The Philosophy of Freedom
The Reality of Freedom
GA 4
XV. The Individual and the Genus
The view that man is a wholly self-contained, free individuality stands in apparent conflict with the facts, that he appears as a member of a natural whole (race, tribe, nation, family, male or female sex), and that he acts within a whole (state, church, etc.). He exhibits the general characteristics of the community to which he belongs, and gives to his actions a content which is defined by the place which he occupies within a social whole.
This being so, is any individuality left at all? Can we regard man as a whole in himself, in view of the fact that he grows out of a whole and fits as a member into a whole?
The character and function of a member of a whole are defined by the whole. A tribe is a whole, and all members of the tribe exhibit the peculiar characteristics which are conditioned by the nature of the tribe. The character and activity of the individual member are determined by the character of the tribe. Hence the physiognomy and the conduct of the individual have something generic about them. When we ask why this or that is so or so, we are referred from the individual to the genus. The genus explains why something in the individual appears in the forms observed by us.
But man emancipates himself from these generic characteristics. He develops qualities and activities the reason for which we can seek only in himself. The generic factors serve him only as a means to develop his own individual nature. He uses the peculiarities with which nature has endowed him as material, and gives them a form which expresses his own individuality. We seek in vain for the reason of such an expression of a man's individuality in the laws of the genus. We are dealing here with an individual who can be explained only through himself. If a man has reached the point of emancipation from what is generic in him, and we still attempt to explain all his qualities by reference to the character of the genus, then we lack the organ for apprehending what is individual.
It is impossible to understand a human being completely if one makes the concept of the genus the basis of one's judgment. The tendency to judge according to the genus is most persistent where differences of sex are involved. Man sees in woman, woman in man, almost always too much of the generic characteristics of the other's sex, and too little of what is individual in the other. In practical life this does less harm to men than to women. The social position of women is, in most instances, so low because it is not determined by the individual characteristics of each woman herself, but by the general ideas which are current concerning the natural function and needs of woman. A man's activity in life is determined by his individual capacity and inclination, whereas a woman's activity is supposed to be determined solely by the fact that she is just a woman. Woman is to be the slave of the generic, of the general idea of womanhood. So long as men debate whether woman, from her “natural disposition,” is fitted for this, that, or the other profession, the so-called Woman's Question will never advance beyond the most elementary stage. What it lies in woman's nature to strive for had better be left to woman herself to decide. If it is true that women are fitted only for that profession which is theirs at present, then they will hardly have it in them to attain any other. But they must be allowed to decide for themselves what is conformable to their nature. To all who fear an upheaval of our social structure, should women be treated as individuals and not as specimens of their sex, we need only reply that a social structure in which the status of one-half of humanity is unworthy of a human being stands itself in great need of improvement.
Anyone who judges human beings according to their generic character stops short at the very point beyond which they begin to be individuals whose activity rests on free self-determination. Whatever lies short of this point may naturally become matter for scientific study. Thus the characteristics of race, tribe, nation, and sex are the subject-matter of special sciences. Only men who are simply specimens of the genus could possibly fit the generic picture which the methods of these sciences produce. But all these sciences are unable to get as far as the unique character of the single individual. Where the sphere of freedom (thinking and acting) begins, there the possibility of determining the individual according to the laws of his genus ceases. The conceptual content which man, by an act of thought, has to connect with percepts, in order to possess himself fully of reality (cp. pp. 57 ff.), cannot be fixed by anyone once and for all, and handed down to humanity ready-made. The individual must gain his concepts through his own intuition. It is impossible to deduce from any concept of the genus how the individual ought to think; that depends singly and solely on the individual himself. So, again, it is just as impossible to determine, on the basis of the universal characteristics of human nature, what concrete ends the individual will set before himself. Anyone who wants to understand the single individual must penetrate to the innermost core of his being, and not stop short at those qualities which he shares with others. In this sense every single human being is a problem. And every science which deals only with abstract thoughts and generic concepts is but a preparation for the kind of knowledge which we gain when a human individual communicates to us his way of viewing the world, and for that other kind of knowledge which each of us gains from the content of his own will. Wherever we feel that here we are dealing with a man who has emancipated his thinking from all that is generic, and his will from the grooves typical of his kind, there we must cease to call in any concepts of our own making if we would understand his nature. Knowledge consists in the combination by thought of a concept and a percept. With all other objects the observer has to gain his concepts through his intuition. But if the problem is to understand a free individuality, we need only to take over into our own minds those concepts by which the individual determines himself in their pure form (without admixture). Those who always mix their own ideas into their judgment on another person can never attain to the understanding of an individuality. Just as the free individual emancipates himself from the characteristics of the genus, so our knowledge of the individual must emancipate itself from the methods by which we understand what is generic.
A man counts as a free spirit in a human community only to the degree in which he has emancipated himself, in the way we have indicated, from all that is generic. No man is all genus, none is all individuality; but every man gradually emancipates a greater or lesser sphere of his being, both from the generic characteristics of animal life and from the laws of human authorities which rule him despotically.
In respect of that part of his nature for which man is not able to win this freedom for himself, he forms a member within the organism of nature and of spirit. He lives, in this respect, by the imitation of others, or in obedience to their command. But ethical value belongs only to that part of his conduct which springs from his intuitions. This is his contribution to the already existing total of moral ideas. In such ethical intuitions all moral activity of men has its root. To put this differently: the moral life of humanity is the sum-total of the products of the moral imagination of free human individuals. This is Monism's confession of faith. Monism looks upon the history of the moral life, not as the education of the human race by a transcendent God, but as the gradual living out in practice of all concepts and ideas which spring from the moral imagination.
XIV. Individualität und Gattung
[ 1 ] Der Ansicht, daß der Mensch zu einer vollständigen in sich geschlossenen, freien Individualität veranlagt ist, stehen scheinbar die Tatsachen entgegen, daß er als Glied innerhalb eines natürlichen Ganzen auftritt (Rasse, Stamm, Volk, Familie, männliches und weibliches Geschlecht), und daß er innerhalb eines Ganzen wirkt (Staat, Kirche und so weiter). Er trägt die allgemeinen Charaktereigentümlichkeiten der Gemeinschaft, der er angehört, und gibt seinem Handeln einen Inhalt, der durch den Platz, den er innerhalb einer Mehrheit einnimmt, bestimmt ist.
[ 2 ] Ist dabei überhaupt noch Individualität möglich? Kann man den Menschen selbst als ein Ganzes für sich ansehen, wenn er aus einem Ganzen herauswächst, und in ein Ganzes sich eingliedert?
[ 3 ] Das Glied eines Ganzen wird seinen Eigenschaften und Funktionen nach durch das Ganze bestimmt. Ein Volksstamm ist ein Ganzes, und alle zu ihm gehörigen Menschen tragen die Eigentümlichkeiten an sich, die im Wesen des Stammes bedingt sind. Wie der einzelne beschaffen ist und wie er sich betätigt, ist durch denStammescharakter bedingt. Dadurch erhält die Physiognomie und das Tun des einzelnen etwas Gattungsmäßiges. Wenn wir nach dem Grunde fragen, warum dies und jenes an dem Menschen so oder so ist, so werden wir aus dem Einzelwesen hinaus auf die Gattung verwiesen. Diese erklärt es uns, warum etwas an ihm in der von uns beobachteten Form auftritt.
[ 4 ] Von diesem Gattungsmäßigen macht sich aber der Mensch frei. Denn das menschlich Gattungsmäßige ist, vom Menschen richtig erlebt, nichts seine Freiheit Einschränkendes, und soll es auch nicht durch künstliche Veranstaltungen sein. Der Mensch entwickelt Eigenschaften und Funktionen an sich, deren Bestimmungsgrund wir nur in ihm selbst suchen können. Das Gattungsmäßige dient ihm dabei nur als Mittel, um seine besondere Wesenheit in ihm auszudrücken. Er gebraucht die ihm von der Natur mitgegebenen Eigentümlichkeiten als Grundlage und gibt ihm die seinem eigenen Wesen gemäße Form. Wir suchen nun vergebens den Grund für eine Äußerung dieses Wesens in den Gesetzen der Gattung. Wir haben es mit einem Individuum zu tun, das nur durch sich selbst erklärt werden kann. Ist ein Mensch bis zu dieser Loslösung von dem Gattungsmäßigen durchgedrungen, und wir wollen alles, was an ihm ist, auch dann noch aus dem Charakter der Gattung erklären, so haben wir für das Individuelle kein Organ.
[ 5 ] Es ist unmöglich, einen Menschen ganz zu verstehen, wenn man seiner Beurteilung einen Gattungsbegriff zugrunde legt. Am hartnäckigsten im Beurteilen nach der Gattung ist man da, wo es sich um das Geschlecht des Menschen handelt. Der Mann sieht im Weibe, das Weib in dem Manne fast immer zuviel von dem allgemeinen Charakter des anderen Geschlechtes und zu wenig von dem Individuellen. Im praktischen Leben schadet das den Männern weniger als den Frauen. Die soziale Stellung der Frau ist zumeist deshalb eine so unwürdige, weil sie in vielen Punkten, wo sie es sein sollte, nicht bedingt ist durch die individuellen Eigentümlichkeiten der einzelnen Frau, sondern durch die allgemeinen Vorstellungen, die man sich von der natürlichen Aufgabe und den Bedürfnissen des Weibes macht. Die Betätigung des Mannes im Leben richtet sich nach dessen individuellen Fähigkeiten und Neigungen, die des Weibes soll ausschließlich durch den Umstand bedingt sein, daß es eben Weib ist. Das Weib soll der Sklave des Gattungsmäßigen, des Allgemein-Weiblichen sein. Solange von Männern darüber debattiert wird, ob die Frau «ihrer Naturanlage nach» zu diesem oder jenem Beruf tauge, solange kann die sogenannte Frauenfrage aus ihrem elementarsten Stadium nicht herauskommen. Was die Frau ihrer Natur nach wollen kann, das überlasse man der Frau zu beurteilen. Wenn es wahr ist, daß die Frauen nur zu dem Berufe taugen, der ihnen jetzt zukommt, dann werden sie aus sich selbst heraus kaum einen anderen erreichen, Sie müssen es aber selbst entscheiden können, was ihrer Natur gemäß ist. Wer eine Erschütterung unserer sozialen Zustände davon befürchtet, daß die Frauen nicht als Gattungsmenschen, sondern als Individuen genommen werden, dem muß entgegnet werden, daß soziale Zustände, innerhalb welcher die Hälfte der Menschheit ein menschenunwürdiges Dasein hat, eben der Verbesserung gar sehr bedürftig sind. 1Man hat mir auf die obigen Ausführungen gleich beim Erscheinen (1894) dieses Buches eingewendet, innerhalb des Gattungsmäßigen könne sich die Frau schon jetzt 50 individuell ausleben, wie sie nur will, weit freier als der Mann, der schon durch die Schule und dann durch Krieg und Beruf entindividualisiert werde. Ich weiß, daß man diesen Einwand vielleicht heute noch stärker erheben wird. Ich muß die Sätze doch hier stehen lassen und möchte hoffen, daß es auch Leser gibt, die verstehen, wie stark ein solcher Einwand gegen den Freiheitsbegriff, der in dieser Schrift entwickelt wird, verstößt, und die meine obigen Sätze an anderem beurteilen als an der Entindividualisierung des Mannes durch die Schule und den Beruf.
[ 6 ] Wer die Menschen nach Gattungscharakteren beurteilt, der kommt eben gerade bis zu der Grenze, über welcher sie anfangen, Wesen zu sein, deren Betätigung auf freier Selbstbestimmung beruht. Was unterhalb dieser Grenze liegt, das kann natürlich Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Betrachtung sein. Die Rassen, Stammes, Volks, und Geschlechtseigentümlichkeiten sind der Inhalt besonderer Wissenschaften. Nur Menschen, die allein als Exemplare der Gattung leben wollten, könnten sich mit einem allgemeinen Bilde decken, das durch solche wissenschaftliche Betrachtung zustande kommt. Aber alle diese Wissenschaften können nicht vordringen bis zu dem besonderen Inhalt des einzelnen Individuums. Da, wo das Gebiet der Freiheit (des Denkens und Handelns) beginnt, hört das Bestimmen des Individuums nach Gesetzen der Gattung auf. Den begrifflichen Inhalt, den der Mensch durch das Denken mit der Wahrnehmung in Verbindung bringen muß, um der vollen Wirklichkeit sich zu bemächtigen (vgl. S.88ff.), kann niemand ein für allemal festsetzen und der Menschheit fertig hinterlassen. Das Individuum muß seine Begriffe durch eigene Intuition gewinnen. Wie der einzelne zu denken hat, läßt sich nicht aus irgendeinem Gattungsbegriffe ableiten. Dafür ist einzig und allein das Individuum maßgebend. Ebensowenig ist aus allgemeinen Menschencharakteren zu bestimmen, welche konkrete Ziele das Individuum seinem Wollen vorsetzen will. Wer das einzelne Individuum verstehen will, muß bis in dessen besondere Wesenheit dringen, und nicht bei typischen Eigentümlichkeiten stehen bleiben. In diesem Sinne ist jeder einzelne Mensch ein Problem. Und alle Wissenschaft, die sich mit abstrakten Gedanken und Gattungsbegriffen befaßt, ist nur eine Vorbereitung zu jener Erkenntnis, die uns zuteil wird, wenn uns eine menschliche Individualität ihre Art, die Welt anzuschauen, mitteilt, und zu der anderen, die wir aus dem Inhalt ihres Wollens gewinnen. Wo wir die Empfindung haben: hier haben wir es mit demjenigen an einem Menschen zu tun, das frei ist von typischer Denkungsart und gattungsmäßigem Wollen, da müssen wir aufhören, irgendwelche Begriffe aus unserem Geiste zu Hilfe zu nehmen, wenn wir sein Wesen verstehen wollen. Das Erkennen besteht in der Verbindung des Begriffes mit der Wahrnehmung durch das Denken. Bei allen anderen Objekten muß der Beobachter die Begriffe durch seine Intuition gewinnen; beim Verstehen einer freien Individualität handelt es sich nur darum, deren Begriffe, nach denen sie sich ja selbst bestimmt, rein (ohne Vermischung mit eigenem Begriffsinhalt) herüberzunehmen in unseren Geist. Menschen, die in jede Beurteilung eines anderen sofort ihre eigenen Begriffe einmischen, können nie zu dem Verständnisse einer Individualität gelangen. So wie die freie Individualität sich frei macht von den Eigentümlichkeiten der Gattung, so muß das Erkennen sich frei machen von der Art, wie das Gattungsmäßige verstanden wird
[ 7 ] Nur in dem Grade, in dem der Mensch sich in der gekennzeichneten Weise frei gemacht hat vom Gattungsmäßigen, kommt er als freier Geist innerhalb eines menschlichen Gemeinwesens in Betracht. Kein Mensch ist vollständig Gattung, keiner ganz Individualität. Aber eine größere oder geringere Sphäre seines Wesens löst jeder Mensch allmählich ab, ebenso von dem Gattungsmäßigen des animalischen Lebens, wie von den ihn beherrschenden Geboten menschlicher Autoritäten.
[ 8 ] Für den Teil, für den sich der Mensch aber eine solche Freiheit nicht erobern kann, bildet er ein Glied innerhalb des Natur, und Geistesorganismus. Er lebt in dieser Hinsicht, wie er es andern abguckt, oder wie sie es ihm befehlen. Einen im wahren Sinne ethischen Wert hat nur der Teil seines Handelns, der aus seinen Intuitionen entspringt. Und was er an moralischen Instinkten durch Vererbung sozialer Instinkte an sich hat, wird ein Ethisches dadurch, daß er es in seine Intuitionen aufnimmt. Aus individuellen ethischen Intuitionen und deren Aufnahme in Menschengemeinschaften entspringt alle sittliche Betätigung der Menschheit. Man kann auch sagen: das sittliche Leben der Menschheit ist die Gesamtsumme der moralischen Phantasieerzeugnisse der freien menschlichen Individuen. Dies ist das Ergebnis des Monismus.
XIV Individuality and genus
[ 1 ] The view that man is predisposed to a complete, self-contained, free individuality is apparently contradicted by the facts that he appears as a member within a natural whole (race, tribe, people, family, male and female sex), and that he acts within a whole (state, church and so on). He bears the general characteristics of the community to which he belongs and gives his actions a content determined by the place he occupies within a majority.
[ 2 ] Is individuality still possible at all? Can the human being itself be regarded as a whole in itself when it grows out of a whole and integrates itself into a whole?
[ 3 ] The member of a whole is determined by the whole in terms of its characteristics and functions. A tribe is a whole, and all the people belonging to it have the characteristics that are determined by the nature of the tribe. How the individual is constituted and how he acts is determined by the character of the tribe. This gives the physiognomy and actions of the individual something generic. If we ask why this or that is so or so in a person, we are referred from the individual to the genus. This explains to us why something about him appears in the form we observe.
[ 4 ] Humans, however, free themselves from this generic quality. For the human generic, correctly experienced by man, is nothing that restricts his freedom, nor should it be through artificial events. Man develops qualities and functions in himself, the reason for which we can only seek in himself. The generic serves him only as a means of expressing his particular nature. It uses the peculiarities given to it by nature as a basis and gives it the form appropriate to its own nature. We now search in vain for the reason for the expression of this being in the laws of the species. We are dealing with an individual that can only be explained by itself. If a person has penetrated to this detachment from the generic, and we still want to explain everything about him from the character of the genus, then we have no organ for the individual.
[ 5 ] It is impossible to fully understand a person if one bases one's judgment on a generic concept. The most stubborn way of judging according to genus is when it comes to a person's sex. The man almost always sees too much of the general character of the other sex in the woman, the woman in the man, and too little of the individual. In practical life this is less harmful to men than to women. The social position of women is usually so unworthy because in many points, where it should be, it is not conditioned by the individual peculiarities of the individual woman, but by the general ideas which are formed of the natural task and needs of women. The man's activity in life is determined by his individual abilities and inclinations, that of the woman should be determined solely by the fact that she is a woman. The woman should be the slave of the generic, the general feminine. As long as men debate whether a woman's "natural disposition" makes her suitable for this or that profession, the so-called woman question cannot leave its most elementary stage. What a woman can want according to her nature is left to the woman to judge. If it is true that women are only fit for the occupation that now belongs to them, then they will hardly be able to achieve another one of their own accord, but they must be able to decide for themselves what is in accordance with their nature. To those who fear that our social conditions will be shaken by the fact that women are not taken as generic human beings but as individuals, it must be replied that social conditions in which half of humanity has a degrading existence are in great need of improvement. 1In response to the above remarks, it was objected to me as soon as this book was published (1894) that within the generic, women can already live out their individual lives as they wish, far more freely than men, who are already de-individualized by school and then by war and work. I know that this objection will perhaps be raised even more strongly today. But I must leave the sentences here and would like to hope that there are also readers who understand how strongly such an objection violates the concept of freedom that is developed in this writing, and who judge my above sentences by something other than the de-individualization of man through school and profession.
[ 6 ] Those who judge men by generic characters come just to the limit above which they begin to be beings whose activity is based on free self-determination. What lies below this limit can of course be the subject of scientific consideration. Racial, tribal, ethnic and sexual characteristics are the content of special sciences. Only people who wanted to live solely as specimens of the species could coincide with a general picture that comes about through such scientific observation. But all these sciences cannot penetrate to the particular content of the individual. Where the realm of freedom (of thought and action) begins, the determination of the individual according to the laws of the species ends. The conceptual content that man must bring into connection with perception through thinking in order to take possession of the full reality (cf. p.88ff.) cannot be fixed once and for all and left to mankind ready-made. The individual must gain his concepts through his own intuition. How the individual is to think cannot be derived from any generic concept. Only the individual is decisive for this. Nor is it possible to determine from general human characters what concrete goals the individual wants to set before his will. Whoever wants to understand the individual must penetrate into his or her particular nature and not stop at typical peculiarities. In this sense, every single person is a problem. And all science that deals with abstract thoughts and generic concepts is only a preparation for the knowledge that comes to us when a human individuality tells us its way of looking at the world, and for the other knowledge that we gain from the content of its will. Where we have the feeling that we are dealing with something in a human being that is free from typical ways of thinking and generic volition, we must stop using any concepts from our spirit if we want to understand his essence. Recognition consists in the connection of the concept with perception through thinking. With all other objects the observer must gain the concepts through his intuition; in understanding a free individuality it is only a matter of taking its concepts, according to which it determines itself, purely (without mixing them with its own conceptual content) into our mind. People who immediately interfere with their own concepts in every judgment of another can never arrive at an understanding of an individuality. Just as free individuality frees itself from the peculiarities of the genus, so cognition must free itself from the way in which the generic is understood
[ 7 ] Only to the degree to which man has freed himself from the generic in the manner indicated can he be considered a free spirit within a human community. No human being is completely a species, no one is completely an individual. But every human being gradually detaches a greater or lesser sphere of his being from the generic nature of animal life, as well as from the commandments of human authorities that govern him.
[ 8 ] For the part for which man cannot conquer such freedom, however, he forms a member within the natural and spiritual organism. In this respect, he lives as he imitates others or as they command him to. Only that part of his actions which springs from his intuitions has an ethical value in the true sense. And whatever moral instincts he has in himself through the inheritance of social instincts becomes ethical through the fact that he incorporates them into his intuitions. All moral activity of mankind springs from individual ethical intuitions and their absorption into human communities. One can also say that the moral life of mankind is the sum total of the moral imaginative products of free human individuals. This is the result of monism.