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Chapter 1
German Idealism

1.1. POST-KANTIAN IDEALISM

German idealism  (also known as  post-Kantian idealism,  post-Kantian

philosophy, or simply  post-Kantianism) was a  philosophical
movement  that emerged in  Germany  in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries. It began as a reaction to  Immanuel Kant's  Critique of Pure
Reason. 

The two main streams of philosophy flowing into Kant were Empiricism
(Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) and Rationalism (Descartes, Spinoza, and
Leibniz). The former stressed the senses and the later emphasised the
mind. Kant was able to synthesise these two movements by claiming
that the content of our knowledge comes from the senses but the final
form of knowledge comes from the categories of the mind.
Unfortunately, this led to an Agnosticism which concluded that we
cannot know reality (the noumena) but only appearances (the
phenomena). Thus the stream of Empiricism turned to Positivism
(scientism) which gave up metaphysics for the physical science. And the
stream of Rationalism became Idealism which confessed that our ideas
did not apprehend reality in itself.

The word "idealism" has multiple meanings. The philosophical meaning

of idealism is that the properties we discover in objects depend on the
way that those objects appear to us, as perceiving subjects. These
properties only belong to the perceived appearance of the objects, and
not something they possess "in themselves". The notion of a "thing in
itself" should be understood here as an option of a set of functions for an
operating mind, such that we consider something that appears without
respect to the specific manner in which it appears. The term "idea-ism" is

closer to this intended meaning than the common notion of idealism.

The question of what properties a thing might have  "independently of
the mind"  is thus unknowable and a moot point, within the idealist
tradition.

Kant's work purported to bridge the two dominant philosophical schools

in the 18th century:
1)  rationalism, which held that knowledge could be attained by reason
alone a priori (prior to experience);
2)  empiricism, which held that knowledge could be arrived at only
through the senses  a posteriori  (after experience), as expressed by
philosopher David Hume, whom Kant sought to rebut.

Kant's solution was to propose that while we can know, via sensory
experience, particular facts about the world (which he
termed  phenomena), we cannot know the  form  they must take prior to
any experience (which he called  noumena). That is, we cannot
know  what  objects we will encounter, but we can know  how  we will
encounter them. Kant called his mode of philosophising "critical
philosophy", in that it was supposedly less concerned with setting out
positive doctrine than with critiquing the limits to the theories we can set
out.   The conclusion he presented, as above, he called "transcendental
idealism".
Kant said that there are things-in-themselves, noumena, that is, things
that exist other than being merely sensations and ideas in our minds.
Kant held in the Critique of Pure Reason that the world of appearances
(phenomena) is empirically real and transcendentally ideal. The mind
plays a central role in influencing the way that the world is experienced:
we perceive phenomena through  time,  space  and the  categories of the
understanding. It is this notion that was taken to heart by Kant's
philosophical successors.

Kant's transcendental idealism consisted of taking a point of view

outside and above oneself (transcendentally) and understanding that the

mind directly knows only phenomena or ideas. Whatever exists other

than mental phenomena, or ideas that appear to the mind, is a thing-in-
itself and cannot be directly and immediately known.
Kant had criticized pure reason. He wanted to restrict reasoning,
judging, and speaking only to objects of possible experience. The main
German Idealists, who had been theology students,  reacted against
Kant’s stringent limits. "It was Kant’s criticism of all attempts to prove
the existence of God which led to the romantic reaction of Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel."

1.2. JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE (A.D.

1762 - 1814)

1.2.1. Background and Works.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in a tiny

village in Saxony, Germany. He was the oldest
son of a humble weaver. Originally, Fichte was
schooled by a visiting nobleman who was so
impressed with the child’s ability at nine years of age to report the
substance of a sermon with great accuracy that he decided to provide the
boy’s education. After the death of this tutor, young Johann struggled on
his own with little help from his parents. After he finished his secondary
schooling at the Pforta school, he furthered his education at the
University at Jena and then to Leipzig for theological training. The
highly recognized school at Pforta is where later Friedrick Nietzsche
(see below) would be educated. After a while, he himself found jobs as a
tutor until he married the brilliant and devoted Johanna Rahn. By this
time, Fichte’s philosophical interests had been influenced by Spinoza’s
pantheistic determinism until he came across Kant’s Critiques via one of
his pupils. This was a key factor in his transformation into Idealism.

He served as a tutor in Leipzig and Zurich until he was dismissed

because of his overbearing temperament. While at Zurich, he read Kant,
Montesquieu, and Rosseau, and gladly accepted the French Revolution.
This led to Fichte becoming a convert to Kant. It seemed as though to
Fichte that Kant’s philosophy was able to shed light on those troubling
ideas in Fichte’s mind. Eventually, Fichte met Kant in Königsberg but
received a cold welcome. When he wrote a monograph called an Essay
Toward a Critique of All Revelation (pub. 1792) that applied critical
philosophy to certain topics associated with religion, Kant became
impressed with Fichte’s work and took steps to have it published.

Unfortunately, the printer of the publication had not included Fichte’s

name at the top and it was assumed because of its anonymity that this
particular work was Kant’s alone. Kant quickly gave credit where credit
was due and Fichte suddenly became popular. In 1794 at thirty years of
age, he was called to a professorship at the university at Jena and found
residence in small neighboring city of Weimer where there also resided
many great scholars, including Goethe and Schiller. Fichte became
known as a great Kantian interpreter.

Later he published a treatise on Idealism called Basis of the Entire

Theory of Science (1794) which manifested into other works titled Basis
of Natural Right (1796) and System of Ethics (1798). His reputation for
hastiness and for various other reasons, including a charge of atheism
because of his position of editor in a publication called Philosophical
Journal, ended in his being dismissed from Jena. The work that led to
the accusation of atheism was On the Ground of our Belief in a Divine
World-Order. This world order proposed by Fichte identified God with a
moral-order to be created and sustained by the human will. He wrote
other works including lectures called On the Characteristics of the
Present Age which attacked the Romanists, The Nature of the Scholar,
The Way to the Blessed Life or Doctrine of Religion, and his famous
work titled Addresses to the

German Nation. In 1810, Fichte was appointed head of philosophy at the

University of Berlin. His most noted work that presents his
philosophical perspective is covered in Vocation of Man (1799). When
the typhoid epidemic broke out, both Johann and his wife contracted the
disease. Johann nursed his wife back to health but he later died in
January of 1814.

Fichte was a deeply conscientious, religious, and moral man having a

high regard and duty for the promotion of Kant. He believed every man
did indeed have a divine vocation for which purpose he was brought into
the world to fulfill. He would, however, present his convictions as
though they were the voice of God Himself.

1.2.2. His Philosophy

Fichte was the first to promote Idealism after Kant. This ideal dominated
German philosophy during the early nineteenth century. However, Fichte
called his doctrine ‘critical idealism’ in order to differentiate it from
Kant’s. Fichte took the ‘thing-in-itself’ as the dividing line between
dogmatism— accepting the thing-in-itself—and idealism which denies
it. The conflict between these two according to Fichte is the striking
difference between free determination of one’s will and some standard
of truth illustrating a sense of necessity. Kant pushed for an individual a
priori in each science and in morality. Fichte strived to show their
interconnectedness and interdependence. He initially sided with Kant
that religion is derived from ethics but takes this further and posits that
God is manifested within the universal moral order. To accomplish this
task, he introduces what he calls the “science of sciences” or “science of
knowledge.” Here he illustrates an a priori associated with every science
positing a universal knowledge associated with this ‘new science.’

Different persons look in different directions depending on what kind of

persons they are. The mature self-reliant philosopher recognizes his
freedom and will choose Idealism whereas the immature, those who
have little consciousness of their independence, will pick dogmatism.
However, dogmatism ends in fatalism and materialism whereas idealism
safeguards independence of the self and is grounded in nature. This even
illustrates that idealism has an advantage over dogmatism. Further, the
thing-in-itself is never shown to exist in experience but is only used as
an invention to show its necessity.

1.2.3. The Ego and the Pure (Super) Ego

Fichte’s new science (Wissenschaftslehre) is briefly outlined as follows.

First, he asks the inquirer to examine himself carefully noticing that he
should observe himself freely and having both imagination and will.
However, there are also external objects that are independent of volition
and yet appear as necessary thus being imposed upon me. When
something is experienced, two factors result. There is the object itself—
the thing-in-itself—and the one observing the object forming the
concept—the intelligence-in-itself. The question is, which is ultimate,
the object itself or the judgment of the object in the mind? The object is
really only seen when the observer is also aware of himself. Therefore,
there is really never any awareness of the object-in-itself except only an
assumption. (This even extends to the awareness of one’s self—
existence is a combination of impressions.) Fichte replaces the
intelligence-in-itself with the term ‘I’ or ‘ego.’ What is behind the ego is
a pure ego, a transcendent ego which is the first principle of philosophy.
When a man reflects on his own self- consciousness, he sees that it also
includes a suspicion about the existence of the pure ego as an active
force, not being an object itself.

Fichte’s Idealism places the consciousness independent of experience.

This I-in-itself is free (and spiritual) and takes the external world as its
product. His view is dialectical. Creating a thesis, he uses the law of
identity to prove his point that the object A must exist in the ‘self’ or else
it could never be perceived in the first place. Through his anti-thesis, he
negates the object—not-A—which in turn negates the ‘self’ making it in
opposition to the ‘self.’ The synthesis is the union of the two in
opposition: the ‘self’ called the ego and the ‘not-self’ called the ‘Super’
Ego which is associated with the external world. The external world
operated by the Super Ego is the source of the forms of the mind and of
the sensed objects themselves. This Larger Ego is the common Mind or
Will. This is the essence of Fichte’s Idealism.

Fichte is not just concerned with the phenomenology of consciousness;

rather he is concerned with developing an idealistic metaphysics. His
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positing that there is a pure ego insinuates that there is one and only one
transcendent ego that actively and infinitely manifests itself in the finite
consciousnesses. He even goes as far as to identify it as a spiritual Life
who creates all phenomena. He is pressing for both a phenomenology of
consciousness and a metaphysics of Idealism.

During Fichte’s Jena tenure, he seemed to limit God to an impersonal

being. This led to some conservative Christians making the claim of
atheism against him. However, during the time he was in Berlin he wrote
essays that more specifically described the Super Ego as a being
sufficient to fulfill certain purposes. This external world, according to
Fichte, was one for the fulfillment of moral purposes. The specific aim
for individuals was for them to find their specific duty and vocation.
This leads into his ethical idealism.

1.2.4. Fichte’s Ethical Idealism

Fichte’s moral law is the law of nature where God orders the
universe. The material world is apparent to man’s senses. The
human will is free and his soul is immortal. A person should
exercise his freedom without impinging upon the freedom of others.
Each person comes into the world with a unique vocation for which
he is to perform. However, his duty is never completely fulfilled in
this life; hence, the immortality of the soul makes allowance for its
completion. Each person is to feel the responsibility to conduct his
life in such a way as to work towards his unique calling. Our moral
nature shows that he has ‘natural’ impulses for certain activities only
because he wants to do those certain behaviors. On the other hand,
humans perform other activities to where he leaves them undone
with no regards to an end. This provides evidence for a person’s
inner moral and ethical nature. Humans are a product of ego,

intelligence, and consciousness and as such they strive after freedom

and independence through s natural impulses and desires. The
natural impulses and desires are from a transcendent point of view,
one impulse. Humans are not merely a mechanism. This is
especially true for the scholar whose leadership and dominance
incite others to work at their unique vocation. The scholar was one
who was the clergyman of truth, a guide, a teacher in the human
race dedicated to elevating morality, and one who was make known
the knowledge of the Divine. This is addresses in The Nature of the
Scholar where Fichte indicts mankind, stating that most men are
slothful and never fulfill their responsibilities.

This individual focused vocation also finds its principle in the

nations of the world. Fichte’s morality focuses in on the individual;
his right focuses in on the relationships of one human being to
another. Both have a common focal point—a person striving for the
infinite. The notion of this infinite striving illustrates the pure
freedom found in a human being man which is a person’s duty
making up the essence of the moral law. Each nation too has its own
unique vocation in history where it is to

make its contribution in the advancement of mankind. Fichte

especially thinks this is true for the Germans above all and
addresses this in his Addresses to the German Nation. The
vocational duty of each person is as Fichte dictum says: “Always
fulfill thy vocation . . . act according to thy conscience” (The
Science of Ethics, II, 12, 13). This pronouncement guides a person
to synthesize his needs and wants so that the moral order can be
actualized. The state’s purpose is to provide restraints for the
common will joined in a civil pact. To act this out, each individual is
to surrender his or her freedom to the state. The state is there only to
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harness non-ethical interests. Eventually, the need for the state will
disappear but for the time being, the state is indispensable and
carries with it great moral responsibility.

Above all, mankind is to strive for his ultimate destiny—the union

with God in perfect love. This is his philosophy of religion and is
presented in Fichte’s The Way to the Blessed Life.

1.2.5. Fichte on Faith and Religion

In his essay titled On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Providence

(1798), Fichte illustrates his notion of the idea of God and the world. He
accomplishes this not through ordinary consciousness or transcendental
idealism of the Pure Ego, but rather through the notion of morality.
Here, the ego is a part of the super-sensible moral order—God, the
divine moral orderer. The Fichtean God is the moral orderer and
actualizes Himself through nature and morality—not just a reconciler of
them. Immortality can even be understood now as a reality while the
infinite Self strives (as was illustrated in his notion regarding vocation).
Freedom is the realization of the internal subjective nature that allows
obedience to moral imperatives. Since man is a member of the sensible
world and the eternal world, he is obligated to the moral law within the
material realm. His loyalty is based on rational faith in the true source of
life. It is through the activity of religion that the will dies to self and
attaches to the law of duty. However, this duty is accomplished through
an attitude of love based upon religious meditations where one takes on
the characteristics of God’s intelligence, will and power. Therefore, man
is left to choose between a love for God or a love for this phenomenal
world. This is the basis of true faith. To speak of God as substance, or as
personal, or benevolent, is nonsense according to Fichte. However,
belief in the divine moral order posits that moral actions result in the
good and evil actions never result in the good. Here again, this is where
the charge of atheism was levied against him because his readers thought
he reduced God to some moral ideal.

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The focal point of religion is in the obedience to the moral law. Faith is
faith in the ontological moral order. It can be seen that this dynamic
panentheistic idealism is based on faith and not based on knowledge. In
order to fulfill the moral vocations there is the requirement of faith in a
living and active moral order, the infinite Reason and Will. However,
Fichte in The Way to the Blessed Life concerns himself with edifying the
uplifting his hearers and reassuring them that his philosophy is not at
odds with the Christian religion.

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1.3. FRIEDRICH WILHELM

JOSEPH VON SCHELLING
(A.D. 1775 - 1854)

1.3.1. The Life and Works of

Schelling
1212

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling

is the connecting link between Johann
Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Hegel.
Friedrich Schelling was born in 1775 in Wurttemberg. His father was a
learned Pastor and teacher to which Friedrich received most of his
secondary education at home. At fifteen, he was sent to the Tubingen
theological foundation where Hegel and Hölderlin were his classmates.
Schelling’s early educational training was theological rather than
scientific. At age seventeen, he wrote a dissertation on the third chapter
of Genesis and in 1793 he published as essay titled On Myths. While at
Tübingen, he mastered Kant, Plato, and Leibniz and expounded on
Fichte’s teachings. He was a brilliant young man at the age of eighteen
and began to publish philosophical papers. However, subsequent
publications revealed variations in his perspective. He did advance
beyond Fichte. He became known as the “second founder of the theory
of science.” He later died in 1854.

He taught at the University of Jena in 1798. Schelling’s earliest writings

were done while he was at Jena where he first studied under Fichte.
Starting around 1801, Hegel arrived at the University of Jena and for the
next two years he and Schelling engaged in a collaborative effort to
defend the “System of Identity.” These two would also co-write the
entire contents of the new Critical Journal of Philosophy. Needless to
say, it was during this time that division occurred between Schelling and
Fichte. In addition, it would not be too much longer until the ties with
Hegel would be compromised. After marrying, Schelling left Jena and
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went to Wurzburg in Munich. Initially, he argued that man’s knowledge

can only lie in the Ego. With this, he attempted to deduce nature from
the essence of the Ego. Eventually, he viewed various organic life forms
as successive stages in which the production of matter takes place. It is
convincing to Schelling that scientific research presupposes that Nature
is intelligible whereby the experiment itself involves questions that
Nature is forced to answer.

He believed that Nature’s self-reflection as it knows itself and is

illustrated through man where the lower is explained by the higher. In
this is where Schelling shows the influence of Aristotle’s Absolute and
the real order of things (Works, I, p. 708).) Schelling was attempting to
present an argument that there is an a priori succession of ascending
stages of evolution. He argued this without any sufficient scientific
background to prove that latter species were derived from lower ones.
Later Darwin would attempt to give a scientific basis for this in natural
selection. The different stages of evolution are represented in the
development of the observing mind. During the time of this transfer, he
was introduced to Jacob Boehme (C. ~ 1575—1624, German Christian
mystic and theologian). Boehme had some very interesting insights on
evil, freedom, and the dualism of forces in God and nature. Later in his
career around 1802, under the influence of Spinoza, he posits that mind
and matter at its lowest point are identical. Schelling, as well as Spinoza
had attempted, was unable

to show how the Absolute could be related to a world of diversity. His

every changing philosophy led him to take on Hegel’s philosophy. It
would be during the years of 1800 to 1804 that Schelling focused in on
the philosophy of art or aesthetic. Around 1805 to 1808, Schelling
focused his interests on religious concerns and had a particular interest
in the Gnostic tradition, most especially, the theosophical writings of
Jacob Boehme. By the time his last work in 1809 had appeared, his
philosophy started to be criticized and his theory on God was
challenged. These critics said that Schelling’s theory on God led to
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pantheism and anthropmorphism. He continued to lecture and provide an

underground center that resisted against the reigning idealism of that
time. After the death of his wife Carolina in 1809, Schelling’s activities
as a philosopher virtually came to an end being replaced by more
conservative social and religious elements.

In 1827, he returned to Munich as a professor of philosophy. In 1841, he

relocated to Berlin and took the appointed chair of Professor of
Philosophy. He was given the job to stamp out the “dragon seed of
Hegelianism.” As well, he developed his new philosophy of revelation
and methodology. He called this his ‘new philosophy’ that was counter
the ‘old philosophy’ of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, including his own
philosophy that he had earlier promoted while at Jena.

Schelling wrote the following works: Philosophical Letters on

Dogmatism and Criticism (1795), Ideas toward a Philosophy of Nature
(1797), On the World Soul (1798), co-edited the Critical Journal of
Philosophy with Hegel, and a System of Transcendental Idealism (1800),
Exposition of My System of Philosophy (1801), Bruno or On the Divine
and Natural Principles of Things (1802), Philosophy of Religion (1804),
and Philosophical Inquires into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809),
and The Ages of the World (composed 1811), and the two final works
done posthumously, Philosophy of Revelation and Introduction to the
Philosophy of Mythology. [Collins]

1.3.2.The Philosophy of Schelling

It was in 1796 (when Schelling was twenty-one) that he drafted his

system of philosophy proceeding from the idea of the ‘ego’ or ‘I’ as an
absolutely free being through the proposition of the non-ego to the arena
of speculative physics thus ultimately ending in the area of the human
spirit. The prerequisite to this would be form a foundation in regards to
the moral world, the notion of God, and of freedom associated with all

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spiritual beings. Add to this the importance of beauty and the aesthetic
value of reason coupling to a new mythology tying together philosophy
and religion.

Schelling branched out on new ideas, commenting on the works of

others in such as way as to make it difficult for historians to determine
his general position. So, the following rough summary of his stages can
be misleading. During his first years, Schelling was influenced by Fichte
which aided him in making his general theory of science. Following
after this there was the second phase where he focused in on the reality
of nature or the non-ego, which ended up contradicting Fichte’s doctrine.
The third stage had shown the evidence of Spinoza’s influence which
eventually led to the emergence of dualism from the identity of the
absolute. It was during his Spinozian era that Schelling attempted to take
Fichte’s ‘lifeless’ conception of nature and replace it with one modeled
after Spinoza’s natura naturans without overstepping the boundaries of
transcendental idealism. This aided him in creating his own ‘philosophy
of nature.’ Eventually Schelling would revise his position on the
transcendental idealism which he called “aesthetic idealism.” He
eventually harmonized the philosophy of nature and the transcendental
idealism and construct what he called the “System of Identity” or
“Absolute Idealism.” Stage four included the influence of Jacob Boehme
writings. Schelling relied heavily on the sources of theosophical
doctrines—those teachings promoting the mystical insights into the
nature

of God and the soul. The years at the close of his career was occupied
with the interpretations of myths and the historical forms of religious
belief. These apparent shifts of his philosophy illustrated his hold on the
dialectic and the problems that came along with them. This fallout is
associated with the major question of Schelling’s speculations: “Why is
there anything at all? Why not nothing?” (Philosophy of Revelation, I,
1.)
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Overall, throughout his career he did more philosophizing than

developing a completed philosophical system. Schelling brings his
views full circle via his philosophy of art, joining the transcendental
with his philosophy of nature illustrating the infinite through the finite.
Foreshadowing Schopenhauer, he makes use of the Romantic notion of
the genius. Man is has the power through the imagination to synthesize
extremes. Schelling’s writings can be characterized as a ‘philosophy of
speculative salvation’ in that he attempted to restore harmony in
philosophy. His aim was to have philosophy be able to solve the
problems of the existence of the world which was different than Fichte’s
philosophy: “explaining the origin of representations accompanied by a
feeling of necessity.” In short, his view could be called I the title of one
of his books, a “System of Transcendental Idealism.” Here again,
Idealism, because of Kant, is locked out of knowing the real world, the
thing- in-itself. One can only posit transcendentally what he cannot
know cognitively.