, there would be no Person.
The Contract is that the private property by mutual agreement is released by a person A and is obtained by a person B.
to be completed.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Life
Arthur Schopenhauer was born as the only son of the very wealthy banker in Danzig, one of the most economically poerful Hanza Cities in the Middle Ages. His mother was greatly younger than his father and the young Arthur was paranoid by the idea that his mother married his father for the sole reason of his father’s wealth, of which he later was not only firmly convinced, but he believed that this conviction was confirmed by his own mother. His mother was extremely beautiful and gifted with intellect and literary abilities, and even authored stories and travel-memoirs. When Arthur was very young, he travelled with his parents to France and England. Exceptionally successful in his business, his father wanted Arthur to become either a banker or a merchant.
However, Arthur Schopenhauer, after his father’s death, went to Göttingen University to study natural sciences, history and philosophy. His teacher was the famous skeptic, Gottlob Ernst Schulze. Under his guidance, the young Schopenhauer studied Plato and Kant. Then Arthur Schopenhauer transferred to Berlin to study under Fichte, but he was rather disappointed with Fichte’s lectures on his philosophy. Arthur Schopenhauer got his Ph.D. at University of Jena with his dissertation, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde . Through his father’s death, both his mother and Arthur inherited his father’s great wealth. Being almost blindly admiring Goethe and those Romantic men of letters, his mother moved to Weimar where Goethe lived and was then the center of German literary life. She managed to hold her “literary salon” at her house and many famous men of letters including Goethe often visited her salon.
After his promotion (Ph.D. degree), Arthur Schopenhauer went to Weimar to spend a year with his mother. Arthur hated his mother both in her pretentious, superficial interest in the world of letters and her pure calculation of marrying his father for his wealth. Soon it became intolerable to Arthur Schopenhauer to live with her. Probably through his experiences with his own mother, Schopenhauer generally despised the woman. Throughout his life, Schopenhauer entertained an idea of marriage on several occasions, but after careful calculations of pro and con of the marriage, Schopenhauer came to an indubitable conclusion that it is far better off to remain unmarried. On the one hand, according to Arthur Schopenhauer, it is quite costly to be married. On the other, Schopenhauer firmly believed, the woman wanted by marriage the fulfillment of her selfish desires including wealth, status and luxury life, that Schopenhauer experienced through his own mother. From 1814 through 1818, he lived in Dresden and wrote Über das Sehen und die Farben and Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung . The latter is his magnum opus. As soon as he finished the World as Will and Representation, he travelled to Rome and Naples.
In 1820, Arthur Schopenhauer became an instructor (Privatdozent) at the University of Berlin and taught there until 1830. Although he was active at the University of Berlin almost at the same time as Hegel was teaching in Berlin (1819-1831), Schopenhauer never wanted to admit that Hegel’s popularity among students was due to the superiority of his philosophy. Furthermore, Schopenhauer was perhaps overwhelmed by the great fame and popularity of Hegel who collected hundreds of students in a huge lecture hall. Because of his conviction of the profundity of his own philosophy and through his competitive spirit, Schopenhauer deliberately scheduled his lectures at the same time as Hegel’s. In consequence, he had only a few students in his classes, that deeply depressed Schopenhauer every semester and had to take a long refuge to Italy every summer to recuperate from his failure in teaching at the university and depression from his disappointment in the blindness of the general populace not to be able to recognize Schopenhauer’s philosophy.
In 1831, Cholera spread in Germany and Hegel died of it. Despite Schopenhauer was a confirmed pessimist, he quickly resigned from the University (he had enough wealth inherited from his parents) and moved to Italy as quickly as possible to avoid the catastrophe. When the epidemic was over, he came back to Frankfurt am Main to live, with a french poodle, occasionally playing the flute and smoking a pipe till 1860, when he finally died.
In his later years, Schopenhauer’s magnum opus became well known and he gathered quite a few admirers around him and seemed considerably content and happy. On several occasions, Arthur Schopenhauer considered the possibility of marriage, but he decided not to, because he believed that to be married is indeed a nuisance and not worth troubles.
Works
Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (1813)
Über das Sehen und die Farben‹On the sight and Colors‹(1816)
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung‹The World as Will and Representation‹(1819)
Über den Willen in der Natur‹On the Will in the nature‹(1836)
Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik‹Two fundamental problem of ethics‹
Über die Freiheit dew menschlichen Willens‹On the human freedom‹
Über das Fundament der Moral‹On the basis of moral‹(1841)
Parerga und Paralipomena‹Supplements and Appendices‹(1851)

Philosophy
Schopenhauer’s philosophy has recently become once again highly recognized as particularly very important for the 20th century philosophy and its development, because Nietzsche’s philosophy which has been extremely highly considered in the second half of the 20th century presupposes Schopenhauer’s philosophical approach as its predecessor. Namely first of all, Schopenhauer made the World Will or will as the principle of philosophy and reality. By so doing, Schopenhauer completely shed the tradition of the European reason and opened the new vista for Nietzsche’s overhauling appraisal of the Western culture in its entirety, which no one before Nietzsche attempted. Secondly, Schopenhauer’s pessimism further made Nietzsche take the nihilism of the European values, its culture and history.
Schopenhauer is often quoted as the best example of pessimist, while Leibniz is considered that of optimist. Pessimism is an ontological doctrine which believes that the world in which we live is the worst possible world ‹ mundo pessimum‹ (or the world created and selected by God as the worst possible one). Since this doctrine implies the negative values of this world, it also have some ethical implications as it often associated with fatalism. Optimism in contrast, is the ontological theory which affirms that the world in which we live is the best possible world ‹ mundo optimum ‹ (or the world created and chosen by God as the best possible world among all possible worlds). Schopenhauer was not quite consistent in his pessimism. For example, should this world be the worst, why was he so afraid of dying (Schopenhauer quickly went to Italy, when cholera made an outbreak in Berlin. The major source of his pessimistic traits was due to the influence of Indian philosophy and in particular Buddhism. Schlegel’s translations of Buddhistic scriptures from Sanskrit were available for the first time in the West. According to Schopenhauer, although the world is the worst possible world, the philosopher can get out of this lot. In this sense, Schopenhauer’s pessimism, while the pessimism per se often implies fatalism, allows us to liberate ourselves from this miserable fate by pure philosophical contemplation. It is also of our interest to point out that Schopenhauer denied the value of suicide despite this world’s being the worst possible world.
Schopenhauer contended that the human-beings are distinguished from the other animals due to their possession of reason. Due to this reason we the humans are caught by the wonder of and pressed by the desire to search for the meaning of their life and death. From this wonder (thaumazén), according to Schopenhauer, the metaphysical needs arise. [Is this this reason used in the same meaning as in its preceeding philosophies? The answer is perhaps “no.” It is needed to elaborate this point.] These needs are unique to the human-beings, so we may very well say that the human-beings are “metaphysical animals.” Philosophy arises from questioning the phenomenon.
According to Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, philosophy may be divided into four branches:
Philosophy
1) To know the world which appears to us ‹‹‹Epistemology
2) To recognize the nature of the world ‹‹‹‹‹Metaphysics
3) To know the particular way of liberating oneself‹‹‹Aesthetics
4) To know the universal way of liberating oneself‹‹‹‹Ethics (contemplatio)
1) Theory of Knowledge or Epistemology
In his “subjective idealism” in the sense of tanscendental philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer acknowledges himself as a Kantian. Since long, of course, it is known that sensations are our inner conditions. Kant made us known further that the forms of our knowledge, too, are not products of our abstraction or generalization of what we obtained through senses, but they are of the “subjective” origin and nature in the sense of the structure of our consciousness and not products of our receptivity from the object.
According to Schopenhauer, we can only recognize how a thing appears.Through our (transcendental) structure of our cognitive faculty called understanding and reason, we know how we represent a thing, i.e., we only know the phenomenon and the phenomenal world. Therefore, the world, i.e., the world we expereince, is nothing but what we represent.
Further, according to Schopenhauer, to understand the uniersal ontology (the ontology of nature as the phenomenal world), we are able to simply follow the Kantian theory of knowledge. The forms of our knowledge may be reduced ultimately to the principle of reason (= purpose or causa finalis or der Satz vom Grunde= the principle of reason).
This final cause or the principle of reason has four fundamental forms in accordance with the kinds of representation:
i. pure intuition (space and time)‹ratio essendi or principium rationis sufficientis essendi
(the principle of sufficient reason for being)
ii. sensory intuition‹ratio fiendi or principium sufficientis fiendi
(the principle of sufficient reason for change)
iii. will‹ratio agendi or principium sufficientis agendi
(the principle of sufficient reason for action)
iv. abstract concept‹ration cogniscendi or principium sufficientis cogniscendi
(the principle of sufficient reason for cognition)
i. Pure intuition (of space and time) as ratio essendi is the principle of organizing the relationship of the sensorily given in the order of space and time.
ii. Sensory intuition as ratio fiendi is the principle for material substance by means of efficient causal necessity.
Everything appearing in the phenomenal world necessarily occurs and is organized by causality, whereby such necessary changes “postulate” the material substance or matter. How real and objective the principle of causality may appear in its working in the phenomenal world, this principle of causality does not apply to the thing in itself beyond the phenomenon (as is the case of Kant’s philosophy) . It applies solely to the phenomenal world and explain it as the condition of the material substance (in the phenomnenal world). While in the inorganic world this causality is mechanical, the cause applied to the living organism appears as its stimulus as its necessary condition, thus as its purpose even at its lowest stage.
iii. Will as ratio agendi is the principle of motivation. The motive is, according to Schopenhauer, conscious to us, the human-beings, and yet this motive appears as the “cause” in relation to the human-being, thus the human-being also appears as the being without freedom.
a) the mechanical cause, b) the stimulus and c) the motive do relate themselves to and “represent” three different kinds of action although in reality, they do not represent the different necessities, but these necessities of “cause” are one and the same kind.
The human behavior is motivated necessarily by a certain motive which precedes. This motive determines our will. Therefore, Schopenhauer held that the freedom of will doest not really exist, but is a merely is a human illusion.
iv. The abstract concept with its relationship as ratio cogniscendi is the principle which determines the fact that knowledge, or a judgment in more particular, must have a sufficient reason in order to be true. To combine or disjunct concepts (as a judgment by a ceratin principle or a law) is the task of reason. This reason alone as the faculty for abstract thinking and as the faculty of science distinguishes humankind from the other animals.
Understanding (which is ultimately subordinated to reason) on the contrary is the faculty to elevate sensation to intuition and “produce” objects in the phenomenal world. Further, according to Schopenhauer, understanding in its function is common to the human-beings and the other animals. While understanding is “productive,” reason is “passive” or “receptive,” although reason is the faculty of mediating representations and that of the language and judgment.
2) Metaphysics
Schopenhauer maintains that the objective knowledge is contained within the limit of our representation, i.e., is related exclusively to the phenomenal world. Thus, everything recognizable is a phenomenon. The phenomenon must be given through the so-called pure, formal intuition of space and time and is governed by the categories, by the basic principles and eminenly by causality. Therefore, following Schopenhauer, space, time and causality may be characterized as the “screens” of the phenomenal world, which is to be distinguished from the world of the thing itself. Among those three elements, space, time, and causality, however, one must be distinguished form the other two as unique. For we recognize this principle alone beyond the phenomenon. This is the pure form of time. This pure time distinguishes us, the human-beings, from the thing itself in general. Schopenhauer further elaborates this time and identifies it as no other than our own consciousness. Here, for example, we may be able to evidence in Schopenhauer’s philosophy the profound insight into the nature of time in relation to the human consciousness. This insight of Schopenhauer into the pure time strangely anticipates the further development into the central theme of Henri Bergon on the one hand and Husserl and Heidegger on the other in the twentieth century philosophy.
On the one hand, in my pursuit of knowledge, I appear as phenomenon of my body, the object among other objects of the material phenomenal world.
On the other hand, at the same time, I possess the immediate consciousness of my self, by means of which I am able to grasp the genuine essence of my own self. Thereby I know myself as Will that is not in the domain of the phenomenal world, but in the domain of the thing in itself.
Will is far more than a mere representation. Will is something primordial in my self, something genuinely real. This reality appears to me in the phenomenal world as my body. Thus the relation between will and intellect is the relation between the primary and the secondary, that between the “substance” and the “accidence.”
Further, the relation between will and intellect appears to be the relation between the internal and the external, the relation of reality and phenomenon.
The act of will is followed by the action of the body, or we may say that they are one and the same in the world of appearance. The same is given in two different ways, namely will is seen from the inside, while the body is seen from the outside.
The body may called an objectified will.
While I am appearing as a body, I am will in reality. Through an analogy with this relationship, we should know reality. The universe is a makranthropos and the knowledge of our own essence is the key to the understanding of the universe.
As my body is the visibility or appearance of my will, the universe is the visibility or appearance of the world will. The human will is an expression of the highest stage of the development of the principle which works as “power” in nature. To name this power or principle “will” is denominatio a potiori, i.e., a denomination by the superior. It is not possible to inquire into the depth of the reality. Both that which reveals itself as will and that which remains after the denial of will cannot be known to us at all.
The world in itself is Will. This primordial Will cannot be categorized by any of our predicates that modify the things through our subjective determinations. For example, we cannot talk of this Will such that it is determined by causality or motivation, that Will is singular or plural, or that Will is under the forms of space and time.
This primordial Will is groundless (grundlos), i.e., it cannot be explained by or reduced to anything else. this primordial will is a blind drive. It is an unconscious drive to existence. This primordial Will is one and all (to hen kai pan). It reveals itself e.g. as gravity, as magnetism, as the drive to live, and as the natural healing power. These all are nothing but the World Will (der Weltwille). The singularity is retained in the purposefulness of corporeality of everything. The hidden, unexplainable nature of thing is this world Will. For example, even among the unorganic things, e.g. the essence of stone is the will to fall. The essence of the lung is the will to breathe. The teeth, the throat and the intestines are the objectified hunger. the various characteristics which the World Will produces itself materially constitute a series of stages of increasing perfection. They constitute the World of Eternal Ideas. These Ideas stand between the primordial will and the infinite individuals.
The most universal power of nature which is life force is the low bass in the symphony, while the higher stages of the plants and the animals are middle sounds and that of the humans are expressing leading, meaningful melodies. In the human brain as its organ, the World Will made a torch to represent the world. In order to actualize its Will with consideration, the world Will lit the torch in the human brain, whereby the Will created intellect as its implement. Schopenhauer even contended that the brain and intellect are one and the same. The brain is no other than the will to know just like the stomach’s being the will to digest. Schopenhauer does not recognize mind as a nonmaterial entity independent of matter.

3) Aesthetics
The essence of the aesthetic attitude consists in the pure contemplation that is liberated from the control of the World Will. Intellect among a few philosophical and artistic geniuses succeeds in liberating itself from the ultimate control of the Will. Intellect here can become purer and deepen itself into the question of “what” i.e., the essence of thing rather than that of “why,” “for what,” “where” and “when.” Intellect in the humans like in the other animals serves as a means to the Will, while among the philosophical and artistic geniuses, intellect liberates itself from the particulars, from all the sufferings of the human existence and contemplates the Ideas in their purity. Thus, the person with such an intellect can elevate oneself above the control of the world will.
Poetry is the higher than the plastic arts. The highest form of poetry is, according to Schopenhauer, tragedy. However, among various genres of arts, the highest form of art is music.
While the other forms of art imitate Ideas, music imitates the Will itself. Therefore, Schopenhauer called music the unconscious metaphysics.
4) Ethics
There is pessimism (the belief that the universe was created as the worst possible) in the basis of Schopenhauer’s ethics. Schopenhauer demonstrated the blindness and the irrationality of the world ground or the World Will by portraying the undescribable sufferings and irremediable miseries of life. The world contains more sufferings and pains than pleasures. The world is the worst possible world. Will is the purposeless effort or conation (conatus in Latin = powerful dirve) among the beings which are lower than the animals. The drives for pleasure among animals are unfulfilled and the unsatiable desires for pleasures and the unchanging will for happiness among the humans are unfulfilled or denied by trapping the humans in miseries and poverty . What we call the pursuit of pleasure is, according to Schopenahuer, nothing but the avoidance of pain. In the face of undescribable miseries in the world, it is utter stupidity and hopeless self-deception for the human being to be optimistic. It is indeed true that it is better nonexistence than existence. Those irremediable sufferings to the humans are the proper punishment for the original sinn. For the individual creates onself her/his particular existence from its own free will. To save oneself from such a primordial, profound sinn, from the total miseriy and unrescurable unhappiness of our existence is only possible by the Second Act of the transcendental freedom, that is, the total refurbishing of our own nature. Because it is supernatural in origin, it is correct that the church calls it the born-again or the grace.
Therefore, according to Schopenhauer, the presupposition for morality is to clearly recognize 1) that the world is fundamentally evil, 2) that all the individuals are not real and ultimately a mere phenomenon or illusion (due to the influence from Buddhism).
Thus, the human-being can liberate oneself from such egoistic self assertion by the following two knowledge, namely a) by realizing that all the normal human efforts to avoid sufferings and to escape from the control of the will are totally meaningless while all pleasures are in reality utterly unattainable, b) by explicitly comprehending that all the human individuals are mere phenomenal expressions of the World Will.
It is indeed sympathy as the moral sentiment that is the only genuine moral drive in the humanity and this morally sentiment called sympathy can counterweight against the individual’s selfish egoism and is the source of moral justice and genuine love for all. Only by means of sympathy, the human-being is capable of discovering oneself in the other and is capable of feeling the other’s sufferings as one’s own. The only higher virtue than this popular sympathy may be found in one’s Absolute Renunciation of Will, that can be found among Christian ascetics and Asian jogi. By renouncing the Will, the wareness as the pure contemplation is not a motive but the means to quiet the Will. Thus the human-being will be able to overcome and liberate oneself from the control of the Will. Thus the genuine ecstacy is attained. By this pure contemplation, the human-being is able to live in the Nirvana or the genuine reality.
Schopenhauer was the first in the West that accepted influences from Indian philosophies. The greatest successor of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is Nietzsche. Nietzsche succeeded Schopenhauer’s philosophy and totally new tradtion in the Western philosophy not only through his not finding the principle of philosophy in reason, but in non-rational Will, but also in his development of radical nihilism, in which Nietzsche asserts that nothing in this world (the Western World and its metaphysics according to Nietzsche) is valuable and meaningful, insists that the world and the Western Civilization is completely empty and has no hope for the future in itself. Therefore, the Prophet Zarathustra announces the dawn of the new, creative Morality and Culture. Not only Schopenhauer’s influence on Nietzsche is decisive, but also Schopenhauer’s attention to and his analysis of the body reminds us of phenomenological approaches to the problem of the body by Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. Schopenhauer has been underestimated for a long time, but now his philosophy shall be rediscovered, shall be shed light on and shall be more profoundly re-evaluated as Nietzsche has been re-evaluated (or over-evaluted by the French postmodernists?).

Auguste Comte (January 19, 1798 – September 5, 1857)
Life
Auguste Comte was born in Montpelier, France, on January 19, 1797 and moved to Paris in 1816 when he was 17 years old. There in 1818, Comte got acquainted with Pierre Saint-Simon, who was a social reformer and was called a utopian socialist by Karl Marx in distinction from Marx Engels’ “scientific socialism”. Comte became Saint-Simon’s collaborator, though later he split from him. Comte gave lectures on his own philosophical system in 1826. Then he became mentally ill and hospitalized. In 1828 Comte resumed his lectures and became a lecturer at the School of Polytechnics. However, after publishing his magnum opus, Cours de philosophie positive, he lost the position. Comte finally got acquainted with Clotilde de Vaux, whom he mystically admired. He died on September 5, 1857 in Paris.
Works
Cours de philosphie positive, 6 vol. (Lectures on the positive philosophy)1830-42
Discours sur l’Ésprit positif (Discourse on the positive spirit)1844
Discours sur l’Ensemble du Positivisme (Discourse on the Totality of Positivism) 1848
Systéme de Politique positive, ou Traité de Sociologie instituant la Religion de L’Humanité, 4 vol. (The System of positive politics or Treatise on Sociology concerning the religion of humanity) 1851-54
Catéchisme positiviste, ou Sommaire Exposition de la Religion universelle (The Positive Catechism or the general exposition of the universal religion) 1852
Appel au Conservateurs (An appeal to the conservertive) 1855
Synthèse subjective, ou Système universel des conceptions propre à l’Humanité (The subjective synthesis or the universal system of the conceptions appropriate to humanity) 1856
Lettres (letters) 1877 and 1844
Philosophy
In his philosophy of history, Comte accepted the law of progress of humanity in three stages, which had been developed by Saint-Simon and Turgot. Comte interprets in regards to the human intellectual development such that humanity first remained in the theological stage, then moved to the metaphysical stage, and finally developed into the stage of positive sciences. The job of philosophy is to foster this development. At the first stage, the individual, just like humanity as a whole, believes in gods, demon, etc. in one’s own intellectual development, then in metaphysical concepts. Finally, one exerts oneself to recognize the phenomena by means of observation and experiment.
“Any intelligent heads recognizes today that the genuine research are found exclusively in the analysis of the phenomena in order to discover the law of facts, the immutable causal or analogical connections and are no longer able to inquire into the secret nature, the first and teleological cause of nature, nor its absolute origin.”
The sciences appears in a well established order, in which every knowledge contains its preceding ones. Mathematics starts with the simplest and least complex phenomenon. Following mathematics are respectively astronomy, physics chemistry, biology and sociology. Comte did not recognize psychology as an independent science, but this belongs to biology.
Sociology, which Comte had an honor of naming this science, was divided by Comte into the social static and the social dynamics. While the former deals with the universal laws of social structure, the latter deals with the progress of the society. According to Comte, the three stages of the intellectual development of humanity are at the same time the tree stages of the human society. For a certain social condition belongs to every stage of intellectual stage: To the theological stage belongs the order of warfare, to the stage of positive sciences, the social structure of the industrial society. As the ultimate goal the original starting point of thought appears once again that consisted in Sant-Simon’s idea of unity of science and industry.

John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806-May 8, 1873)
Life
John Stuart Mill was born on May 20, 1806 in London as the eldest son of James Mill, who was a close associate of Jeremy Bentham, who founded Utilitarianism as the theory of political philosophy and the ideology for his political movement. (His political party was originally called the Philosophical Radicals, which gained no popular appeal after all.) Thanks to John Stuart Mill’s effort, utilitarianism became a very significant ethical theory among the English speaking philosophies.
James Mill had a clear idea of how to educate his prodigy son and experimented it on him. Namely James Mill, John’s father, attempted to artificially mold this young, extra-ordinarily gifted John as the given material (like a bonsai) by means of his own philosophy of education.To James Mill, the educational ideal of humanitas conceived and perfected at the second half of the Ancient Rome was the best model toward which he must cultivate (=educate) this child prodigy. At the age of three, John started getting instruction in arithmetic and Greek, and at eight years of age, he mastered Latin. By then, he had mastered arithmetics, geometry and Aristotelian logic.
Soon the young John was reading the Greek and the Roman classics in their original languages. At that time, John’s favorite was Homer’s Iliad, then soon he was reading with great fascination Odyssey, then the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the majority of Plato’s dialogues, and the great historian Thucydides writings, which left a deep impression on him. He also read Virgil’s Aeneid, Lucretius, the Orations by Cicero and many other less well known works of the ancient cultures. During his early teens, John Stuart Mill was fascinated by history and was writing ancient Roman history.
Then, his interest shifted from history to philosophy, logic, and economic theories. At the age of twelve, John started studying Aristotle’s syllogism by reading his Organon (Prior and Posterior Logic, and Categories). He was deeply impressed the utilities of formal logic advocated by the great minds of the past and was fascinated with its nature. When he was around thirteen years of age, John intensively read such dialogues of Plato as Gorgias, Protagoras, and the Republic. He thought nothing was surpassed than Socratic spirit in analysis and dialectic search for truth. All the curriculum was developed by James Mill, John’s father and James was not only monitoring his son’s progress of learning but also actively involved in tutoring him if necessary. Every morning, John used to take a walk with his father and report to him what he read the day before and discuss them with him during the walk.
James not only prevented the young John from associating himself with other children of his age, but also John himself had little interest in it due to the lack of common interests with them. It was James’ attempt to revive the ancient educational endeavor (towards the paideia of humanitas) to train the human mind by means of abstract, formal thinking. This notion of humanitas was possessed not only by James Mill, but the majority of the European intellectuals thought that humanitas was the universal ideal of humanity, when it comes to the question of the education of humanity as such. Wilhelm von Humboldt, for example, established with the curriculum guided by the same ideal of humanitas the University of Berlin with the commission by the Prussian Government in the early 1800s. This was the model for the modern university curriculum in the industrialized world (until in the United States, the professional education and the training of skills became the center of the higher education).
John gradually taking over from his father his tutoring and monitoring responsibility for his younger siblings and was far more fascinated with this task with many insights. He also discovered that the major effort of the normal education was more directed to memorization and mere parroting of knowledge as the substitute for the creative power of developing one’s own thought.
It was only nineteen years of age when Bentham asked John Stuart Mill to edit his manuscripts on jurisprudence, which were three unfinished works. It was an easy task for the young John and after the publication of the opus, Bentham started publishing Westminster Review in charge of John as its chief editor. He also wrote articles and book reviews.
When he was twenty one, he suffered a deep emotional crisis. Till then, the meaning of John’s life was identified with those of the fellow laborers and he thought of himself as the world reformer. Its objective being set on something durable and distant, seemed, however, never to find its complete fulfillment. in Fall of 1826, John was awaken from this belief as if it were a bad dream and felt that he had nothing living for at all. He felt that he had gained the fame at the too early age and at the same time, he was not satisfied with pleasures that he could obtained so easily and were not worthy for the name of pleasure whether it is selfish or unselfish pleasure.
In stead of philosophy, and scientific pursuits, John Stuart Mill discovered the emotional fulfillment in music and poetry, particularly in Wordsworth’s poems. Through this experience John came to a realization that human growth was not only intellectual but must be also emotional for a human-being to be complete. According to His Autobiography, John never suffered from the irrational, sexual drive with such intensity as the other youngsters did, however.
Around this time in 1830, John got acquainted with Harriet Taylor, who would be a very good friend and critic of his throughout his life and became his wife twenty years later! Harriet was younger than John by three years. As John everywhere acknowledged, Harriet read and criticized all his writings of these twenty five years. Needless to say, Harriet, therefore, exercised a decisive influences on John Stuart Mill.
When John Stuart Mill was 16, he started working for the East India Company, where his father also had worked for years. He held his job there for almost thirty years, although he did a lot of writings and was politically active with Bentham and his followers. Although he held the second highest post at that company when it was dissolved by the Parliament, he did not accept a seat of the council supervising this affairs he had been offered.
Through his own experience, John Stuart Mill was convinced of the effectiveness of training of human mind by formal and abstract thinking, namely logic. He worked thirteen years on his first magnum opus, A System of Logic, and published it in 1843. After Arnoud’s Port Royal Logic, It became the standard book for logic. His contribution to inductive logic both in its systematic treatment and theoretical justification was and still is extremely highly regarded. It was considered of cardinal importance as a scientific method on the basis of observation and empirical generalization.
His opus On Utilitarianism was his contribution to ethical theory, which in itself was of no significant value as the ethical theory. However, he modified the fundamental assumption of Bentham’s principle of utility and had to reject the possibility of hedonistic calculus because John Stuart Mill clearly admitted qualitative differences among pleasures while Bentham saw them as merely quantitative.
Together with his two other books on political philosophy, Essays on Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill made an everlasting contribution to the philosophical groundwork for the democratic society and government. In his Principles of Political Economy, John applied more specifically the principle of utility to politics that is more significant and influential than his explication of ethical imperatives by means of utilities.
In his Nature, the Utility of Religion and Theism, John Stuart Mill advocated that the religion consisted in human nature and had to be construed by means of human experience. He found in Religion and Theism utilities to the meaning and happiness of human existence.
As a politician (endorsed by a group of electors for election to Parliament), John Stuart Mill declared to refuse to represent the local interest of his constituency (before election), and advocated the women’s suffrage. Having been elected to the House of Commons, John Stuart Mill served three sessions which passed the Reform Bill of 1865. He proposed an amendment for the women’s suffrage to it, which was defeated, and yet this incident arouse an enormous interest in this question and later developed into the founding of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage.
John Mill died on May 8, 1873 in London.
Works
A System of Logic 1843
Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy 1844
Principles of Political Economy 1848
Essays on Liberty 1859
Dissertations and Discussions, Political, Philosophical and Historical 1861
Considerations on Representative Government 1861
On Utilitarianism 1863
An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy 1865
Auguste Comte and Positivism 1865
The Subjugation of Women 1869
Nature, the Utility of Religion and Theism 1974
Autobiography 1873
Letters 1910
Philosophy
Induction in Logic
His greatest contribution to philosophy is generally agreed as his systematic organization of and justification for induction. On the basis of our empirical observation of common characteristic among a series of examples, we are lead to an conclusion that the object of the samples in general possesses that characteristic. Although it is a powerful tool to an empirical generalization of an hypothesis, the demonstration of an inductive argument does deserve the name of validity and invalidity, but that of high provability and improvability. Since such a confirmation of an empirical hypothesis possesses the power to predict a future event (which is essential function of a scientific law) and could not exclude a possibility of being falsified by one incident which is contrary to the law or the hypothesis.
Utilitarianism in modification
Jeremy Bentham, who was a social reformer and the founder of the political party, primarily called the Philosophical Radicals, was a political philosopher rather than a moral philosopher. In order to provide political theory with an ethical basis, he naively believed in and intended to develop a rarely simple-minded ethics which must be as exact and precise as the physical sciences. For this end, to Bentham, it was self evident that hé hedoné or pleasure (and pain as the absence of pleasure) is the basis of ethical deliberation. For
Nature has placed man under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standards of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all that we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection and assumes tit for the foundation of that system the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law.

As long as the governance of pleasure and pain are the human motives for the consequence of one’s action, this was more radical a position than Epicurus held as his ethical doctrine. Furthermore, Bentham’s hedonism probably radically differs from the Ancient Hedonism in that his notion of utility implies the consideration of an impact of its action on a given group or the social environment.
Namely, according to Bentham,
By utility is meant that property in an object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness, tot eh party whose interest is considered.

Thus, the criterion of the right action consists not in what one is compelled to do as an inevitable moral duty, but in the consequence of an action which one would intend to accomplish. For instance, I should not lie to the tax collector, not because I am obligated to tell the truth under the moral imperative of “Thou shall not lie!”, but I should not tell a lie because not telling a lie would bring about a pleasure, advantages and benefit from my not cheating taxes in stead of pain, embarrassment, evil and mischief resulted by cheating taxes.
In order to better understand what Bentham meant by utility, it may better look at his definition of the principle of utility:
The principle of utility is that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.

Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility one may also say either that it is one that ought to be done, or at least that it is not one that ought not to be done.

One may also say that it is right that it should b e done, at least that it is not wrong that it should not be done. When thus interpreted, the worlds ought, and right and wrong, and others of that stamp, have a meaning: When used otherwise,they have none.

In other words, according to Bentham, the criterion of the right action or the principle of morality consists in the greatest pleasures for the greatest number of people, since Bentham never recognized the qualitative differences among pleasures. Since pleasure is quantitatively measurable, one is able to calculate the amount of and the extent of pleasures that a human action will produce. This measurement of pleasures is called by Bentham the Hedonistic Calculus: The Hedonistic Calculus consists of seven factors, namely
intensity of the pleasure or pains involved
duration
certainty or uncertainty
propinquity or remoteness
fecundity, the tendency to produce a pleasure to further produce other pleasures and a pain to lad to other pains
purity
extent, the number of persons whom they affect.
This Bentham was able to rhyme as follows:

Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure‹
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.\
Such pleasures seek if private te thy end:
If it be public, wide let them extend.
Such pains avoid, whichever be they view.
If pains must come, let them extend to few.
Thus, Bentham was able to generalize and said that:
To take an exact account, then, of the general tendency of any act, sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the one side, and then of all the pains o the other. The balance, if it bears on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency of the act, if no the side of pain, it’s bad tendency.

According to Bentham, to legislate a law is a choice of the lesser evil among the evils. Therefore, it is of cardinal importance for him to appeal to this principle of the greatest pleasures for the greatest number of people. This implies a certain altruism, though utilitarianism is an explicit hedonism and thus it is egoistic in nature. Bentham believed that it was the function of law to see that a man would consider the good of other as well as his own selfish good. Criminal laws, for example, must make sure, according to Bentham, that the laws would make one suffer so much pain when they disregard the welfare of other that this would outweigh any pleasure they might derive from an criminal act.
John Stuart Mill attempted to assimilate his viewpoint as close to that of Bentham and his own father as possible and he wrote in On Utilitarianism:
The creed which accepts as the foundation f morals, utility or the Greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain, by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. All desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in nay other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

Against this utilitarianism proposed by Bentham, John Stuart Mill clearly and intuitively rejected the egoism as human nature and the appeal to enlightened self interest, and he recognized qualitative differences among pleasures, so that he rejected the fundamental tenet of utility which is the hedonistic calculus. Although he held that pleasures are indeed values, John Stuart Mill believed that the humans are basically empathetic to others and thus altruistic, and that justice is one of the most fundamental human values.
Thus what John Stuart Mill did was to emphasize qualitative differences of value among pleasures and admitted that indeed some values of certain pleasures are much higher and therefore desirable than those of the others. Mill argues:
It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

Indeed he contended:
It is better to be a human-being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied: better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

This echoes Anatole France, a great nineteenth century French playwright, who said:
The joy of understanding is a sad joy yet those who have once tasted it would not exchange it for all the frivolous gaieties and empty hopes of the vulgar herd.

Not only Mill attempted to overcome one of the most fundamental shortcomings of the traditional Hedonism by clearly recognizing qualitative differences among pleasures on the one hand, and on the other he exerted himself to defy the egoistic tenet of Hedonism by pointing out the altruistic aspect of the human nature such that we are capable of pursuing the greatest amount of happiness all concerned in stead of pleasures of the enlightened self interest of many.
Mill maintained that one is demanded by Utilitarianism to be disinterested and benevolent. He was convinced that he saw in the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth the perfect spirit of ethics of utility.
John Stuart Mill contended that, although the humans were natured to have equally concerned about the others as with oneself, it was necessary to promote this fecundity further by education, religion and by the laws of the state. Thus the humans are to be civilized.
It is the firm foundation of Utilitarianism that “lies in the social feelings of humankind: the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become stronger from the influences of advancing civilization.”
On Liberty
The concept of liberty started becoming a central philosophical theme since the challenge of Newtonian mechanics which presupposes the universal validity of causal necessary connection among natural phenomena. Since then, Hume attempted to undermine the a priori necessity of causal connections by reducing them to the psychological association. Kant’s effort to rehabilitate the objective validity of the causality by construing it as one of the twelve categories, the subjective concepts of understanding which has the transcendental validity of the phenomenal world.
John Stuart Mill was not interested in the metaphysical foundation of freedom of will, but he was more concerned about the practical utilities of freedom in the actual human life. He held that liberty was the foundation for the social happiness as well as for the happiness of the individual such that the greatest good of the society as a whole is achieved by allowing each individual to exercise his/her own freedom unrestrained, so long as he/she does not harm others. Particularly the freedom of opinion and speech was more strongly advocated by Mill.
John Stuart Mill was furthermore firmly convinced with the ability of human reason. And human reason alone will be able to make improvements through the freedom of speech.
The social reform through education and democracy
John Mill contended that any social reform including the women’s suffrage and equality could be accomplished by educating and enlightening the people. Our basic attitudes, convictions and moral ideals will be bettered through our educational, reformatory endeavor.
His notion of education lead him to his conviction that liberal economic conditions in which everyone has the right to cultivate oneself, better enlightened, better informed and becoming better civilized. Therefore, he believed that the true democracy would be the sole foundation for the better moral and social capacities, although democracy would demand more intelligence, more reason, more self control of all the citizens, which could be accomplished by popular education.

Ludwig Feuerbach (July 28, 1804 – September 13, 1872)
Life
Ludwig Feuerbach was born on July 28, 1804 in Landshut in Germany as a son of the criminal prosecutor Anselm Ritter von Freuerbach, whose brother was the famous romantic painter called Anselm Freuerbach. Ludwig Freuerbach studied theology at University of Heidelberg where Professor Daub had him excited about Hegel’s philosophy. Since 1824 He studied at University of Berlin under Hegel and changed his major from theology to philosophy.
In 1828 Feuerbach completed his requirement for Habilitation (the qualification for instructorship) with his habilitation’s thesis on De ratione una, univerali, infinita (On the one, universal and infinite cause).
In 1830, Ludwig Feuerbach had his book, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit, (Thoughts on death and immortality) published anonymously, because Feuerbach was well aware that his a theistic contention of the book would get him into a trouble with the authority and the society in general. Soon his authorship become known, and unfortunately his a-theistic thought he disclosed in the book made it impossible for him to get a teaching position at any German university. As a result, in 1832, therefore, he gave up seeking a teaching job at the university and exclusively lived as a private author and scholar in Frankfurt am Main, Ansbach, Erlangen and Nürnberg. After his marriage to Berta Löw Ludwig, Feuerbach moved back to his home village between Ansbach and Bayreuth. Responsing to many devoted students’ request, Ludwig Feuerbach held a series of public lectures on the nature of religion in Fall semester of 1848/49 at the University of Heidelberg. In 1860, Feuerbach was forced to move to Rechenberg near Nürnberg due to his financial difficulties caused by the loss of his properties, where he died on September 13, 1872.
Works
De ratione una, universali, infinita (On the one, universal and infinite cause) 1828
Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit (Thoughts on death and immortality) 1833
Geschichte der neueren Philosophie von Bacon von Verulam bis Spinoza (The History of Contemporary Philosophy from Bacon to Spinoza) 1833
Geschichte der neueren Philosophie: Darstellung, Entwicklung und Kritik der Leibnizschen Philosophie (The History of Contemporary Philosophy, its description, development and critique of Leibniz’ Philosophy) 1837
Pierre Bayle, nach seinen für die Geschichte der Philosophie und Menschheit interesantesten Momenten (Pierre Bayle according to his Most Interesting Elements for the History of Philosophy and Humanity) 1838
Über Philosophie und Christentum, in Beziehung auf den der Hegelschen Philosophie gemachten Vorwurf der Unchristlichkeit (On Philosophy and Christianity in relation to the objection of the Unchristianity of Hegel’s Philosophy) 1839
Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity) 1841
Vorläufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie (Tentative Theses for the Reformation of Philosophy) 1842
Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft (Principles of the Philosophy of Future) 1843
Das Wesen des Galubens im Sinne Luthers (The Essence of Faith in Luther’s Sense) 1844
Das Wesen der Religion (The essence of Religion) 1845
Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion (Lectures on the Essence of Religion) 1851
Theogonie nach den Quelle des klassischen, hebräischen und christlichen Altertums (Theogony according to the Sources of classical, hebrew and christian Ancient Periods) 1857
Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit vom Standpunkte der Anthropologie (Divinity, Freedom and Immortality from the Anthropological Standpoint) 1866
Spiritualismus und Materialismus (Spiritualism and Materialism) 1866
Aus dem Nachlaß: Der Eudäimonismus,‹Moralphilosophie, ‹Briefwechsel hrsg. von A. Kapp (The Posthumous Manuscripts: Eudaimonism, Moral Philosophy and Letters ed. by A. Kapp) 1879
Philosophy
Hegel’s influences and Materialism of Love
Ludwig Feuerbach received the decisive influences from Hegel’s philosophy. His vocabulary is Hegelian and how to manipulate a certain idea is also very Hegelian. Take for example, the notion of “self-alianation of the human-being from itself” (Die Selbstentfremdung des Menschens von sich selbst) is a literary transformation of Hegelian conception into the nature of the human condition. And yet Feuerbach was able to develop his own thought (which is ontologically materialistic and epistemologically empiristic, in this sense Feuerbach was diametrically opposed to Hegel) on the basis of his critical confrontation with Hegel’s philosophy. In order to even attempt to overcome Hegel’s philosophy, Feuerbach could not be a naive materialist or an empiricist (although he was naive comparing to Hegel’s philosophy), but needed a certain kind of sophistication in his philosophical thinking. To a great extent, therefore, Feuerbach indebted to Hegel in this respect. However, it is rather very strange indeed to discover that Hegel’s dialectical method had no trace in Feuerbach’s philosophical thinking. It is obvious that Feuerbach had a basically different philosophical attitude towards reality, philosophy and religion from Hegel.
In his article on “Kritik der Hegelschen Philosophie” (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy) in 1839, Feuerbach dissociated himself from Hegel’s “rational mysticism.” Feuerbach’s magnum opus, Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity) in 1841, was through and through determined by his attitude of anti-speculative thinking of Hegel’s core approach, and this opus was devoted to the clarification of the religious problems from the new understanding of human-being and to philosophical explanations of the dogmas of the speculative theology. His book on Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft (Principles of the Philosophy of Future) in 1843 declared his final divorce from the speculative philosophy.
Ludwig Feuerbach valued as the true philosophy only the knowledge of that which really is (i.e., what is knowlable by sense experinece)‹Der Mensch ist, was er ißt (The human-being is what he eats).‹, whereby Feuerbach presupposed that , freed from speculative thinking, such knowledge of reality only can be given to us by experience, namely by our senses:
I do object the absolute, the immaterial, the self-contented speculation‹the speculation which creates its own material out of itself. I am far apart like between heaven and earth from the philosophers who believe that the more abstract their philosophy is, the better it becomes: I need my sense to philosophical thinking, particularly my eyes! (The Essence of Christianity, Preface to the Second Edition).

Epistemologically, Feuerbach took the so-called representational theory of knowledge.
The distinction of philosophy from religion is based on the image (das Bild) (The Essence of Christianity, Preface to the First Edition). Feuerbach thought that he was never bound to any dogmatic standpoint. According to Ziegenfuß, “Feuerbach is neither an idealist, nor a materialist. To Feuerbach, God, Spirit, Soul and I are mere abstractions as much as quantity, matter, body are mere abstractions. To him, truth, essence and reality are sensitivity.”
Non-the-less, Feuerbach understood sensitivity in a quite wider sense as if he would characterize all vital and living as sensory. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that, in his ontology, Feuerbach was materialistic in that what is real is concrete, particular, entity and its qualities.
However, it must be emphasized that his ethical hope for the future was idealistic:
I am an idealist in the sole hope for the field of practical philosophy.

In short, the idea is the faith in the historical future to me, the faith in the victory of truth and virtue, and has only the political and moral significance.

Philosophy must become Philosophical Anthropology, and so does religion.
The center of Feuerbach’s philosophical thinking is the human-being that is a living, loving, sensory being and is a social being (Gemeinschaftswesen). The conviction that all the philosophy must start with the human-being constituted the core thought of Feuerbach’s philosophical investigation, whether it was in his critique of Christianity, his religious philosophy, or in his ethics and his philosophy in general. Feuerbach declared, “my first thought is God, my second one is reason and the third one is the human-beilng!” The human-being is according to Feuerbach the “wahre Ens realissimus” (the “true, most real Being”). To Feuerbach’s philosophy, the human being was not only the most positive principle of reality, but also the human-being was made the principle of all of his philosophy (The Essence of Christianity, Preface to the Second Edition). Here we see a decisive impact of Feuerbach on Karl Marx particularly in his earlier thoughts.
To the question of what the essence of the human-being is, Feuerbach answered:
Reason, will and heart! To the perfect human-being belongs the power of thinking, the power of will and the power of heart! (The Essence of Christianity, Introduction to Chapt. 1)

The true being is thinking, loving and willing being!

Just as in philosophy, in religion the human-being constitutes its center:
Religion is the reflection, the mirroring of the human nature into itself. (The Essence of Christianity, Book I, Chapt. 6) ‹ The essence of the human-being in distinction from the animal is not only the reason for (the existence of), but also the object of religion. (The Essence of Christianity, Introduction, Chapt. 1) ‹ The human-being is the beginning, the center and the end of religion. (Book I, Chapt. 19)

In other words, the object and the content of religion must be re-interpreted from the new philosophical anthropology. Instead of God, the human-being is to be placed as the center of the universe and God is to be construed from the nature of the human-being. Therefore, sometimes Feuerbach’s philosophy is called “anthropologism.” Feuerbach never took the concept of religion in Hegel’s sense, but “in an infinitely higher and more universal sense.” (Preface to the Second Edition) Not only religion is anthropology, but also the philosophy of religion, the theology, Christianity and the Christian theology which are all ultimately one and the same. This Feuerbach intended to demonstrate in The Essence of Christianity, and to “elevate the anthropology to a theology” and not lower the theology to an anthropology (if you believe that theology is indeed higher than anthropology!). The old wisdom that religion has something to do with God, and Feuerbach’s declaration that religion must have something to do with the human-being, and they do not contradict each other according to Feuerbach. For the human-being and God (because He is the self-alienation of the human-being itself) are ultimately one and the same, and the Divine Essence and the Human Essence are identical, and there is no distinction between the predicates of God and thoses of the human predicates. “God is the revealed Inner, expressed Self of the human being.” (The Essence of Christianity, Introduction, Chapt. 2) ‹ “God is no other than the essence of the human-being.” (Book I, Chapt 19) ‹ “The consciousness of God is the self consciousness of the human-being, the cognition of God is the self cognition of the human-being.”

Max Stirner (1806 – 1856)

Life
Max Stirner is a pseudonom For Caspar Schmidt. Stirner Was Born on October 25, 1806 In Bayreuth (iis in Barbaria and is famous for Wagner’s Festival (Bayreuth Festspiele)). He studied Theology and Philosophy In Berlin from 1826 – 1828 under Neander, Marheineke, Hegel and Schleiermacher, and then transferred to Erlangen and Königsberg.
Stirner acted as a teacher, and a private scholar and was active also as a Journalist in Berlin due to the financial pressure. Max Stirner died on June 26, 1856 in Berlin.
Works
Die Einzige and sein Eigentum, Leipzig, 1845

Geschichte der Reaktion, 2 volumes, Berlin, 1852

Kleine Schriften hersg. von J.H.Mackay, 1898
Das unwahare Prinzip unserer Erziehung oder Der Humanismus und der Realismus, neu herg. v. WEilly Storrer, Basel, 1927
Philosophy

On the one hand, Stirner was deeply influenced from the Left Hegelians such as Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, and yet he criticized because, according to Stirner, they were not radical enough in their understanding of the nature of human-being. Stirner did radicalize the nature of individualism both in ontology of human-being and in ethics and claimed that such a radical individual egoism be the only defensible philosophical viewpoint about the nature of human-being.
In epistemology, Stirner took the extremely radical nominalism, which does not recognize any universals such as Ideas and abstract concepts and ideals: According to Stirner, all universal concepts, values and purposes are no other than the products of the ndivdual ego or particular self (das individuelles I). As to the ontology, Stirner advocated taht this individual ego or partiuclar self (das individuelles I) is the sole reality and that only the instrumental and useful to this individual ego or particular self are the value. Thus, according to Stirner, The individual ego or particular self is true.
Gott und die Menschheit haben ihre Sache af Nichts gestellt, auf nichts als auf sich. Stelle Ich denn meine Sache gleichfalls auf Mich, der Ich so gut wie Gott das Nichts von allem anderen, der Ich mein alles, der Ich der Einzige bin.

Stirner’s magnum opus was titled Die Einzige and sein Eigentum . Its leading motive was that “I have set my matter on nothing. The Individual who has set its matter on nothing as on oneself is named the Sole Being by Stirner.
Every higher being above me, whether it is God, or whether it is a human-being, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness!

Stirner maintained that the death sentence is to be given to God, Saints, Kaiser and Pope, Race and Motherland, Nation, Society and Community all together. All of them must, therfore, be destroyed as Monsters and Mental Illusions. What we call the society is, argues Stirner, a bundle of selfish egos whose sole concern is themselves and nothing else:
Should the state be a community of human-beings, and not a bunch of egos (Is) which are concerned exclusively about themselves, then the human-beings cannot exist without morality and must depend on morality. Thus, the nation and I are enemies to each other. In the heart of me as the egoist, no way such a community may be blessed. Never do I sacrifice myself for the community, but I do only exploit it! Why should I worry about the rest of the world?

With such arguments, Stirner influenced for the development of poliical anarchism. According to Stirner, this Sole Being (I) is innately free, totally and absolutely free. The Sole Being, on the contrary, is the freedom searchers, dreamers and total enthusiasts of freedom, while those petit bourgeois liberalists are strictly distinguished.
The solipsism (normarlly the ontological doctrine which asserts that I myself alone exists and nothing or nobody else ) that Stirner held as a consequence of his radical philosophical doctrine must also be understood ethically. The radical egoism as an ethical doctrine means that everything and every one else exists for me and for my self-interest and nothing else: I do verything for my own self (I ought to do what promotes my ego and self-interest). Therefore, the solipsism derives from his radical egoism. On the ohter hand, such a doctrine as solipsism cannot be an ethical doctrine in the strict sense. For ethics or morality is only possible with the assunption that other human-beings also exist. Thus, egoism also presupposes the existence of others.
I will be everything and will have everything that I can be and can have: How should I care whether or not others are similar or have similar…. I am not an I among other I’s, but I am the solely existing I. I am alone.

Such an ego is not that absolute I as that of Fichte, that creates and deduces everything else from Itself. Fichte’s ego is according to Stirner a product of our imagination!
When Stirner’s articles and books appeared, they made an enormous impact on his contemporary nihilistic youth, but the influences quickly faded away and Stirner was forgotten. In the earlier, it is obvious that Marx and Engels (cf. The Holiy Family) were influenced by Max Stirner. Later Edward von Hartmann (Die Philosophie der Als Ob) revived Stirner’s thought as its egoism and a from of nihilism of the 19th century Europe. This nihilism and radical egoism was re-affirmed anew by Nietzsche in a differnt form. In this sense, Max Stirner must be re-evaluated more highly.
Stirner’s egoism was a reaction to Hegel’s integrated whole of the reality through logic and philosophical insights into discoveries of the webb of relationships among many contradictories. While Hegel and Goethe, for example, i.e., the minds of the previous generation were able to affirm the status quo with its political ans social stablishment, many of the Left Hegelians were not able to do. Some became egoistic because they discovered hypocricy and superficiality, thus not only evilness, but also meaninglessness, of the ethics of the time. Others became nihilistic at the same time, because all the values of the time were disclosed themselves as meaningless and empty. Despite (and very likely because of) enormous progress of natural sciences and technologies, the artists, poets, philosophers and intellectuals were disillusioned and found no hope and meaning in the future of Western culture. Nietzsche and his philosophy was not an isoluated phenomenon, but a symptom of the time. In this sense, Marx and the Left Hegelians, who, still in the trust of the European Reason, dreamed of a revolution to overcome the ills and problems of the social political conditons of the time may be characterized rather n a i v e.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Life
Mar Marx was born in the city of Trier on Mosel in May 5, 1818, as the son of Heinrich Marx, a Jew who converted himself to Lutheran Protestantism in 1816. His father Heinrich was first a lawyer and later became the Legal Council of the city of Trier. Karl Marx’ grandfather and his great grandfather were Rabbis in Trier, Rhineland. Thus, his ancestors had long lived within the Jewish ghetto in the city of Trier and had had seldom outside-contacts. Their original family name was Levi. Herschel Levi was Karl Marx’s father’s orginal Jewish name. Unlike Karl Marx’ great grandfather and grandfather, Herschel Levi was educated at the University and (for the first time) lived outside of the Jewish ghetto in the city of Trier. One year before Karl Marx was born, Herschel Levi decided to adopt the German name Heinrich Marx in stead of his Jewish name and converted to Lutheran Protestantism. As an intellectual at that time in Germany, Herschel Levi (Heinrich Marx) got the secular education and had widely read such writers of the Enlightenment Period as Leibniz, Rousseau Voltaire and Kant.The main reason for his conversion (and his change of their family name from the obvious jewish name Herschel Levi to Heinrich Marx) was very pragmatic, namely to retain his legal profession, as the policies of the shaky Prussian Government at that time did not allow to practice the law and hold a public position. Karl Marx was baptized in 1824. His father intellectually lived in the politically liberal tradition and the philosophically Kantian rationalistic traits. As a youth, Karl Marx was therefore, educated in that intellectual atmosphere.
The Little Karl already showed his gifted brilliance and intellectual potentials. At the same time, people, particularly his father who, being a lawyer, always sought compromises, was startled by his stubborn and domineering temperament as well as his self-centeredness and his little concerns about his siblings. Only two persons, when Karl Marx was a child, recognized his intellectual brilliance. One is needless to say his father Heinrich Marx.
The other was Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen, the neighbor and his father’s superior, who held a high office position at the Prussian government. As his name indicates, Freiherr von Westphalen was one of the old, highly respected aristocratic descents in Westfalia. Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen not only discerned Marx’ gifts, but helped him in various ways (including a great deal of financial assistance) to develop his intellectual brilliance. To the Levis, Freiherr von Westphalen was incomparably more respectable and wealthier, and they felt that the family von Westphalen belonged to the different class from theirs. Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen nevertheless adored the young Karl Marx for his gifted intellectual talent and allowed him to use his great private library. Karl quickly read all the books in the library and surprised everybody.
Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen had a lovely daughter called Jenny. Jenny was older than Karl by one year, but she, too, adored Karl and admired his brilliance. Karl was long in love with Jenny, too, as doubtlessly she was beautiful, charming, elegant and also extremely smart and gave a lot of her attention and support to the young Karl Marx. Despite class difference and financial imbalance, their love got its fruit in that 1837, Freiherr Ludwig von Westphalen allowed Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen to be married. This of course surprised many of von Westphalen’s relatives. Heinrich Heine, the great German-Jewish Romantic poet who took the refuge to Paris due to his political radicalness, wrote an eloquent tribute to Jenny Marx’ charm and wit, as he met Jenny and Karl Marx in Paris. Jenny became the indispensable, firm and devoted spiritual support to Karl in solitude and his philosophical and political causes until her death (despite Karl Marx’s affairs with their maid).
At the age of seventeen, Karl Marx obtained Abitur (High School Diploma). Under his father’s guidance, first Karl Marx studied jurisprudence at University of Bonn under Professor Savigny and Professor Gans. Professor Gans, a specialist in criminal law, was a confirmed right Hegelian, who exercised a decisive influence on Karl Marx and his future philosophy. Thus, Marx changed his major to History and Philosophy first in Bonn, then transferred to Berlin. Karl Marx was totally engulfed by the profound insights and logical charms of Hegel’s philosophy. “The fashion” then among the German intellectual circles was Hegel’s philosophy and Marx spoke his thoughts in the eloquent Hegelian terminology. His brilliance and mastery of Hegel’s philosophy in discussions surprised many. He earned his doctorate degree in Philosophy with his dissertation on Differenz der Demokritischen und Epikurischen Naturphilosophie (Differences between Democritus’ and Epicurus’ philosophies) at University of Jena in 1841. At that time, already Karl Marx was associated with the left Hegelians. Most of the Right Hegelians were devoted, faithful interpreters or popularizers of Hegel’s philosophy and idealists (one exception may be Søren Kierkegaard, if we call him a Right Hegelian, as his many interpreters do). Contrary to them, the Left Hegelians were in general materialists in ontology and hard line social reformers and political radicals in political ideology, most of them were eager to turn upside down the social structure and dreaming a political and social revolution tomorrow. They were also radical critics of Christianity or often atheists. Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, his brother Edgar Bauer, Köppen and Max Stirner were the people with whom Karl Marx was associated.
Marx wanted to obtain his qualification as a lecturer (Habilitation) at the University Bonn under Bruno Bauer, an instructor in the radical left theology and Karl Marx’ mentor and friend, but Bauer was dismissed from his position in Bonn for his radical thoughts. Thus, Marx had to give up the hope for obtaining his habilitation and became the editor in chief of Rheinische Zeitung (Rhine daily) in Cologne until it was forbidden to publish by the Prussian Government because of its reform-oriented and radically confrontational editorials in 1843. The young Karl was witnessed many miseries, poverty and hard labors of the wine farmers on Mosel and was whole heartedly sympathetic to the plight of the blue color workers in such big cities as Cologne, Berlin and Düsserldorf, etc.
In Fall, 1843, Karl Marx traveled to visit Arnold Ruge in Paris, with whom Marx published only one issue of Deutsch-Französicher Jarhbücher (German-French Annual Journals) in which marx published two of his articles, Die Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law) and Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question). From early 1840s till 1851, Paris was the international center of the various intellectual radicals, artists, musicians and poets who were passionately protesting against the establishments, the political status quo of the times, the political regimes (kings and tyrants), the Church and the army, the incomprehensible philistine masses, slaves and oppressors, enemies of life and the rights of the free humanity, and they spiritually formed a unique solidarity. The government was no longer controlled by the privileged class, but by the newly self asserting class called le bourgeois , while frequent riots against the oppression of the entrepreneurs by the blue collar workers were rampant, so that the intellectuals strongly felt the crisis and the transition of the period as well as le fin de ciècle. In the writings and letters of Balzac, Stendahl, Zola, Flaubert, Musset, Heine, Tocqueville, Delacroix, Wagner, Berlioz, Gautier, Herzen, Turgenev, Victor Hugo, George Sand, and List.
During his stay in Paris, Marx first saw the politico-economical problem of the society more from the point of view of the self-alienation of man from himself through the fact that the proletarians who no longer possessed the means of production (neither land, nor the machines and the factory) were forced to sell their own labor as the merchandise for their and their families’ subsistence. Careful reading of Adam Smith, Ricardo, as well as the so-called Utopian socialists, Pierre Saint-Simons, Charles Fournier and Robert Owens and their followers. Karl Marx also got acquainted with a group of intellectuals, who called themselves communistes. They are a bunch of revolutionaries who intended to abolish the private property and other privileges of the bourgeois class. The Russian revolutionary and anarchist, Bakunin who was a resolute man of action, an adroit and fearless agitator, a magnificent orator, a dangerous megalomaniac consumed by a fanatical desire to dominate man, much later described Karl Marx as follows:

M. Marx is by origin a Jew. He unites in himself all the qualities and effects of that gifted race. Nervous, some say, to the point of cowardice, he is immensely malicious, vain, Quarrelsome, as intolerant and autocratic as Jehovah, the God of his fathers, and like Him, insanely vindictive.
There is no lie, no calumny, which he is not capable of using against anyone who has incurred his jealousy or his hatred; he will not stop at the basest intrigue if, in his opinion, it will serve to increase his position, his influence and his power.

Such are his vices, but he also has many virtues. He is very clever, and widely learned. In about 1840 he was the life and soul of a very remarkable circle of radical Hegelians-German’s whose consistent cynicism left far behind even the most rabid Russian nihilists. Very few men has read so much and, it may be added, have read so intelligently, as K. Marx…

Karl Marx was particularly impressed by a well-to-do young German whose father owned cotton manufacturing factories in Barmen, called Friedrich Engels. They met in Paris in the Fall of 1844 over the publication of his economic articles by Engels in Marx’ s Journal. This was a decisive for the lives both of Marx and Engels. Engels immediately became the most ardent follower, the provider with rich concrete information of the economic reality and the financial supporter of Karl Marx. He further developed his thought of the so-called dialectic materialism to justify his, contemptuous, revolutionary ideology. At this period, two other men, Wietling and Proudhon are very important to Marx’ thinking, although their relations to Karl Marx was not so simple to describe. We shall look at them later.
By the request of the Prussian Government, Marx was expelled from Paris in 1845 and moved to Brussels and wrote the book, Misère de la philosophie,reponse a la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon, published in 1872.
In 1848 Karl Marx, Together with Friedrich Engels, worked and published Communist Manifesto.
He moved back to Paris, then to Cologne and back to Paris again. After the Cologne trial, Marx and his family moved to London in 1851 and he became almost a historical figure until 1863, when the International was formed in London and Marx was asked to write the Inaugural Address of the International, which besides Communist Manifesto is the most important document of the Socialist Movement in 1800. In 1859 his Zur politischen Ökonomie(To the Political Economy) appeared. The first Volume of Das Kapital appeared in 1864. His years in London, most of his time was spent in the British Museum for reading and writing in research.
Many a critic scorns Karl Marx that despite his total devotion to the “rescue of the oppressed,” Karl Marx had an affair with their long time maid. It was long before Jenny started suffering from cancer, which took her life in 1881. After her death, Gradually Karl Marx’ health started deterioration and in 1882 after a severe winter, the physician sent him to Algiers to recuperate. He arrived with acute pleurisy. After returning to French Riviera in the search of the sun, Marx moved to Paris, then returned to London. Due to the abscess of the lung, Marx died on March 14, 1883.
Works
A. ruge and K. Marx, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher 1884
K. Marx & F. Engels, Die heilige Familie, Gegen Bruno Bauer und Konsorten (The Holy Family) 1845
Misère de la philosophie, reponse a la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon (The Misery of Philosophy in Response to the Philosophy of Misery by M. Proudhon) 1847
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie ( The Capital, The Critique of Political Economy) 1. Buch 1867, 2. Buch 1885
Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe im Auftrag der Marx-Engels- Institut in Moskau (The Historical-Critical Complete Works in the contract with Marx-Engels- Institute in Moscow) 1927 1950
Philosophy
The Early Humanistic Period in the Continent
During the decade of 1840, the emphasis of Marx’s writings was mainly on the humanistic concern about the exploitation of the proletarians. Through his application of Hegel’s philosophy and Feuerbach’s thought about the self-alienation of man from himself, Karl Marx saw this alienation of man from himself not in God, nor his relation to man as Feuerbach had done, but in the dehumanization of the proletariat. Namely, the human labor is, according to Karl Marx, the most essential and sacred nature of humanity. And yet, the proletarians had to sell their essence (labor) as a commodity (a thing) to subsist. To Karl Marx, what else could be more self alienating of man from himself as this? It is self alienation because a) man’s most essential characteristic was reified in the sense that the human labor was made a commodity and he/she had sell it for his own and his family’s subsistence. It is self alienating because 2) the proletarians were deprived of their freedom as that constitutes the wholeness of the humans, It is self alienating because 3) the proletarians were exploited and oppressed and forced into a most miserable conditions, i.e., into the most inhumane conditions.
Indeed, prior to Karl Marx’ writings, there were other revolutionaries and communistes (as mentioned above) who were both gathering in Paris and were associated with Marx and also outside of Paris (like e.g. Robert Owens). They attacked the capitalists and the governments of Europe for those inhumane, miserable conditions of the proletarians and advocated the liberation of humanity by a social revolution in order to abolish the private property, which they considered the cause of the capitalistic pursuit (that they learned from Plato).
Therefore, Marx was not the first to notice the miseries of the proletarians, nor to advocate the socialism or communism as well as a violent revolution to recover the wholeness (der Heil) of the Proletariat as humanity. The uniqueness and originality of Karl Marx consists in his application of the concept of the self alienation of man from himself to the dehumanizing conditions of the proletariat and in his further applying the dialectic to the historical development of the society by making the Hegelian dialectic turned upside down.
The Historical, Dialectic Materialism
Marx advocated that the dialectic contradictions found in the history were not the abstract negation in Hegel’s philosophy, but the concrete socio-economical discrepancy between the two classes, the class that possesses the means of production and the class that does not possess the means of production, the class of the exploiters and that of the exploited. Marx advocated that the historical development of a given society was determined by the material conditions of the society, not by such simple matter as constitutes the material substances, but by the economical conditions of the society.
Marx called this determining economical condition the real basis (die Realbasis) and the rest of the cultural phenomena, the super structures (die Überbau). To this latter belong the political organization, social organization and structures, the way and what we eat, the languages, arts, music, literature, philosophy and religion. Being a rationalist (still lingering in the spirit of the Enlightenment),
Marx considered religion as the opium of the masses who were exploited and oppressed to seek their hope and salvation in the afterlife and to desensitize themselves to miseries, poverties and hunger.
Marx attacked Hegel also that his approach in philosophy is upside down and insisted that the true determining factor of the historical development is not Spirit or Idea, but the economical conditions that is worth the mane of materialism.
Karl Marx contended that the history had developed itself dialectically through three major stages by means of each of their economical conditions. These economical conditions are, according to Marx, to be determined by the mode of production and the mode of exchange.
In the earliest stage of the society of humankind, people lived a primitive communistic society. In this society, the humans were either hunters or food gatherers or both. In their activities of obtaining the food and the other necessities of life, they possessed their own means of production such as bows, arrows and spears, or baskets or sticks for gathering of fruits, nuts and grain as stone mills. In this way of living, there were no private properties, but everything they owned were communal including marriage and children. No one member of the community would take advantage of the other, nor would exploit the other either. In this community, there were no need of exchange, since the people were for most parts self sufficient.
When they started agricultural activities, they started exchanging products they had produced. At the earlier stage, they exchanged their products by barter. The value of the commodity of exchange was, according to Marx, usually levelled out and approximately determined by the cost of the material and the cost of the labor hours. Therefore, how advanced the skill and the technique of specialized artisans might be and how sophisticated the distribution of labor might become, according to Marx, there would be no accumulation of the wealth of a few, nor exploitation of the masses by the selected few at all. In this society, all the social, the cultural, philosophical, religious conditions were determined by this mode of production and the mode of exchange and remained the same.
However, once currency was introduced, the mode of exchange was immensely modified. Until then, the exchange was done for the same of the products they wanted to use or consume. As soon as this new mode of exchange was introduced, the purpose of exchange became to make money, i.e., to accumulate wealth! This was the dawn of the private property. The human greed was inspired either to own more land by buying out or by waging a war to acquire the land. Where the majority of the farmers had not cared about the land (nobody had owned the land, but the land had belonged to all the members of the community), suddenly they had no land on which they were to cultivate (the means of production). The land belonged to a privileged few either who themselves acquired by force or by shrewd exchange, or who had inherited those lands from their parents. The landless peasants had to work for those who possessed the land. Here is the new mode of production was established, namely the mode of production in which the majority of the people did not have the means of productions (no land), while the few owned the means of production and did not work. In actuality, however, the story was not so simple as described above. On the contrary, there were landless peasants as well as farmers who owned their own lands. And yet, as the feudal system was established by the beginning of the Ancient civilizations, the humans were divided into the two classes by means of the economic conditions, namely the class which consisted of the farmers who did no longer possess the land (the means of production) and lived on the income of the farm products, while they were busy with warfare.
Thus, the notion of class was by Karl Marx distinctly defined by the economic terms. In this early stage of the commercial capitalism with the feudal system, still the humans were, according to Marx, not completely divided into two classes, although the peasants and the aristocrats were opposing to each other, but, according to Marx, there were plebeians who were merchants and artisans as well as slaves. In consequence, the opposition was blurred.
Through the French Revolution, the merchants and economic powerful financiers established themselves as the socially leading class called la bourgeoisie against the aristocrats. The latter quickly lost its economic power and the social, cultural and superstructural hegemony in the society.
And yet, the clear opposition in the sense of the contradiction between the opposing classes did not come into existence until the Industrial Revolution took place in Europe. Here the financiers and the industrial entrepreneurs like Engels’ father became clearly the class of people who owned the means of production (factories, machines, materials and energy), while the peasants quickly became the proletarians who did not have anything else (the means of production) but their own labour to sell its sole commodity in order that they could subsist. Karl Marx maintained that this process of economic development from one step to the other was necessary and inevitable, as it is the scientific fact because the process followed the law of the dialectic materialism.
To Marx, it was equally absolutely inevitable due to the historical dialectic that today’s capitalism will necessarily develop into and is taken over by the communism or socialism tomorrow where there would be no class distinction because the true equality, the true freedom and the true justice would be possessed by everybody, since there would be no private property,and it will be the society where people would work according to their abilities and would take according to their needs.
This development of class struggles is necessary and the victory of the oppressed class against the possessor class is inevitable, because the people of the oppressed class had revolted and has revolted against the oppressors as the historical necessary consequence, like the plebeians against the aristocrats for democracy and justice in 5th century BC in Greece, like the bourgeois against the aristocrats in the French Revolution for their motto of égalité, liberté et fraternité. Marx believed that being oppressed, the oppressed people were forced to have a clear awareness of their being exploited and would necessarily demand their rights and justice and would revolt against the economically dominating class, that would result in the triumph of the oppressed.
Marx held that it is the scientific fact and that it is due to the law of the historical dialectic. Marx thought that people like Saint-Simons, Fourier and Owens did lack the scientific theory of historical dialect, that would explain the necessity of this economic development, thus they remained as Utopian socialists.
According to Marx, how this class dichotomy came into existence and would be furthered may be explained by his theory of surplus value of human labor. As mentioned above, it was a “known fact” among the socialists prior to and contemporary of Marx that the private property was the cause for the human drive for accumulation of wealth. Thereby it was not yet to be economically explained how it would be possible for the oppressors and exploiters to accumulate their wealth, even if there were the human greed for even more accumulation of wealth. Marx argued that once currency was introduced as a revolution of the mode of exchange, it allows some people to buy a commodity not with its proper exchange value, but with less values. Since the value of a commodity consists of the value of materials and the value which human labor creates for producing it, it is not possible for the buyer to reduce the cost of the material, but it is possible to bargain the value of human labor which was put into the commodity for production. Since the proletariat has nothing else (the means of production) but selling their own labor as a commodity, they are easily forced to sell their labor far less than it actually worth. By so doing, the entrepreneurs would be able to sell the finished products much more than he paid for the material and the labor cost. This difference of value. The accumulation of wealth is only possible by means of this surplus value, namely by selling and buying the human labor as a commodity through the proletarians’ being stripped off of the means of production. Their wages would be lowered, far lowered to the subsistence level of the proletarians so that the entrepreneurs as the factory owners would be able to exploit the laborers and accumulate wealth with the pretense of the need of the capital to renovate the means of production.
The next question to be answered by Marx will be why Marx and other agitators for revolution would make a special effort to stir up the consciousness of the proletariat and unify the proletarians to revolt against the capitalists, if indeed the revolution were inevitable due to the necessary law of historical dialectic. Karl Marx maintained that even if it were inevitable, the sooner the revolution would occur, the quicker the more authentic way of the human existence would be recovered as a whole. The true salvation of the humanity, where no exploitation occurred, where the proletariat would not have to sell their labor as commodity, where people work according to their abilities, and take according to their needs, where the true freedom of humanity is accomplished, must be achieved as soon as possible, for it should be the task of philosophy.
Humanity has to liberate themselves from the self alienation from oneself. Beyond this idea, we are able to see the eschatology of the Judeo-Christian theology. While in Hegel’s philosophy, the final completion of his philosophical system is accomplished in today, Marx’ authentic state of humanity with equality, freedom and justice will be achieved in tomorrow. The temporal phase is shifted from now to
tomorrow. The Final Judgement will come tomorrow.
Marx’ economical determinism has revealed itself as untenable. Otherwise, his doctrine of the historical dialect itself, being a part of the so-called Überbau (the superstructure) and not the real basis, would not predict the future, as he wished for. The historical dialectic itself must be subject to the economic conditions as the real basis, if his theory were valid. Here is one of many Marx’ inconsistencies.
We should not accuse of Marx for the failure of the socialistic states such as Soviet Union or Eastern European Socialist countries, for those nations’ ideology was formed by the great revolutionary and the political visionary, called Lenin. The state of those countries was the dictatorship of the so-called proletariat through the vanguard of the communist party. Namely, according to Lenin, the proletarians were not able to awake themselves for the revolutionary awareness by themselves, but they are to be lead by the elite community party members. Lenin was also aware of the threat of the neighboring capitalistic civilizations, by which the socialist nations would not be able to totally forget the dream of the exploitation of the majority by the few privileged.
However, Marx’ historical dialectic is equally speculative as Hegel’s philosophy is if one would call Hegel’s approach speculative. It was Marx’ naive faith in the scienticity of dialectic in his economic-political theory as well as philosophy. Although it is no longer possible to see the oppreessed and exploited proletariat would revolt against the oppressing and exploiting capitalists’ class, we are still evidencing the oppression and the exploitation in our society. It may still be possible for us to modify Marx’ theory such that the current society will be fundamentally reformed through the ideology of Marx’ basic philosophical thought.

Friedrich Engels (09-28-1820‹08-05-1895)
Life

Firedrich Engels was born as the son of a wealthy industrialist in Barmen, Westfalia. He stablished himself in 1837 as a qualified merchant and yet continued his studies in philosophy and theology. Then Engels was successful in his journalistic acitivies whereby he came to contact with Strauß and Feuerbach. In Berlin he attended Schelling’s lectures and got acquainted with the left liberals such as Bauer brothers and Stirner, etc. In 1842 Engels published the article titled, “Schelling and Revelation, ” which he wrote against Schelling’s lecture about his criticism on religion. Through this article, Engels got acquainted with Anold Ruge, who in turn introduced him to Karl Marx in Paris in 1842. In the same year, Engels moved to Manchester to oversee his father’s manufacturing plant. On his way home, Engels visited Marx and Ruge in Paris and collaborated with Mark on the article named, “Outlines of the Critique of National Economy,” which appeared in die Deutsch-Französischen Jahrbücher.
Since then, the friendhsip and collaboration between Marx and Engels continued until Marx death. For the most parts, Marx was financially supported by Engels and Engels was probably the person who best “understood” Marx’s endeavors. Engels sometimes published articles together with Marx. Having moved to London, Engels worked with the factory in Manchester, travelled not only within Europe,but aalso went to America once. He died in London on August 5, 1895.
Works
Friedrich Engels Schriften der Frühzeit. Aufsätze, Korreespondenzen, Briefe, Dichtungen aus den Jahren 1838 bis 1844 gesammelt and herausgegeben von Gutav Mayer, Berlin 1920
Herrn Euigen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft 1878
Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassichen deutschen Philosphie, 1888
Sammulung von Aufsätze hersg. von Riasanow, 1925
Grundsätze des Kommunismus hersg. von E. Berstein, 1914
Manifest der kommunistischen Partei mit Karl Marx, 1848
Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft 1883
Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und Staats 1884
Zur Geschichte des Urchristentums, in : Neue Zeit, 1894-1895
Aus dem Briefwechsel zwischen F. E. und Karl Marx 1844-1883 hersg von A. Bebel und e. Berstein
1913

Philosophy

Friedrich Engels’ philosophy was in his early years under the influence first of Hegel, then the left Hegelians such as Strauß and Feuerbach, then was strongly molded by Marx’ thoughts through the collaborations with Marx. His first work, “Mr. Eugen Dühring’s Waltzing around the Science” in 1878. Three chapters of this work were later made independent into a book published under the title, “The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science.” When Engels published an article about the materialistic historical view in the weekly paper called, “The People,” on August 6, 1859, his own philosophical viewpoint was established as the so-called historical materialism. This view point was supposed to be developed through the influences from Feuerbach and Marx in particular. Although Marx’ historical materialism was far more sophisticated (therefore, more complex) than Engels’ thought which was far more simplistic. Engels believed that materialistic-dialectic history would become an exact science like physics or mathematics and he did everything to make it so. According to Engels, the well-planned, conscious organization must be established in stead of anarchy. Namely, the social laws are to be established and freely applied, while the human-being ought to create the history according to those laws. According to Engels, “the humanity made a leap from the kingdom of necessity to that of freedom. In this article, Engels defended Hegel against Dühring’s criticism. According to Ziegenfuß, Engels wrote almost at the same time to A. F. Lange and told him that he was no way a Hegelian, and yet he could not help but having admiration to and influence from that good old colossal guy.
In his Ludwig Feuerbach and the Beginning of the Classical Philosophies (1888), Engels felt that he followed Hegel’s approach in “The world is not to be grasped as a complex of the finished products, but the complex of processes. In those processes, apparent stable things as much as their mental copies in our head and concepts must undergo an incessant metamorphosis of change and vanishing, in which ,despite all apparent contingencies and all momentous retreats, ultimately a progressive development will persist.” Epistemologically, Engels took a very naive copy theory as his own viewpoint. He affirmed that we are able to develop a faithful copy of the real world. Engels contended against Hegel;s development of the concept,
In stead of viewing the real things as copies of this or that stage of the absolute concept, we must understand the concepts of our head once again materialistic as the copies of the real things…

In his last years, Engels did not publish any opera, but only stated his thoughts in his letters. He defended Marx’ effort to base the historical materialism on the economic conditions as the reactions to those critics’ argments. And yet Engels contended a far more moderate, less monistic veiw such that the economic conditions are the last and sole basis of the social development, while we should not overlook that the such overstructures as sciences, states and laws, philosophies and relegions often exercise influence on the fundamental structure called the economic conditions. In his last letter dated in 1894, Engels even extended the concept of the “economic relations” so much that it should contain not only the technics of production and distribution, but also the geographic conditions, the residues from the carried-over earlier economic development stages, the race as some of the economic factors.
Die politische, literarische, künstlerische usw. Entwicklung beruht auf die ökonomischen. Aber sie alle reagieren auch aufeinander und auf die ökonomische Basis… Die Menschen machen ihre Geschichte selbst, aber in einem gegebenen, sie bedingenden Milieu, auf Grundlage vorgefundener, tatsächlicher Verhähltnisse, under denen die ökonomischen, so sehr sie auch von den übringen politischen und ideologischen beinflußt werden mögen, doch in letzter Instanz die entscheinden sind und den durchgehenden, allein zum Verständnis führenden roten Faden bilden.

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813-November 4, 1855)
Life
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on May 5, 1813, in a great house his father recently bought near the City Hall of Copenhagen. The house faced one of the great squares of the city, called the New Market (Nytorv). Except his study philosophy in Berlin, Søren Kierkegaard spent all his life in Copenhagen. On November 4, 1855, Søren Kierkegaard closed his rather short, 42 years of life in Frederik’s Hospital there.
Copenhagen’s population at that time was 200,000 and yet it was the capital of Denmark, which was and still is a monarch. Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s stage was also Denmark. It has Royal Opera House, Royal Theatre, and Royal Library, etc. An attentive visitor will discover a bronze statue of Søren Kierkegaard by an artist called Aasleff. This is an enlarged copy of another small statue made by Haaelriis and many people claim that the original is far superior. His ferocious attacks to the establishment of the theology in Denmark, his eccentric relationships with others were well recorded in order to portray his personality. Kierkegaard was a great theologian and philosopher who was considered as one of the so-called right Hegelian philosophers with the special emphasis on religion. At any rate, Søren Kierkegaard was one of the most celebrated persons Denmark has ever produced.
Apart from his study trip to Berlin, Prussia (Germany), Kierkegaard made only one trip in his own motherland beyond the island of Seeland, that was the trip to his father’s birthplace, i.e., Jutland and the heath country, where he was born and was supposed to have, as a boy, suffered desperate hunger, cold and loneliness. Søren Kierkegaard’s trip was made, right after he passed the Theological Examination. This was the fulfillment of his father’s greatest wish.
His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was born in Saeding, “which was not a village, not even a hamlet, but a scattered parish in the heath country where only shepherds and peat-diggers could make out a scanty existence.” The stone church at Saeding suggests the utmost poverty and desolation. At his last stopping place before reaching Saeding Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “Here I sit entirely alone (I have, it is true, often been just as much alone but was never so conscious of it) and I count the hours till I shall see Saeding. I never can remember any change in my father, and now I shall see the places for which I have often felt nostalgia on account of his descriptions. Suppose I were to fall ill and be buried in Saeding cemetery! Uncanny thought. His last wish for me is fulfilled [i.e., in the fact that he had taken his theological examination] ‹ might my whole earthly destiny come to no more than this? Good Lord! My task cannot be so lowly, considering all I owe to him. From him I learned what father-love is, and I got a conception of the divine father love, the one unshakable thing in life, the true archimedean point.” There is now no dwelling near it. “The church has its altar, a brightly painted pulpit, and a great crucifix, the only ornaments are two wooden tablets on the wall of the nave, both bearing inscriptions in gilt lettering upon a black ground. One was placed there in 1821 by Søren Kierkegaard’s father and records the gift he made to the parish in honor of his mother’s brother, Niels Andersen Seading, who when he was a boy of twelve delivered him from his bitter lot, took him to Copenhagen, and started him on the path to wealth. The other records a gift made in behalf f the school and the poor of the parish in honor of Søren Kierkegaard’s father by the nephew, Michael Andersen Kierkegaard, to whom he had turned over his business. Michael describes his uncle (i.e., Søren Kierkegaard’s father) as “guide and support of my youth, the benefactor of Saeding school.” In 1935, Søren Kierkegaard’s eightieth anniversary, the Bishop of Ribe dedicated there a marble tablet in memory of our great philosopher and theologian, Søren Kierkegaard. According to Walter Lawrie, “as this church was too poor to have a minster of its own, the parsonage with its glebe (which as well as the cemetery was known as the churchyard or Kierkgaard) was rented, and the family which occupied it was called by this name. The elder Kierkegaard, when he was settled in Copenhagen, added an “e” to the common noun, “Kierkgaard” to distinguish the cognomen. He built for his mother and two sisters a Red House with thatch roofs, that was admired in the neighborhood because it was built by bricks and timber unlike others with clay!
When the younger Kierkegaard stayed in the Red House for three days, he wrote in his diary, “It seems as though I must experience the sharpest contrasts. After living for three days with my poor old aunt, pretty much like Ulysses and his companions [literally, stable-brothers] the next place I came to was so chock full of counts and barons that it was frightful.” Søren continues: “It is related here in Saeding that there is a house hereabouts where once there lived a man who in time of the pest outlived all the others and buried them. He plowed long furrows in the peat and buried his neighbors in long rows.” “Standing before the door of this little place (Red House), with the aroma which hay always emits, in the light of the late afternoon; the sheep drifting home constitute the foreground; dark clouds broken by strong beams of light such as indicate a gale ‹ the heath rising in the background ‹ if only I might remember clearly the impression of the evening. The heath must be particularly fitted to develop strong minds. Here everything lies naked and unveiled before God; and here is no place for the many distractions, the many nooks and crannies wherein consciousness can hide and from which seriousness so often has trouble in recovering the dispersed thoughts. Here consciousness must definitely and precisely hedge itself in. Truly here upon the heath one well may, ‘Wither shall I flee from thy presence?'”
Michael Petersen Kierkegaard, one of the nine children, however gifted in his intellectual capabilities, appeared to be condemned to a life of poverty, obscurity and desolation. However, his mother’s brother (Søren’s great uncle) Niels Andersen Saeding, suddenly changed Michael’s life when he was 12 years old, as he took Michael Petersen to Copenhagen, as Niels Saeding had long established himself there as a hosier. Since wool was produced principally in Jutland in Denmark, it is natural that the Jutlanders were prominent in this trade. The “hosier” referred to more than a dealer in stockings; he dealt also in ready-made clothing. Michael, Søren’s father must have been a very able man. He developed a considerable business in cloth, and on 12-04, 1780, when he was 24, he obtained a license to deal also in food stuffs, while on 09-19, 1788, he was licensed by royal patent to deal also in Chinese and East India wares as well as merchandise from the Danish West Indies (sugar, syrup and coffee beans for whole sale and retail. He quickly became a wealthy merchant.
But at the age of 40 years, he retired from business and left it to his nephew, Michael Andersen Kierkegaard. This followed immediately after the death of his wife’s death, who was married to Søren’s father only for two years. Before the year of mourning was hardly over, Michael married to Anne Søren-datter Lund, a servant at his household yet a distantly relative from Jutland, on 04-26, 1797. The first child, Maren Kiersten, was born on 09-07, 1797, four months and eleven days after the marriage. In the course of next eight years, two more daughters, Nicoline Christine and Petrea Severine and the eldest son, Peter Christian, were born , before they moved to the Central Copenhagen, where Søren Michael was born in 1807, Niels Andreas in 1809. On May 5, 1813, the last of seven children, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, was born, when his father was 56 years old and his mother was 45. The name Søren is linguistically a corrupted form of the Latin Severinus, the name of a Saint of the fifth century, who attained a great fame in Denmark. However, he was the last to bear this name, as the popular ridicule about this great philosopher was so much that “don’t be a Søren” was said as a warning to children not to be mischievous or evil.
The elder Kierkegaard was rigorously pious and brought up his children “in the fear of God.”
Søren’s father’s religious piousness affected Søren Kierkegaard very negatively. On the one hand, he hated Christianity due to this attitude of his father. On the other, he found his father’s godfearing attitude intolerable, as Søren found in father’s soul the unrest despite such a profound piety. In Postscript which was written by his pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, “To cram Christianity into a child is a thing that cannot be done…” There is a reason to suspect that this father regarded his youngest son not only as his Benjamin but as his Isaac, the son who is to be sacrificed as his atonement, or at least for is guilt. In this regard, Kierkegaard wrote two years before his death in his Diary:
There are two thoughts which arose in my soul so early that I really cannot indicate in their origin The first is that there are men whose destiny it is to be sacrificed in one way or another for others in order to bring the idea out ‹ and that I wish my peculiar cross was one of them. The other thought is that I should never be tried by having to work for my living ‹ partly because I thought that I should die very young, and partly because I thought that in consideration of my peculiar cross God would spare me this suffering and problem…

Such a thought, Kierkegaard believed, derived from his father and his education to Søren.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard entered University of Copenhagen at the age of 17. The music which he could not find at home was a great attraction to him and he became an opera enthusiast. He loved theatre. At his early years at the University, Søren Kierkegaard appropriated passionately the aesthetic side of life. Although he felt that his home a spiritual prison (religious, cultural restrictions), he followed his father’s wish and chose theology his major and yet he diligently studied theology. Among his six siblings, Søren Michael died in 1819, Maren Kirsten died in 1822. In 1832, first Nicoline Christine died, a year later Niels Andreas died at Paterson, N.J. And in 1834, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard’s mother died. After five months, Petrea Severine died. Within two years, Kierkegaard’ father lost three of his children and his wife. None of those children did live longer than 34 years. Peter, the eldest and Søren Aabye, the youngest, survived these catastrophic years, although Søren Aabye died at the age of 42. His father found it God’s punishment to him that he must outlive all of his children. Søren Aabye found it a curse and sensed. He remembered the peasant in a Greek tragedy replied to the question of why he believed in gods, ” because the gods hate me.” Not only melancholy was the state of mind very close to Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, but also this sense of tragedy was equally with him all the time. An entry of Quidam’s Diary in which he projects himself to Solomon and his father to David states:
Solomon’s judgment is well known. It availed to discriminate between truth and deceit and to make the judge famous as a wise prince. His dream is not so well known.
If there is any pang of sympathy, it is that of having to be ashamed of one’s father, of him whom one loves above all,to whom one is most indebted ‹ to have to approach him backwards with averted face in order not to behold his dishonor. But what greater bliss of sympathy can be imagined than to dare to love as the son’s wish prompts him, and to dare to be proud of the father, moreover, because he is the only elect, the singularly distinguished man, a nation’s strength, a country’s pride, God’s friend, a promise for the future, extolled in his lifetime, held by memory in the highest esteem! Happy Solomon, this was thy lot! Among the chosen people (how glorious it was even to belong to them!) he was the KIng’s son (enviable lot!), son of that king who was the elect among kings.
Thus Solomon lived happily with the prophet Nathan. The father’s strength and the father’s achievements did not inspire him to deeds of valor, for indeed no opportunity was left for that, but it inspired him with admiration, and admiration made him a poet. But if the poet was almost jealous of his hero, the son was blissful in his devotion to the father.
Then one time the son made a visit to his royal father. In the night he awoke at hearing movement where the father slept. Horror seizes him, he fears it is a villain who would murder David. He steals nearer‹he beholds David with a crushed and contrite heart, he hears a cry of despair from the soul of the penitent.
Faint at the sight he returns to his couch, he falls asleep, but he does not rest, he dreams, he dreams that David is an ungodly man, rejected by God, that the royal majesty is a sign of God’s wrath upon him, that he must wear the purple as a punishment, that he is condemned to rule, condemned to hear the benediction of the people, whereas the justice of the Lord secretly and hiddenly pronounces judgement upon the guilty one; and the dream suggests the surmise that God is not the God of the pious but of the ungodly, and that one must be an ungodly man to be God’s elect‹and the horror of the dream is this contradiction.
While David lay upon the ground with crushed and contrite heart, Solomon arose from his couch, but his understanding was crushed. Horror seized him when he thought of what it is to be God’s elect. He surmised that holy intimacy with God, the sincerity of the pure man before the Lord, was not the explanation, but that a private guilt was the secret which explained everything.
And Solomon became wise, but he did not became a hero; and he became a thinker, but he did not become a man of prayer; and he became a preacher; but he did not become a believer; and he was able to help many, but he was not able to help himself; and he became sensual, but not repentant; and he became contrite and downcast, but not again erect, for the power of the will had been strained by what surpassed the strength of youth. And he tossed through life, tossed about by life‹strong, supernaturally strong (that is womanishly weak) in the stirring infatuations and marvelous inventions of imagination, ingenious in expounding thoughts. But there was rift in his nature, and Solomon was like the paralytic who is unable to support his own body. In his harem he sat like a disillusioned old man, until desire for pleasure awoke, and he shouted, “Strike the tumbrels, dance before me, ye women.” But when the Queen of the South came to visit him, attracted by his wisdom, then was his soul rich, and the wise answer flowed from his lips like the precious myrrh which flows from the trees in Arabia.

In Either/Or, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard equated himself to Antigone. To this, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard referred in relation to Solomon’s dream in one of his diary entry:
I must again occupy myself with my ‘Antigone.’ The task will be to develop and explain the presentiment of guilt. It was with this in view I reflected upon Solomon and David, Solomon’s youthful relationship to David…

Antigone Kierkegaard talked about in Either/Or:

So the race of Labdakos is the object of the fury of the angry gods; Oedipus has killed the Sphinx, liberated Thebes, murdered his father, married his mother, and Antigone is the fruit of this marriage. So it is in the Greek tragedy. Here I diverge. In my version everything remains the same and yet all is different. Oedipus has killed the Sphinx and liberated Thebes, so much is known to all, and Oedipus lives honored and admired, happy in his love for Jocasta. The rest is hidden from men’s eyes and no suspicion has recalled that horrible dream to reality. Only antigone knows it. How she came to know it lies outside the tragic interest, and every one is free in that respect to make his own surmise. At an early age, when she was not yet fully mature, dark hints of that horrible secret had at moments gripped her soul, until at last certainty at one blow cast her into the arms of anguished dread.

Since Oedipus dies and is remembered with great honor, Antigone feels obligated to hold secret the crime that her father committed and could not be made known. The most serious collision occurs when she falls in love with a man, the son of Leon, who loves Antigone dearly. Because he knows how much she loves him, he can not understand why Antigone hides something from him. In Kierkegaard own case, he was the projection of Regina, his once fiancé, while Antigone was his own surrogate. Sir Walter Lowrie describes this as follows:
He (Søren Kierkegaard) stresses the fact that Antigone cannot divulge the secret which would bring shame upon her father’s memory, and that therefore she cannot marry him, for she will not enter int a marriage which is not perfectly open-hearted. the grim secret is her undoing. (p. 78)

The Great Earthquake Søren Aabye Kierkegaard experienced at his age of 22 on the one hand crushed him together with his long lasting feeling of Søren to his father. On the other hand, this event liberated him from his secretive emotion toward his father’s being at the same time. In his The Concept of Dread, Kierkegaard states:
Angust (Dread) is not sudden like a dart, but slowly bores its way into the heart.

It is interesting to discover that Kierkegaard’s passionate, so-called subjective concept of truth was already found around that time in one of the entries of his journal:
What I really need is to become clear in my own mind what I must do, not what must know‹except in so far as a knowing must precede every action. The important thing is to understand what I am destined for, to perceive what the Deity wants me to do; the point is to find the truth which truth for me, to find that idea for which I am ready to live and die. What good would it do me to discover a so-called objective truth…? … What good would it do me if I were able to expound the significance of Christianity,…, if for me and for my life it did not have any really profound importance?What good would it do me that I were able to develop a theory of the State [like Hegel] and out of particulars fetched from many quarters put together a totality, construct a world wherein again I did not live but which I merely held up to the gaze of others? …What good would it do me that truth stood before me cold and naked, indifferent as to whether I recognized it or not, producing rather a fearful shudder than a trustful devotion? To be sure, I am willing to recognize an imperative of the understanding and to admit that persons may be influenced through this; but then it must be livingly embodied in me‹and this it is I now recognize as the principal thing. It is for this my soul thirsts as the deserts of Africa thirst after water… It was this that I lacked, the experience of leading a complete human life and not merely a life of understanding, so that with this I should not be basing the development of my thought‹well, upon something that is called objective, something which at all events is not my own, but I should be basing it upon something connected with the deepest roots of my soul, through which, so to speak, I have grown into the divine nature and cling fast to it even thought the whole world collapses. This is what I lack, and towards it I am striving…

At the same time, as a young person of his age normally is, Kierkegaard was exuberant at many possibilities of his life in the future. Although he was diligently preparing for theology examination, Kierkegaard enjoyed a liberated student life at the university. This was the period of Kierkegaard’s so-called aesthetical life. Around this time, he also was perhaps farthest from Christianity in his life, too. However, he soon, as he did many a time later, too, experienced the despair which results from possibility unchecked by necessity ‹as he describes the situation in The Sickness onto Death.
(to be continued.)
Works
S. A. Kierkegaard’s Collected Works in 14 volumes, 1901-1906,
Ether/Or, e. A Life’s Fragment, edit. by Viktor Eremita, 1843
Two religious Sermons, 1843
Fear and Trembling , Dialectic Lyrics by Johannes de silentio, 1843
On Repetition, An Attempt of Experimental Psychology by johannes Climacus, 1844
Philosophical Brocks by Johannes Climacus, 1846
The Concept of Anxeity by Nigilius Haufniensis, 1844
Religious Sermons in the Various Spirit, 1848
Christian Sermons, 1848
The Crisis, by Inter et Inter, 1848
The Viewpoint for my author’s effectiveness, 1848
The Sickness onto Death, 1849
Two Small Ethico-Religious Articles, 1849
Indoctrination in Christianity, 1850
The recommended Self-Examination Today, 1851
The Diaries in 2 volumes edit. by Th. Haecker, 1923
Selections of Kierkegaard’s Confessions and Thoughts, 1918
Philosophy

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was also strongly influenced by Hegel not only in his extensive use of dialectics but also in his employment of other Hegelian concepts and is therefore called sometimes as one of the right Hegelians (together with such people as Grockner). In Hegel’s system, it is generally understood, a concrete particular individual and its unique experience never come to be properly accounted for, but it is so-to-speak totally ignored, although it is integrated into the development of the absolute spirit. Such an interpretation is common, because the particular was starting point, but was never the end in Hegel’s understanding of reality. To Hegel, the concrete particular is meaningful, as long as it is mediated by the universal, while the universal as such in abstraction is totally meaningless and is also to be mediated by the concrete, particular. Nevertheless, from the point view of Kierkegaard, this particular, individual as Søren Aabye cannot be properly understood and grasped by such an dialectical mediation alone. On the contrary, according to Kierkegaard, such a concrete, particular individual is beyond the grasp of Hegel’s dialectic approach and his system of philosophy. Therefore, Kierkegaard strongly objected Hegel’s so-called “universal logicism” and “objectivism.” However, such an understanding of Hegel’s philosophy itself may be subjected to criticism, for such an interpretation is based on the assumption that Hegel’s system was constructed by the prinicple, so called reason, which was and still is considered the human (and possibly inclduing the divine) highest cognitive faculty. The concept of reason in Hegel’s system is perhaps the most misunderstood of all. This is not well elaborated here at the introductory portion of his philosophy. We intend to explore the genuine nature of Hegel’s philosophy which has been overlooked and misinterpreted and totally blinded by our sight.
At any rate, in his emphasis on the concrete particular individual and subjectivity, however, Kierkegaard is often considered as the forerunner of the existential philosophy. (We would like to carefully use the term “existentialism” which was only employed by Jean-Paul Sartre and applicable to his philosophy, so the latter could not universally be applied to such existential philosophers as Heidegger, Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Albert Camus, Merleau-Ponty, etc.) In contrast to Hegel, as the tradition of the History of the Western philosophy, Kierkegaard’s philosophy and the alpha and amega of his philosophy may be simply characterized as “individualism” in that he developed his philosophy on the basis of his own personal experience and made the concrete, particular individual as the principle of all.
It is also well known that Kierkegaard radically criticized the establishment of the current Christianity, that is , the Protestant church then in Denmark and made it as one of the steps for obtaining the new relationship to God. The process in which Kierkegaard underwent was a series of personal, philosophical struggles with inner conflicts and contradictions that were well recorded and revealed in his own diaries and other publications. Unlike Hegel’s case, Kierkegaard was not able to find the solution by negation and the ultimate, harmonious unity of those opposing strives. Strange as it may sound, clearly seen in his biography above, Kierkegaard in his youth suffered even from his father’s profound sense of guilt and his fear the panishment by God.
He stated, “It is and remains the hardest trial, when the human-being does not know whether one’s suffering is the psychic malaise or sin.”(1844) To Kierkegaard, it was always clear that he could only follow his “calling” (the call of conscience and the calling from God at the same time) by means of a certain, concrete decision and action through his own experience, but not just through speculative thinking as Kierkegaard and many other understood Hegel’s philosophy.
Truth is for him not a universal necessity, but his own, concrete personal truth, which he experiences in the face of choice between his own life and death and in his responsibility. Kierkegaard made a resolution:
Now I will exert myself to solely focus my own gaze on myself and to start to internally act!

The aim of his philosophical thinking was absolutely subjective and thus existential. Kierkegaard was the first philosopher who used the term “existence” and “existential” in the sense of the 20th century existential philosophies. However, in the following context, Kierkegaard used “existence” in the sense in which Schelling distinguishes “Daß” (that=existence) from “Was” (what=essence). According to him, existence is temporal, and is thus in change. This not only applies to that which recognizes, but also to that which is recognized. Only the particular individual exists. To exist means also to be individual particular. An existential recognition is such an essential recognition that it deals with an individual in its temporal being and is rooted from the core of the personality. Existence as being in time always is incomplete. Therefore, the existential thinking will never be able to constitute a system. Thus, as long as the speculative philosophy is mistaken in its faith in the system, such a thinking also wrong in its endeavor to the higher unity like in the case of Hegel’s philosophy. Kierkegaard maintains:
All those discourses about the higher unity which is supposed to unify the absolute opposites is a metaphysical assassination of ethics. (1844)

The existential thinking must not mean “Both/and” but “Either/or.” : It is not the problem of reconciliation and mediating the contradictories as in the case of Hegel’s philosophy, but the problem here is “repetition.” … The repetition is primarily that which is wrongly called “mediation.” (Repetition, P. 33)

This concept of repetition played a very significant role in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Kierkegaard even devoted an entire book to answering its questions: “Is repetition possible?” “What significance does repetition has?” “Is something gained or lost by repetition?” etc.
According to Kierkegaard, not in case we devote ourself to memory and hope, but should one comprehend one’s own life as repetition, the human-being can actually live. Each of us must apply to the future that which one has obtained in the past as a result of one’s experience. I other words, the potentiality must be actualized. This is only possible, so argues Kierkegaard, by repetition. And for this, a decision is necessarily presupposed and by so doing, it grasps a potential action. Thus, repetition becomes an “omen” (Losung) for every ethical awareness. Kierkegaard argues that repetition cannot be psychologically justified, but it is transcendent. Therefore, repetition presupposes a “coup” of decision (den Ruck der Entscheidung). In this manner, repetition obtains the appearance of the religious category. “Repetition” as the omen for every ethical awareness is also the interest of metaphysics, thus it is a conditio sine qua non for every dogmatic problem. According to Kierkegaard, only through the work of repetition, a structure is established in our spiritual life.
Just as against Hegel’s assumption regarding the historical development, Kierkegaard thereby objected Hegel’s contention that a “continuous” structure in all events, not only in spiritual, but also in natural events. According Kierkegaard, “continuity” is a mere abstraction: gradual transition cannot be found anywhere. Any possible continuous growth is interrupted by the coup of actualizing, which could not be foreseen before. Our thought creates continuity. Life, i.e., reality is suddenly from one stage to another by a “leap.” Particularly in our spiritual life, progress is made by leaps.
The history of the individual life makes progress through its motion from one stage to another. Each stage will be set by a leap. (Die Angst, S. 113)

Leap is ultimately a qualitative change, a qualitative decision-making. In opposition to Hegel’s “qualitative dialectic,” Kierkegaard called “qualitative distinction” his fundamental philosophical belief. For Kierkegaard, the opposition between thought and existence, the universal and the particular, is the absence of the gradual transition from one to the other. Here, we may be able to find a relationship from Schelling to Kierkegaard.
For the human-being there cannot be a system of existence (ein System des Daseins), but only for God, who is outside of its existence and yet exists (Gott, der außerhalb des Daseins und doch im Dasein ist). There is no rational comprehensible relationship between the eternally closed existence of God and the existing, comprehending human spirit. It is a “paradox,” it is a non-sense and contradictory, something irrational.
The paradox is the passion of thought and the thinker who avoids paradox is like a lover who keeps oneself from passion ‹ a mediocre patron. The highest potency of every passion is such that it will its own downfall, and it is the highest passion of understanding that understanding will make a blow, although such a blow will have to bring about its own downfall in some way or other. This is the highest passion of thinking to discover something, which it cannot think of. (Philosophical Bite)

Paradox, the contradiction in itself, the absurdity, will be also the objection of faith: God, the absolute eternal, ought to be firmly held and grasped in the mutation of human existence. Only the passion of faith can make this essential truth of its own. The more contradictory its content is, the more heightened its inner personal feeling, the inner reality, its internal power and energy is. Faith is the matter of subjectivity.
Subjectivity is truth. (Die Wahrheit is die Subjektivität.)

Truth is adventure (Wagnis). In his entire life, Kierkegaard devoted himself to this.
These various stages of development are needless to say a refection of his own personal experience. According to Kierkegaard, there are three stages of one’s life: The aesthetic stage, the ethical stage, and the religious stage. In the transition from the aesthetic to the ethical stage, there exists “irony.”
In the transition from the ethical to the religious stage, there is “humor.” In the aesthetic view, life is a free phantasy play of mere potentials. The human life in this stage is in absolute “hanging,” without any personal commitment. The central concept of the ethics is the individuality. The individual’s authentic ethical reality is its own reality. In this individuality, the ethical decision takes place. The individual discovers its own innermost essence in adventure (Wagnis).
Whatever my ethical significance is, it is unconditionally connected to the category of individuality.

Kierkegaard held that the content of ethics is the individual’s piety to God. Even if it cannot be fulfilled, ethics holds onto its command. When the individual is staggered through this, then in repentance the individual obtains the transition to the higher stage, the religious stage. The ethical stage is merely a transitory stage and precisely because of this, its highest form is repentance. To be in the religious stage means to be ready for suffering and downfall. It is the task of the religious life that ideality will be introduced into reality. The connection between the ethical and the religious stage is “humor.” It is the humor that evidences the finite in its nothingness and indifference against the Infinite. There are only two major religious views such that only leap enables us from one to the other. The first does not presupposes any breaking away from the natural world-order and its representative was Socrates. The second is paradoxically determined by the relationship to God in temporality. Faith’s relationship to the highest paradox is presented in Christianity in which the quilt consciousness is elevated to the consciousness of sin. By means of this, the greatest innerness and the greatest suffering in the individual are achieved.
Kierkegaard’s personal religiosity experienced its profound internalization at the Easter, 1848.
I do now feel the drive to attain the relationship to myself in that I myself am closely related to God. (august 1847)

At this very awareness, Kierkegaard was forced to confront himself with the Christianity at that time in Denmark, which he characterized as the religion of the mild and of consolation (=mediocrity). In this manner, as Kierkegaard maintains, one betrays the genuine Christianity.
As quite self-evident from the mentioned above, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard’s total devotion to his calling, his insistence on finding the authentic truth in subjectivity, and his radicalization of the philosophical focus on self and its existence exercised various influences in the 20th century not only on such existential philosophers as Heidegger and Jaspers, but also on such so-called dialectical theologians as Karl Barth, but also Gogarten and Thurneysen, etc. The extreme crystallization of his individual, personal experiences into philosophical awareness and existential religious consciousness was very rare.
His radical criticism on the establishment of Danish churches and theology forced the protestant theology to refocus its emphasis from the social and institutional significance to the existential individual religious quest in Christianity.

Friedrich Immanuel Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 24, 1900)
Life
On October 15, 1844, Friedrich Immanuel Nietzsche was born in Röcken, Prussia as the only son of the Lutheran pastor Karl Ludwig Nietzsche. When Friedrich was 5 years of age, his father passed away after a long illness for one year. (Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published in 1859.) Many argue that as a result, Nietzsche was in care of five female relatives, that would affect his life and even his philosophy. They were his grandmother, his mother , his two aunts and his three years younger sister Elizabeth. Being only a male in the family, Friedrich Nietzsche was called Fritzchen (Little Fred), adored, petted and worshipped by them.
As a school boy, Fritzchen already revealed his intellectual gift. He found boring to play with his neighbors’ children and despised them with great disdain. They in turn reciprocated the feeling with him, calling him “der kleine Pfahrer!” (The Tiny Minister). At the age of 15, Friedrich was separated from his female relatives and went to the Lutheran boarding school, which however was located 5 miles away from home. Not only at that time, he already well read, but also he was dreaming of becoming a writer. On Easter, 1861, Friedrich Nietzsche was confirmed at the age of 16. Nevertheless, around the time, Nietzsche started having doubt about the existence of God and soon he gave up the idea of becoming a minister.
At the age of 17 Nietzsche went to University of Bonn, where he enjoyed the free, college students’ privileged adolescent life more than anything else with beer, wine, sex and tobacco, etc. He even joined a student corps called the Franconia. It is said at this time he was infected syphilis which affected him in his second half of life. His spending exceeded the money sent from his family and he started getting tired of such hedonistic life anyway and transferred himself to University of Leipzig. In Germany, once you obtained Abitur (the high school diploma), you can study at any of the German Universities you like and you can transfer anywhere.
There Nietzsche discovered interest in the Greek philology and the Greek culture. He showed enormous gift in his study, so that his teacher, Professor Ritschl, patronized Nietzsche very much. At the same time, it is said that around this time, when Nietzsche was 21, he discovered Arthur Schopenhauer and his non-rational philosophy of will. He was deeply influenced by him and his thought. However, by nature Nietzsche was not rational, but was, from the beginning of philosophical pursuit, deeply attracted to non-rational elements of reality, which in Schopenhauer’s philosophy was the concept of will. Therefore, Schopenhauer’s philosophy gave a clear form to his inner yearning in his philosophical inquiry. While Schopenhauer’s philosophy was pessimism (which holds that the universe was created, still is and will be the worst possible world), Nietzsche found no value in what was considered as valuable from the worldly viewpoint and ended up with the metaphysics of nihilism (that holds that all the current values in the universe are nothing). Just to find an affirmation of life (an attempt to transvalue values), he joined the Prussian cavalry to discover that he fell off of a horse and was in consequence discharged.
When Nietzsche returned to Leipzig in order to complete the requirements for his doctorate degree, his teacher Professor Ritschl strongly recommended to the position of Chair of Classical Philology which had became vacant at University of Basel in Switzerland in 1868. As the University of Basel appointed him to the post, Leipzig University conferred a doctorate degree upon Nietzsche without fulfilling his requirements. Nietzsche was twenty four years old.
The genius often gets no recognition. And he or she is eccentric for most parts and is hard to get along with other people. Nietzsche was no exception and was not very unsuccessful as a teacher at Basel University. The teaching obligations burdened him and he constantly fought with his colleagues. He missed classes all the time and often deeply tortured by the meaninglessness of the existence. As Bismarck started Prussia’s war against France in 1870, he was felt to be called upon to take part in “the struggle in redemption of the Teutonic race from Latin vice and rationalism” (this was written by his sister Elizabeth, who changed so many of Friedrich Nietzsche’s manuscripts in editing his complete works. She took care of him during his invalid life), and the renounced his Swiss nationality (which he had obtained upon the appointment of the teaching position) and tried to join the army again. However, he was not qualified as a soldier, but as he enlisted himself for the German ambulance service, he fell ill with dysentery and diphtheria and could not continue his excitement of the assertion of life. According to Elizabeth (in The Young Nietzsche), Friedrich Nietzsche “felt for the first time that the strongest and high Will to Life does not find expression in a miserable struggle for existence (cf. Darwin’s one of the principles for evolution of the species), but in a Will to War, a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower.” Whether or not, these are authentic words of Nietzsche is not a question to ask here (in fact, it is more likely that Eliazabeth not only wrote his biography, but edited with a great many alterations of Nietzsche’s statement such that many of which were considered some of Friedrich Nietzsche’s central thought were later discovered and justified as Elizabeth’s falsifications: We shall discuss this later), but he agreed with Darwin that life is the struggle and further agreed with Schopenhauer that there only exists a sense of the meaninglessness and futility of all the pain and suffering caused by the struggle. According to Nietzsche, only through the new assertion of life, not the life of the weak masses, but that of the strong Übermensch with the will for power.
Nietzsche as a young man composed some pieces in music and was very much interested in music as well as he was confident that he understood music well and admired Richard Wagner’s music long before he became widely recognized. Right after Nietzsche went to Basel, he introduced himself to Richard Wagner. As Nietzsche deeply admired Wagner’s unparalleled creativity, he wrote The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie) to obtain Wagner’s recognition. This book gathered an instant praise among the Wagner’s followers and Richard Wagner himself welcomed it because an academic scholar’s recognition was, Wagner felt, needed him for his universal recognition and obtaining financial support to perform his music. Being controversial, The Birth of Tragedy become well read among the intellectuals of the time. However, among the classic philologists, it was totally rejected as not “scientific.” This may very well understandable, because 1) Nietzsche’s two principles of Dionysus and Apollo cannot be empirically demonstrated, 2) the transvaluation of the then values about the nature of Greek culture was not so easily acceptable to rationalistic German and Latin philologists, 3) the ultimate goal of this opus was to adore and justify Wagner’s arts. The Dionysian principle represents irrationality, creativity, love and will to power, mystic ecstasy.., while the Apollonian is rationality, order and harmony, unproductivity in the sense of being no longer creative and rather reflective and appreciative. Prior to the so-called height of the Greek culture particular in Athens, the Greek civilization was governed by this Dionysian principle and extremely creative, dynamic and productive, then the Athenian culture of 5th century B.C. came with the Apollonian principle which showed rationality, symmetry, order and harmony, appreciation of arts in stead of creation, reflection in philosophy rather than creative insight. Nietzsche argued that the current Latin culture has been nothing but Apollonian, while the surge of the Teutonic culture symbolized by Richard Wagner’s work of art is governed by the Dionysian principle. And his music was considered the sign of the rebirth of the creative spirit of the Germanic culture.
It is unfortunate that we must somewhat undermine Elzabeth’s credibity as the most faithful follower and the most ardent admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche. His relationship with Elizabeth is a typical Freuden one of love and hate. On the one hand, Since his childhood, Friedrich was emotionally dependent on Elizabeth a great deal, on the other hand, Elizabeth at the time of Friedrich’s approach to Wagner went far more radical in the Germanic nationalism which Friedrich did not approve of together with her radical anti-semitism. During this period, Elzabeth met a pseudo intellectual and an emotional agitator and a blind racist, called Bernhard Förster, who was extremely nationalistic and anti-semitic. Beng a school teacher, he was so radical particuarly in regard to his thesis and agitation for antisemism that he lost his teaching job at the hgiht school. In Bernhard Förster, Elizabeth found a complete actualization of her own thought (which she thought as indentical with Friedrich’s and yet was in reality far from Friedrilch’s, and Frietrich often accused her of being insane as to her pure nationalism and anti-semitism.) They soon got married. At that time, Friedrich was deeply in love with Lou Andrus Salomé, the greatest woman of lettters and had a great reputation and friends among the European intellectuals then. However, she was jewish and Elizabeth totally denied Lou Andros Salomé, of course partly due to her Jewishness and partlly due to her incurable jealousy. Friedrich was furious and resented Elizabeth so deeply as long as he was conscious (he became insane later due to his siphillis supposedly infected during his “Strum und Drang period at the University of Bonn.) When Förster planned a pure Germanic colony in Urguay to maintain the purity of the Germanic culture and race (partiuclarly against the Jews) and they, too, moved to the colony with 17 families who agreed with Förster’s ideal of maintaining the Germanic racial purity. The colony was totally against their expectation in the middle of nowhere but rain forests and it became more and more clear that such an attempt was financially feasible. Bernhard committed suicide under the pressure of financial difficulity.
Around that time, Nietzsche was less and less fit to teaching and no scholarly work in the Classic philology field was published. 1879, Nietzsche retired from the post at the age of 34 and continued to live around Basel for ten years. He lived in Sils-Maria in Engadine in summer, while he moved to Italian Riviera. This was the most productive critical period in which Nietzsche wrote his opera. In 1888, Nietzsche attempted to take a trip to Nice, but could not go beyond Turin as he completely mentally broke down. 1890, when Elizabeth became a widow, she had no reason to stay other there, but came back “to take care of the invalid Friedrich.” After their mother’s death, Elizabeth thought that Weimar, the mecca of intellectuals of the time in Germany, must be the most appropriate place for Friedrich to die. So she dragged the poor invalid Fritzchen all the way to Weimar. Throughout her life time, Elizabeth collected all Friedrich’s manuscripts for establishing his Archive to become the guardian and guru of Friedrich’s philosophy and was editing them and preparing for publication as his opera omnia. No longer aware of what was going on, on August 25, 1900, this solitary spirit of self-criticism quietly died. By Friedrich Nietzsche’s death, the twentieth century started. It was Elizabeth who made contact wilth Mussolini to finance the Archive (which was constantly suffering from fainancial squeeze due to her limitless expenditures). And it was Elizabeth who estalished the contact with Hitler and it was she who made it possible to serve them with the philosophical justification of national socialism. In this sense, Friedrich’s association with those two dictators of the 20th century was fabricated and contrived by his sister and her philosophical thought and not by Friedrich’s at all.
On the other hand, Friedrich Nietzsche saw the devastating effects of the Christianity and its morality on the European culture of the 19th and the 20th centuries and he was the one who through the mouth of Zarathustra prophesized the arrival of the new age and the new culture of truthfulness (die Wahrhaftigkeit) in philosophy and ethics and of the affirmation of the human life and its creativity.
Works
(To be done)

Philosophy
Introduction
The Place of Nietzsche’s Philosophy in the History of the Western Philosophy
Friedrich Nietzsche was in a sense a philosophical giant standing at the turning of the century with enormous cultural and philosophical impacts on developments of the 20th century European philosophies even including the so-called French postmodernists. There have been many attempts done which reduce Nietzsche and his philosophy to merely a sinple, naive philosophy of life inspired by the ideology of the Dawinian theory of evolution. However, they have been unsuccessful at all in those attempts.
Let us examine what makes Nietzsche and his philosophy so important to the 20th century Western philosophy.
Nietzsche on the one hand constitutes such a peak and end of the hsitory of the Western philosophy which had been based on Reason as the principle, because Nietzsche was the first philosopher who declares a war against his own long respected tradition of the Western culture and tried for the first time to critically appraise the Western culture and its fundemental principle (=Reason) in terms of morality and the nature of human existence.
On the other hand, Nietzsche was a visionary in the sense that he not only construed the history of cultures by two antagonistic principles, the principle of Dionysus and that of Apollon, but also attempted thereby he saw the nihilism of the traditional values and of the human existence under the Judeo-Christian moral precepts. Nietzsche defied the European reason, the principles of the Western culture from the 6th century B.C. Greek until the 19th century Europe, and projected a new, non-traditional principle of creativity and the forthcoming of the new civilization by overcoming such a nihilism through conceiving a new notion of will as the principle of reality.
Since Nietzsche foresaw in Richard Wagner (the Germanic race to be discovered as the race of tomorrow) and his works of arts (their creative activities) the dawn of and the premonition for the arrival of the new creative era of the Western culture and because he criticized Christianity and its morality as “Jewish cunnings,” Nietzsche often was also considered as the forerunner of Nazis. In fact, his wife, Cosimo and his son in law were ardent supporters of Nazis and Hitler and Göppels found in Nietzsche a powerful propaganda ideology for Nazis, while Elizabeth Nietzsche-Förster found the strongest financial patron for her expenditure and the archive.
His radical criticism on Christianity (e.g., “God is dead!” and “Christianity is the religion of the slaves and weaklings,” etc.) created various sharp confrontations with and creative activities among theologians. Nietzsche’s philosophy is a radical assertion of Individualism in the sense that to do philosophy is to do so as a concrete, particular invidual. It demands the responsibility of the individual as a thinker and a human-being as such. Philosophically, Nietzsche’s influences on Scheler, Heidegger, Jaspers and other existential philosophers were well known. Furthermore, the French anti-philosophers call themselves “Neo-Nietzscheans,” and philosophical movements after structuralism in France believe that they follow Nietzsche’s intended direction of “doing philosophy” and declare that the post-modern non-rational approach is the sole approach that the European philosophers and intellectuals are able to fight against the tyranny of the European Reason. In this sense, Nietzsche became highly popular and fashionable among the pseudo philosophical intellectuals in the second half of the 20th century.
Nietzsche’s philosophical starting point was Arthur Schopenhauer and his nihilism. On the other hand, we should not overlook the significant impact of Hegel’s philosophy and its idea on the development of Nietzsche’s thought. Hegel was the first Western philosopher who attempted to comprehend reality as a process, specifically as a historical process. Furthermore, (To be continued)
The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie)
(continue)