Riddles of Philosophy
Part II
GA 18
IV. Echoes of the Kantian Mode of Conception
[ 1 ] Only a few personalities in the second half of the nineteenth century attempted to find a firm foundation for the relation of a conception of the self-conscious ego toward the general world picture by going deeply into Hegel's mode of thought. One of the best thinkers along these lines was Paul Asmus (1842–1876), who died as a young man. In 1873 he published a book entitled, The Ego and the Thing in Itself. In it he shows how it is possible, through Hegel's approach to thinking and the world of ideas, to obtain a relation of man toward the essence of things. He explains in an ingenious way that we have in man's thinking an element that is not alien to reality but full of life and fundamentally real, an element on which we only have to concentrate in order to arrive at the essence of existence. In a most illuminating way he describes the course of the evolution of world conception that began with Kant, who had seen in the “thing in itself” an element that was alien and inaccessible to man, and led to Hegel, who was of the opinion that thought comprised not only itself as an ideal entity but also the “thing in itself.” Voices like this found scarcely a hearing. This became most poignantly clear in the slogan, “Back to Kant,” which became popular in a certain current of philosophical life after Eduard Zeller's speech at the University of Heidelberg, On the Significance and Task of the Theory of Knowledge.
The conceptions, partly conscious and partly unconscious, which led to this slogan, are approximately as follows. Natural science has shaken the confidence in spontaneous thinking that means to penetrate by itself to the highest questions of existence, but we cannot be satisfied with the mere results of natural science for they do not lead beyond the external view of things. There must be grounds of existence concealed behind this external aspect. Even natural science itself has shown that the world of colors, tones, etc., surrounding us is not a reality outside in the objective world but that it is produced through the function of our senses and our brain (compare above, to Part II Chapter III). For this reason, it is necessary to ask these questions: In what respect do the results of natural science point beyond their own limits toward the higher problems: What is the nature of our knowledge? Can this knowledge lead to a solution of that higher task? Kant has asked such questions with great emphasis. In order to find one's own position, one wanted to study how he had approached them. One wanted to think over with the greatest possible precision Kant's line of thought, attempting to avoid his errors and to find in the continuation of his ideas a way that led out of the general perplexity.
[ 2 ] A number of thinkers endeavored to arrive at a tenable goal, starting from Kantian points of departure. The most important among them were Hermann Cohen (1842–1916), Otto Liebmann (1840 – 1912), Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1916), Johannes Volkelt (1842–1930) and Benno Erdmann (1851–1921). Much perspicacity can be found in the writings of these men. A great deal of work was done inquiring into the nature and extent of the human faculty of knowledge. Johannes Volkelt who, insofar as he was active as an epistomologist, lives entirely within this current, also contributed a thorough work on Kant's Theory of Knowledge (1879) in which all problems characterizing this trend of thought are discussed. In 1884 he gave the inaugural address for his professorship in Basel in which he made the statement that all thinking that goes beyond the results of the special empirical sciences of facts must have “the restless character of seeking and searching, of cautious trial, defensive reserve and deliberate admission.” It should be an “advance in which one must partly withdraw again, a yielding in which one nevertheless holds on to a certain degree” (On the Possibility of Metaphysics, Hamburg & Leipzig, 1884).
This new attempt to start from Kant appears in a special light in Otto Liebmann. His writings, Contributions Toward the Analysis of Reality (1876), Thoughts and Facts (1882), Climax of Theories (1884), are veritable models of philosophical criticism. Here a caustic mind ingeniously discovers contradictions in the worlds of thought, reveals as half truths what appear as safe judgments, and shows what unsatisfactory elements the individual sciences contain when their results appear before the highest tribunals of thought. Liebmann enumerates the contradictions of Darwinism. He reveals its insufficiently founded assumptions and its defective thought connections, maintaining that something is needed to fill in the gaps to support the assumptions. On one occasion he ends an exposition he gives of the nature of living organisms with the words:
Plant seeds do not lose their ability to germinate after lying dry for ages, and grains of wheat found in Egyptian mummy cases, after having been hermetically sealed and buried for thousands of years, when sowed in a moist soil, thrive excellently. Wheel animalcules (rotatoria) and other infusoria that have been gathered completely dried up from a gutter pipe are newly revived by rain water. Even frogs and fishes that have turned into ice cakes in freezing water revive when carefully thawed out. All these facts are capable of completely opposite interpretations. . . . In short, every form of categorical denial in this matter would be crude dogmatism. Therefore, we discontinue our argument.
This phrase, “We discontinue our argument,” really expresses, even if it does not do so literally, every final thought of Liebmann's reflection. It is, indeed, the final conclusion of many recent followers and elaborators of Kantianism. They do not succeed in doing more than emphasize that they receive the things into their consciousness. Therefore, everything that they see, hear, etc., is not outside in the world but within themselves and they are incapable of deciding anything concerning the outside. A table stands before me, argues the Neo-Kantian, but, really, this only seems to be so. Only a person who is naively concerned with problems of philosophy can say, “Outside myself is a table.” A person who has overcome that naïveté says, “An unknown something produces an impression within my eye; this eye and my brain make out of the impression the sensation brown. As I have this sensation brown not merely at an isolated point but can let my eye run over a plane surface and four columnar forms, so the brownness takes the shape of an object that is this table. When I touch this table, it offers resistance. It makes an impression on my sense of touch, which I express by attributing hardness to the picture that has been produced by the eye. At the suggestion of some “thing in itself” that I do not know, I have therefore created this table out of myself. The table is my mental content. It is only in my consciousness.
Volkelt presents this view at the beginning of his book on Kant's Theory of Knowledge:
The first fundamental condition that the philosopher must clearly realize is the insight that, to begin with, our knowledge extends to nothing more than our conceptions. Our conceptions are the only things that we immediately and directly experience, and for just that reason that we experience them immediately, even the most radical doubt cannot deprive us of the knowledge of them. But the knowledge that goes beyond my faculty of conception is not protected from doubt. (I use this expression here always in its most comprehensive sense so that all physical events are included in the term.) Therefore, all knowledge that goes beyond the conceptions must be marked as doubtful at the outset of the philosophical reflection.
Otto Liebmann also uses this thought to defend the statement: Man can no more know that the things he conceives are not, than he can know positively that they are. “For the very reason that no conceiving subject can escape the sphere of its subjective imagination, because it can never grasp and observe what may exist or not exist outside its subjectivity, leaping thereby over its own consciousness and emancipating itself from itself. For this reason it would also be absurd to maintain that the object does not exist outside the subjective conception” (O. Liebmann, Contributions toward the Analysis of Reality).
[ 3 ] Both Volkelt and Liebmann nevertheless endeavor to prove that man finds something in the world of his conceptions that is not merely observed or perceived, but that is added to the perception by thought—something that at least points toward the essence of things. Volkelt is of the opinion that there is a fact within the conceptual life that points to something that lies outside the life of conception. This fact consists in the logical necessity with which certain conceptions suggest themselves to man. In his book, The Sources of Human Certainty that appeared in 1906, we read Volkelt's view:
If one seeks the basis of the certainty of our knowledge, one finds two points of origin, two sources of certainty. Even if an intimate cooperation of both sources of certainty is necessary if real knowledge is to result, it is nevertheless impossible to reduce one source to the other. The one source of certainty is the self-assurance of consciousness, the awareness of the facts of my consciousness. That I am consciousness is just as true as the fact that my consciousness testifies to the existence of certain processes and states, certain contents and forms. Without this source of certainty there would be no cognitive process; it supplies the material through the elaboration of which all knowledge is produced. The other source of certainty is the necessity of thought, the certainty of logical compulsion, the objective consciousness of necessity. With it something absolutely new is given that cannot possibly be derived from the certainty of our self-awareness in consciousness.
Concerning this second source of certainty, Volkelt expresses himself in his book mentioned above as follows:
The immediate experience allows us to become aware of the fact that certain combinations of concepts show a peculiar form of compulsion to be inherent in them that is essentially different from all other kinds of compulsion that are associated with conceptions. This compulsion forces us to think certain concepts as belonging together, not merely in the conscious process in which we are aware of them but also in a corresponding objective interconnection, independent of the conscious conceptions. Furthermore, this compulsion does not force us in a manner to suggest that we should forfeit our moral satisfaction or our inner happiness, our salvation and so forth, but it contains the suggestion that objective reality would have to annihilate itself in itself, would have to lose its possibility of existence if the opposite of what it prescribes as a necessity were to take place. What distinguishes this compulsion then is that the very thought of the opposite of that necessity forcing itself upon us, would be experienced as a call that reality should revolt against the conditions of its existence. This peculiar, immediately experienced compulsion is generally called logical compulsion or thought necessity. The logically necessary reveals itself directly as an announcement of the object itself. It is the peculiarly meaningful significance, the reason-guided illumination that is contained in everything logical, that bears witness with immediate evidence of the objective, real validity of the logical connections of concepts. (Kant's Theory of Knowledge, pp. 208 ff.)
Otto Liebmann confesses toward the end of his essay, The Climax of Theories, that in his opinion the whole thought structure of human knowledge, from the ground floor of the science of observation up to the most airy regions of the highest hypotheses of world conception, is permeated by thoughts that point beyond perception. “Fragments of percepts must first be supplemented by an extraordinary amount of non-observed elements linked together and connected in a definite order according to certain operations of the mind.” But how can one deny that human thinking has the ability to know something through its own activity as long as it is necessary to resort to this activity even if one merely wants to obtain order among the facts of the observed precepts? Neo-Kantianism is in a curious position. It would like to confine itself within the boundaries of consciousness and within the life of conception, but it is forced to confess that it is impossible to take a step “within” these boundaries that does not lead in all directions beyond those limits. Otto Liebmann ends the second booklet of his Thought and Facts as follows:
If, on the one hand, seen from the viewpoint of natural science, man were nothing but animated dust, then, on the other, all nature, as it appears in space and time, when seen from the only viewpoint that is immediately accessible and given to us, is an anthropocentric phenomenon.
[ 4 ] There are many who hold the view that the world of observation is merely human conception in spite of the fact that it must extinguish itself if it is correctly understood. It is repeated again and again in the course of the last decades in many variations. Ernst Laas (1837–1885) forcefully defended the point of view that only positive facts of perception should be wrought into knowledge. Alois Riehl (1849–1924), proceeding from the same fundamental view, declares that there could be no general world conception at all, and that everything that goes beyond the various special sciences should only be a critique of knowledge. Knowledge is obtained only in the special sciences; philosophy has the task of showing how this knowledge comes about and of taking care that thought should not add any element that can not be justified by the facts. Richard Wahle in his book, The Whole of Philosophy and Its End (1894), eliminates with utmost scrutiny everything that the mind has added to the “occurrences” of the world until finally the mind stands in the ocean of occurrences that stream by, seeing itself in this ocean as one such occurrence, nowhere finding a point capable of providing a meaningful enlightenment concerning them. This mind would have to exert its own energy to produce order in the occurrences. But then it would be the mind itself that had introduced that order into nature. If the mind makes a statement about the essence of the occurrences, it derives this not from the things but from itself. This it could only do if it admitted that in its own activity something essential could go on. The assumption would have to be made that the mind's judgment could have significance also for things. But in its own judgment this confidence is something that, according to Wahle's world conception, the mind is not entitled to have. It must stand idly by and watch what flows past, around and inside itself, and it would only contribute to its own deception if it were to put any credence in a conception that it formed itself about the occurrences.
What final answer could a mind find that looked into the world structure, tossing about within itself problems concerning the nature and purpose of events? As it seemed to occupy a firm stand in opposition to the surrounding world, it has had to experience that it dissolved into a flight of occurrences and flowed together with other occurrences. The mind did no longer “know” the world. It had to admit: I am not certain that there are “knowers,” but there are simply occurrences. They do, to be sure, make their appearance in a manner that the concept of knowledge could emerge prematurely and without justification. . . . and “concepts” emerged and flitted by to bring light into the occurrences, but they were will-o'-the-wisps, specters of wishful thinking, miserable postulates whose evidence meant nothing, empty forms of knowledge. Unknown factors must rule the change. Darkness was spread over nature, occurrences are the veil of the true . . . (The Whole of Philosophy and Its End ).
Wahle closes his book, which is to represent the “gifts” of philosophy to the individual sciences, theology, physiology, esthetics and civic education, with these words, “May the age begin when people will say: once was philosophy.”
[ 5 ] In the above mentioned book by Wahle, as well as in his other books, Historical Survey of the Development of Philosophy (1895) and On the Mechanism of the Mental Life (1906), we have one of the most significant symptoms of the evolution of world conception in the nineteenth century. The lack of confidence with respect to knowledge begins with Kant and leads, finally, as it appears in Wahle, to a complete disbelief in any philosophical world conception.
Nachklänge der Kantschen Vorstellungsart
[ 1 ] Persönlichkeiten, welche durch Sich-Versenken in die Hegelsche Ideenart eine Sicherheit suchten für das Verhältnis einer Vorstellung über das selbstbewußte Ich zu dem allgemeinen Weltbilde, gibt es in der zweiten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts nur wenige. Einer der Besten ist der zu früh verstorbene Paul Asmus (1842-1876), der 1873 eine Schrift veröffentlichte «Das Ich und das Ding an sich». Er zeigt, wie in der Art, in der Hegel das Denken und die Ideenwelt ansah, ein Verhältnis des Menschen zum Wesen der Dinge zu gewinnen ist. Er setzt in scharfsinniger Weise auseinander, daß im Denken des Menschen nicht etwas Wirklichkeitsfremdes, sondern etwas Lebensvolles, Urwirkliches gegeben ist, in das man sich nur zu versenken braucht, um zum Wesen des Daseins zu kommen. Er stellte in lichtvoller Weise den Gang dar, den die Weltanschauungsentwickelung genommen hat, um von Kant, der das «Ding an sich» als etwas dem Menschen Fremdes, Unzugängliches angesehen hatte, zu Hegel zu kommen, welcher meinte, daß der Gedanke nicht nur sich selbst als ideelle Wesenheit, sondern auch das «Ding an sich» umspanne. Solche Stimmen fanden aber kaum Gehör. Am schärfsten kam dies in dem Ruf zum Ausdruck, der seit Eduard Zellers Heidelberger Universitätsrede «Über Bedeutung und Aufgabe der Erkenntnistheorie» in einer gewissen philosophischen Strömung beliebt wurde: «Zurück zu Kant». Die teils unbewußten, teils bewußten Vorstellungen, die zu diesem Ruf führten, sind etwa diese: Die Naturwissenschaft hat das Vertrauen zu dem selbständigen Denken erschüttert, das von sich aus zu den höchsten Daseinsfragen vordringen will. Wir können uns aber doch bei den bloßen naturwissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen nicht beruhigen. Denn sie führen über die Außenseite der Dinge nicht hinweg. Es muß hinter dieser Außenseite noch verborgene Daseinsgründe geben. Hat ja doch die Naturwissenschaft selbst gezeigt, daß die Welt der Farben, Töne usw., die uns umgibt, nicht eine Wirklichkeit draußen in der objektiven Welt ist, sondern daß sie hervorgebracht ist durch die Einrichtung unserer Sinne und unseres Gehirns. (Vgl. oben S. 422ff.) Man muß also die Fragen stellen: Inwiefern weisen die naturwissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse über sich selbst hinaus zu höheren Aufgaben? Welches ist das Wesen unseres Erkennens? Kann dieses Erkennen zur Lösung dieser höheren Aufgaben führen? Kant hatte in eindringender Weise solche Fragen gestellt. Man wollte sehen, wie er es gemacht hat, um ihnen gegenüber Stellung zu nehmen. Man wollte in aller Schärfe Kants Gedankengänge nachdenken, um durch Fortführung seiner Ideen, durch Vermeidung seiner Irrtümer einen Ausweg aus der Ratlosigkeit zu finden.
[ 2 ] Eine Reihe von Denkern mühte sich ab, von Kantschen Ausgangspunkten aus zu irgendeinem Ziele zu kommen. Die bedeutendsten unter ihnen sind Hermann Cohen (1842 bis 1918), Otto Liebmann (1840-1912), Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915), Johannes Volkelt (1848-1930), Benno Erdmann (1851-1921). Es ist viel Scharfsinn in den Schriften dieser Männer zu finden. Eine große Arbeit ist daran gewendet worden, die Natur und Tragweite der menschlichen Erkenntnisfähigkeit zu untersuchen. Johannes Volkelt, der, insofern er als Erkenntnistheoretiker sich betätigt, ganz in dieser Strömung lebt, auch selbst ein gründliches Werk über Kants Erkenntnistheorie (1879) geliefert hat, in dem alle diese Vorstellungsart bestimmenden Fragen erörtert werden, hat 1884 beim Antritt seines Lehramtes in Basel eine Rede gehalten, in welcher er ausspricht, daß alles Denken, das über die Ergebnisse der einzelnen Tatsachenwissenschaften hinausgeht, den «unruhigen Charakter des Suchens und Nachspürens, des Probierens, Abwehrens und Zugestehens an sich» haben müsse; «es ist ein Vorwärtsgehen, das doch wieder teilweise zurückweicht; ein Nachgeben, das doch wieder bis zu einem gewissen Grade zugreift». (Volkelt, Über die Möglichkeit einer Metaphysik, Hamburg und Leipzig, 1884.) - Scharf nuanciert erscheint die neuere Anknüpfung an Kant bei Otto Liebmann. Seine Schriften «Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit» (1876), «Gedanken und Tatsachen» (1882), «Klimax der Theorien» (1884) sind wahre Musterbeispiele philosophischer Kritik. Ein ätzender Verstand deckt da in genialischer Weise Widersprüche in den Gedankenwelten auf, zeigt Halbheiten in sicher erscheinenden Urteilen und rechnet gründlich den einzelnen Wissenschaften vor, was sie Unbefriedigendes enthalten, wenn ihre Ergebnisse vor ein höchstes Denktribunal gestellt werden. Liebmann rechnet dem Darwinismus seine Widersprüche vor; er zeigt seine nicht ganz begründeten Annahmen und seine Gedankenlücken. Er sagt, daß etwas da sein muß, das über die Widersprüche hinwegführt, das die Lücken ausfüllt, das die Annahmen begründet. Er schließt einmal die Betrachtung, die er der Natur der Lebewesen widmet, mit den Worten: «Der Umstand, daß Pflanzensamen trotz äonenlangen Trockenliegens seine Keimfähigkeit nicht verliert, daß zum Beispiel die in ägyptischen Mumiensärgen aufgefundenen Weizenkörner, nachdem sie Jahrtausende hindurch hermetisch begraben gewesen sind, heute in feuchten Acker gesät aufs vortrefflichste gedeihen; daß ferner Rädertierchen und andere Infusorien, die man ganz vertrocknet aus der Dachrinne aufgesammelt hat, bei Befeuchtung mit Regenwasser neubelebt umherwimmeln; ja daß Frösche und Fische, die im gefrierenden Was zu festen Eisklumpen erstarrt sind, bei sorgfältigem Auftauen das verlorene Leben wiedergewinnen; - dieser Umstand läßt ganz entgegengesetzte Deutungen zu... . Kurz: jedes kategorische Absprechen in dieser Angelegenheit wäre plumper Dogmatismus. Daher brechen wir hier ab.» Dieses «Daher brechen wir hier ab» ist im Grunde, wenn auch nicht dem Worte, doch dem Sinne nach, der Schlußgedanke jeder Liebmannschen Betrachtung. Ja, es ist das Schlußergebnis vieler neuer Anhänger und Bearbeiter des Kantianismus. - Die Bekenner dieser Richtung kommen nicht darüber hinaus, zu betonen, daß sie die Dinge in ihr Bewußtsein aufnehmen, daß also alles, was sie sehen, hören usw. nicht draußen in der Welt, sondern drinnen in ihnen selbst ist, und daß sie folglich über das, was draußen ist, nichts ausmachen können. Vor mir steht ein Tisch, - sagt sich der Neukantianer. Doch nein, das scheint nur so. Nur wer naiv ist in bezug auf Weltanschauungsfragen, kann sagen: Außer mir ist ein Tisch. Wer die Naivität abgelegt hat sagt sich: Irgend etwas Unbekanntes macht auf mein Auge einen Eindruck; dieses Auge und mein Gehirn machen aus diesem Eindruck eine braune Empfindung. Und weil ich die braune Empfindung nicht nur in einem einzigen Punkte habe, sondern mein Auge hinschweifen lassen kann über eine Fläche und über vier säulenartige Gebilde, so formt sich mir die Braunheit zu einem Gegenstand, der eben der Tisch ist. Und wenn ich den Tisch berühre, so leistet er mir Widerstand. Er macht einen Eindruck auf meinen Tastsinn, den ich dadurch ausdrücke, daß ich dem vom Auge geschaffenen Gebilde eine Härte zuschreibe. Ich habe also auf Anlaß irgendeines «Dinges an sich», das ich nicht kenne, aus mir heraus den Tisch geschaffen. Der Tisch ist meine Vorstellung. Er ist nur in meinem Bewußtsein. Volkelt stellt diese Ansicht an den Beginn seines Buches über Kants Erkenntnistheorie: «Der erste Fundamentalsatz, den sich der Philosoph zu deutlichem Bewußtsein zu bringen hat, besteht in der Erkenntnis, daß unser Wissen sich zunächst auf nichts weiter als auf unsere Vorstellungen erstreckt. Unsere Vorstellungen sind das Einzige, das wir unmittelbar erfahren, unmittelbar erleben; und eben weil wir sie unmittelbar erfahren, deshalb vermag uns auch der radikalste Zweifel das Wissen von denselben nicht zu entreißen. Dagegen ist das Wissen, das über mein Vorstellen - ich nehme diesen Ausdruck hier überall im weitesten Sinne, so daß alles physische Geschehen darunter fällt - hinausgeht, vor dem Zweifel nicht geschützt. Daher muß zu Beginn des Philosophierens alles über die Vorstellungen hinausgehende Wissen ausdrücklich als bezweifelbar hingestellt werden.» Otto Liebmann verwendet diesen Gedanken auch dazu, die Behauptung zu verteidigen: Der Mensch könne ebensowenig wissen, ob die von ihm vorgestellten Dinge außerhalb seines Bewußtseins nicht seien, wie er wissen könne, ob sie seien. «Gerade deshalb, weil in der Tat kein vorstellendes Subjekt aus der Sphäre seines subjektiven Vorstellens hinaus kann; gerade deshalb, weil es nie und nimmermehr mit Überspringung des eigenen Bewußtseins, unter Emanzipation von sich selber, dasjenige zu erfassen und zu konstatieren imstande ist, was jenseits und außerhalb seiner Subjektivität existieren oder nicht existieren mag; gerade deshalb ist es ungereimt, behaupten zu wollen, daß das vorgestellte Objekt außerhalb der subjektiven Vorstellung nicht da sei.» (O. Liebmann, Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, S. 28.)
[ 3 ] Sowohl Volkelt wie Liebmann sind aber doch bemüht, nachzuweisen, daß der Mensch innerhalb seiner Vorstellungswelt etwas vorfindet, das nicht bloß beobachtet, wahrgenommen, sondern zu dem Wahrgenommenen hinzugedacht ist, und das auf das Wesen der Dinge wenigstens hindeutet. Volkelt ist der Ansicht, daß es eine Tatsache innerhalb des Vorstellungslebens selbst gibt, die hinausweist über das bloße Vorstellungsleben, auf etwas, das außerhalb dieses Vorstellungslebens liegt. Diese Tatsache ist die, daß sich gewisse Vorstellungen dem Menschen mit logischer Notwendigkeit aufdrängen. In seiner 1906 erschienen Schrift «Die Quellen der menschlichen Gewißheit» liest man (S.3) die Volkeltsche Ansicht: «Fragt man, worauf die Gewißheit unseres Erkennens beruht, so stößt man auf zwei Ursprünge, auf zwei Gewißheitsquellen. Mag auch ein noch so inniges Zusammenwirken beider Gewißheitsweisen nötig sein, wenn Erkenntnis erstehen soll, so ist es doch unmöglich, die eine auf die andere zurückzuführen. Die eine Gewißheitsquelle ist die Selbstgewißheit des Bewußtseins, das Innesein meiner Bewußtseinstatsachen. So wahr ich Bewußtsein bin, so wahr bezeugt mir mein Bewußtsein das Vorhandensein gewisser Verläufe und Zustände, gewisser Inhalte und Formen. Ohne diese Gewißheitsquelle gäbe es überhaupt kein Erkennen; sie gibt uns den Stoff, aus dessen Bearbeitung alle Erkenntnisse allererst hervorgehen. Die andere Gewißheitsquelle ist die Denknotwendigkeit, die Gewißheit des logischen Zwanges, das sachliche Notwendigkeitsbewußtsein. Hiermit ist etwas schlechtweg Neues gegeben, das sich aus der Selbstgewißheit des Bewußtseins unmöglich gewinnen läßt.» Über diese zweite Gewißheitsquelle spricht sich Volkelt in seiner früher genannten Schrift in folgender Art aus: «Die unmittelbare Erfahrung läßt uns in der Tat Erleben, daß gewisse Begriffsverknüpfungen eine höchst eigentümliche Nötigung bei sich führen, welche von allen anderen Arten der Nötigung, von denen Vorstellungen begleitet sind, wesentlich unterschieden ist. Diese Nötigung zwingt uns, gewisse Begriffe nicht nur als in dem bewußten Vorstellen notwendig zusammengehörig zu denken, sondern auch eine entsprechende objektive, unabhängig von den bewußten Vorstellungen existierende notwendige Zusammengehörigkeit anzunehmen. Und ferner zwingt uns diese Nötigung nicht etwa in der Weise, daß sie uns sagte, es wäre, falls das von ihr Vorgeschriebene nicht stattfände, um unsere moralische Befriedigung oder um unser inneres Glück, unser Heil usw. geschehen, sondern ihr Zwang enthält dies, daß das objektive Sein sich in sich selbst aufheben, seine Existenzmöglichkeit verlieren müßte, wenn das Gegenteil von dem, was sie vorschreibt, bestehen sollte. Das Ausgezeichnete dieses Zwanges besteht also darin, daß der Gedanke, es soll das Gegenteil der sich uns aufdrängenden Notwendigkeit existieren, sich uns unmittelbar als eine Forderung, daß sich die Realität gegen ihre Existenzbedingungen empören solle, kundtut. Wir bezeichnen bekanntlich diesen eigentümlichen unmittelbar erlebten Zwang als logischen Zwang, als Denknotwendigkeit. Das logisch Notwendige offenbart sich uns unmittelbar als ein Ausspruch der Sache selbst. Und zwar ist es die eigentümliche sinnvolle Bedeutung, die vernunftvolle Durchleuchtung, die alles Logische enthält, wodurch mit unmittelbarer Evidenz für die sachliche, reale Geltung der logischen Begriffsverknüpfung gezeugt wird.» (Volkelt, Kants Erkenntnistheorie, S. 208 f.) Und Otto Liebmann legt gegen das Ende seiner Schrift «Die Klimax der Theorien» das Bekenntnis ab, daß, seiner Ansicht nach, das ganze Gedankengebäude menschlicher Erkenntnis, vom Erdgeschoß der Beobachtungswissenschaft bis in die luftigsten Regionen höchster Weltanschauungshypothesen, durchzogen ist von Gedanken, die über die Wahrnehmung hinausweisen, und daß die «Wahrnehmungsbruchstücke erst nach Maßgabe bestimmter Verfahrungsarten des Verstandes durch außerordentlich viel Nichtbeobachtetes ergänzt, verbunden, in fester Ordnung zusammengereiht werden müssen.» Wie kann man aber dem menschlichen Denken die Fähigkeit absprechen, aus sich heraus, durch eigene Tätigkeit etwas zu erkennen, wenn es schon zur Ordnung der beobachteten Wahrnehmungstatsachen diese seine eigene Tätigkeit zu Hilfe rufen muß? Der Neukantianismus ist in einer sonderbaren Lage. Er möchte innerhalb des Bewußtseins, innerhalb des Vorstellungslebens bleiben, muß sich aber gestehen, daß er in diesem «Innerhalb» keinen Schritt machen kann, der ihn nicht links und rechts hinausführte. Otto Liebmann schließt das zweite seiner Hefte «Gedanken und Tatsachen» so: «Wenn einerseits, aus dem Gesichtspunkt der Naturwissenschaft betrachtet, der Mensch nichts weiter wäre als belebter Staub, so ist anderseits, aus dem allein uns zugänglichen, unmittelbar gegebenen Gesichtspunkt betrachtet, die ganze im Raum und in der Zeit erscheinende Natur ein anthropozentrisches Phänomen.»
[ 4 ] Trotzdem die Anschauung, daß die Beobachtungswelt nur menschliche Vorstellung ist, sich selbst auslöschen muß, wenn sie richtig verstanden wird, sind ihre Bekenner zahlreich. Sie wird in den verschiedensten Schattierungen im Laufe der letzten Jahrzehnte des Jahrhunderts immer wiederholt. Ernst Laas (1837-1885) vertritt energisch den Standpunkt, daß nur positive Wahrnehmungstatsachen innerhalb der Erkenntnis verarbeitet werden dürfen. Aloys Riehl (1844-1924) erklärt, weil er von derselben Grundanschauung ausgeht, daß es überhaupt keine allgemeine Weltanschauung geben könne, sondern daß alles, was über die einzelnen Wissenschaften hinausgeht, nichts anderes sein dürfe, als eine Kritik der Erkenntnis. Erkannt wird nur in den einzelnen Wissenschaften; die Philosophie hat die Aufgabe, zu zeigen, wie erkannt wird, und darüber zu wachen, daß das Denken nur ja nichts in das Erkennen einmische, was sich durch die Tatsachen nicht rechtfertigen lasse. Am radikalsten ist Richard Wahle in seinem Buche «Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende» vorgegangen (1894). Er sondert in der denkbar scharfsinnigsten Weise aus der Erkenntnis alles aus, was durch den menschlichen Geist zu den «Vorkommnissen» der Welt hinzugebracht ist. Zuletzt steht dieser Geist da in dem Meere der vorüberflutenden Vorkommnisse, sich selbst in diesem Meere als ein solches Vorkommnis schauend und nirgends einen Anhaltspunkt findend, sich über die Vorkommnisse sinnvoll aufzuklären. Dieser Geist müßte ja seine eigene Kraft anspannen, um von sich aus die Vorkommnisse zu ordnen. Aber dann ist es ja er selbst, der diese Ordnung in die Natur bringt. Wenn er etwas über das Wesen der Vorkommnisse sagt, dann hat er es nicht aus den Dingen, sondern aus sich genommen. Er könnte das nur, wenn er sich zugestünde, daß in seinem eigenen Tun etwas Wesenhaftes sich abspielte, wenn er annehmen dürfte, daß es auch für die Dinge etwas bedeutet, wenn er etwas sagt. Dieses Vertrauen darf im Sinne der Weltanschauung Wahles der Geist nicht haben. Er muß die Hände in den Schoß legen und zusehen, was um ihn und in ihm abflutet; und er prellte sich selbst, wenn er auf eine Anschauung etwas gäbe, die er sich über die Vorkommnisse bildet. «Was könnte der Geist, der, ins Weltgehäuse spähte und in sich die Fragen nach dem Wesen und dem Ziele des Geschehens herumwälzte, endlich als Antwort finden? Es ist ihm widerfahren, daß er, wie er so scheinbar im Gegensatze zur umgebenden Welt dastand, sich auflöste und in einer Flucht von Vorkommnissen mit allen Vorkommnissen zusammenfloß. Er ,wußte" nicht mehr die Welt; er sagte, ich bin nicht sicher, daß Wissende da sind, sondern Vorkommnisse sind da schlechthin. Sie kommen freilich in solcher Weise, daß der Begriff eines Wissens vorschnell, ungerechtfertigt entstehen konnte... . Und “Begriffe" huschten empor, um Licht in die Vorkommnisse zu bringen, aber es waren Irrlichter, Seelen der Wünsche nach Wissen, erbärmliche, in ihrer Evidenz nichtssagende Postulate einer unausgefüllten Wissensform. Unbekannte Faktoren müssen im Wechsel walten. Über ihre Natur war Dunkel gebreitet, Vorkommnisse sind der Schleier des Wahrhaften. ...» Wahle schließt sein Buch, das die «Vermächtnisse» der Philosophie an die einzelnen Wissenschaften darstellen soll, an Theologie, Physiologie, Ästhetik und Staatspädagogik, mit den Worten: «Möge die Zeit anbrechen, in der man sagen wird, einst war Philosophie.»
[ 5 ] Wahles genanntes Buch (wie seine anderen: «Geschichtlicher Überblick über die Entwickelung der Philosophie», 1895, «Über den Mechanismus des geistigen Lebens», 1906) ist eines der bedeutsamsten Symptome der Weltanschauungsentwickelung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Die Vertrauenslosigkeit gegenüber dem Erkennen, die von Kant ihren Ausgangspunkt nimmt, endet für eine Gedankenwelt, wie sie bei Wahle auftritt, mit dem vollständigen Unglauben an alle Weltanschauung.
Echoes of the Kantian mode of conception
[ 1 ] In the second half of the nineteenth century, there were only a few personalities who, by immersing themselves in the Hegelian mode of ideas, sought a certainty for the relationship of a conception of the self-conscious ego to the general world view. One of the best is Paul Asmus (1842-1876), who died too early and published a paper in 1873 entitled "Das Ich und das Ding an sich". He shows how, in the way in which Hegel viewed thinking and the world of ideas, a relationship of man to the essence of things can be gained. He astutely demonstrates that man's thinking is not something alien to reality, but something full of life, primordially real, into which one need only immerse oneself in order to arrive at the essence of existence. He illustrated in an illuminating way the course that the development of the world view has taken in order to move from Kant, who regarded the "thing in itself" as something alien and inaccessible to man, to Hegel, who believed that thought encompasses not only itself as an ideal entity, but also the "thing in itself". However, such voices were hardly heard. This was expressed most sharply in the cry that became popular in a certain philosophical current after Eduard Zeller's Heidelberg University speech "On the meaning and task of epistemology": "Back to Kant". The partly unconscious, partly conscious ideas that led to this call are something like this: Natural science has shaken our confidence in independent thinking, which wants to penetrate to the highest questions of existence on its own. However, we cannot rest easy with the mere results of natural science. For they do not lead us beyond the outside of things. There must still be hidden reasons for existence behind this outside. After all, natural science itself has shown that the world of colors, sounds, etc. that surrounds us is not a reality outside in the objective world, but that it is produced by the arrangement of our senses and our brain. (Cf. above p. 422ff.) One must therefore ask the questions: To what extent do the results of natural science point beyond themselves to higher tasks? What is the nature of our cognition? Can this cognition lead to the solution of these higher tasks? Kant had posed such questions in a penetrating way. One wanted to see how he did it in order to take a stand against them. They wanted to reflect on Kant's train of thought in all its acuteness in order to find a way out of their perplexity by continuing his ideas and avoiding his errors.
[ 2 ] A number of thinkers struggled to reach some kind of goal from Kant's starting points. The most important among them are Hermann Cohen (1842 to 1918), Otto Liebmann (1840-1912), Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915), Johannes Volkelt (1848-1930), Benno Erdmann (1851-1921). There is a great deal of acumen to be found in the writings of these men. A great deal of work has been devoted to investigating the nature and scope of human cognition. Johannes Volkelt, who, insofar as he is active as an epistemologist, lives entirely in this current, has also himself delivered a thorough work on Kant's epistemology (1879), in which all questions determining this type of conception are discussed, gave a speech when he took up his teaching post in Basel in 1884 in which he stated that all thinking that goes beyond the results of the individual factual sciences must have the "restless character of searching and tracing, of trying, defending and conceding"; "it is a going forward that nevertheless partially recedes again; a yielding that nevertheless grasps again to a certain degree". (Volkelt, Über die Möglichkeit einer Metaphysik, Hamburg and Leipzig, 1884.) - The more recent connection to Kant appears sharply nuanced in Otto Liebmann. His writings "Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit" (1876), "Gedanken und Tatsachen" (1882), "Klimax der Theorien" (1884) are true prime examples of philosophical criticism. A caustic mind ingeniously uncovers contradictions in the worlds of thought, reveals half-measures in seemingly certain judgments and thoroughly reproaches the individual sciences for what they contain that is unsatisfactory when their results are placed before a supreme tribunal of thought. Liebmann reckons up Darwinism's contradictions; he shows its not entirely well-founded assumptions and its gaps in thought. He says that there must be something that overcomes the contradictions, that fills in the gaps, that justifies the assumptions. He once concludes the consideration he devotes to the nature of living beings with the words: "The fact that plant seeds do not lose their germination capacity despite lying dry for eons, that, for example, the grains of wheat found in Egyptian mummy coffins, after having been hermetically buried for thousands of years, thrive most excellently today when sown in damp fields; that, furthermore, rotifers and other infusoria, which one has collected completely dried up from the gutter, swarm around revitalized when moistened with rainwater; yes, that frogs and fish, which have frozen into solid lumps of ice in the freezing water, regain their lost life when carefully thawed; - this circumstance allows completely opposite interpretations. .. . In short: any categorical denial in this matter would be crude dogmatism. Therefore we break off here." This "Therefore we break off here" is basically, if not in word, then in spirit, the final thought of every Liebmann observation. Indeed, it is the final result of many new followers and adaptors of Kantianism. - The adherents of this school do not go beyond emphasizing that they take things into their consciousness, that everything they see, hear, etc., is not outside in the world, but inside themselves, and that consequently they can make nothing of what is outside. There is a table in front of me, - says the New Kantian to himself. But no, it only seems that way. Only those who are naïve about worldviews can say: There is a table outside me. Those who have shed their naivety say to themselves: Something unknown makes an impression on my eye; this eye and my brain turn this impression into a brown sensation. And because I have the brown sensation not only in a single point, but can let my eye wander over a surface and over four pillar-like structures, the brownness forms itself into an object, which is the table. And when I touch the table, it offers me resistance. It makes an impression on my sense of touch, which I express by ascribing a hardness to the structure created by the eye. I have thus created the table out of myself on the occasion of some "thing in itself" that I do not know. The table is my imagination. It is only in my consciousness. Volkelt places this view at the beginning of his book on Kant's theory of knowledge: "The first fundamental theorem that the philosopher must bring to clear awareness consists in the realization that our knowledge initially extends to nothing more than our ideas. Our ideas are the only things that we experience directly; and precisely because we experience them directly, even the most radical doubt cannot wrest knowledge of them from us. On the other hand, the knowledge that goes beyond my imagination - I take this expression here everywhere in the broadest sense, so that all physical events fall under it - is not protected from doubt. Therefore, at the beginning of philosophizing, all knowledge that goes beyond the imagination must be explicitly placed as doubtful." Otto Liebmann also uses this idea to defend his assertion: Man can no more know whether the things imagined by him outside his consciousness are not than he can know whether they are. "Precisely because, in fact, no imagining subject can leave the sphere of his subjective imagination; precisely because he can never, ever, by leaping over his own consciousness, by emancipating himself from himself, grasp and state that which may or may not exist beyond and outside his subjectivity; precisely because it is inconsistent to want to maintain that the imagined object is not there outside the subjective imagination." (O. Liebmann, On the Analysis of Reality, p. 28.)
[ 3 ] However, both Volkelt and Liebmann endeavor to prove that man finds something within his imaginary world that is not merely observed, perceived, but is thought in addition to what is perceived, and that at least points to the essence of things. Volkelt is of the opinion that there is a fact within the imaginative life itself that points beyond the merely imaginative life, to something that lies outside this imaginative life. This fact is that certain ideas impose themselves on man with logical necessity. In his 1906 publication "The Sources of Human Certainty", we read (p.3) Volkelt's view: "If we ask what the certainty of our cognition is based on, we come across two origins, two sources of certainty. No matter how intimate the interaction of both modes of certainty may be necessary if knowledge is to arise, it is nevertheless impossible to trace one back to the other. The one source of certainty is the self-certainty of consciousness, the awareness of the facts of my consciousness. As true as I am consciousness, my consciousness testifies to the existence of certain processes and states, certain contents and forms. Without this source of certainty there would be no cognition at all; it gives us the material from the processing of which all knowledge emerges in the first place. The other source of certainty is the necessity of thought, the certainty of logical compulsion, the factual awareness of necessity. With this something is given that is absolutely new, which cannot possibly be gained from the self-certainty of consciousness." Volkelt speaks about this second source of certainty in the following way in his earlier mentioned writing: "Direct experience does indeed allow us to experience that certain conceptual connections carry with them a highly peculiar compulsion, which is essentially different from all other kinds of compulsion by which ideas are accompanied. This compulsion forces us not only to think of certain concepts as necessarily belonging together in the conscious imagination, but also to assume a corresponding objective, necessary belonging together that exists independently of the conscious imagination. And furthermore, this compulsion does not force us in such a way that it tells us that if what it prescribes did not take place, our moral satisfaction or our inner happiness, our salvation, etc. would be at stake, but its compulsion contains this, that objective being would have to cancel itself out in itself, would have to lose its possibility of existence, if the opposite of what it prescribes were to exist. The distinguishing feature of this compulsion therefore consists in the fact that the thought that the opposite of the necessity that imposes itself on us should exist manifests itself to us directly as a demand that reality should rebel against its conditions of existence. We call this peculiar, directly experienced compulsion a logical compulsion, a necessity of thought. The logically necessary reveals itself to us directly as a statement of the thing itself. And indeed it is the peculiar meaningful significance, the rational illumination, which contains everything logical, whereby the factual, real validity of the logical connection of concepts is testified to with immediate evidence." (Volkelt, Kant's Epistemology, p. 208 f. ) And Otto Liebmann, towards the end of his essay "The Climax of Theories", confesses that, in his view, the entire thought structure of human cognition, from the ground floor of observational science to the loftiest regions of the highest worldview hypotheses, is permeated by thoughts that point beyond perception, and that the "fragments of perception must first be supplemented, connected, and strung together in a fixed order by an extraordinary amount of non-observed things in accordance with certain modes of the understanding." But how can one deny human thinking the ability to recognize something from within itself, through its own activity, if it already has to call upon its own activity to help it order the observed facts of perception? Neo-Kantianism is in a peculiar position. It wants to remain within consciousness, within the life of the imagination, but must admit to itself that it cannot take a step within this "within" that does not lead it out to the left and right. Otto Liebmann concludes the second of his booklets "Thoughts and Facts" as follows: "If on the one hand, viewed from the standpoint of natural science, man would be nothing more than animate dust, then on the other hand, viewed from the directly given standpoint accessible to us alone, the whole of nature appearing in space and time is an anthropocentric phenomenon."
[ 4 ] Despite the fact that the view that the observational world is only human imagination must extinguish itself if it is understood correctly, its proponents are numerous. It has been repeated in various shades over the last decades of the century. Ernst Laas (1837-1885) vigorously defended the view that only positive facts of perception should be processed within cognition. Aloys Riehl (1844-1924) explains, because he starts from the same basic view, that there can be no general world view at all, but that everything that goes beyond the individual sciences must be nothing other than a critique of knowledge. Knowledge is only gained in the individual sciences; philosophy has the task of showing how knowledge is gained and of ensuring that thinking does not interfere with knowledge that cannot be justified by the facts. The most radical approach was taken by Richard Wahle in his book "Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende" (1894). In the most astute way imaginable, he excludes from knowledge everything that is added by the human spirit to the "occurrences" of the world. In the end, this spirit stands there in the sea of passing occurrences, seeing itself in this sea as such an occurrence and finding nowhere a point of reference to enlighten itself meaningfully about the occurrences. This spirit would have to draw on its own strength in order to sort out the events of its own accord. But then it is he himself who brings this order into nature. If it says something about the nature of events, then it has not taken it from things, but from itself. He could only do this if he admitted to himself that something essential was taking place in his own actions, if he could assume that when he says something, it also means something for the things. The spirit must not have this confidence in the sense of Wahle's world view. It must lay its hands in its lap and watch what flows around it and within it; and it would be deceiving itself if it were to give any credence to the view it forms of events. "What could the spirit, which, peering into the world and rolling around in itself the questions about the nature and purpose of events, finally find as an answer? It happened to him that, as he stood there so seemingly in opposition to the surrounding world, he dissolved and merged with all occurrences in a flight of occurrences. He 'knew" no longer the world; he said, I am not sure that knowers are there, but occurrences are there per se. They come, of course, in such a way that the concept of knowledge could arise prematurely, unjustifiably... . And "concepts" flitted up to shed light on the occurrences, but they were will-o'-the-wisps, souls of desires for knowledge, pathetic, in their evidence meaningless postulates of an unfulfilled form of knowledge. Unknown factors must alternate. Darkness was spread over their nature, occurrences are the veil of the true. ..." Wahle concludes his book, which is intended to present the "legacies" of philosophy to the individual sciences, to theology, physiology, aesthetics and state pedagogy, with the words: "May the time dawn when people will say that philosophy once was."
[ 5 ] Wahle's aforementioned book (like his others: "Geschichtlicher Überblick über die Entwicklung der Philosophie", 1895, "Über den Mechanismus des geistigen Lebens", 1906) is one of the most significant symptoms of the development of worldviews in the nineteenth century. The lack of trust in cognition, which takes Kant as its starting point, ends in complete disbelief in all world views for a world of thought such as that of Wahle.