Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
GA 4
X. Monism and the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
[ 1 ] The 1Here the term “spiritual activity” is introduced by the Editor following a suggestion of Rudolf Steiner himself, instead of the word “freedom” which he considers does not adequately represent the German “Freiheit.” naive man who acknowledges nothing as real except what he can see with his eyes and grasp with his hands, demands for his moral life, too, grounds of action which are perceptible to his senses. He wants someone who will impart to him these grounds of action in a manner that his senses can apprehend. He is ready to allow these grounds of action to be dictated to him as commands by any man whom he considers wiser or more powerful than himself, or whom he acknowledges, for another reason, to be a power superior to himself. This accounts for the moral principles enumerated above, viz., the principles which rest on the authority of family, state, society, church and God. The most narrow-minded man still believes in the authority of some one person. He who is a little more advanced allows his moral conduct to be dictated by a majority (state, society). In every case he relies on some power which is perceptible. When, at last, the conviction dawns on someone that his authorities are fundamentally human beings just as weak as himself, then he seeks guidance from a higher power, from a Divine Being, whom, in turn, he endows with qualities perceptible to the senses. He conceives this Being as communicating to him the conceptual content of his moral life in a perceptible way—believing, for example, that God appears in the burning bush, or that He moves about among men in manifest human shape, and that their ears can hear His voice telling them what they are to do and what not to do.
[ 2 ] The highest stage of development which Naive Realism attains in the sphere of morality is that at which the moral command (the moral Idea) is conceived as having no connection with any external being, but, hypothetically, as being an absolute power in one's own inner life. What man first beheld as the external voice of God, that he now beholds as an independent power in his own interior and he now talks of this inner voice in a way which identifies it with conscience.
[ 3 ] This conception, however, takes us already beyond the level of the naive consciousness into the sphere where moral laws have become independent norms. They are there no longer transmitted by a carrier, but are turned into self-existent metaphysical entities. They are analogous to the visible-invisible forces of Metaphysical Realism, which seek reality, not through the part which human nature, through its thinking, plays in this reality, but which hypothetically adds it to the facts of experience. Hence these extra-human moral norms always appear as accompanying Metaphysical Realism. For this theory is bound to look for the origin of morality likewise in the sphere of extra-human reality. There are different views possible. If the supposed extra-human being is conceived to be unthinking and acts according to purely mechanical laws, as modern Materialism conceives that it does, then it must also produce out of itself, by purely mechanical necessity, the human individual and all that belongs to him. On that view the consciousness of freedom can be nothing more than an illusion. For whilst I consider myself the author of my action, it is the matter of which I am composed and the movements which are going on in it that work within me. I imagine myself free, but actually all my actions are nothing but the effects of the material processes which are the basis of my physical and mental organization. It is only because we do not know the motives which compel us that we have the feeling of freedom. “We must emphasize that the feeling of freedom is caused by the absence of external compelling motives.” “Our actions are as much subject to necessity as our thoughts” (Ziehen, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, pp. 207, ft.).2For the manner in which I have here spoken of “Materialism,” and for the justification of so speaking of it, see the Addition on page 145.
[ 4 ] Another possibility is that someone will find in a spiritual being the Absolute hidden behind all phenomena. If so, he will look for the spring of action in such a kind of spiritual power. He will regard the moral principles which his reason contains as the manifestation of this absolute being, which pursues in men its own special purposes. Moral laws appear to the Dualist, who holds this view, as dictated by the Absolute, and man's only task is to discover, by means of his reason, the decisions of the Absolute and to carry them out. For the Dualist, the moral order of the world is the perceptible reflection of the higher order that lies behind it. Our earthly morality is the manifestation of the extra-human world-order. It is not man who matters in this moral order but the Absolute, that is, the extra-human Being. Man ought to do what this being wills. Eduard von Hartmann, who identifies this being as such with a Godhead whose existence is a life of suffering, believes that this Divine Being has created the world in order to gain, by means of the world, release from his infinite suffering. Hence this philosopher regards the moral evolution of humanity as a process, the function of which is the redemption of God. “Only through the building up of a moral world-order on the part of rational, self-conscious individuals is it possible for the world-process to be led to its goal.” “Real existence is the incarnation of the Godhead. The world-process is the passion of the incarnated God, and at the same time the way of redemption for him who was crucified in the flesh; morality, however, is co-operation in the shortening of this path of suffering and redemption” (Hartmann, Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, p. 871). On this view man does not act because he wills, but he ought to act because it is God's will to be redeemed. Whereas the Materialistic Dualist turns man into an automaton, the action of which is nothing but the effect of causality according to purely mechanical laws, the Spiritualistic Dualist (i.e., he who treats the Absolute, the thing-in-itself, as a spiritual something in which man with his conscious experience has no share), makes man the slave of the will of the Absolute. Freedom (spiritual activity) is excluded in Materialism, as well as in one-sided Spiritualism, and in general Metaphysical Realism which infers, as true reality, an extra-human something which it does not experience.
[ 5 ] Naive and Metaphysical Realism, if they are to be consistent, have to deny freedom for one and the same reason, viz., because, for them, man does nothing but carry out, or execute, principles necessarily imposed upon him. Naive Realism destroys freedom by subjecting man to authority, whether it be that of a perceptible being, or that of a being conceived on the analogy of perceptible beings, or lastly, that of the abstract inner voice which he interprets as “conscience.” The Metaphysician, content merely to infer an extra-human reality, is unable to acknowledge freedom because, for him, man is determined, mechanically or morally, by a “Being-in-itself.”
[ 6 ] Monism will have to admit the partial justification of Naive Realism, with which it agrees in admitting the justification of the world of percepts. He who is incapable of producing moral Ideas through intuition must receive them from others. In so far as a man receives his moral principles from without he is actually unfree. But Monism ascribes to the Idea the same importance as to the percept. The Idea can manifest itself in the human individual. In so far as man follows the impulses coming from this side he feels himself to be free. But Monism denies all justification to Metaphysics which merely draws inferences, and consequently also to the impulses of action which are derived from so-called “Beings-in-themselves.” According to the Monistic view, man's action is unfree when he obeys some perceptible external compulsion; it is free when he obeys none but himself. There is no room in Monism for any kind of unconscious compulsion hidden behind percept and concept. If anybody maintains of the action of a fellow-man that it has not been freely done, he is bound to point out within the perceptible world the thing or the person or the institution which has caused the agent to act. And if he supports his contention by an appeal to causes of action lying outside the perceptible or spiritually real world, then Monism must decline to take account of such an assertion.
[ 7 ] According to the Monistic conception, then, man's action is partly free, partly unfree. He is conscious of himself as unfree in the world of percepts, and he realizes in himself the free spirit.
[ 8 ] The moral laws which his inferences compel the Metaphysician to regard as issuing from a higher power are, according to the upholder of Monism, thoughts of men. To him the moral order is neither a replica of a purely mechanical order of nature nor of an extra-human world-order, but through and through the free creation of men. It is not man's business to carry out the will of some being outside himself in the world, but his own. He carries out his own decisions and intentions, not those of another being. Monism does not find behind human agents the purposes of a foreign world ruler, determining them to act according to his will. On the contrary, men, in so far as they realize their intuitive Ideas, pursue merely their own human ends. Moreover, each individual pursues his own particular ends. For the world of Ideas realizes itself, not in a community, but only in individual men. What appears as the common goal of a community is nothing but the result of the separate volitions of its individual members, and most commonly of a few outstanding men whom the rest follow as their authorities. Each one of us has it in him to be a free spirit, just as every rose germ is destined to become a rose.
[ 9 ] Monism, then, is in the sphere of genuinely moral action the true philosophy of spiritual activity (freedom). Being also a philosophy of reality, it rejects the metaphysical (unreal) restriction of the free spirit as emphatically as it acknowledges the physical and historical (naively real) restrictions of the naive man. Inasmuch as it does not look upon man as a finished product, exhibiting in every moment of his life his full nature, it considers idle the dispute whether man, as such, is free or not. It looks upon man as a developing being, and asks whether, in the course of this development, the stage of the free spirit can be attained.
[ 10 ] Monism knows that nature does not send forth man ready-made as a free spirit, but that she leads him up to a certain stage, from which he continues to develop still as an unfree being, until he reaches the point where he finds his own self.
[ 11 ] Monism perceives clearly that a being acting under physical or moral compulsion cannot be truly moral. It regards the stages of automatic action (in accordance with natural urges and instincts), and of obedient action (in accordance with moral norms), as necessary preparatory stages for morality, but it understands that it is possible for the free spirit to transcend both these transitory stages. Monism emancipates the truly moral world-view in general from all the internal fetters of the maxims of naive morality, and from all the externally imposed maxims of speculative Metaphysicians. The former Monism can as little eliminate from the world as it can eliminate percepts. The latter it rejects, because it looks for all principles of elucidation of the phenomena of the world within that world and not outside it. Just as Monism refuses even to entertain the thought of cognitive principles other than those applicable to men (p. 96), so it rejects also the thought of moral maxims other than those applicable to men. Human morality, like human knowledge, is conditioned by human nature, and just as beings of a different order will mean by knowledge something very different from what we mean by it, so other beings will have a very different morality. For Monists, morality is a specifically human quality, and spiritual activity (freedom) the human way of being moral.
Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918
[ 12 ] 1. In forming a judgment about the argument of the two preceding chapters, a difficulty may arise from what may appear to be a contradiction. On the one side, we have spoken of the experience of thinking as one the significance of which is universal and equally valid for every human consciousness. On the other side, we have pointed out that the Ideas which we realize in moral action and which are of the same nature as those that thinking elaborates, manifest themselves in every human consciousness in an uniquely individual way. If we cannot get beyond regarding this antithesis as a “contradiction,” and if we do not recognize that in the living recognition of this actually existing antithesis a piece of man's essential nature reveals itself, we shall not be able to apprehend in the true light either the Idea of knowledge or the Idea of freedom. Those who think of concepts as nothing more than abstractions from the world of percepts, and who do not acknowledge the part which intuition plays, cannot but regard as a “pure contradiction” the thought for which we have here claimed reality. But if we understand how Ideas are experienced intuitively in their self-sustaining essence, we see clearly that, in knowledge, man lives and enters into the world of Ideas as into something which is identical for all men. On the other hand, when man derives from that Idea-world the intuitions for his voluntary actions, he individualizes a member of the world of Ideas by that same activity which he practises as a universally human one in the spiritual and ideal process of cognition. The apparent logical contradiction between the universal character of cognitive Ideas and the individual character of moral Ideas becomes, when seen in its reality, a living concept. It is a criterion of the essential nature of man that what we intuitively apprehend oscillates within man, like a living pendulum, between knowledge which is universally valid, and individualized experience of this universal content. Those who fail to perceive the one oscillation in its real character, will regard thinking as a merely subjective human activity. For those who are unable to grasp the other oscillation, man's activity in thinking will seem to lose all individual life. Knowledge is to the former, the moral life to the latter, an unintelligible fact. Both will fall back on all sorts of suppositions for the explanation of the one or of the other, because both either do not understand at all how thinking can be intuitively experienced, or else misunderstand it as an activity which merely abstracts.
[ 13 ] 2. On p. 139 I have spoken of Materialism. I am well aware that there are thinkers, like the above-mentioned Th. Ziehen, who do not call themselves Materialists at all, but yet who must be called so from the point of view put forward in this book. It does not matter whether a thinker says that for him the world is not restricted to merely material being, and that, therefore, he is not a Materialist. No, what matters is whether he develops concepts which are applicable only to material being. Anyone who says, “Our action, like our thought, is necessitated,” lays down a concept which is applicable only to material processes, but not applicable either to action or to existence. And if he were to think out what his concept implies, he would end by thinking materialistically. He saves himself from this fate only by the same inconsistency which so often results from not thinking one's thoughts out to the end. It is often said nowadays that the Materialism of the nineteenth century is scientifically dead. But in truth it is not so. It is only that nowadays people frequently fail to notice that they have no other Ideas than those which can approach only the material world. Thus recent Materialism is veiled, whereas in the second half of the nineteenth century it openly flaunted itself. Towards a conception which apprehends the world spiritually the camouflaged Materialism of the present is no less intolerant than the self-confessed Materialism of the last century. But it deceives many who think they have a right to reject a conception of the world which takes spirit into account, on the ground that the scientific world-view “has long ago abandoned Materialism.”
X. Freiheitphilosophie und Monismus
[ 1 ] Der naive Mensch, der nur als wirklich gelten läßt, was er mit Augen sehen und mit Händen greifen kann, fordert auch für sein sittliches Leben Beweggründe, die mit den Sinnen wahrnehmbar sind. Er fordert ein Wesen, das ihm diese Beweggründe auf eine seinen Sinnen verständliche Weise mitteilt. Er wird von einem Menschen, den er für weiser und mächtiger hält als sich selbst, oder den er aus einem andern Grunde als eine über ihm stehende Macht anerkennt, diese Beweggründe als Gebote sich diktieren lassen. Es ergeben sich auf diese Weise als sittliche Prinzipien die schon früher genannten der Familien, staatlichen, gesellschaftlichen, kirchlichen und göttlichen Autorität. Der befangenste Mensch glaubt noch einem einzelnen andern Menschen; der etwas fortgeschrittenere läßt sich sein sittliches Verhalten von einer Mehrheit (Staat, Gesellschaft) diktieren. Immer sind es wahrnehmbare Mächte, auf die er baut. Wem endlich die Überzeugung aufdämmert, daß dies doch im Grunde ebenso schwache Menschen sind wie er, der sucht bei einer höheren Macht Auskunft, bei einem göttlichen Wesen, das er sich aber mit sinnlich wahrnehmbaren Eigenschaften ausstattet. Er läßt sich von diesem Wesen den begrifflichen Inhalt seines sittlichen Lebens wieder auf wahrnehmbare Weise vermitteln, sei es, daß der Gott im brennenden Dornbusche erscheint, sei es, daß er in leibhaftig-menschlicher Gestalt unter den Menschen wandelt und ihren Ohren vernehmbar sagt, was sie tun und nicht tun sollen.
[ 2 ] Die höchste Entwickelungsstufe des naiven Realismus auf dem Gebiete der Sittlichkeit ist die, wo das Sittengebot (sittliche Idee) von jeder fremden Wesenheit abgetrennt und hypothetisch als absolute Kraft im eigenen Innern gedacht wird. Was der Mensch zuerst als äußere Stimme Gottes vernahm, das vernimmt er jetzt als selbständige Macht in seinem Innern und spricht von dieser innern Stimme so, daß er sie dem Gewissen gleichsetzt.
[ 3 ] Damit ist aber die Stufe des naiven Bewußtseins bereits verlassen, und wir sind eingetreten in die Region, wo die Sittengesetze als Normen verselbständigt werden. Sie haben dann keinen Träger mehr, sondern werden zu metaphysischen Wesenheiten, die durch sich selbst existieren. Sie sind analog den unsichtbar-sichtbaren Kräften des metaphysischen Realismus, der die Wirklichkeit nicht durch den Anteil sucht, den die menschliche Wesenheit im Denken an dieser Wirklichkeit hat, sondern der sie hypothetisch zu dem Erlebten hinzudenkt. Die außermenschlichen Sittennormen treten auch immer als Begleiterscheinung dieses metaphysischen Realismus auf. Dieser metaphysische Realismus muß auch den Ursprung der Sittlichkeit im Felde des außermenschlichen Wirklichen suchen. Es gibt da verschiedene Möglichkeiten. Ist das vorausgesetzte Wesen als ein an sich gedankenloses, nach rein mechanischen Gesetzen wirkendes gedacht, wie es das des Materialismus sein soll, dann wird es auch das menschliche Individuum durch rein mechanische Notwendigkeit aus sich hervorbringen samt allem, was an diesem ist. Das Bewußtsein der Freiheit kann dann nur eine Illusion sein. Denn während ich mich für den Schöpfer meiner Handlung halte, wirkt in mir die mich zusammensetzende Materie und ihre Bewegungsvorgänge. Ich glaube mich frei; alle meine Handlungen sind aber tatsächlich nur Ergebnisse der meinem leiblichen und geistigen Organismus zugrunde liegenden materiellen Vorgänge. Nur weil wir die uns zwingenden Motive nicht kennen, haben wir das Gefühl der Freiheit, meint diese Ansicht. «Wir müssen hier wieder hervorheben, daß dieses Gefühl der Freiheit auf der Abwesenheit äußerer zwingender Motive... beruht.» «Unser Handeln ist necessitiert wie unser Denken.» (Ziehen, Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie Seite 207 f.) 1Über die Art, wie hier von «Materialismus» gesprochen wird, und die Berechtigung, von ihm so zu sprechen, vgl. «Zusatz» zu diesem Kapitel am Schluß desselben.
[ 4 ] Eine andere Möglichkeit ist die, daß jemand in einem geistigen Wesen das hinter den Erscheinungen steckende außermenschlicheAbsolute sieht. Dann wird er auch den Antrieb zum Handeln in einer solchen geistigen Kraft suchen. Er wird die in seiner Vernunft auffindbaren Sittenprinzipien für einen Ausfluß dieses Wesens an sich ansehen, das mit dem Menschen seine besonderen Absichten hat. Die Sittengesetze erscheinen dem Dualisten dieser Richtung als von dem Absoluten diktiert, und der Mensch hat durch seine Vernunft einfach diese Ratschlüsse des absoluten Wesens zu erforschen und auszuführen. Die sittliche Weltordnung erscheint dem Dualisten als wahrnehmbarer Abglanz einer hinter derselben stehenden höheren Ordnung. Die irdische Sittlichkeit ist die Erscheinung der außermenschlichen Weltordnung. Nicht der Mensch ist es, auf den es in dieser sittlichen Ordnung ankommt, sondern auf das Wesen an sich, auf das außermenschliche Wesen. Der Mensch soll das, was dieses Wesen will. Eduard von Hartmann, der das Wesen an sich als Gottheit vorstellt, für die das eigene Dasein Leiden ist, glaubt, dieses göttliche Wesen habe die Welt erschaffen, damit es durch dieselbe von seinem unendlich großen Leiden erlöst werde. Dieser Philosoph sieht daher die sittliche Entwickelung der Menschheit als einen Prozeß an, der dazu da ist, die Gottheit zu erlösen. «Nur durch den Aufbau einer sittlichen Weltordnung von seiten vernünftiger selbstbewußter Individuen kann der Weltprozeß seinem Ziel entgegengeführt... werden.» «Das reale Dasein ist die Inkarnation der Gottheit, der Weltprozeß die Passionsgeschichte des fleischgewordenen Gottes, und zugleich der Weg zur Erlösung des im Fleische Gekreuzigten; die Sittlichkeit aber ist die Mitarbeit an der Abkürzung dieses Leidens, und Erlösungsweges.» (Hartmann, Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewußtseins 5. 871). Hier handelt der Mensch nicht, weil er will, sondern er soll handeln, weil Gott erlöst sein will. Wie der materialistische Dualist den Menschen zum Automaten macht, dessen Handeln nur das Ergebnis rein mechanischer Gesetzmäßigkeit ist, so macht ihn der spiritualistische Dualist (das ist derjenige, der das Absolute, das Wesen an sich, in einem Geistigen sieht, an dem der Mensch mit seinem bewußten Erleben keinen Anteil hat) zum Sklaven des Willens jenes Absoluten. Freiheit ist innerhalb des Materialismus sowie des einseitigen Spiritualismus, überhaupt innerhalb des auf Außermenschliches als wahre Wirklichkeit schließenden, diese nicht erlebenden metaphysischen Realismus, ausgeschlossen.
[ 5 ] Der naive wie dieser metaphysische Realismus müssen konsequenterweise aus einem und demselben Grunde die Freiheit leugnen, weil sie in dem Menschen nur den Vollstrecker oder Vollzieher von notwendig ihm aufgedrängten Prinzipien sehen. Der naive Realismus tötet die Freiheit durch Unterwerfung unter die Autorität eines wahrnehmbaren oder nach Analogie der Wahrnehmungen gedachten Wesens oder endlich unter die abstrakte innere Stimme, die er als «Gewissen» deutet; der bloß das Außermenschliche erschließende Metaphysiker kann die Freiheit nicht anerkennen, weil er den Menschen von einem «Wesen an sich» mechanisch oder moralisch bestimmt sein läßt.
[ 6 ] Der Monismus wird die teilweise Berechtigung des naiven Realismus anerkennen müssen, weil er die Berechtigung der Wahrnehmungswelt anerkennt. Wer unfähig ist, die sittlichen Ideen durch Intuition hervorzubringen, der muß sie von andern empfangen. Insoweit der Mensch seine sittlichen Prinzipien von außen empfängt, ist er tatsächlich unfrei. Aber der Monismus schreibt der Idee neben der Wahrnehmung eine gleiche Bedeutung zu. Die Idee kann aber im menschlichen Individuum zur Erscheinung kommen. Insofern der Mensch den Antrieben von dieser Seite folgt, empfindet er sich als frei. Der Monismus spricht aber der bloß schlußfolgernden Metaphysik alle Berechtigung ab, folglich auch den von sogenannten «Wesen an sich» herrührenden Antrieben des Handelns. Der Mensch kann nach monistischer Auffassung unfrei handeln, wenn er einem wahrnehmbaren äußeren Zwange folgt; er kann frei handeln, wenn er nur sich selbst gehorcht. Einen unbewußten, hinter Wahrnehmung und Begriff steckenden Zwang kann der Monismus nicht anerkennen. Wenn jemand von einer Handlung seines Mitmenschen behauptet: sie sei unfrei vollbracht, so muß er innerhalb der wahrnehmbaren Welt das Ding, oder den Menschen, oder die Einrichtung nachweisen, die jemand zu seiner Handlung veranlaßt haben; wenn der Behauptende sich auf Ursachen des Handelns außerhalb der sinnlich und geistig wirklichen Welt beruft, dann kann sich der Monismus auf eine solche Behauptung nicht einlassen.
[ 7 ] Nach monistischer Auffassung handelt der Mensch teils unfrei, teils frei. Er findet sich als unfrei in der Welt der Wahrnehmungen vor und verwirklicht in sich den freien Geist.
[ 8 ] Die sittlichen Gebote, die der bloß schlußfolgernde Metaphysiker als Ausflüsse einer höheren Macht ansehen muß, sind dem Bekenner des Monismus Gedanken der Menschen; die sittliche Weltordnung ist ihm weder der Abklatsch einer rein mechanischen Naturordnung, noch einer außermenschlichen Weltordnung, sondern durchaus freies Menschenwerk. Der Mensch hat nicht den Willen eines außer ihm liegenden Wesens in der Welt, sondern seinen eigenen durchzusetzen; er verwirklicht nicht die Ratschlüsse und Intentionen eines andern Wesens, sondern seine eigenen. Hinter den handelnden Menschen sieht der Monismus nicht die Zwecke einer ihm fremden Weltenlenkung, die die Menschen nach ihrem Willen bestimmt, sondern die Menschen verfolgen, insofern sie intuitive Ideen verwirklichen, nur ihre eigenen, menschlichen Zwecke. Und zwar verfolgt jedes Individuum seine besonderen Zwecke. Denn die Ideenwelt lebt sich nicht in einer Gemeinschaft von Menschen, sondern nur in menschlichen Individuen aus. Was als gemeinsames Ziel einer menschlichen Gesamtheit sich ergibt, das ist nur die Folge der einzelnen Willenstaten der Individuen, und zwar meist einiger weniger Auserlesener, denen die anderen, als ihren Autoritäten, folgen. Jeder von uns ist berufen zum freien Geiste, wie jeder Rosenkeim berufen ist, Rose zu werden.
[ 9 ] Der Monismus ist also im Gebiete des wahrhaft sittlichen Handelns Freiheitsphilosophie. Weil er Wirklichkeitsphilosophie ist, so weist er ebenso gut die metaphysischen, unwirklichen Einschränkungen des freien Geistes zurück, wie er die physischen und historischen (naiv-wirklichen) des naiven Menschen anerkennt. Weil er den Menschen nicht als abgeschlossenes Produkt, das in jedem Augenblicke seines Lebens sein volles Wesen entfaltet, betrachtet, so scheint ihm der Streit, ob der Mensch als solcher frei ist oder nicht, nichtig. Er sieht in dem Menschen ein sich entwickelndes Wesen und fragt, ob auf dieser Entwickelungsbahn auch die Stufe des freien Geistes erreicht werden kann.
[ 10 ] Der Monismus weiß, daß die Natur den Menschen nicht als freien Geist fix und fertig aus ihren Armen entläßt, sondern daß sie ihn bis zu einer gewissen Stufe führt, von der aus er noch immer als unfreies Wesen sich weiter entwickelt, bis er an den Punkt kommt, wo er sich selbst findet.
[ 11 ] Der Monismus ist sich klar darüber, daß ein Wesen, das unter einem physischen oder moralischen Zwange handelt, nicht wahrhaftig sittlich sein kann. Er betrachtet den Durchgang durch das automatische Handeln (nach natürlichen Trieben und Instinkten) und denjenigen durch das gehorsame Handeln (nach sittlichen Normen) als notwendige Vorstufen der Sittlichkeit, aber er sieht die Möglichkeit ein, beide Durchgangsstadien durch den freien Geist zu überwinden. Der Monismus befreit die wahrhaft sittliche Weltanschauung im allgemeinen von den innerweltlichen Fesseln der naiven Sittlichkeitsmaximen und von den außerweltlichen Sittlichkeitsmaximen der spekulierenden Metaphysiker. Jene kann er nicht aus der Welt schaffen, wie er die Wahrnehmung nicht aus der Welt schaffen kann, diese lehnt er ab, weil er alle Erklärungsprinzipien zur Aufhellung der Welterscheinungen innerhalb der Welt sucht und keine außerhalb derselben. Ebenso wie der Monismus es ablehnt, an andere Erkenntnisprinzipien als solche für Menschen auch nur zu denken (vergleiche S.124f.), so weist er auch den Gedanken an andere Sittlichkeitsmaximen als solche für Menschen entschieden zurück. Die menschliche Sittlichkeit ist wie die menschliche Erkenntnis bedingt durch die menschliche Natur. Und so wie andere Wesen unter Erkenntnis etwas ganz anderes verstehen werden als wir, so werden andere Wesen auch eine andere Sittlichkeit haben. Sittlichkeit ist dem Anhänger des Monismus eine spezifisch menschliche Eigenschaft, und Freiheit die menschliche Form, sittlich zu sein.
Zusatz zur Neuausgabe (1918)
[ 12 ] 1. Eine Schwierigkeit in der Beurteilung des in beiden vorangehenden Abschnitten Dargestellten kann dadurch entstehen, daß man sich einem Widerspruch gegenübergestellt glaubt. Auf der einen Seite wird von dem Erleben des Denkens gesprochen, das von allgemeiner, für jedes menschliche Bewußtsein gleich geltender Bedeutung empfunden wird; auf der andern Seite wird hier darauf hingewiesen, daß die Ideen, welche im sittlichen Leben verwirklicht werden und die mit den im Denken erarbeiteten Ideen von gleicher Art sind, auf individuelle Art sich in jedem menschlichen Bewußtsein ausleben. Wer sich gedrängt fühlt, bei dieser Gegenüberstellung als bei einem «Widerspruch» stehen zu bleiben, und wer nicht erkennt, daß eben in der lebendigen Anschauung dieses tatsächlich vorhandenen Gegensatzes ein Stück vom Wesen des Menschen sich enthüllt, dem wird weder die Idee der Erkenntnis, noch die der Freiheit im rechten Lichte erscheinen können. Für diejenige Ansicht, welche ihre Begriffe bloß als von der Sinneswelt abgezogen (abstrahiert) denkt und welche die Intuition nicht zu ihrem Rechte kommen läßt, bleibt der hier für eine Wirklichkeit in Anspruch genommene Gedanke als ein «bloßer Widerspruch» bestehen. Für eine Einsicht, die durchschaut, wie Ideen intuitiv erlebt werden als ein auf sich selbst beruhendes Wesenhaftes, wird klar, daß der Mensch im Umkreis der Ideenwelt beim Erkennen sich in ein für alle Menschen Einheitliches hineinlebt, daß er aber, wenn er aus dieser Ideenwelt die Intuitionen für seine Willensakte entlehnt, ein Glied dieser Ideenwelt durch dieselbe Tätigkeit individualisiert, die er im geistig-ideellen Vorgang beim Erkennen als eine allgemein-menschliche entfaltet. Was als logischer Widerspruch erscheint, die allgemeine Artung der Erkenntnis-Ideen und die individuelle der Sitten-Ideen: das wird, indem es in seiner Wirklichkeit angeschaut wird, gerade zum lebendigen Begriff. Darin liegt ein Kennzeichen der menschlichen Wesenheit, daß das intuitiv zu Erfassende im Menschen wie im lebendigen Pendelschlag sich hin, und herbewegt zwischen der allgemein geltenden Erkenntnis und dem individuellen Erleben dieses Allgemeinen. Wer den einen Pendelausschlag in seiner Wirklichkeit nicht schauen kann, für den bleibt das Denken nur eine subjektive menschliche Betätigung; wer den andern nicht erfassen kann, für den scheint mit der Betätigung des Menschen im Denken alles individuelle Leben verloren. Für einen Denker der erstem Art ist das Erkennen, für den andern das sittliche Leben eine undurchschaubare Tatsache. Beide werden für die Erklärung des einen oder des andern allerlei Vorstellungen beibringen, die alle unzutreffend sind, weil von beiden eigentlich die Erlebbarkeit des Denkens entweder gar nicht erfaßt, oder als bloß abstrahierende Betätigung verkannt wird.
[ 13 ] 2. Auf S. 175f. wird von Materialismus gesprochen. Es ist mir wohl bewußt, daß es Denker gibt — wie der eben angeführte Th. Ziehen — , die sich selbst durchaus nicht als Materialisten bezeichnen, die aber doch von dem in diesem Buche geltend gemachten Gesichtspunkte mit diesem Begriffe bezeichnet werden müssen. Es kommt nicht darauf an, ob jemand sagt, für ihn sei die Welt nicht im bloß materiellen Sein beschlossen; er sei deshalb kein Materialist. Sondern es kommt darauf an, ob er Begriffe entwickelt, die nur auf ein materielles Sein anwendbar sind. Wer ausspricht: «Unser Handeln ist necessitiert wie unser Denken», der hat einen Begriff hingestellt, der bloß auf materielle Vorgänge, aber weder auf das Handeln, noch auf das Sein anwendbar ist; und er müßte, wenn er seinen Begriff zu Ende dächte, eben materialistisch denken. Daß er es nicht tut, ergibt sich nur aus derjenigen Inkonsequenz, die so oft die Folge des nicht zu Ende geführten Denkens ist. — Man hört jetzt oft, der Materialismus des 19. Jahrhunderts sei wissenschaftlich abgetan. In Wahrheit ist er es aber durchaus nicht. Man bemerkt in der Gegenwart oft nur nicht, daß man keine anderen Ideen als solche hat, mit denen man nur an Materielles heran kann. Dadurch verhüllt sich jetzt der Materialismus, während er in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts sich offen zur Schau gestellt hat. Gegen eine geistig die Welt erfassende Anschauung ist der verhüllte Materialismus der Gegenwart nicht weniger intolerant als der eingestandene des vorigen Jahrhunderts. Er täuscht nur viele, die da glauben, eine auf Geistiges gehende Weltauffassung ablehnen zu dürfen, weil ja die naturwissenschaftliche den «Materialismus längst verlassen hat».
X. Philosophy of freedom and monism
[ 1 ] The naïve person, who only accepts as real what he can see with his eyes and grasp with his hands, also demands motives for his moral life that are perceptible to his senses. He demands a being who communicates these motives to him in a way that his senses can understand. He will have these motives dictated to him as commandments by a person whom he considers to be wiser and more powerful than himself, or whom he recognizes for some other reason as a power above him. In this way, the moral principles that emerge are those of family, state, social, ecclesiastical and divine authority mentioned earlier. The most biased person still believes a single other person; the somewhat more advanced person has his moral behavior dictated to him by a majority (state, society). It is always perceptible powers on which he relies. If the conviction finally dawns on him that these are basically just as weak people as he is, he looks to a higher power for guidance, to a divine being, which he endows with sensually perceptible qualities. He allows this being to convey the conceptual content of his moral life to him again in a perceptible way, be it that God appears in the burning bush, be it that he walks among men in a bodily-human form and tells their ears audibly what they should and should not do.
[ 2 ] The highest stage of development of naive realism in the field of morality is that in which the moral commandment (moral idea) is separated from every foreign entity and hypothetically conceived as an absolute force within oneself. What man first heard as the external voice of God, he now hears as an independent power within himself and speaks of this inner voice in such a way that he equates it with conscience.
[ 3 ] This, however, means that we have already left the stage of naive consciousness and have entered the region where moral laws become independent as norms. They then no longer have a carrier, but become metaphysical entities that exist through themselves. They are analogous to the invisible-visible forces of metaphysical realism, which does not seek reality through the share that the human being has in this reality in thought, but which hypothetically adds them to what is experienced. The extra-human moral norms always appear as a concomitant of this metaphysical realism. This metaphysical realism must also seek the origin of morality in the field of the extra-human real. There are various possibilities. If the presupposed being is conceived as a being without thought in itself, acting according to purely mechanical laws, as it is supposed to be in materialism, then it will also bring forth the human individual from itself by purely mechanical necessity, together with everything about it. The consciousness of freedom can then only be an illusion. For while I believe myself to be the creator of my actions, the matter that composes me and its processes of movement are at work in me. I believe myself to be free, but all my actions are in fact only the results of the material processes underlying my physical and mental organism. Only because we do not know the motives that compel us do we have the feeling of freedom, according to this view. "We must again emphasize here that this feeling of freedom is based on the absence of external compelling motives... ..." "Our action is necessitated like our thought." (Ziehen, Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie page 207 f.) 1On the way in which "materialism" is spoken of here, and the justification for speaking of it in this way, cf. the "Supplement" to this chapter at the end of it.
[ 4 ] Another possibility is that someone sees in a spiritual being the extra-human Absolute behind the phenomena. Then he will also seek the drive to act in such a spiritual force. He will regard the moral principles to be found in his reason as an emanation of this being in itself, which has its special intentions with man. The moral laws appear to the dualist of this school of thought as dictated by the Absolute, and man simply has to investigate and carry out these counsels of the Absolute Being through his reason. The moral world order appears to the dualist as a perceptible reflection of a higher order behind it. Earthly morality is the manifestation of the extra-human world order. It is not man who is important in this moral order, but the being itself, the extra-human being. Man should do what this being wants. Eduard von Hartmann, who conceives of the being in itself as a deity for which its own existence is suffering, believes that this divine being created the world so that it could be redeemed from its infinite suffering through it. This philosopher therefore sees the moral development of humanity as a process that is there to redeem the deity. "Only through the construction of a moral world order on the part of rational, self-conscious individuals can the world process be led towards its goal..." "Real existence is the incarnation of the Godhead, the world process is the passion history of the incarnate God, and at the same time the path to the redemption of the crucified in the flesh; morality, however, is the cooperation in shortening this suffering and path of redemption." (Hartmann, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness 5. 871). Here man does not act because he wants to, but he should act because God wants to be redeemed. Just as the materialistic dualist makes man an automaton whose actions are only the result of purely mechanical lawfulness, so the spiritualistic dualist (that is the one who sees the absolute, the being in itself, in a spiritual being in which man with his conscious experience has no part) makes him a slave to the will of that absolute. Freedom is excluded within materialism as well as one-sided spiritualism, in general within metaphysical realism, which concludes that the extra-human is a true reality and does not experience it.
[ 5 ] Both naïve and metaphysical realism must consequently deny freedom for one and the same reason, because they see in man only the executor or implementer of principles necessarily imposed on him. Naïve realism kills freedom by submitting to the authority of a perceptible being or a being conceived according to the analogy of perceptions or, finally, to the abstract inner voice that it interprets as "conscience"; the metaphysician, who merely opens up the extra-human, cannot recognize freedom because he allows man to be mechanically or morally determined by a "being in itself".
[ 6 ] Monism will have to recognize the partial justification of naive realism because it recognizes the justification of the perceptual world. Those who are incapable of producing moral ideas through intuition must receive them from others. Insofar as man receives his moral principles from outside, he is indeed unfree. But monism ascribes equal importance to the idea alongside perception. However, the idea can manifest itself in the human individual. Insofar as man follows the impulses from this side, he feels himself to be free. Monism, however, denies all justification to merely inferential metaphysics, and consequently also to the drives of action originating from so-called "beings in themselves". According to the monistic view, man can act unfree if he follows a perceptible external compulsion; he can act freely if he only obeys himself. Monism cannot recognize an unconscious compulsion behind perception and concept. If someone claims of an action of his fellow human being that it was performed unfree, he must prove within the perceptible world the thing, or the person, or the institution that caused someone to act; if the person making the claim invokes causes of action outside the sensually and spiritually real world, then monism cannot accept such an assertion.
[ 7 ] According to the monistic view, man acts partly unfree and partly free. He finds himself as unfree in the world of perceptions and realizes the free spirit in himself.
[ 8 ] The moral commandments, which the merely deductive metaphysician must regard as emanations of a higher power, are thoughts of men to the confessor of monism; the moral world order is for him neither the imitation of a purely mechanical natural order, nor of an extra-human world order, but entirely the free work of man. Man does not have to enforce the will of an external being in the world, but his own; he does not realize the counsels and intentions of another being, but his own. Monism does not see behind the acting human beings the purposes of a world control that is alien to it, which determines people according to its will, but people pursue, insofar as they realize intuitive ideas, only their own, human purposes. And each individual pursues his own particular purposes. For the world of ideas does not live itself out in a community of human beings, but only in human individuals. What emerges as the common goal of a human totality is only the consequence of the individual acts of will of the individuals, usually of a select few, whom the others follow as their authorities. Each of us is called to a free spirit, just as every rose germ is called to become a rose.
[ 9 ] Monism is therefore philosophy of freedom in the realm of truly moral action. Because it is a philosophy of reality, it rejects the metaphysical, unreal limitations of the free spirit just as well as it recognizes the physical and historical (naive-real) limitations of naive man. Because he does not regard man as a finished product that unfolds its full nature at every moment of its life, the dispute as to whether man as such is free or not seems to him to be null and void. He sees in man an evolving being and asks whether the stage of the free spirit can also be reached on this path of development.
[ 10 ] Monism knows that nature does not release man from its arms as a free spirit ready-made, but that it leads him to a certain stage, from which he continues to develop as an unfree being until he reaches the point where he finds himself.
[ 11 ] Monism is clear that a being acting under a physical or moral compulsion cannot be truly moral. It regards the passage through automatic action (according to natural drives and instincts) and the passage through obedient action (according to moral norms) as necessary preliminary stages of morality, but it recognizes the possibility of overcoming both stages through the free spirit. Monism generally liberates the truly moral worldview from the inner-worldly fetters of naive moral maxims and from the extra-worldly moral maxims of speculative metaphysicians. He cannot eliminate the latter from the world, just as he cannot eliminate perception from the world; he rejects the latter because he seeks all explanatory principles for elucidating world phenomena within the world and none outside it. Just as monism rejects even thinking of principles of cognition other than those for human beings (cf. pp. 124f.), it also decisively rejects the idea of moral maxims other than those for human beings. Human morality, like human cognition, is conditioned by human nature. And just as other beings will understand cognition to mean something quite different from us, other beings will also have a different morality. For the supporter of monism, morality is a specifically human characteristic, and freedom is the human form of being moral.
Additions to the new edition (1918)
[ 12 ] 1. A difficulty in the assessment of what is presented in the two preceding sections can arise from the fact that one believes oneself to be confronted with a contradiction. On the one hand, we speak of the experience of thinking, which is felt to be of general significance, equally valid for every human consciousness; on the other hand, it is pointed out here that the ideas which are realized in the moral life, and which are of the same kind as the ideas worked out in thinking, are lived out in an individual way in every human consciousness. He who feels compelled to remain with this opposition as a "contradiction", and who does not recognize that it is precisely in the living view of this actually existing opposition that a part of the essence of man is revealed, will be unable to see either the idea of knowledge or that of freedom in the right light. For that view which thinks of its concepts merely as abstracted from the sense world and which does not allow intuition to come into its own, the thought here claimed for a reality remains as a "mere contradiction". For an insight that sees through how ideas are intuitively experienced as a beingness based on itself, it becomes clear that man, in the sphere of the world of ideas, when cognizing, lives himself into something that is uniform for all men, but that when he borrows the intuitions for his acts of will from this world of ideas, he individualizes a member of this world of ideas through the same activity that he develops in the spiritual-ideal process of cognition as a general-human one. What appears to be a logical contradiction, the general nature of cognitive ideas and the individual nature of moral ideas, becomes a living concept when it is viewed in its reality. Therein lies a characteristic of human nature, that what is to be intuitively grasped in man moves back and forth between the generally valid cognition and the individual experience of this general. For those who cannot see the reality of one swing of the pendulum, thinking remains only a subjective human activity; for those who cannot grasp the other, all individual life seems lost with the activity of man in thinking. For a thinker of the first kind, cognition, for the other, moral life, is an inscrutable fact. Both will contribute all kinds of ideas to the explanation of the one or the other, all of which are inaccurate, because both either do not actually grasp the tangibility of thinking or misjudge it as a merely abstracting activity.
[ 13] 2. On p. 175f. materialism is mentioned. I am well aware that there are thinkers - such as Th. Ziehen just mentioned - who do not call themselves materialists at all, but who must nevertheless be designated by this term from the point of view asserted in this book. It does not matter whether someone says that for him the world is not resolved in mere material existence; he is therefore not a materialist. Rather, it depends on whether he develops concepts that are only applicable to a material being. He who says: "Our action is necessitated like our thinking", has put forward a concept that is applicable only to material processes, but neither to action nor to being; and if he thought his concept through to the end, he would have to think materialistically. That he does not do so is only the result of that inconsistency which is so often the consequence of not thinking to the end. - We now often hear that the materialism of the 19th century has been scientifically dismissed. In truth, however, it is not at all. In the present day people often fail to realize that they have no other ideas than those with which they can only approach material things. Thus materialism now conceals itself, whereas in the second half of the 19th century it was openly displayed. The veiled materialism of the present is no less intolerant of a spiritual view of the world than the admitted materialism of the previous century. It only deceives many who believe that they are allowed to reject a spiritual view of the world because the natural sciences have "long since abandoned materialism".