The Riddle of Humanity
GA 170
21 August 1916, Dornach
Lecture X
What I would like to give you today is a thoroughly undemanding analysis of some recent directions in recent philosophical thinking. I want to take some well-known currents of thought from the surface of recent intellectual life as my point of departure. Later—very soon, if not in the next lecture—we will have time to consider some of the details and the special ramifications of contemporary thought. I would like to describe a certain tendency that is fundamental to some of the most recent of contemporary schools of thought. The whole direction taken by certain schools of thought is marked by the loss of a sense for how to orient oneself in reality, and by the loss of a sense for truth in so far as ‘the truth’ refers to an agreement between our knowledge and something that is objective. Just observe what difficulties the adherents of some recent schools of thought find themselves in when they need to decide whether a judgement about reality—about some aspect of reality or other—is right or wrong. They have difficulty in finding valid epistemological grounds, valid scientific or philosophical grounds, for their decision. There is no trace of a principle or—to use a more scientific expression—of a criterion for deciding whether particular judgements are true judgements; that is, there is no way of deciding whether they have been made with regard for reality. Certain of the old criteria have been lost and it is quite evident that nothing has come along to take their place in recent times.
I would like to take as my point of departure a thinker who died very recently. Initially, the physical sciences were his field. He turned from them to a kind of inductive philosophy in which he attempted to find something to replace the old concepts of truth, the feeling for which has been lost. I am speaking of Ernst Mach. Today I can only give you an outline of his ideas. Ernst Mach was sceptical about all the concepts produced by the thinking that preceded his time-all the thinking up to the last third of the nineteenth century. Although it approached its concepts more or less critically, this earlier thinking still spoke of the world and man under the assumption that man perceives the world through his senses—processes his sense perceptions with the help of concepts, and thereby arrives at certain pictures and ideas about the world. This assumes—and, as I said, I cannot go into all kinds of epistemological considerations today—that the impressions of colour, sound, warmth, pressure, and so on, originate in something objective. It assumes that the impressions are made on our senses by something objective, something objectively out there in external space and, in general, external to our soul life. It assumes that these impressions create sense experiences which then are further digested. And it also assumes that the human I is the true agent which is actively at work in the whole process of knowledge, and forms the basis of the entire life process. This I was acknowledged in one form or another and there was much speculation about it. People said: There exists something which one is justified in seeing as a kind of I. It is active and it is what ultimately shapes sense experiences into concepts and ideas.
Ernst Mach looked around our given world and said, more or less: None of these concepts are justified—neither the concept of subjectivity and of the I which is the subject of knowledge, nor the concept of the object that is the basis of sense impressions. What are we really given? he asked. What does the world really put before us? Fundamentally, all that is given are our sensations. We perceive colours, we perceive sounds, we have sensations of smell, and so on; but beyond these sensations, nothing at all is given to us. If we review the whole world, everything is some [form] of sensation, and beyond the sensations nothing objective is to be found. The entire world around us actually resolves into sensations. The multiplicity of sensations is all that there is. And if we can say that nothing exists beyond sensations, then we cannot say that there is some kind of I active within us. For what is given to us in the sphere of the soul? Again, only sensations. When we observe what is within us, the only thing given is the succession of sensations. These are strung together as on a thread: yesterday we had sensations; today we have sensations; tomorrow we will have sensations. They connect like the links of a chain. But everywhere, nothing is there but sensations; there is no active I. An I only appears to be there because groups of sensations are associated with one another and thus are separated out from the total world of impressions. We call this group of impressions ‘I’. They belong to us and are a part of what we perceived yesterday and the day before yesterday and half a year before that. We have found a group of sensations that belong together, so we use the expression ‘I’ as a common designator to apply to them all. Thus both the I and the object of knowledge fall away; the manifold of sensations is all that a human being can talk about. At first we relate to the world naively but, if we observe reality, all that is really there is a multiplicity of variously-grouped colours, variously-grouped sounds, variously-grouped experiences of temperature, variously-grouped experiences of pressure, and so on. And that is all.
Now along comes science. Science discovers laws. In other words it does not simply describe sensations—here I see this sensation, there I see that sensation, and so on—it discovers laws, laws of nature. Why should men need to establish natural laws if all they ever experience is a multiplicity of sensations? Merely watching the multiplicity of sensations never leads to judgements. It is only when we have more or less achieved laws that we arrive at judgements. What have our Judgements to do with the world of experience, which is really nothing more than a chaotic multiplicity? What guides one in forming judgements? Sensations are all that one has to go on-and Mach maintains that one sensation cannot even be measured against another. If that is so, what is the source of criteria for passing judgements, establishing laws and arriving at the laws of nature? To this Ernst Mach replies that it is merely a matter of economy of thought. By devising certain laws we are enabled to follow particular sensations and hold them together in our thought. What we call a law of nature is a method of associating sensations. It is the method we feel is the most economical for our thinking, the one that requires the least amount of thought.
We see a stone fall to earth. This involves a collection of sensations—one here, one there, and so on—nothing but sensations. The law of weight, of gravitation, gives us a way of combining these sensations. But there is no further reality in the law of gravitation; the sensations are the real content.
But why should we ever think out the law of gravity in the first place? Because we find it convenient: it is economical to have a concise way of referring to a special group of sensations. It gives us a kind of comfortable overview of the world of sensations. And the ways of thinking that we find most comfortable—these are the ones we call laws. What we accept as valid laws are the thoughts that give us the most convenient overview of some group of sensations. Laws provide us with certain useful expressions. Through them we know—so to speak—that when one set of conditions (that is, some collection of sensations) is repeated, then others will again be found to follow them. It is convenient for me to use the law of gravity to gather together the sensations aroused by a falling stone, for then I know: If this is a law, one thing will fall to earth like another. Thus I can think about the future in terms of the past. That is economy of thought. It is the law upon which Ernst Mach says the whole business of science is founded—the law of economy of thought, the law of the application of the least energy, which says that the greatest possible sum of sensations should be thought with the least possible number of thoughts.
You can see that no one will ever arrive at reality in this way. For, collecting together groups of sensations in the most comfortable manner possible serves nothing beyond making one's life more comfortable. The expressions to which one is led by the principle of economy of thought tell one nothing about the real basis of the sensations. The thoughts merely serve to give us a comfortable orientation in the world. The only fundamental reason for a thought is that we find it comfortable; that is why we connect certain sensations as we do. Thus you see that we have here a criterion of truth that quite deliberately tries to avoid establishing any sort of objectivity. Its only purpose is to support man's capacity to orient himself by means of sensations.
Richard Wahle16Richard Wahle (b. 1857): Das ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende. Ihre Vermachtnisse an die Theologie, Aesthetik und Staatspedagogik, Vienna and Leipzig, 1894. was a thinker who based his ideas on similar considerations. Richard Wahle also said: People think that one thing is a cause, that another thing is an effect; that an I lives within us, that objects live outside us. But that is all nonsense. (I use approximately the same expressions as those he used.) In truth, the only things in the world that are known to us are these: that here I see the occurrence of a colour, that there a sound occurs. The world, says Wahle, consists in such occurrences and nothing more. We have already gone too far if we name these occurrences ‘sensations’, as Mach called them, for the word ‘sensation’ already contains the hidden implication that there is someone present who is doing the sensing. But how could one possibly know that the occurrence of which one is presently aware is a sensation? Out there is an occurrence of colour, an occurrence of sound, an occurrence of pressure, an occurrence of warmth; within is an occurrence of pain, an occurrence of joy, an occurrence of repletion, an occurrence of hunger. Or within is an occurrence in which someone thinks, ‘There is a God.’ But nothing more is present there than the occurrence in which someone thinks, ‘There is a God.’ Having the idea that God exists is just like having a pain. Both are only occurrences. Wahle believes, to be sure, that one must distinguish between two kinds of occurrence, the primary ones, and the so-called miniatures: Primary occurrences are those that come with an original sharpness, such as occurrences of colour, occurrences of sound, occurrences of pressure, occurrences of warmth, occurrences of pain, occurrences of joy, occurrences of hunger, occurrences of repletion, and so on. Miniatures are fantasies, intentions and, in short, everything that appears as a shadowy picture of primary occurrences. But when one takes the sum of all primary occurrences and all miniatures, that is all the world has to offer us. Fundamentally, everything else is poetry—it has been written-in without justification. Such is the case, Wahle believes, when, instead of restricting themselves to saying, ‘Three years ago there were certain occurrences, then there were others’, people are blinded by the fact that these occurrences follow one another and make the further assumption that the occurrences are collected together in an I. But where is this I? There is nothing there but occurrences, occurrences that are arranged in sequence, series of occurrences. Nowhere is an I to be found. And then others come along and claim to have discovered laws that connect occurrences, natural laws. But these laws, too, present us with nothing more than series of occurrences. And it is absolutely impossible to come to any decision as to why the series of occurrences are as they are. When men think they know something because they have strung together occurrences in a particular way, that knowledge is just so much folderol. Such knowledge, according to Wahle, is neither valid nor is it especially lofty—it is just a sign that someone has had to think something out because he has had difficulty in relating to his own occurrences. The I is the most curious of all mankind's inventions. For nowhere in the sum total of occurrences is such a thing as an I to be found. Some unknown factors seem to lurk behind the manner in which occurrences follow one another, since it does not seem arbitrary. But—and I am using the words that Wahle would use—it is entirely beyond the capacities of human judgement to ascertain what kind of unknown factors might be at work there. There is nothing one can say about them. All that a human being can know is that occurrences occur and that the factors directing them are unknown. Physics, physiology, biology, sociology—they all falter about in the dark, seeking for the director-in-charge. But this faltering about merely helps us to live with the occurrences. It will never lead us to knowledge about the unknown factors at play in the succession of occurrences. It is human folly, therefore, when people believe they can arrive at a philosophy which teaches us something about why the occurrences are as they are. Humanity has devoted itself to this folly for a time; it is high time they gave it up. One of Wahle's most important books bore the title The End of all Philosophy. Its Legacy to Theology, Physiology, Aesthetics and National Policy (Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende. Ihre Vermachtnisse an die Theologie, Physiologie. Aesthetik und Staatspedagogik). In order to teach about this ‘end of philosophy’, and in order to teach that philosophy is nonsense, Richard Wahle became a professor of philosophy!
Above all else, we can see that a total helplessness regarding the criteria of truth lies at the root of such an approach. All impulse to come to any decisions regarding knowledge has been lost. What this is based on could be characterised in the following way. Imagine someone who has a book which he has been reading for a long time. He has read it again and again and certain information contained in the book has become a part of the way he lives. Then one day he thinks to himself: Yes, here I have this book before me and I have always assumed that it gives me information about certain things. But when I take a really good look at it, the pages contain nothing but letters, letters, and more letters. I have really been an ass to believe that information about things that are not even in the book could somehow flow to me from it. For nothing is there but letters. I have been living in the mad expectation that if I let these letters affect me and if I enter into a relationship with them, they could give me something. But nothing is there but rows of the letters of the alphabet—just letters. So I must finally release myself from the insane notion that these letters describe something, or that they could somehow relate to one another, or that they could group into meaningful words, or such like. That really is a picture of the kind of thinking on which Wahle's non-philosophy, his un-philosophy, is based. For his great discovery consists in this: Men have been foolish asses, he says, to believe that they could read in the book of nature and explain how occurrences are connected! They witness occurrences, but there is nothing there beyond the unconnected occurrences. At the very most, there might be some further, unknown factors at work which are responsible for the special groupings of the letters.
This is how Wahle fails to identify with the impulse to decide about the truth of judgements and to make discoveries about the nature of the world. Human knowledge has lost the power to formulate any criterion of truth. In earlier times one believed in the human capacity to arrive at truths by means of judgements based on inner experience.
This belief has slipped from one's grasp. Hence the way philosophers wander about in this area, philosophising. By way of these two examples I wanted to demonstrate how a criterion of truth and a feeling for one's capacity to produce the truth have been lost.
A contemporary school of thought called Pragmatism demonstrates the loss of the older understanding for a criterion of truth. In Pragmatism you have a large-scale, calculated version of this loss. William James17William James (1842 – 1910): American philosopher and psychologist. is the most prominent, if not the most significant, proponent of Pragmatism. The following is a brief characterisation of the principle of Pragmatism as it has recently appeared.
Men pass judgements and they want them to express something about reality. But no human being can possibly generate anything within himself that will enable him to pass a true judgement about reality. There is nothing in man that, in and of itself, leads to the decision: that is true and the other is false. In other words, there is a feeling that one is powerless to find any original, self-sufficient criterion for whether something is true or false. And yet, because they live in a real world, men feel it is necessary to make judgements. And the sciences are full of judgements. But if one reviews the entire spectrum of the sciences with all their judgements, do they contain anything about anything that is in a higher sense true, true in the sense in which the old schools of philosophy spoke of truth and falsehood? No! According to what William James says, for example, any line of thought which asks whether something is true or false is a totally impossible way of thinking. One makes judgements. If certain judgements are passed, then one can use them to get along in life. They prove to be useful and applicable to living—they enhance one's life. If other judgements were passed, one would soon cease to come to terms with life, one's life would cease to progress. They would not be useful, they would harm life. This applies to even the most unsophisticated judgements. One cannot even say, reasonably, that the sun will rise again in the morning, for no criterion of truth is available. But we have formed the judgement: The sun rises every morning. If someone came along, maintaining that the sun would only rise for the first two thirds of the month, but not during the last third, this judgement would not bring him forward in life; he would run into trouble in the last third of the month. The judgements we form are useful. But there can be no talk of whether they are true or false. All that can be said is that one judgement helps us to get on in the world, enhances life, and that the contrary is the case with another, which gets in the way of life. There is no independent criterion of truth and falsehood: what enhances life we call true, and what hinders life, false. Thus everything to do with the question of whether or not we should pass a certain judgement is reduced to external matters of practical living. None of the impulses one once believed one possessed are valid.
Now, this line of thought is not the arbitrary product of one or the other school. One of the most extraordinary things about the line of thinking I have just described is that it has spread to practically the whole of our earth's intellectual community. It makes its appearance, independently, in one place and then in another, because present-day humanity is organised so as to fall into this way of thinking. The following interesting example demonstrates this. In the 1870s, in America, Pierce18Charles Sanders Pierce (1839 – 1914): American philosopher. wrote the first book about Pragmatic Philosophy. This was taken up by William James and, in England, by Schiller,19F. C. S. Schiller (1864 – 1937): English philosopher. and these and others continued to develop it. Now, at the very same time that Pierce was publishing his initial treatment of the ideas of pragmatic philosophy in America, a German thinker published the book The Philosophy of As If (Philosophie des Als Ob). It was a parallel occurrence. The philosopher in question was Hans Vaihinger.20Hans Vaihinger (1852 – 1933): Philosophie des Als Ob, System der theoreticshen, praktischen und religiosen Fiktionen der Menschheit auf Grund eines idealistischen Positivismus, 2nd edition, Berlin, 1913. What is this Philosophy of As If all about? It begins with the thought that human beings are actually incapable of forming true or false concepts in the way they used to do, although they still persist in forming them. The atom is a well-known example of this. The concept of the atom is, of course, wholly absurd. For our thinking attributes all sorts of qualities to the atom, qualities that will not stand up when, they are put to the test of the senses. And yet sense impressions are thought of as the effects of atomic activity. So the concept is contradictory. It is a concept of something that is totally unobservable. The atom, as Vaihinger says, is a fiction. We create many such fictions. All the higher concepts we form about reality are, fundamentally, fictions of this sort. Since there is no criterion of truth or falsehood, the reasonable man of the present needs to be clear that he is dealing in fictions. One must be fully conscious about making fictions. One must be clear that the atom is nothing but a fiction and that it cannot really exist. But one can observe the various things that are manifest in the world as if they were ruled by the life and movements of atoms—as if. For this fiction is useful. Establishing such fictions makes it possible to connect the appearances in certain ways. The I is also a fiction, but it is a fiction one has to create. For it is much more comfortable to treat the appearances that come together as if an I were active within them than it is to get along without the fiction of the I ... even though one can rest assured that it is a fiction. Thus we live according to fictions. There is no philosophy of reality, only a “Philosophy of As If”. The world humours us by appearing as if it agreed with the fictions we have made about it.
As a whole, in its tendencies and also in the way it presents individual arguments, the philosophy of Pragmatism is very similar to the “Philosophy of As If”. As I said, it was written down during the same period, the 1870s, when Pierce was writing his treatise on ‘Pragmatic Philosophy’. But an objective criterion of truth was still possible for the humanity of the 1870s. They still possessed enough rudiments of the old beliefs for their science not to have to consist of fictions. The 1870s were an awkward time for someone who wanted to become a professor of philosophy to publish a ‘Philosophy of As If’. It was not yet possible to get away with it. So Vaihinger looked for a way out. At first he acted as one has to act (has one not?). He left the Philosophy of As If lying in his desk while he went about his teaching. When the time came, he accepted his pension. Then he published the Philosophy of As If, which has now appeared in numerous editions. I simply tell the story; I am not pointing my finger, I am not judging, I am only telling the story.
So we see that there was a tendency for the old criteria of truth to break down and for truth to be measured against life. Formerly it was believed that life should be shaped in accordance with the truth, so life was put in the service of truth. What one meant by truth in the old sense did not include fictions, not even useful fictions. But, according to the extraordinary definition of the Philosophy of As If, truth is the most comfortable form of error. For, although there is nothing else but error, some errors are more agreeable and others less agreeable. The fact that what we call truths are simply the more agreeable errors is something we must clearly understand.
Thus, an impulse to do away with the concept of truth as it had been understood in older theories of knowledge really has been developing in the more recent schools of thought. One must ask oneself, ‘What is this all about?’ Naturally, there would be much to tell if I were to give you a comprehensive account of the matter. But to begin with we will take only one from among the many possible examples. In recent times, a boundless flood of empirical knowledge has become available to mankind. At the same time, men's thinking has become increasingly powerless. Thinking has lost its sovereignty over this inexhaustible richness of empirical observation and empirical knowledge; it cannot hold them together.
The way in which people have become more and more accustomed to abstract thinking is another factor. One did not think so much in earlier times, but one tried to keep one's thinking connected to the external world and to actual experience. It was felt that thinking needed to be connected with something and that it could not progress if it were wholly isolated. But along with the extensive cultivation of thinking, one has also learned to think abstractly—has become accustomed to abstract thinking and has become fond of it. To this must be added other harmful characteristics of our age, above all, the view that anyone who wants to become even so much as a lecturer must produce some kind of elevated thinking or research, and that those who want to become professors must do something quite immense! A kind of hypertrophy of thinking, so to speak, has been thus created. Thinking is set loose on its own; it begins to arrive at forms of thought that, as such, are merely internally logical. I will show you one of these internally logical thought-forms.
Just picture the following: Here is a mountain. On this mountain (A) a shot is fired. After a while, say two minutes, two more shots are fired. Then, after a further two minutes, three shots are fired.
And now, over here (B) there is someone who is listening. I will not say that he is wounded, but he is listening. What he hears would be, first a single shot, then after a certain period, two shots, and then, after another pause, three shots. But now let us assume that matters are not so simple, with one, two, and then three shots being fired here, and over here someone who hears the shots—first one, then two, then three. Let us assume that someone (C) moves from this mountain (left) towards this other one (right). Assume that he flies at a certain speed and that he moves very fast. You know from elementary physics that sound requires a certain time to get from here (see drawing) to there. Therefore, when a shot is fired here (A), a certain period of time will elapse before it will be heard by a person who is listening over here (B) ... then the sound of the single shot will arrive. Two minutes later, the pair of shots will arrive and, after a further two minutes, the three shots. But let us assume that this other person (C) moves faster than the speed of sound. As he passes this mountain, moving towards the other, he is already moving faster than the speed of sound. The first shot is fired ... then two shots ... then three ... After the three shots have been fired, he arrives at this other mountain and flies on at the same speed until he overtakes the three shots—that is, he flies past the sound of the three shots—flying quickly past them, for he is moving faster. Eventually, the sound of the three shots will arrive here (D). He is flying after them. He hears them as he overtakes them and continues onward, flying towards the two shots that had been fired earlier. These he also hears as he overtakes them. Then he overtakes the single shot and hears it. Therefore, someone who is flying faster than sound would hear the shots in reverse order: three shots ... two shots ... one shot. If one is living in circumstances usual for an ordinary human being on the ordinary earth, and thus has the usual relationship to the speed of sound, one would hear one shot at this point, two shots here, three here. But if one does not behave like an ordinary human being on the ordinary earth, but instead is a being who can fly faster than the speed of sound, one would hear the events in reverse order: three shots, two shots, one shot. All that is required is that one practise the minor skill of chasing after the sounds while flying faster than the sounds of the shots are moving.

Now, this is unquestionably as logical as it could be. There is not the slightest logical objection to be brought against it. Thanks to certain things that have emerged recently in the sciences, the example I have just been describing to you—in which someone flies in pursuit of sounds and hears them in reverse order—has been used to introduce countless lectures. Again and yet again, lectures begin with this so-called example. For this is supposed to demonstrate that the way in which one perceives things is a result of the situation in which one is living. The only reason that we hear as we do, rather than in reverse, is that we move at a snail's pace in comparison with the speed of sound. I cannot describe here all that is derived from this train of thought, but I wanted to acquaint you with it, since for many it is the basis of a widespread, acutely discerning theory, the so-called theory of relativity.
I have only described the most obvious parts to you. But you can see from what I have described that everything here is logical—very, very logical. Now, these days one finds countless judgements—the philosophical literature is teeming with them—all of which are derived from the same assumptions about thought. It is as though thinking has been torn away from reality. One thinks only about certain isolated conditions of reality and then constructs further thoughts from them.
It is scarcely possible to reply to such things, for the naturally expected reply would be a logical reply. But there can be no logical reply. It was for this reason that I introduced a certain idea in my last book, On the Riddles of Humanity (Vom Menschenratsel). This is the idea that if one wants to arrive at the truth, it is not sufficient just to form a logical concept, or a logical idea. There is the further requirement that the concept or idea must be in accordance with reality. Now, a very lengthy discussion would be required if I were to show you that the whole of the theory of relativity does not agree with reality, even though it is logical—wonderfully logical. We could show how the concept that is constructed regarding the series of one, two and three shots is completely logical and that, nevertheless, it is not a concept that would be formed by someone who thinks in accordance with reality. One cannot disprove the theory, one can only refrain from using it! And someone who has understood the criterion of being in accord with reality would refrain from using such concepts.
The empirical phenomena that Lorentz,21Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853 – 1929): Dutch physicist; founder of the theory of electrons. Einstein, and others are trying to understand by means of this theory of relativity must be approached in an entirely different manner, not along the lines in which they and the others are thinking.
What I have been describing to you here is only one current in the ongoing stream of recent thought. Naturally, remnants of earlier thought are always being intermixed with the more recent thinking. But the ultimate and radical consequences of the assumptions on which almost all recent thinking is based are already contained in what I have been describing to you. We can see one distinctive peculiarity. A self-sufficient criterion of truth and falsehood has been lost—or, better said, the feeling for such a criterion has been lost. The resulting emancipation of abstract thinking has led to the formation of concepts which, being logical, are indisputable. In a certain sense they even accord with reality. But they remain merely formal concepts, for they are not suitable for saying something real about reality. They swim on the surface of reality without penetrating to the actual impulses at work in reality.
The following is an example of a theory that stays on the surface of reality and does not want to submerge in reality: Consider how, within the sphere of human reality one can distinguish the mineral realm, the plant realm, the animal realm and the human realm. And men live within a social order, as well—one could call it a sociological order. Perhaps other, higher, orders could be found, but we are not presently concerned with those. Now, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when a materialistic concept of reality held sway, the fashion in which people pictured these superimposed realms was one that must seem simplistic to us. Basically, only the mineral realm was taken into account. One said to oneself: Now, plants consist of the same things that are to be found in the mineral realm; they are simply organised in a more complicated way. The animal realm is again just a matter of further complication, and the human realm is more complicated still ... and so we reach the higher levels. Mind you, when one proceeds further, to the social order, it is no longer possible to discover more complicated atomic movements. Certain patterns of movement correspond to the mineral realm—that is how people pictured things. The movements become more complicated in the plant realm—this one knew, although it was not possible to observe the atoms. Still more complicated movements correspond to the animal realm, and even more complicated ones to the human realm. All was built up in this way. But, of course, when one comes to the social order it is not so easy to continue thinking in terms of atoms, for no atomic movements are there to be observed.
It was left to a thinker of the final third of the nineteenth century to at last accomplish the wonder of reducing sociology to biological concepts. He treated social structures, such as families, like cells. These then group themselves, do they not, into regional communities—or whatever we shall call them?—which are the beginnings of tissues. Then the theory goes further—countries are complete organs ... and so on. The person who created this way of thinking.22Albert Schaffle (1831 – 1903): Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie. Drei Briefe an einen Staatsmann zur Erganzung der ‘Quintessenz des Sozialismus’, Tubingen, 1885. Schaffle then wrote a book Social Democracy's Empty Future. (Die Aussichtslosigkeit der, Sozialdemokratie), which drew on these theories for support. Hermann Bahr,23Hermann Bahr (1863 – 1934): Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herm Schaffle. Drei Breife an einen Volksmann als Antwort auf ‘Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie’, Zurich, 1886. the Viennese writer, was still a young, but very talented, whipper-snapper in those days. He wrote a reply to Schaffle's Social Democracy's Empty Future and called it, Herr Schaffle's Empty lnsights (Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herm Schaffle). This outstandingly-written book has since been forgotten.
Thus, as I was saying, the old materialists conceived of reality in terms of ever more complicated structures. In doing so, they naturally had to introduce certain concepts, concepts, say, about how the movements of the atoms, which in a mineral are fixed, become more labile and seek to achieve a balanced form in plants, and so on. In short, various theories were constructed in which it was attempted to derive one thing from another. Once materialism had been active for long enough, it was possible to think back and see how little fruit it had borne and how poorly its idea of reality had stood up to exacting tests. And so people came to the idea: Yes, to be sure, there is the mineral realm, and after that comes the plant realm. Mineral substance is contained within the plant, and the laws applying to minerals even apply there; the salts and other substances contained in the plant function in accordance with their own physiological-chemical laws. But the plant realm can never arise out of the mineral realm. Something further is required, some creative element. When one proceeds from the mineral realm to the plant realm, something creative has to be added to it. This creative element—the first creative element—works creatively in the realm of the minerals. Then a second creative element manifests itself in the mineral realm and the animal realm arises. So the animal sphere must take hold of the plant and mineral realms. Then a fourth creative element appears and takes hold of the three lower realms—takes them into the human sphere. Then, when we come to the social order, a further creative element again takes hold of the subordinate realms. A veritable hierarchy of creative elements! Of course there is nothing objectionable in the logic of this thinking. As thought, it is correct thought. But you will certainly have to think differently about these matters if you call to mind some of the concepts of spiritual science—concepts which we shall not be discussing today. These reflections remain stuck in abstractions; they never arrive at a concrete picture. Some details are mentioned, of course, but when one sets about thinking in this fashion one is stuck with an abstract concept of creativity. All the thinking remains stuck at the level of abstractions. And yet it is an attempt to use clear, formal thinking to overcome an unadorned materialism. One arrives at something higher, but only as an abstract concept.
Boutroux's24Emile Boutroux (1845 – 1921): French philosopher. philosophy is an attempt to overcome unadorned materialism. He makes use of a formal thinking derived from the unprejudiced observation of the hierarchy of the realms of nature. He seeks the concept of an ascending creative scale in what could be called the hierarchy of the sciences. This leads to interesting conclusions. But the whole attempt remains stuck in abstractions. It is easy to show this by examining the details of Boutroux's philosophy. To begin with, I will only describe the line of thought he takes; perhaps the rest can be introduced later. Here we have an attempt to capture reality by applying abstractions to a more or less superficial observation of reality. But it is not thus to be captured. He does not want a mere ‘Philosophy of As If’, nor does he want to found some sort of mere pragmatism, or to restrict himself to an unreal enumeration of occurrences. But he cannot arrive at the sort of concreteness needed for reading the external world and for discovering what lies behind it. He cannot help us to look at the external world as one looks at the letters in a book to discover what is behind them; he only shows us some abstractions. These are supposed to express what it is that lives in the realms of reality. Whereas it was the criterion of reality that was missing in the other philosophical lines of thought I have been describing, what has been lost here is the power to take hold of reality concretely. One is no longer able to submerge in the inner impulses that are at work in reality, but only to skim along the top.
This shows us another fundamental tendency of modern life. I mentioned that thinking has emancipated itself in a particular way Torn from reality. Once emancipated from reality, it proceeds in abstractions.
If you will observe all the various recent schools of thought, you will perceive how the ability to plunge into reality has been lost. The ability to grasp reality in its true shape is becoming weaker and weaker. For a classic example of this follow the development of thought that leads from Maine de Biran25Francois Pierre Gauthier Maine de Biran (1766 – 1824): French philosopher. to Bergson.26Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941): French philosopher. Whereas Biran, living in the first third of the nineteenth century, still pursued a line of thought whose important psychological concepts enabled him to submerge in the real sphere of the human being, Bergson strikes out on a curious path that is wholly characteristic of the particular tendencies at work in recent thought. Bergson notices, on the one hand, that it is not possible to submerge in an immediate, living reality by means of the usual abstract thinking nor with the help of anything offered by scientific thinking as it is currently practised and as it is embodied in various scientific conclusions. He saw that this thinking is fundamentally unable to connect with reality—that it will always remain more or less on the surface of reality. For this reason he wishes to grasp reality by means of a kind of intuition. At present, I can only give you the broadest outlines of this intuition at the moment. It is an inner mode of experience; it contrasts with an approach which tries to capture reality in external structures of its own devising. This leads Bergson to some odd conclusions regarding the theory of knowledge and psychology. I will omit the intermediate steps and proceed to the summit from whence he points to the materialistic view that memories and other higher manifestations of soul life—manifestations involving complicated inner forms or movements—are dependent on structures in the brain. He says, to the contrary, that the shaping of these complicated forms has nothing at all to do with the purpose of the brain. What happens, rather, is that the soul acts and comes into relationships with reality which are then expressed in sensations, perceptions, in practical engagement with life, and in the way we move our body. These things are beyond the reach of abstract thinking and must be grasped by intuition, by inner experience. The function of the inner structures that are dependent on the brain extends no further than to their effects on perception and on the promotion and arrangement of life. Memory is not the result of formations in the brain; memory functions with an intensity that is independent of the brain.
This is an attempt to overcome a materialistic concept of knowledge. It is a curious attempt in that what it brings to light is the opposite of reality. For memory depends precisely upon the support of the physical body, the physical brain and the whole physical system.
Memory could never be established in the soul life if the soul were not able to extend its development into the physical body and establish within it the things necessary for exercising the faculty—the ability—to remember. So here we have a theory in which the drive to overcome materialism leads to conclusions that are precisely the opposite of the right ones. The truth of the matter is that memory needs to be annexed to the soul—it is among the capacities that the human soul needs to acquire. Therefore, memory, with the help of the physical body, needs to be annexed to the soul. But Bergson arrives at a contrary view—the view that the physical body does not participate in the development of memory. I am not describing these things in order to say something in particular about Bergsonian philosophy, but merely to show you this curious manifestation in contemporary thinking. Proceeding in an entirely logical fashion, one arrives at the opposite of what is correct.
We could start, therefore, with those more epistemologically orientated philosophies which speak of the inability to arrive at a criterion of truth and falsehood, and then proceed to the philosophies that are more concerned to arrive at the truth. What we would find, throughout, is that they all arrive at exactly the wrong conclusions because of their helplessness in dealing with the truth. Thus does contemporary thinking lean towards the very things that are incorrect and false. This phenomenon is connected with the way in which mankind has developed a tendency towards abstractions and an ability to work with abstractions, for this has made man a stranger to reality. Mankind is detached from reality and cannot finds its way back into reality. You can read about this in detail in my book, The Riddles of Philosophy (Die Ratsel der Philosophie). If one separates oneself from reality and lives in abstractions, the way back to reality is not to be found. But a counter-tendency is beginning to make itself felt. People are beginning to discover in themselves a kind of longing for spiritual concepts. But the helplessness persists; there is still an inability to arrive at the spirit. Significant and instructive things are to be observed happening in contemporary attempts to find a path that leads out of this absolute helplessness, a path leading to spiritual truths. And we have just looked at an example in which thinking that has been emancipated from reality seeks for the truth and arrives at the opposite of the truth.
The philosophy of Eucken27Rudolf Eucken (1846 – 1926): German philosopher. is a characteristic example of someone who is seeking for the spirit without having the slightest ability to grasp even so much as the shirt-tail of anything spiritual. Although Eucken speaks of nothing but the spirit, he does so only in words. He never actually says anything about the spirit. Because his words are wholly incapable of capturing anything truly spiritual, he speaks unceasingly of the spirit. He has already written countless books. To read through his books is a genuine torture, for they all say the same thing. There you will always find ... that one must discover how to grasp one's own being with thinking that exists in itself, that takes hold of itself without any dependence on anything external or on any external resistance, that beholds itself within itself, that proceeds entirely within itself and in so doing enters into itself and then recreates itself from out of itself. If you hear Eucken deliver a series of lectures about Greek philosophy, or read one of his books about it, you will find the development of Greek philosophy presented in this manner: At first thinking tries a little to take hold of itself, but it cannot yet do so ... Or you can hear how Paracelsus is gradually beginning to take hold of the inner world ... Or you can read a book about the development of Christianity-everywhere you will find the same things; everywhere the same! Yet our modern philistines find this philosophy so infinitely important; they rejoice to hear someone speaking about the spirit and theorising about the spirit as long as they are not required to know anything about the spirit or to actually enter into anything spiritual. This is why many say that Eucken's philosophy is the reawakening of Idealism, the reawakening of the life of the spirit, and is the right philosophy for creating a cultural ferment that will again enliven today's deathly, exhausted spiritual life, and so on. And yet anyone who has a feeling for what pulses, or ought to pulse, through a philosophy, and who reads or listens to Eucken, will have the lively impression that he is supposed to take hold of his own hair and drag himself into the heights, and then drag himself higher still, and higher still again. For such is the self-consistent logic of Eucken's philosophy. I have tried to give a totally objective account of these things in my Riddles of Philosophy. Anyone is capable of saying what I have just said, for it is not necessary to embark on critical analysis—merely acquainting oneself with the concepts as they are is enough.
Thus we see how certain contemporary streams of thought flow from a helplessness in the face of truth; we see how it is even possible to construct philosophies out of such helplessness in the face of reality. If one were not concerned about life, this might not seem so terrible. But terrible it is. And now and again it is necessary to enter into what lives and weaves in contemporary intellectual life in order to develop a feeling for what might overcome these things.
I have only described to you a few of the currents of thought that have been important to the intellectual life in the most varied places, places where philosophical views of the world are presented in lectures and are taught. Over the last years, the various streams of thought have been developing similar tendencies, so that a common structure of thought exists overall. I touched on this when I showed you how the ‘Philosophy of As If’ and Pragmatism arose at the same time, independently of one another.
But the thinkers have also borrowed various things from one another. The exchange of thoughts is always an active business. Vaihinger was wholly independent of Pierce; the two, one in Germany, the other over there in America, arrived at this approach to life independently of one another. Indeed, one finds many such echoes between personalities in one culture and personalities in another. Only by observing these in detail does one obtain a true picture of what is really going on in the spiritual life. And an unbelievable amount is written and thought and considered along these lines today, but the speculations pay no attention, to some of the simplest of things. Certain connections are ignored because the present day has not preserved a sense for reality. And this sense for reality is something that must be learned. As a sort of appendix to today's lecture let me state: This sense for reality is a thing that has to be learned.
If I may be allowed to mention something personal, I should like to say that I have always attempted—even in external scientific matters—to develop the sense for reality, the sense for how to keep on the trail of reality. This consists not only in being able to judge what is really there, but also in being able to find ways of applying real measures and real comparisons to reality. Perhaps you are acquainted with the so-called doctrine of the eternal return—the return of the same things—that is to be found in Nietzsche. According to this doctrine, we have already sat together countless times before in just the way we are sitting now. And we will sit together in this way countless times again. This is not a doctrine of reincarnation, but a doctrine about the repetition of the same things. At the moment I am not concerned to criticise the doctrine of the eternal return. This doctrine of eternal return is derived from a quite definite picture of how the world was formed. Out of this other, prior, view of the world Nietzsche developed some impossible ideas.
I was once present with other scholars at the Nietzsche Archive. The doctrine of the eternal return was being discussed and people were interested to know how Nietzsche might have arrived at this idea. Now, just think of the marvellous possibilities there! Anyone who is acquainted with academic circumstances will see what beautiful opportunities there are for writing the greatest possible number of dissertations and books about how Nietzsche originally came upon the idea of the doctrine of the eternal return. Naturally, one can come up with the boldest of theories to explain it. One can find all kinds of things; one only has to look for them. After the discussion had gone on for a while, I said to the gathering: Nietzsche often arrived at an idea by formulating the contradictory of some idea he encountered in another person. Thus I was trying to approach his ideas realistically. To my knowledge, I said, the contrary of this idea of his is to be found in another philosopher, Duhring, who said that the original configuration of the earth made it impossible that anything should ever repeat itself. And I said that, to the best of my knowledge, Nietzsche had read Duhring. So I suggested that the simplest thing would be to go into Nietzsche's library, which has been preserved, take down the books by Duhring, and look at the passages where the counter-theory is to be found. We then went to his library and located the books. We found them the relevant passages—with which I was quite familiar—and found heavy markings in Nietzsche's own hand and some characteristic words. When he came to passages where he intended to formulate a contradictory idea—I am no longer sure exactly which word he used in this particular case—Nietzsche would write something like ‘ass’ or ‘nonsense’ or ‘meaningless’. There was such a characteristic word written in the margin at this place. Thus the idea for ‘the doctrine of the eternal return’ was born in Nietzsche's spirit when he read this passage and formulated the contradictory idea! Here it was just a matter of looking in the right place. For when he met certain ideas, Nietzsche really did tend to formulate the contradictory idea.
Here we have another characteristic manifestation of the powerlessness of the modern criterion of reality. I have been showing you some of the things that originate in this powerlessness. We have another example in this use of contradiction to confront a stated truth or a pre-existing judgement when one is unable to arrive at any independent criterion of truth of one's own. But one must not generalise about such things. It would naturally be absurd to take this example and come to the abstract judgement that Nietzsche arrived at his entire philosophy in this manner, for at times he was entirely positive and simply extended an idea while remaining completely faithful to its original spirit. This, for example, is how the whole of what we encounter in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Bose) came into being. This can be demonstrated in all particulars. Once again, all one has to do is go to Nietzsche's library. There one will find a book on morality by Guyau.28Marie Jean Guyau (1854 – 1888): French poet and philosopher. Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction, Paris, 1884. Read all the passages where Nietzsche has made notes in the margins—you can then find them again, summarised, in Beyond Good and Evil. Beyond Good and Evil is already contained in Guyau's treatment of morality. These days it is necessary to pay attention to such connections. Otherwise one can arrive at entirely false impressions about what kind of person this or that thinker was.
Today I wanted to share with you some perspectives on the modern intellectual life. I have restricted myself to what is most familiar and straightforward. If circumstances permit, we can return to these matters in the near future and examine them in greater detail.
Zehnter Vortrag
Was ich heute geben will, soll eine ganz anspruchslose Auseinandersetzung sein über einige in der neueren Zeit heraufgekommene philosophische Gedankenrichtungen. Ich werde an sehr bekannte Gedankenrichtungen anknüpfen, sozusagen an die an der Oberfläche des Gedankenlebens der letzten Zeit sich befindlichen. Später, in der nächsten oder in der allernächsten Zeit, können wir uns ja einmal auf Einzelheiten und spezielle Ausgestaltungen gegenwärtiger Gedanken einlassen. Ich möchte einen gewissen Grundzug in einigen Gedankenrichtungen der Gegenwart, der jüngsten Zeit, charakterisieren. Dieser Grundzug besteht darin, daß die ganze Richtung gewisser Gedankenströmungen uns zeigt, man könnte sagen, ein Abhandenkommen eines Orientierungsgefühles für die Wirklichkeit, für die Wahrheit, insofern man die Zusammenstimmung unserer Erkenntnisse mit einem Objektiven «die Wahrheit» nennen kann. Man merkt gewissen Gedankenströmungen der jüngsten Zeit an, daß sich die Denker so schwer zurechtfinden, wenn sie aus erkenntnistheoretischen Gründen heraus, aus Gründen heraus, die sie philosophisch oder wissenschaftlich gelten lassen können, eine Entscheidung treffen sollen darüber, ob ein Urteil über die Wirklichkeit, diese oder jene Form der Wirklichkeit richtig oder unrichtig ist. Es ist nicht in dem Denken ein Prinzip oder — wenn ich mich wissenschaftlich ausdrücken sollte — ein Kriterium zu verspüren, das den Impuls darstellte, sich zu entscheiden bei gewissen Urteilen, ob sie wahre Urteile, das heißt auf Wirklichkeit bezügliche Urteile sind. Gewisse ältere Kriterien sind abhanden gekommen. Und das ist deutlich zu merken, daß an die Stelle dieser alten Wahrheitskriterien eigentlich nichts Rechtes tritt in der letzten Zeit.
Ich möchte dabei ausgehen von einem in der allerjüngsten Zeit verstorbenen Denker, der von physikalischen Studien ausgegangen ist und sich dann einer Art induktiver Philosophie zugewendet hat, und der versucht hat, etwas zu setzen an die Stelle der alten Wahrheitsbegriffe, für die allmählich das Gefühl verlorengegangen ist. Ich meine Ernst Mach zunächst. Ernst Mach - ich kann nur Grundlinien der Begriffe heute anführen - ist skeptisch gegenüber allen Begriffen, welche das vorhergehende Denken, das Denken bis in das letzte Drittel des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts hinein, hervorgebracht hat. Dieses Denken sprach ja, indem es mehr oder weniger kritisch sich zu diesen Begriffen verhält, sie mehr oder weniger ausarbeitete, doch so über die Welt und den Menschen, daß man annahm: Der Mensch nimmt durch seine Sinne die Welt wahr, verarbeitet die Sinnesempfindungen durch Begriffe und kommt dann zu gewissen Vorstellungen, zu Ideen über die Welt. Dabei setzt man voraus — wie gesagt, auf allerlei weitere erkenntnistheoretische Dinge kann ich mich heute nicht einlassen -, daß dasjenige, was empfunden wird: Farben, Töne, Wärme, Druckempfindungen und so weiter, herkommt von irgendeiner Objektivität, von irgend etwas Objektivem, das sich draußen im Raum oder überhaupt draußen außerhalb unseres Seelischen befindet, durch die Sinne einen Eindruck macht, welcher Eindruck dann Sinnesempfindung ist, welche Sinnesempfindung dann wieder weiterverarbeitet wird. Und als das Agens, das eigentlich Tätige, das Aktive in diesem ganzen Erkenntnisprozeß, der nun wiederum zugrunde liegt dem ganzen Lebensprozeß, sah man das Ich des Menschen an, über das man ja viel spekulierte, theoretisierte, das man aber in der einen oder in der anderen Form so gelten ließ, daß man sagte: Es gibt eben so etwas, das man berechtigt ist, als eine Art Ich anzusehen, das aktiv ist und das die verschiedenen Sinnesempfindungen zuletzt zu Begriffen, Ideen formt.
Ernst Mach sieht sich gewissermaßen um in unserer gegebenen Welt und sagt: Alle diese Begriffe — vom Ich, also von dem Erkenntnissubjekt, von der Subjektivität; von dem Objekt, das den Sinnesempfindungen zugrunde liegt -, alle diese Begriffe sind eigentlich unberechtigt. Er sagt: Was haben wir eigentlich gegeben? Was ist eigentlich vorliegend in der Welt? Nur Empfindungen sind im Grunde genommen vorliegend. Wir nehmen Farben wahr, wir nehmen Töne wahr, wir nehmen Geruchsempfindungen wahr und so weiter; aber irgend etwas außerhalb dieser Empfindungen ist uns ja gar nicht gegeben. Wenn wir richtig Umschau halten in der Welt, so ist alles irgendwie Empfindung, und jenseits der Empfindungen findet man nirgends ein Objektives. Alle Welt, die uns vorliegt, löst sich eigentlich auf in Empfindungen. Alles sind nur mannigfaltige Empfindungen. Und wenn wir so sagen können: Nichts ist da außer Empfindungen - so kann man auch nicht sagen: Da drinnen in uns ist ein besonderes Ich, ein Aktives. Denn was ist uns denn in unserer Seele gegeben? Wiederum nur Empfindungen. Wenn wir da hineinschauen in uns, ist uns nur ein Verlauf von Empfindungen gegeben; diese Empfindungen sind gleichsam an einem Faden aufgerollt: gestern haben wir Empfindungen gehabt, heute haben wir Empfindungen, morgen werden wir Empfindungen haben. Die gliedern sich so zusammen wie die Kettenglieder. Aber überall nur Empfindung; nirgends ein aktives Ich. Es ist nur ein Schein von einem Ich da, weil aus der allgemeinen Empfindungswelt eine Gruppe von Empfindungen herausgeholt wird, die sich zusammengruppieren. Und diese Gruppierungen nennen wir Ich, sie gehören uns, sie gehören zu dem, was wir gestern und vorgestern und vor einem halben Jahre wahrgenommen haben. Weil wir solch eine Gruppe von zusammengehörenden Empfindungen finden, bezeichnen wir sie mit dem gemeinsamen Worte «Ich». — Also das Ich fällt auch weg, das Erkenntnisobjekt fällt auch weg, alles, wovon der Mensch sprechen kann, ist nur eine Mannigfaltigkeit von Empfindungen. Stehen wir also zunächst naiv der Welt gegenüber, betrachten wir das Wirkliche, so ist wirklich eine unendliche Mannigfaltigkeit verschieden gruppierter Farben, verschieden gruppierter Töne, verschieden gruppierter Temperaturempfindungen, verschieden gruppierter Druckempfindungen und so weiter vorhanden; aber das ist alles.
Nun kommt aber auch die Wissenschaft. Die Wissenschaft findet Gesetze. Das heißt, sie beschreibt nicht einfach: Ich sehe hier diese Empfindung, ich sehe dort jene Empfindung und so weiter, sondern sie findet Gesetze, Naturgesetze. Was nötigt denn den Menschen, Naturgesetze aufzustellen, da er doch nur eine Mannigfaltigkeit von Empfindungen hat? Bloß hinzuschauen auf die Mannigfaltigkeit der Empfindungen gibt kein Urteil. Erst indem wir mehr oder weniger zu Gesetzen aufsteigen, kommen wir zum Urteil. Was wollen wir denn eigentlich mit dem Urteil in der Empfindungswelt, die doch eigentlich nur eine chaotische Mannigfaltigkeit ist? Wonach richtet man sich denn, indem man Urteile bildet? Ja, wenn nichts da ist als nur Empfindungen —- man kann doch nicht, meint Mach, eine Empfindung an der anderen messen. Also, was gibt denn ein Kriterium her, Urteile zu bilden, Gesetze aufzustellen, zu Naturgesetzen zu kommen? — Da sagt Ernst Mach: lediglich die Denkökonomie führt dazu. Wenn wir gewisse Gesetze ausdenken, so können wir an der Hand dieser Gesetze gewisse Empfindungen verfolgen, zusammenhalten gleichsam im Denken. Und wenn wir fühlen, daß wir bei irgendeiner Art, die Empfindungen zusammenzuhalten, mit dem kleinsten Maß des Denkens messen können, am Ökonomischsten denken, so nennen wir das ein Naturgesetz. Wir sehen, daß ein Stein zur Erde fällt. Es ist eine Summe von Empfindungen, hier eine Empfindung, dort eine Empfindung und so weiter — lauter Empfindungen. Wir fassen das zusammen unter dem Gesetz der Schwere, der Gravitation. Aber das Gesetz der Schwere ist weiter keine Wirklichkeit, denn Wirklichkeit sind nur die Empfindungen. Also warum denken wir dann überhaupt das Gesetz der Schwere aus? Weil es unsbequem ist; es ist denkökonomisch, einegewisse Gruppe von Empfindungen mit einem kurzen Ausdruck zusammenzufassen. Wir gewinnen dadurch gewissermaßen einen bequemen Überblick über die Empfindungswelt. Und dasjenige Gedachte, was uns den bequemsten Überblick über irgendeine Gruppe von Empfindungen gibt, so daß wir diesen Ausdruck gebrauchen können, indem wir gewissermaßen wissen, wenn wir den Ausdruck haben und gewisse Bedingungen wiederum hergestellt sind, das heißt, gewisse Empfindungen wieder auftreten werden, dann werden in ihrer Folge wieder andere auftreten — das gilt uns als Gesetz. Wenn ich die Empfindungen, die hervorgerufen werden durch einen fallenden Stein, in das Gesetz der Schwere zusammenfasse, so ist das für mich bequem, denn ich weiß: wenn ich dieses Gesetz habe, dann wird einer auf die Erde fallen wie ein anderer. Ich kann also von der Vergangenheit in die Zukunft herein denken. Es ist Denkökonomie. Das Gesetz der Denkökonomie, das Gesetz des kleinsten Kraftmaßes, das heißt, mit der kleinsten Summe von Gedanken die größte Zahl von Empfindungen zu umfassen, das ist dasjenige, was Ernst Mach zugrunde legt dem ganzen wissenschaftlichen Betrieb.
Sie sehen daraus: Zu etwas Wirklichem kommt man dadurch nicht. Denn dadurch, daß man in der bequemsten Weise Gruppen von Empfindungen zusammenfaßt, dient man nur der eigenen Bequemlichkeit des Lebens. Aber das, was man als Ausdrücke bekommt durch das Prinzip der Denkökonomie, das sagt nichts aus über das, was den Empfindungen zugrunde liegt. Es ist nur zu unserer eigenen bequemsten Orientierung in der Welt. Es ist nur, weil wir es im Grunde genommen so bequem finden; deshalb fassen wir die Empfindungen in einer gewissen Weise zusammen. Sie sehen also, hier handelt es sich um ein Wahrheitskriterium, das ganz absichtlich absieht davon, zu irgendeiner Objektivität zu kommen, das kein anderes Ziel verfolgt, als dem ‚menschlichen Orientierungsvermögen durch die Empfindung hindurch zu dienen.
Ein Denker, der auf ähnlichen Erwägungen seine Ideen aufgebaut hat, ist Richard Wahle. Richard Wahle sagt auch: Da reden die Menschen davon, das eine ist Ursache, das andere ist Wirkung; da lebe im Innern ein Ich, draußen leben Objekte. Aber das ist alles Unsinn — ich gebrauche ungefähr die Ausdrücke, die er auch gebraucht -, in Wahrheit ist uns nichts in der Welt vorliegend, als: wir sehen da ein Farbenvorkommnis, da ein Tonvorkommnis; die Welt besteht nur, wie Wahle sagt, aus Vorkommnissen. Wenn wir diese Vorkommnisse Empfindung nennen, wie das Mach tut, so gehen wir eigentlich schon zu weit; denn in dem Worte «Empfindung» liegt schon eine geheime Hindeutung, daß jemand da ist, der empfindet. Aber woher soll man denn wissen, daß das, was als Vorkommnis auftritt, eine Empfindung ist? Vorkommnisse sind da. Da draußen ist ein Farbenvorkommnis, ein Tonvorkommnis, ein Druckvorkommnis, ein Wärmevorkommnis; da drinnen ist ein Schmerzvorkommnis, ein Freudenvorkommnis, da ist das Vorkommnis der Sättigung, das Vorkommnis des Hungers, da ist das Vorkommnis, daß sich einer vorstellt: einen Gott gebe es. Aber es liegt eigentlich nichts vor, als daß einer sich vorstellt: einen Gott gibt es. So wie einer einen Schmerz hat, so stellt er sich vor: einen Gott gibt es. Alles ist nur Vorkommnis. Zwar meint Wahle, man muß unterscheiden zwischen zweierlei Arten von Vorkommnissen, den primären Vorkommnissen und den sogenannten Miniaturen. Die primären Vorkommnisse, das sind diejenigen, die mit ihrer ursprünglichen Schärfe auftreten, Farbenvorkommnisse, Tonvorkommnisse, Druckvorkommnisse, Wärmevorkommnisse, Schmerzvorkommnisse, Freudenvorkommnisse, Hungervorkommnisse, Sättigungsvorkommnisse und so weiter. Miniaturen sind Phantasiebilder, Absichten, kurz, alles dasjenige, was wie in Abschattung, wie in Schattenbildern der primären Vorkommnisse auftritt. Aber wenn man die Summe aller primären Vorkommnisse und aller sekundären Vorkommnisse, der sogenannten Miniaturen, nimmt, dann hat man auch alles, was die Welt uns bietet. Alles übrige ist im Grunde genommen hinzugedichtet, ohne Berechtigung hinzugedichtet. Da, meint Wahle, sagen sich die Menschen: Vor drei Jahren sind diese Vorkommnisse dagewesen, dann sind die anderen Vorkommnisse gekommen, und weil gewisse Vorkommnisse so aufeinanderfolgen, so blendet das die Menschen, und sie fassen das zusammen als ein Ich. Aber wo ist ein solches Ich? Vorkommnisse sind nur da, die aneinandergereiht sind, Reihen von Vorkommnissen. Aber nirgends ist ein Ich da. Und dann kommen die Menschen und sagen, sie hätten Gesetze gefunden, welche diese Vorkommnisse verbinden — Naturgesetze. Aber diese Gesetze stellen auch nichts anderes dar, als daß sie Vorkommnisse aneinanderreihen. Und warum sie sich so aneinanderreihen, darüber etwas zu entscheiden, das ist schlechterdings unmöglich. Und wenn die Menschen das Wissen nennen, wenn sie die Vorkommnisse in einer gewissen Weise auffädeln, so ist dieses Wissen eben Firlefanzerei. Dieses Wissen, meint Wahle, sei weder etwas Gültiges noch etwas besonders Erhabenes, sondern es stellt nur dar, daß der Mensch eigentlich nicht recht die Möglichkeit findet, sich zu seinen Vorkommnissen in ein Verhältnis zu setzen und sich etwas ausdenkt. Das Ich ist die kurioseste Erfindung. Denn nirgends ist in der Summe der Vorkommnisse so etwas wie ein Ich wirklich aufzufinden. So wie die Vorkommnisse aufeinander folgen, muß man annehmen, daß unbekannte Faktoren im Spiele sind; denn es scheint, daß die Vorkommnisse nicht willkürlich aufeinander folgen. Aber was für unbekannte Faktoren - ich gebrauche dieselben Worte, die Wahle gebraucht — im Spiele sind, das entzieht sich vollkommen der menschlichen Beurteilung, darüber kann man überhaupt nichts aussagen. Alles, was der Mensch wissen kann, ist, daß Vorkommnisse vorhanden sind, und daß diese Vorkommnisse dirigiert werden von ganz unbekannten Faktoren. An der Direktion tappen Physik, Physiologie, Biologie, Soziologie herum. Aber das ist eben nur ein Herumtappen, so daß man mit den Vorkommnissen leben kann. Das führt niemals dazu, über die im Spiele befindlichen unbekannten Faktoren etwas zu wissen. Daher ist alle Meinung, daß man zu einer Philosophie kommen könnte, die etwas enthielte über die Gründe, warum die Vorkommnisse so und so auftreten, ein menschlicher Wahnsinn, dem sich die Menschheit eine Zeitlang hingegeben hat und demgegenüber es hoch an der Zeit ist, ihn aufzugeben. — Eines der wichtigsten Bücher von Richard Wahle heißt: «Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende. Ihre Vermächtnisse an die Theologie, Physiologie, Ästhetik und Staatspädagogik.» Um dieses Ende der Philosophie zu lehren, um zu lehren, daß die Philosophie ein Wahnsinn ist, ist Richard Wahle Professor der Philosophie geworden!
Wir sehen, daß vor allen Dingen solchen Erwägungen zugrunde liegt eine vollständige Ohnmacht gegenüber Wahrheitskriterien. Man empfindet keinen Impuls mehr, eine Entscheidung in der Erkenntnis herbeizuführen. Was zugrunde liegt, könnte man etwa in der folgenden Weise charakterisieren. Denken Sie sich, jemand hat ein Buch und hat darinnen lange gelesen; immer wieder liest er und immer wieder liest er und lebt der Anschauung, daß er durch dieses Buch Mitteilungen empfangen hat über gewisse Dinge, über die das Buch eben Mitteilungen enthält. Nun überlegt er sich einmal: Ja, da liegt nun dieses Buch vor mir, da habe ich mir immer eingebildet, durch dieses Buch habe ich Mitteilungen über das oder jenes; aber wenn ich dieses Buch so recht ansehe: da sind immer auf den Seiten nur Buchstaben, Buchstaben, Buchstaben. Ich bin also eigentlich ein Esel gewesen, daß ich geglaubt habe, aus diesem Buche können mir Mitteilungen über allerlei Dinge, die gar nicht in dem Buch drinnen sind, zufließen, denn es sind ja doch nur Buchstaben. Ich habe immer nur in dem Wahn gelebt, diese Buchstaben so auf mich wirken zu lassen, in Wechselwirkungen, daß sie mir etwas geben sollen; aber Buchstaben sind immer nur da, folgen immer nur aufeinander — Lettern. Also muß man endlich sich von dem Wahn befreien, daß diese Buchstaben irgend etwas beschreiben, daß sie sich irgendwie aufeinander beziehen könnten, sich gruppieren könnten zu bedeutsamen Worten oder dergleichen. - Es ist wirklich ein Bild, das man gebrauchen kann für die Art des Denkens, die dieser Wahleschen Nichtphilosophie, Unphilosophie zugrunde liegt. Denn seine große Entdeckung besteht darinnen, daß er sagt: Die Menschen haben bisher geglaubt, sie sehen Vorkommnisse; aber die Vorkommnisse deuten sie in ihrem Zusammenhange, sie lesen gleichsam die Natur. Aber wie törichte Esel waren doch die Menschen! Es gibt ja nur unzusammenhängende Vorkommnisse, und höchstens sind noch unbekannte Faktoren im Spiele, wie vielleicht etwas Unbekanntes im Spiele ist, was nun die Buchstaben so sonderbar gruppiert.
Also das Sich-Hineinleben in den Impuls fehlt, in den Impuls, eine Entscheidung zu treffen über den Wahrheitswert eines Urteils, das eben gewonnen wird auf Grundlage der Welt. Ohnmächtig ist die menschliche Erkenntnis geworden in bezug auf ein Wahrheitskriterium. In älteren Zeiten hat man geglaubt, der Mensch habe in sich so etwas wie die Fähigkeit, aus dem inneren Erleben desjenigen, was im Urteile ist, zu Wahrheiten zu kommen. Das konnte man nicht festhalten. Und so philosophiert man in einer solchen Richtung herum. - Ich wollte gerade durch diese zwei Beispiele klarmachen dieses Abhandenkommen des Wahrheitskriteriums, dieses Sich-nicht-mehr-drinnenstehend-Fühlen in der Erzeugung der Wahrheit.
In groß angelegter Weise sehen wir dieses Abhandenkommen eines im alten Stile zu nehmenden Wahrheitskriteriums bei derjenigen Denkrichtung der Gegenwart, die man als Pragmatismus bezeichnet. Und wenn auch vielleicht nicht der bedeutendste, so ist doch der bekannteste Vertreter des Pragmatismus William James. Wenn wir uns in Kürze das Prinzip des Pragmatismus klarmachen wollen, wie er in der jüngsten Zeit aufgetreten ist, so kann man ihn annähernd auch etwa in der folgenden Weise charakterisieren.
Die Menschen fällen Urteile, durch die sie etwas aussagen wollen über die Wirklichkeit. Allein der Mensch hat keine Möglichkeit, in sich etwas aufzutreiben, das ihn dazu bringen könnte, über die Wirklichkeit ein wahres Urteil zu fällen. Es gibt nicht so etwas im Menschen, was entscheiden würde, für sich entscheiden würde, an sich entscheiden würde: das ist wahr, das ist falsch. - Also man fühlt sich ohnmächtig, ein ursprüngliches, an sich bestehendes Kriterium darüber zu finden, ob dies wahr, ob dies falsch ist. Dennoch fühlt sich der Mensch gezwungen, indem er in der Wirklichkeit lebt, Urteile zu fällen. Und die Wissenschaften sind ja voller Urteile. Wenn man nun den ganzen Umfang der Wissenschaften ansieht mit allen ihren Urteilen — sagen sie etwas aus über irgend etwas, was in einem höheren Sinne, im Sinne der alten Philosophenschulmeinungen wahr oder falsch ist? Nein! Das ist überhaupt im Sinne zum Beispiel von William James eine ganz unmögliche Denkweise, sich zu fragen, ob an sich irgend etwas wahr oder falsch sein kann. Man fällt Urteile. Wenn man gewisse Urteile fällt, so kann man mit diesen Urteilen leben. Sie erweisen sich als nützlich und anwendbar im Leben, als das Leben fördernd. Würde man andere Urteile fällen, so würde man bald mit dem Leben nicht zurechtkommen, würde man nicht vorwärtskommen im Leben. Sie wären unnützlich, lebensschädigend. Selbst für die gröbsten Urteile kann man das anwenden. Man kann nicht einmal vernünftigerweise sagen, morgen werde wieder die Sonne aufgehen; denn ein Wahrheitskriterium gibt es gar nicht. Aber wir haben uns einmal das Urteil gebildet: Jeden Morgen geht die Sonne auf. - Wenn einer kommen wollte und würde sagen: Nur die zwei Drittel vom Monat geht die Sonne auf und im letzten Drittel nicht mehr, - so würde er mit diesem Urteile im Leben nicht vorwärtskommen, denn er würde immer anstoßen im letzten Drittel des Monats. Das Urteil, das wir uns bilden, ist nützlich. Aber von wahr oder falsch kann nicht in einem anderen Sinne die Rede sein, als daß ein Urteil uns durch die Welt durchführt, daß es das Leben fördert, und daß ein anderes Urteil, das ein entgegengesetztes ist, das Leben schädigt. Es gibt nicht ein an sich bestehendes Kriterium für wahr und falsch, sondern das Leben-Fördernde nennen wir wahr, das Leben-Schädigende nennen wir falsch. - Da ist also alles hinausgetrieben in die Lebenspraxis, was entscheiden soll darüber, ob wir ein Urteil fällen oder nicht. Und alle die Impulse, die man früher geglaubt hat zu besitzen, die werden nicht gelten gelassen.
Solch eine Denkrichtung ist nun nicht etwa das willkürliche Erzeugnis eines einzelnen oder einer Schule. Sondern das Eigentümliche gerade solcher Denkrichtungen, wie ich sie heute anführte, ist, daß sie fast über das Ganze der, sagen wir, denkerischen Erdenkultur ausgebreitet sind, daß sie wie unabhängig voneinander da und dort auftreten, weil die Menschheit der Gegenwart darauf hinorganisiert ist, in solche Denkrichtungen hineinzukommen. Es liegt zum Beispiel folgende interessante Erscheinung vor. Während Peirce in Amerika in den siebziger Jahren das erste Buch geschrieben hat über «pragmatische Philosophie», die dann bei William James, in England bei Schiller und bei anderen immer mehr ausgebildet worden ist, während also Peirce in Amerika seine erste Abhandlung über die pragmatische Philosophie hat erscheinen lassen, die in dieser Gedankenrichtung liegt, schrieb ein Denker in Deutschland seine «Philosophie des Als Ob». Das ist also eine Parallelerscheinung. Vaihinger heißt der Betreffende, der die «Philosophie des Als Ob» dazumal geschrieben hat. Was will diese «Philosophie des Als Ob»? Sie geht von dem Gedanken aus, daß der Mensch eigentlich unfähig ist, im alten Sinn wahre oder falsche Ideen oder Begriffe zu bilden, aber doch Ideen und Begriffe bildet, so zum Beispiel — nehmen wir einen bekannten Begriff — den des Atoms. Das Atom ist natürlich ein ganz absurder Begriff. Denn das Atom wird im Denken mit allerlei Qualitäten ausgestattet, die in die Sinne fallen müßten, wenn sie wirklich bestehen würden. Dennoch aber werden die Sinnesempfindungen als Wirkungen von Atomtätigkeit aufgefaßt. Also ist es ein widerspruchsvoller Begriff, ein Begriff für ein vollständig Unauffindbares. Es ist, wie Vaihinger sagt, das Atom eine Fiktion. Wir bilden uns viele solche Fiktionen, und im Grunde genommen sind alle höheren Begriffe, die wir uns über die Wirklichkeit bilden, solche Fiktionen. Da es ein Kriterium für das Wahre oder Falsche nicht gibt, so muß man eigentlich als vernünftiger Mensch der Gegenwart sich klar sein darüber, daß man es mit Fiktionen zu tun hat. Und man muß vollbewußt sich Fiktionen machen. Man muß sich klar sein darüber, daß das Atom eine bloße Fiktion ist, daß das Atom nicht da sein kann. Aber man betrachtet die Welterscheinungen so, als ob die Welt von den Bewegungen oder dem Leben der Atome beherrscht wäre - als ob -, und dadurch ist es nützlich, sich diese Fiktion zu bilden. Man kommt zu einem gewissen Zusammenhang der Erscheinungen, wenn man solche Fiktionen aufstellt. Ein Ich ist eine Fiktion; aber man muß diese Fiktion bilden. Denn wenn man gewisse Erscheinungen, die miteinander auftreten, so betrachtet, als ob ein Ich in ihnen tätig wäre, von dem man ganz gewiß weiß, daß es nur eine Fiktion ist, so betrachten sie sich bequemer, als wenn man sie nicht unter der Fiktion des Ich betrachten würde. Und so lebt man eigentlich von lauter Fiktionen. Es gibt nicht eine Philosophie der Wirklichkeit, sondern eine «Philosophie des Als Ob». Die Welt gaukelt uns vor, als ob das wäre, was wir als Fiktionen haben.
Im Ganzen, in der Anlage und auch in den einzelnen Durchführungen, ist die Philosophie des Pragmatismus sehr ähnlich der «Philosophie des Als Ob». Ich sagte: In derselben Zeit, als Peirce seine pragmatische Philosophie als Abhandlung geschrieben hat, in den siebziger Jahren, hat Vaihinger die «Philosophie des Als Ob» niedergeschrieben. Aber so wie die Menschen damals waren, in den siebziger Jahren, hatten sie noch so viele Rudimente des alten Glaubens, daß es doch noch ein objektives Kriterium der Wahrheit geben könnte, und daß die Wissenschaften nicht bloß aus Fiktionen bestehen könnten, daß es eine mißliche Sache gewesen wäre, diese «Philosophie des Als Ob» just in den siebziger Jahren zu veröffentlichen, wenn man Professor hat werden wollen. Dazumal ging es noch nicht. Da hat denn Vaihinger einen Ausweg gesucht. Er hat zunächst die «Philosophie des Als Ob» im Schreibtisch liegenlassen, hat so, wie es heute notwendig ist, nicht wahr, gelehrt, und als die Zeit herangekommen war, wo er sich pensionieren lassen konnte, da hat er sich pensionieren lassen und die «Philosophie des Als Ob» veröffentlicht, die jetzt schon in mehreren Auflagen erschienen ist. — Ich erzähle nur; ich richte nicht, urteile nicht, kritisiere nicht, erzähle nur.
So sehen wir, wie eine gewisse Tendenz besteht, die alten Wahrheitskriterien aufzulösen und im Grunde genommen nicht das Leben in den Dienst der Wahrheit zu stellen, das Leben zu einer Ausgestaltung der Wahrheit zu machen, wie man früher geglaubt hat, sondern die Wahrheit am Leben zu messen. Fiktionen - von ihnen weiß man, daß sie nicht im alten Sinne das enthalten, was Wahrheit genannt wurde; aber zweckmäßig sind diese Fiktionen. Daher die eigentümlichen Definitionen der «Philosophie des Als Ob»: Wahrheit ist die bequemste Art des Irrtums, denn es gibt überhaupt nur Irrtum; aber es gibt unbequeme Irrtümer und bequemere Irrtümer, und die bequemeren Irrtümer nennen wir Wahrheiten; aber darüber muß man sich nur einmal klar sein.
Es gibt also einen Evolutionsimpuls in dem neueren Denken, der wirklich dahin führt, ein Erfassen des Wahrheitsbegriffes im alten erkenntnistheoretischen Sinne nicht mehr zu haben. Man frägt sich: Womit hängt das zusammen? Natürlich müßte ich Ihnen viel erzählen, wenn ich Ihnen den ganzen Umfang dessen schildern sollte, womit dies zusammenhängt. Aus der Fülle der Tatsachen sei nur die eine zunächst hervorgehoben, daß ja in der neueren Zeit eine unendliche Fülle von empirischem Erkenntnismaterial sich dem Menschen dargeboten hat, und daß die Menschen immer ohnmächtiger wurden in ihrem Denken, ohnmächtig, weil sie nicht mehr beherrschen konnten, zusammenhalten konnten mit dem Denken das unendlich reiche Material empirischer Wahrnehmungen, empirischer Erkenntnisse.
Ein anderer Grund ist dann der, daß man im Laufe der Zeit sich viel zu sehr an das abstrakte Denken gewöhnt hat. In älteren Zeiten hatte man noch nicht so viel gedacht. Man versuchte, sich mit dem Denken an die Außenwelt, an die Erfahrung zu halten. Man hatte das Gefühl, daß man gewissermaßen mit dem ganz abgezogenen Denken nicht vorwärtskommt, daß dieses Denken sich an etwas halten müsse. Nun hatte man aber an dem vielen Denken, das man gepflogen hat, das abstrakte Denken gelernt und das abstrakte Denken gewissermaßen lieb gewonnen, sich daran gewöhnt. Und dazu kamen manche Schäden der Zeit, vor allen Dingen die Anschauung, daß eigentlich jeder irgend etwas Erhebliches denken oder erforschen müsse, der Privatdozent werden will, und schon etwas ganz Ungeheures, wenn er Professor werden will! Und so entstand, möchte ich sagen, eine gewisse Hypertrophie des Denkens. Man dachte darauf los und kam zu Denkgebilden, die als Denkgebilde innerlich logisch sind. Ich will Ihnen ein solches Denkgebilde vorführen, das innerlich ganz logisch ist.
Denken Sie sich einmal (siehe Zeichnung): Hier wäre ein Berg; auf diesem Berge (A) wird zunächst ein Schuß abgegeben, nach einer gewissen Zeit, sagen wir nach zwei Minuten, zwei Schüsse, wieder nach einer gewissen Zeit, nach weiteren zwei Minuten - drei Schüsse.

Nun steht da einer rechts (B), der hört zu. Ich will nicht sagen, daß er erschossen wird, aber er hört zu. So wird er hören: einen Schuß, nach einer gewissen Zeit zwei Schüsse, nach einer gewissen Zeit drei Schüsse. Nun aber nehmen wir an, die Sache sei nicht so, daß man hier einfach schieße, ein Schuß, zwei Schüsse, drei Schüsse, und hier einer hört: ein Schuß, zwei Schüsse, drei Schüsse, sondern mit einer gewissen Schnelligkeit bewege sich ein Mensch (C) von diesem Berg (links) nach diesem Berg (rechts), fliege da hinaus, bewege sich mit einer gewissen Schnelligkeit von dem einen Berg zum anderen seine Schnelligkeit sei sehr groß. Nun wissen Sie ja aus der elementaren Physik, daß der Schall eine gewisse Zeit braucht, um von hier hierher zu kommen. Wenn also hier (A) geschossen wird, und der (B) hört hier zu, so hört er den Schall; nach einer gewissen Zeit kommt der erste Schuß an, nach den nächsten zwei Minuten zwei Schüsse, nach weiteren zwei Minuten drei Schüsse. Aber nehmen wir an, der Mensch (C) bewege sich schneller als der Schall. Nun steht er da. Er bewegt sich schon von hier aus gegen den Berg zu schneller als der Schall. Der erste Schuß wird abgegeben, die zwei zweiten Schüsse werden abgegeben, die drei dritten Schüsse werden abgegeben, und er kommt eben, nachdem die drei dritten Schüsse abgegeben worden sind, am Berge an, fliegt weiter mit derselben Geschwindigkeit, überfliegt die drei Schüsse, das heißt den Schall überfliegt er, während er rasch weiterfliegt; er geht schneller. Der Schall der drei Schüsse ist nach einer gewissen Zeit hierher (D) gekommen. Er fliegt nach den drei Schüssen, hört die drei im Vorbeifliegen; da kommt er nach den zwei Schüssen, die vorher abgegangen sind, im Schalle, da hört er die zwei Schüsse; dann fliegt er weiter, da kommt er nach dem ersten Schusse, da hört er den ersten Schuß. Ein solcher also, der schneller fliegt als der Schall, hört umgekehrt: drei Schüsse, zwei Schüsse, einen Schuß. Also, wenn man sich zu der Geschwindigkeit des Schalles so verhält, wie ein ordinärer Mensch auf der ordinären Erde sich nach den gewöhnlichen Bedingungen des Lebens verhält, so hört man hier einen Schuß, hier zwei Schüsse, hier drei Schüsse. Wenn man sich nicht verhält wie ein ordinärer Mensch auf der ordinären Erde, sondern wenn man ein Wesen ist, welches schneller fliegt als der Schall, so hört man die Sache umgekehrt: drei Schüsse, zwei Schüsse, einen Schuß. Man braucht nur die kleine Kunstfertigkeit zu üben, dem Schall nachzufliegen und schneller vorwärtszufliegen als er selber.
Nun, diese Sache ist zweifellos so logisch wie nur irgend möglich, denn es ist gegen die Logik der Sache nicht das Allergeringste einzuwenden. Gewisse Vorkommnisse der neueren Wissenschaft haben nun dazu geführt, daß das, was ich Ihnen eben hier ausgeführt habe über dieses Dem-Schalle-Nachfliegen und Umgekehrt-Hören, die Einleitung zu unzähligen Vorträgen bildet. Immer wieder und wiederum beginnt man Vorträge, welche gehalten werden, mit diesem - nun, sagen wir, Beispiele. Denn es soll dadurch gezeigt werden, daß, wie man die Dinge wahrnimmt, eigentlich nur davon abhängt, in welcher Lage des Lebens man selber ist. Es kommt nur durch unsere kriechende Art im Verhältnis zum Schall, daß wir nicht umgekehrt hören, sondern daß wir so hören, wie wir jetzt hören. Ich kann nicht alles, was sich daran schließt, hier ausführen, aber ich wollte Ihnen diesen Gedankengang vorführen, denn er bildet gewissermaßen für viele eine Grundlage einer heute weitverbreiteten, tief eingreifenden Theorie, der sogenannten Relativitätstheorie.
Ich habe Ihnen nur das Allerplumpste vorgeführt. Sie sehen aber, daß an dem, was da vorgeführt wird, alles logisch ist, alles ganz, ganz logisch ist. Nun gibt es heute unzählige Urteile - es wimmelt gerade in der philosophischen Literatur von Urteilen, die gefällt werden auf dieselben Gedankenvoraussetzungen hin. Das Denken ist sozusagen losgerissen von der Wirklichkeit. Man denkt nur gewisse einzelne Bedingungen der Wirklichkeit und bildet sich daran das Denken.
Etwas zu erwidern auf diese Dinge ist ja aus dem Grunde schwer möglich, weil man natürlich eine logische Erwiderung erwartet. Aber eine logische Erwiderung kann es nicht geben. Aus diesem Grunde eben habe ich in meinem letzten Buche «Vom Menschenrätsel» auf Grundlage älterer Denk-Erwägungen eingeführt den Begriff, daß eine Wahrheit erst dadurch erfaßt wird, daß man nicht nur einen logischen Begriff, eine logische Idee bildet, sondern einen wirklichkeitsgemäßen Begriff, eine wirklichkeitsgemäße Idee. Nun würde es sehr weite Ausführungen erfordern, wenn ich Ihnen zeigen würde, daß die ganze Relativitätstheorie zwar logisch ist, und zwar wunderbar logisch aber wirklichkeitsgemäß ist sie nicht. So daß man sagen kann: Der Begriff, der hier entwickelt ist in bezug auf die eins, zwei, drei Schüsse ist ganz logisch; aber derjenige, der wirklichkeitsgemäß denkt, bildet ihn nicht. Man kann ihn nicht widerlegen, sondern man kann ihn nur unterlassen! Wer sich aber angeeignet hat das Kriterium des Wirklichkeitsgemäßen, der unterläßt auch solche Begriffe. Die empirischen Erscheinungen, die man durch diese Relativitätstheorie zu fassen sucht — Lorentz, Einstein und so weiter —, sie müssen in ganz anderer Weise gefaßt werden als durch die Gedankenreihe, welche durch die Einstein, Lorentz und so weiter gedacht wird.
Dies, was ich Ihnen hier ausgeführt habe, ist wiederum nur eine Strömung in dem ganzen sich vorwärtsbewegenden Strom neuzeitlichen Denkens. Gewiß, es mischt sich immer in dieses neuzeitliche Denken etwas hinein von früher her Gebliebenem. Aber letzte Konsequenzen, radikale Konsequenzen dessen, was fast allem neuzeitlichen Denken zugrunde liegt, sind schon die Dinge, die ich ausgeführt habe. Nun liegt eine gewisse Merkwürdigkeit vor. Weil man verloren hat ein ursprüngliches Kriterium, oder sagen wir ein Gefühl für ein ursprüngliches Kriterium des Wahren und Falschen, so kommt man durch die Emanzipation im Abstrakten dazu, Begriffe auszubilden, welche zwar an sich unanfechtbar sind, weil sie logisch sind, die sogar in einem gewissen Sinne wirklichkeitsgemäß sind, aber die ungeeignet sind, über die Wirklichkeit etwas Wirkliches auszusagen, die doch nur formale Begriffe bleiben, gewissermaßen Begriffe, die an der Oberfläche der Wirklichkeit schwimmen und nicht untertauchen in die eigentlichen Impulse der Wirklichkeit.
Ein Beispiel für eine an der Oberfläche bleibende Theorie, die nicht untertauchen will in die Wirklichkeit, ist folgendes. Denken Sie: In der menschlichen Wirklichkeit unterscheidet man das Mineralreich, das Pflanzenreich, Tierreich, Menschenreich. Die Menschen leben wieder zusammen in der sozialen Ordnung, man könnte sagen in der soziologischen Ordnung, und man könnte vielleicht noch höhere Ordnungen finden. Das kommt nicht darauf an. Als nun so in der Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts ein materialistischer Wirklichkeitsbegriff existierte, da stellte man sich diese Übereinanderlagerung gleichsam sehr einfach vor. Man nahm im Grunde genommen eigentlich nur das physische Mineralreich an und sagte sich: Nun, die Pflanzen sind nur etwas komplizierter angeordnete Dinge aus denselben Grundbestandteilen, aus denen das Mineralreich besteht; wieder komplizierter sind die Grundbestandteile im Tierreich angeordnet; wieder komplizierter im Menschenreich und so weiter hinauf. Allerdings, als es da weiter hinaufging, in die soziale Ordnung, da wollten sich zum Beispiel auch komplizierte Atombewegungen nicht mehr finden lassen. Dem Mineralreich entsprechen gewisse Bewegungsformen der Atome so stellten es sich ja gewisse Leute vor -, die werden komplizierter im Pflanzenreich, da kann man verzichten, man sieht da das Atom nicht; das Tierreich entspricht noch komplizierteren Bewegungsformen, und noch komplizierteren das Menschenreich. So wird alles aufgebaut. Allerdings, wenn man da in die soziale Ordnung hineinkommt, da will es nicht so recht mit dem Atom gehen, da kann man keine Atombewegungen finden.
Ein Denker aus dem letzten Drittel des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts hat ja allerdings das Kunststück fertiggebracht, auch die Soziologie auf biologische Begriffe zurückzuführen. Er hat soziale Gebilde, Familien, wie Zellen behandelt, dann, nicht wahr, gruppieren sie sich zu größeren — was weiß ich — Bezirksgemeinschaften, nun, das sind Anfänge von Geweben. Dann geht es weiter — Staaten sind schon ganze Organe - na, und so weiter. Schäffle hieß der Betreffende, der diese sozialen Organismen als Gedanken gestaltet hat. Schäffle schrieb dann ein Buch: «Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie» und stützte das auch auf diese biologisch-soziologische Theorie. Der Wiener Schriftsteller Hermann Bahr, der dazumal noch ein sehr junger Dachs war, aber ein ganz begabter Mensch, schrieb eine Gegenschrift gegen das Buch von Schäffle «Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie» und nannte damals seine Gegenschrift: «Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herrn Schäffle.» Es ist ein ausgezeichnet geschriebenes Buch, das aber vergessen worden ist.
Also, wie gesagt, der alte materialistische Wahrheitsbegriff hat da nur immer kompliziertere Gebilde sich gedacht, hat ja natürlich auch gewisse Begriffe eingeführt, sagen wir: In den Kristallen bewegen sich die Atome in einer gewissen starren, im Pflanzenreich in einer labileren, den Gleichgewichtspunkt suchenden Form und so weiter. Kurz, man hat die verschiedensten Theorien ausgedacht, aber man wollte immer so eins aus dem anderen hervorgehen lassen. Als der Materialismus lang genug bestanden hatte, da konnte man auch darüber nachdenken, wie wenig fruchtbar und wie wenig eigentlich der genaueren Prüfung standhaltend diese materialistische Wirklichkeitsidee ist. Und so konnte man sich die Idee bilden: Nun gewiß, das mineralische Reich ist da, dann tritt das Pflanzenreich auf. In der Pflanze ist der mineralische Stoff eingegliedert, sogar die mineralischen Gesetze; die Salze, die drinnen sind, die anderen Stoffe, funktionieren nach ihren physiologisch-chemischen Gesetzen. Also in dem Pflanzenreich ist das mineralischeReich drinnen. Aber niemals kann aus dem mineralischen Reich heraus das Pflanzenreich entstehen. Es muß etwas Schöpferisches dazukommen. Indem man also heraufsteigt aus dem Mineralreich ins Pflanzenreich, kommt etwas Schöpferisches dazu, und dieses — das erste Schöpferische — ist schöpferisch im Mineralreich. Dann kommt ein zweites Schöpferisches im Pflanzenreich, das sich das mineralische Reich aneignet. Dann kommt ein drittes Schöpferisches, aus dem das Tierreich hervorgeht. Das Tierische eignet sich wiederum die unteren Reiche an. Dann kommt ein viertes Schöpferisches, es eignet sich die unteren Reiche an — im Menschenreich. Dann, in der soziologischen Ordnung, ein neues Schöpferisches eignet sich wieder die anderen Reiche an. Eine Hierarchie von Schöpferischem! — Es läßt sich natürlich nichts einwenden gegen die Logik dieses Gedankens. Der Gedanke ist auch richtig als Gedanke. Sie werden allerdings über die Sache anders denken müssen, wenn Sie sich an geisteswissenschaftliche Begriffe, von denen wir heute nicht reden wollen, erinnern. Aber es bleibt die ganze Betrachtung im Abstrakten stecken; es kommt nicht in ein konkretes Vorstellen hinein. Gewiß, es werden Einzelheiten beigebracht; aber wenn man so denkt, so hat man doch eigentlich nur den abstrakten Begriff des Schöpferischen. Es bleibt doch das ganze Denken in Abstraktionen stecken. Aber es ist ein Versuch, den bloßen Materialismus gewissermaßen durch einen Formalismus eines klaren Denkens zu überwinden. Man kommt zu etwas höheren, aber doch nur zu abstrakten Begriffen.
In Boutroux’ Philosophie haben wir den Versuch, den bloßen Materialismus zu überwinden aus dem formalen Denken, das sich ergibt durch eine unbefangene Betrachtung der Hierarchie der Naturreiche. Sozusagen aus der Hierarchie der Wissenschaften heraus wird dieser Begriff des aufsteigenden Schöpferischen gesucht. Dabei kommen interessante Folgerungen zutage. Aber es bleibt alles im Abstrakten stekken. Das ließe sich leicht beweisen, wenn wir in die Einzelheiten der Boutrouxschen Philosophie eingehen. Ich will nur die Gedankenrichtungen zunächst einmal darstellen; das andere mag später einmal kommen. Hier haben wir den Versuch, gewissermaßen durch eine oberflächliche Betrachtung der Wirklichkeit mit einseitigen Abstraktionen die Wirklichkeit zu erfassen. Aber man kann sie nicht erfassen. Man will zwar nicht eine bloße «Philosophie des Als Ob», nicht einen bloßen Pragmatismus begründen, nicht bei dem wesenlosen Nebeneinanderstellen von Vorkommnissen stehenbleiben, aber man kommt nicht zu einer solchen Konkretisierung, daß man wirklich gewissermaßen lesen würde die Außenwelt, um das, was hinter ihr ist, zu erkennen, wie man aus den Buchstaben eines Buches das, was hinter den Buchstaben steht, erkennt, sondern man kommt nur zu einigen Abstraktionen, die angeben sollen, daß da etwas lebt in der Hierarchie der Wirklichkeitsreiche. Während den anderen philosophischen Gedankenrichtungen, die ich angeführt habe, verlorenging erkenntnistheoretisch das Wahrheitskriterium, geht hier die Kraft verloren, konkret hineinzufassen in die Wirklichkeit. Man hat nicht mehr das Vermögen, unterzutauchen in die inneren Impulse der Wirklichkeit. Man schöpft ab.
Das führt uns zu einem anderen Grundzug des modernen Lebens. Dieses Denken, sagte ich, hat sich in einer gewissen Weise emanzipiert von der Wirklichkeit, verläuft emanzipiert von der Wirklichkeit in Abstraktionen. Wie man auf diese Weise verloren hat den Impuls, in die Wirklichkeit unterzutauchen, das konnten Sie an den verschiedensten Gedankenrichtungen der neueren Zeit wahrnehmen. Immer ohnmächtiger und ohnmächtiger wurde man, die wahre Gestalt der Wirklichkeit zu erfassen. Ein klassisches Beispiel ergibt sich, wenn man die Entwickelung des Denkens betrachtet von Maine de Biran bis zu Bergson. Während Biran im Beginne des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts noch eine Denkrichtung hat, welche in wichtige psychologische Begriffe untertauchen kann, in die Wirklichkeit der menschlichen Wesenheit selbst, schlägt Bergson einen eigentümlichen Weg ein, der ganz charakteristisch ist für die besondere Tendenz neuzeitlichen Denkens. Auf der einen Seite bemerkt Bergson, daß man mit dem gewöhnlichen abstrakten Denken und überhaupt mit dem ganzen wissenschaftlichen Denken, so wie es geübt wird und wie es sich ablagert in den wissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen, im Grunde genommen nicht hineinkommen kann in eine Wirklichkeit, daß man da immer nur gewissermaßen an der Oberfläche der Wirklichkeit bleibt, nicht untertaucht in das unmittelbare Leben der Wirklichkeit. Daher will er in einer Art von Intuition - ich kann jetzt nur ganz in allgemeinen Zügen charakterisieren —,in einem inneren Erleben gegenüber dem äußeren Pläneentwerfen der Wirklichkeit, diese Wirklichkeit erfassen. Und da kommt er zu einer eigentümlichen Anschauung in erkenntnistheoretischer und psychologischer Beziehung. Die gipfelt dann - ich will jetzt die Zwischenglieder auslassen — darinnen, daß er sagt, man glaube nach materialistischer Anschauung, daß Gedächtnis und höhere Gebilde des Seelenlebens an komplizierte Formen oder Bewegungen, Gebilde des Gehirnes gebunden seien. Aber das Gehirn sei überhaupt gar nicht dazu da, solche komplizierten Gebilde zu gestalten, sondern das, was Seelisches ist und was nicht durch abstraktes Denken, sondern durch innerliches Erleben, durch Intuition zu erfassen ist, das wirkt, und die Beziehungen, die es eingeht zur Wirklichkeit, die drücken sich aus in den menschlichen Sensationen, in den Empfindungen und in der praktischen Lebensgestaltung, in der Bewegung, die wir etwa unserem Körper beibringen. Aber alles erschöpft sich in den Gehirnbildungen, in dem, was Wirkung in der Empfindung und Wirkung in der Lebensförderung, in der Lebensausgestaltung ist. Dagegen käme zum Beispiel das Gedächtnis nicht so zustande, daß dafür Gehirngebilde da seien, sondern das wirke in einer Intensität unabhängig vom Gehirne.
Es ist ein Versuch, den materialistischen Erkenntnisbegriff zu überwinden, ein Versuch, der eigentümlich ist dadurch, daß er das Entgegengesetzte von der Wirklichkeit zutage fördert. Denn gerade, um das Gedächtnis auszubilden, muß die Widerlage des physischen Leibes und des physischen Gehirnes und des ganzen physischen Systems dasein. Es würde sich im Seelischen nie ein Gedächtnis festsetzen können, wenn nicht das Seelische sich herausentwickelte bis zum physischen Leib und im physischen Leib die Bedingungen herstellte, sich das Vermögen, die Fähigkeit des Gedächtnisses anzueignen. Also es bildet sich hier eine Theorie aus, die aus dem Trieb, den Materialismus zu überwinden, gerade auf das Umgekehrte von dem kommt, was richtig ist. Während das richtig ist, daß man sagen muß: Weil zu den Fähigkeiten, die sich die menschliche Seele erwirbt, auch das Gedächtnis kommen soll, und das Gedächtnis dann mit Hilfe des physischen Leibes angegliedert werden muß an die Seele, - wird bei Bergson gerade der physische Leib als unbeteiligt an der Entwickelung des Gedächtnisses aufgefaßt. Ich führe diese Dinge nicht aus, um Spezielles gleichsam historisch über die Bergsonsche Philosophie zu sagen, sondern nur um diese eigentümliche Erscheinung zu charakterisieren, daß ein Denken der neueren Zeit auf ganz logische Weise dahin führt, das Umgekehrte von dem zu finden, was richtig ist.
So können wir ausgehen von den mehr erkenntnistheoretisch orientierten Philosophien, die reden von der Ohnmacht gegenüber einem Kriterium des Wahren und Falschen, und kommen dann zu denjenigen Philosophien, die sich zwar bemühen, das Wahre zu finden, aber weil sie es suchen aus der Ohnmacht gegenüber dem Wahren heraus, kommen sie gerade zu dem Verkehrten, zu dem, was falsch ist, so daß in der Gegenwart geradezu eine gewisse innere Tendenz des Denkens nach dem Uhrichtigen, nach dem Falschen vorhanden ist. Das hängt richtig zusammen damit, daß man sich eigentlich durch die Abstraktionsfähigkeit, die Abstraktionstendenz, an die man sich gewöhnt hat, entfremdet hat der Wirklichkeit. Man kommt los von der Wirklichkeit und findet nicht wieder in sie zurück. Das Genauere können Sie in meinen «Rätseln der Philosophie» nachlesen. Man findet nicht wieder zurück zur Wirklichkeit, wenn man sich in der Abstraktion davon getrennt hat. Aber auf der anderen Seite lebt sich in die Leute hinein wiederum eine gewisse Sehnsucht, das Geistige zu erfassen. Aber es ist noch Ohnmacht da, zu diesem Geistigen zu kommen. Da kann es oftmals geradezu signifikant, bedeutsam sein, wie man sogar sehen kann in der Gegenwart dieses Suchen nach der Wahrheit des Geistes aus der absoluten Ohnmacht heraus. Eben haben wir ein Beispiel betrachtet, wo das Wahre gesucht und das Verkehrte gefunden wird durch die Emanzipation des Denkens von der Wirklichkeit.
Ein charakteristisches Beispiel des Suchens nach dem Geiste ohne auch nur die geringste Fähigkeit, einen einzigen Zipfel des Geistes zu erfassen, finden Sie in der Philosophie von Eucken. Eucken redet nur von dem Geist, das heißt mit Worten, aber nie sagt er etwas über den Geist. Weil seine Worte ganz ohnmächtig sind, an den wirklichen Geist heranzukommen, daher redet Eucken immer vom Geist. Unzählige Bücher hat er schon geschrieben. Es ist eine wahre Tortur, sich durch diese Bücher durchzulesen, denn es steht in all diesen Büchern dasselbe. Immer steht da, daß man finden muß dieses Sich-selbst-Erfassen des In-sich-seienden-Denkens, das, abgesehen von einer äußeren Anlehnung und von einem äußeren Widerstehen, in sich selber sich erfaßt, in sich selber sich erschaut, an sich selber vorwärtsrückt, mit diesem Vorwärtsrücken in sich selber hineinkommt und aus sich selber heraus sich wieder gestaltet. Man kann ein Kolleg hören bei Eucken oder ein Buch lesen über die griechische Philosophie, man wird die Entwickelung der griechischen Philosophie so dargestellt finden, wie zuerst dieses Denken ein wenig versucht, sich selbst zu erfassen, dies aber noch nicht kann. Man kann über Paracelsus hören, wie da allmählich erfaßt wird das Innere, man kann über die Entstehung des Christentums ein Buch lesen - überall dasselbe, überall dasselbe! Und so unendlich bedeutsam ist diese Philosophie für das moderne Philistertum, welches so froh ist, über den Geist reden zu hören, über den Geist zu theoretisieren, wenn man gar nichts zu wissen braucht über den Geist, wenn man nur nicht wirklich hineinzukommen braucht in den Geist. Daher nennen viele Euckens Philosophie die Wiedererweckung des Idealismus, die Wiedererweckung des Geisteslebens, ein Kulturferment, geeignet, das sich erschöpfende und ertötende geistige Leben der Gegenwart wieder aufzufrischen und so weiter. Und derjenige, der ein Empfinden hat für das, was in einer Philosophie pulst und pulsen soll, der liest Eucken, hört Eucken, und hat so lebendig das Gefühl, wie wenn ich mich jetzt da am eigenen Schopf in die Höhe ziehe und immer höher und immer höher! Denn darin besteht die widerspruchslose Logik der Euckenschen Philosophie doch. Ich habe in meinen «Rätseln der Philosophie» gesucht, die Dinge ganz objektiv darzustellen. Das, was ich jetzt gesagt habe, kann sich jeder selber sagen, weil man nicht gleich zu kritisieren braucht, sondern erst bekannt werden muß mit den Begriffen, die existieren.
So sehen wir, wie gewisse Gedankenströmungen in der Gegenwart geradezu aus der Ohnmacht gegenüber der Wirklichkeit hervorgehen, und wie aus dieser Ohnmacht gegenüber der Wirklichkeit eben Philosophien gebildet werden. Wenn man sich nicht kümmert um dieses Leben, nun ja, dann denkt man, es sei das nicht eigentlich so schlimm. Aber es ist schon schlimm. Und man muß sich manchmal auch einlassen auf dasjenige, was lebt und webt im Denkleben der Gegenwart, weil man vielleicht daran ein Gefühl bekommen kann für das, wodurch dasjenige, was in der Gegenwart lebt, überwunden werden kann.
Ich habe Ihnen nur einige von den Gedankenströmungen vorgeführt, die in den verschiedensten Gegenden eine gewichtige Rolle spielen auf dem Gebiete des Lebens, wo man es eben mit Gedanken zu tun hat, wo philosophische Weltanschauung vorgetragen und gelehrt wird. Es ist in der Gegenwart durchaus so, daß sich allmählich bis in die letzten Jahre entwickelt hat wirklich eine gemeinsame Struktur der Denktendenzen. Ich habe das angedeutet, indem ich Ihnen gezeigt habe, wie unabhängig voneinander der Pragmatismus und die «Philosophie des Als Ob» aufgetreten sind.
Aber auch übernommen haben die Denker verschiedenes voneinander. In immer regem Wechselverkehr standen die Denker. Vaihinger ist von Peirce ganz unabhängig; sie sind ganz unabhängig voneinander zu diesen Lebensrichtungen gekommen, drüben in Amerika und hier in Deutschland. Aber auch sonst finden wir vielfach Anklänge bei der Persönlichkeit der einen Kulturgemeinschaft und der Persönlichkeit der anderen Kulturgemeinschaft; und nur dadurch bekommt man ein Bild von dem, was im geistigen Leben wirklich ist, daß man auf die Einzelheiten dieser Dinge wirklich eingeht und sie betrachtet. Auch in dieser Beziehung wird in der Gegenwart zwar viel spekuliert, ungeheuer viel gedacht, geschrieben, betrachtet, aber selbst auf die einfachsten Dinge wird nicht geachtet. Auf gewisse Zusammenhänge, die bestehen, wird wenig geachtet, weil man nicht Wirklichkeitssinn sich bewahrt hat in der Gegenwart. Diesen Wirklichkeitssinn muß man schon ausbilden. Lassen Sie mich das als Anhang zu den heutigen Betrachtungen gleichsam sagen: Man kann sich ihn nur erarbeiten, diesen Wirklichkeitssinn.
Wenn ich da etwas Persönliches erwähnen darf: Es war immer mein Bestreben - auch in allem äußeren Wissenschaftlichen -, Wirklichkeitssinn auszubilden, gewissermaßen Spürsinn für die Wirklichkeit. Der besteht nicht nur darinnen, daß man eine Wirklichkeit beurteilen kann, sondern daß man auch die Wege findet, um das Wirkliche an dem Wirklichen zu messen und mit dem Wirklichen zu vergleichen. Sie wissen vielleicht, daß bei Nietzsche vorkommt die Lehre von der sogenannten ewigen Wiedergeburt, von der Wiederkunft des Gleichen. Diese Lehre ist so: Wie wir hier zusammensitzen, so haben wir schon unzählige Male zusammengesessen und werden wieder zusammensitzen. — Es ist nicht eine Reinkarnationslehre, sondern eine Wiederkunftslehre des Gleichen. Ich will jetzt diese Wiederkunftslehre nicht kritisieren; darauf kommt es jetzt nicht an. Diese Wiederkunftslehre geht hervor aus einer ganz bestimmten Vorstellung über eine erste Weltgestaltung, aus unmöglichen Vorstellungen, die sich Nietzsche gebildet hat über eine erste Weltgestaltung.
Ich war einmal mit anderen Gelehrten im Nietzsche-Archiv, und es war die Rede von der Lehre von der Wiederkunft des Gleichen. Man interessierte sich dafür, wie Nietzsche zu einer solchen Idee gekommen sein mag. Nun denken Sie, was für schöne Gelegenheiten das sind! Wer die Verhältnisse kennt, weiß es, was für schöne Gelegenheiten das gibt, um möglichst viele Dissertationen und Bücher zu schreiben, wie Nietzsche zu den ursprünglichen Ideen der Lehre der Wiederkunft des Gleichen gekommen ist. Da kann man natürlich die kühnsten Hypothesen aufstellen, und man kann vieles finden, wenn man einfach so sucht. Ich sagte dazumal, nachdem die Diskussion eine Weile gegangen war: Nietzsche ist sehr häufig — ich versuchte also, ihn in seiner Idee wirklichkeitsgemäß zu fassen - zu einer Idee dadurch gekommen, daß er die Gegenidee zu einer Idee, die er bei einem anderen gefunden hat, gefaßt hat. Meines Wissens kommt die Gegenidee, nämlich, daß es wegen einer gewissen Konfiguration des Erdenanfangs keine Wiederkunft des Gleichen geben könne - bei Dühring vor, bei einem anderen Philosophen. Und meines Wissens, sagte ich, hat Nietzsche Dühring gelesen. Nun ist das Einfachste und Wirklichste, wir gehen in Nietzsches Bibliothek, die erhalten ist, nehmen diese Werke von Dühring heraus, wo diese Gegenidee steht, und schauen einmal nach. — Nun, man ging in seine Bibliothek, schaute nach, schlug die Stelle auf — ich kannte sie genau -, und da findet sich ein dicker Strich von Nietzsches Hand an dieser Stelle mit einigen bezeichnenden Worten. Er schrieb an solche Orte, wo er Gegenideen fassen wollte - ich weiß jetzt nicht genau, was er an dieser Stelle geschrieben hat -, so etwas wie «Esel», «Unsinn», «Nonsens». Solch ein charakteristisches Wort stand da an dieser Kante. Und er hat also gelesen, angemerkt, die Gegenidee gefaßt, und die Gegenidee der «Wiederkunftslehre des Gleichen» ist aus seinem Geiste entsprungen! — Da handelt es sich darum, an der richtigen Stelle zu suchen. Denn Nietzsche hatte wirklich gegenüber gewissen Ideen die Tendenz, die Gegenidee zu bilden.
Das ist nun auch ein Charakteristikon wiederum in der Verohnmächtigung des modernen Wahrheitskriteriums — ich habe Ihnen die anderen Ausflüsse der Verohnmächtigung dargestellt —, das ist wieder ein Ausdruck der Verohnmächtigung: Weil man nicht selber zu einem Wahrheitskriterium kommen kann, bildet man die Gegenwahrheit zu Wahrheiten, die schon da waren, die Gegenurteile zu Urteilen, die schon da waren. - Man darf solche Dinge aber nicht verallgemeinern. Wenn Sie daraus wiederum das abstrakte Urteil bilden wollten, Nietzsche habe seine ganze Philosophie nur auf diesem Wege gewonnen, so wäre das natürlich ein völliger Unsinn; denn zuweilen war er ganz positiv, das heißt, er bildete einfach gewisse Ideen weiter aus, ganz in ihrem Geiste. So zum Beispiel ist die ganze Lehre von «Jenseits von Gut und Böse», wie sie uns bei Nietzsche entgegentritt, ganz nachzuweisen in allen einzelnen Teilen. Man braucht wiederum nur in Nietzsches Bibliothek zu gehen und das Buch über die Moral von Guyax zu nehmen. Man liest diejenigen Stellen, die Nietzsche am Rande angestrichen hat und findet sie abstrahiert in « Jenseits von Gut und Böse»! «Jenseits von Gut und Böse» ist ganz in Guyaus Abhandlungen über die Moral schon enthalten. Solche Zusammenhänge muß man in der neueren Zeit durchaus beachten. Beachtet man sie nicht, so kommt man zu ganz falschen Bildern über dasjenige, was der eine oder der aridere Denker war.
Ich wollte Ihnen also einige Gesichtspunkte des modernen Gedankenlebens heute vorführen. Ich habe mich nur an das Allerbekannteste und Alleroberflächlichste gehalten. Wenn es die Umstände gestatten, so können wir auf Einzelheiten in der allernächsten Zeit einmal gerade auf diesem Gebiete eingehen.
Tenth Lecture
What I want to give today is to be a very unpretentious discussion of some philosophical trends that have arisen in recent times. I will take up some very well-known lines of thought, those that are, so to speak, on the surface of recent intellectual life. Later, in the near or very near future, we will be able to go into the details and specific forms of contemporary thought. I would like to characterize a certain basic feature of some of the current, most recent schools of thought. This basic feature consists in the fact that the whole direction of certain currents of thought shows us, one might say, a loss of a sense of orientation toward reality, toward truth, insofar as one can call the agreement of our knowledge with an objective “truth.” It is noticeable in certain recent schools of thought that thinkers find it so difficult to find their way when, for epistemological reasons, for reasons that they can accept as philosophically or scientifically valid, they have to decide whether a judgment about reality, this or that form of reality, is right or wrong. There is no principle in thinking, or—if I may express myself scientifically—no criterion that provides the impulse to decide whether certain judgments are true judgments, that is, judgments that refer to reality. Certain older criteria have been lost. And it is clear that nothing really suitable has replaced these old criteria of truth in recent times.
I would like to start with a thinker who died very recently, who began with physical studies and then turned to a kind of inductive philosophy, and who attempted to replace the old concepts of truth, for which people have gradually lost their sense, with something new. I am referring primarily to Ernst Mach. Ernst Mach—I can only outline the basic concepts here—is skeptical of all concepts that have been produced by previous thinking, that is, thinking up to the last third of the nineteenth century. This thinking, while relating more or less critically to these concepts and elaborating them to a greater or lesser extent, nevertheless spoke about the world and human beings in such a way that one assumed: Human beings perceive the world through their senses, process sensory impressions through concepts, and then arrive at certain representations, at ideas about the world. In doing so, one assumes—as I said, I cannot go into all sorts of further epistemological issues today—that what is perceived: colors, sounds, warmth, pressure sensations, and so on, comes from some kind of objectivity, from something objective that is located outside in space or outside our soul in general, makes an impression through the senses, which impression is then a sensory perception, which sensory perception is then further processed. And as the agent, the actual active force in this whole process of cognition, which in turn underlies the entire process of life, one regarded the human ego, about which much was speculated and theorized, but which was accepted in one form or another, so that one said: There is something that one is justified in viewing as a kind of ego that is active and ultimately forms the various sensory perceptions into concepts and ideas.
Ernst Mach looks around our given world, as it were, and says: All these concepts—of the ego, that is, of the subject of knowledge, of subjectivity; of the object that underlies sensory perceptions—all these concepts are actually unjustified. He says: What do we actually have? What actually exists in the world? Only sensations exist, basically. We perceive colors, we perceive sounds, we perceive smells, and so on; but we are not given anything outside of these sensations. If we look around the world properly, everything is somehow a sensation, and beyond sensations there is nothing objective to be found anywhere. The whole world that is present to us actually dissolves into sensations. Everything is just manifold sensations. And if we can say that there is nothing but sensations, then we cannot say that there is a special self, an active entity, within us. For what is given to us in our soul? Again, only sensations. When we look inside ourselves, we find only a succession of sensations; these sensations are, as it were, rolled up on a thread: yesterday we had sensations, today we have sensations, tomorrow we will have sensations. They are linked together like the links of a chain. But everywhere there is only sensation; nowhere is there an active self. There is only the appearance of a self because a group of sensations is taken out of the general world of sensations and grouped together. And we call these groupings “I”; they belong to us, they belong to what we perceived yesterday and the day before yesterday and six months ago. Because we find such a group of sensations that belong together, we designate them with the common word “I.” So the I also falls away, the object of knowledge also falls away, everything that man can speak of is only a multiplicity of sensations. So if we initially take a naive view of the world and observe reality, what we find is an infinite variety of differently grouped colors, differently grouped sounds, differently grouped temperature sensations, differently grouped pressure sensations, and so on; but that is all.
But then science comes along. Science discovers laws. That is, it does not simply describe: I see this sensation here, I see that sensation there, and so on, but it discovers laws, natural laws. What compels humans to establish natural laws, since they have only a multiplicity of sensations? Merely looking at the multiplicity of sensations does not lead to any judgment. Only by more or less rising to the level of laws do we arrive at judgment. What do we actually want with judgment in the world of sensations, which is really nothing more than a chaotic multiplicity? What do we go by when we form judgments? Yes, if there is nothing but sensations—you cannot, says Mach, measure one sensation against another. So what criterion is there for forming judgments, establishing laws, arriving at natural laws? Ernst Mach says: only the economy of thought leads to this. When we devise certain laws, we can use these laws to follow certain sensations, holding them together, as it were, in our thinking. And when we feel that we can measure with the smallest measure of thought, that we are thinking most economically, in some way of holding sensations together, we call this a law of nature. We see that a stone falls to the ground. It is a sum of sensations, a sensation here, a sensation there, and so on—nothing but sensations. We summarize this under the law of gravity. But the law of gravity is not a reality, because only sensations are reality. So why do we even think up the law of gravity? Because it is inconvenient for us; it is economical to summarize a certain group of sensations with a short expression. This gives us a convenient overview of the world of sensations, so to speak. And the thought that gives us the most convenient overview of any group of sensations, so that we can use this expression, knowing that when we have the expression and certain conditions are met again, that is, certain sensations will occur again, then others will occur in their wake — this is what we consider to be a law. If I summarize the sensations caused by a falling stone in the law of gravity, this is convenient for me because I know that if I have this law, then one will fall to the ground like another. I can therefore think from the past into the future. It is economy of thought. The law of economy of thought, the law of the least amount of force, that is, to encompass the greatest number of sensations with the least amount of thought, is what Ernst Mach takes as the basis of all scientific activity.
You can see from this that you cannot arrive at anything real in this way. For by grouping sensations together in the most convenient way, you are only serving your own convenience in life. But what you get as expressions through the principle of economy of thought says nothing about what underlies the sensations. It is only for our own convenient orientation in the world. It is only because we find it so convenient that we group sensations together in a certain way. So you see, this is a criterion of truth that deliberately refrains from arriving at any kind of objectivity and pursues no other goal than to serve the human ability to orient oneself through sensation.
A thinker who has built his ideas on similar considerations is Richard Wahle. Richard Wahle also says: People talk about one thing being the cause and another being the effect; they say that an ego lives inside us and objects live outside us. But that is all nonsense — I am using roughly the same expressions he does — in truth, nothing in the world exists for us except that we see a color occurrence here, a sound occurrence there; the world consists only, as Wahle says, of occurrences. When we call these occurrences sensations, as Mach does, we are actually going too far; for the word “sensation” already contains a secret implication that there is someone who senses. But how can we know that what appears as an occurrence is a sensation? Events are there. Out there is an event of color, an event of sound, an event of pressure, an event of heat; in here is an event of pain, an event of pleasure, there is the event of satiety, the event of hunger, there is the event that someone imagines: that there is a God. But there is actually nothing there except that someone imagines that there is a God. Just as someone experiences pain, so they imagine that there is a God. Everything is just an occurrence. Wahle believes that a distinction must be made between two types of occurrences: primary occurrences and so-called miniatures. Primary occurrences are those that occur with their original intensity: occurrences of color, sound, pressure, heat, pain, pleasure, hunger, satiety, and so on. Miniatures are fantasy images, intentions, in short, everything that appears as if in shadow, as in silhouettes of the primary occurrences. But if you take the sum of all primary occurrences and all secondary occurrences, the so-called miniatures, then you have everything that the world offers us. Everything else is basically added, added without justification. Wahle believes that people say to themselves: Three years ago, these events happened, then other events happened, and because certain events follow each other in this way, people are blinded by this and summarize it as an “I.” But where is such an 'I'? There are only events strung together, series of events. But nowhere is there an 'I'. And then people come along and say they have found laws that connect these events—laws of nature. But these laws represent nothing more than a string of events. And it is utterly impossible to decide why they occur in this sequence. When people call this knowledge, when they string events together in a certain way, this knowledge is nothing but nonsense. This knowledge, Wahle believes, is neither valid nor particularly sublime, but merely represents the fact that humans are unable to relate to events and therefore invent something. The ego is the most curious invention. For nowhere in the sum total of events can anything like an ego be found. The way events follow one another, one must assume that unknown factors are at work, for it seems that events do not follow one another arbitrarily. But what unknown factors—I use the same words Wahle uses—are at work is completely beyond human judgment; nothing can be said about them at all. All that man can know is that events exist and that these events are directed by completely unknown factors. Physics, physiology, biology, and sociology grope around at the direction. But this is just groping around, so that one can live with the events. It never leads to knowing anything about the unknown factors at play. Therefore, any opinion that one could arrive at a philosophy that contains something about the reasons why events occur in a certain way is human madness to which humanity has indulged for a time and which it is high time to abandon. — One of Richard Wahle's most important books is called: “The Whole of Philosophy and Its End. Its Legacy to Theology, Physiology, Aesthetics, and State Education.” Richard Wahle became a professor of philosophy in order to teach this end of philosophy, to teach that philosophy is a delusion!
We see that underlying such considerations is, above all, a complete powerlessness in the face of criteria of truth. One no longer feels any impulse to bring about a decision in knowledge. What underlies this could be characterized in the following way. Imagine that someone has a book and has been reading it for a long time; he reads it again and again and lives with the belief that through this book he has received information about certain things that the book contains. Now he thinks to himself: Yes, here is this book in front of me, and I have always imagined that through this book I have received information about this or that; but when I look at this book properly, there are only letters, letters, letters on the pages. So I have actually been a fool to believe that this book could give me information about all kinds of things that are not in the book at all, because they are only letters. I have always lived under the delusion that these letters have an effect on me, that they interact with me and are supposed to give me something; but letters are always just there, always following one another—letters. So one must finally free oneself from the delusion that these letters describe anything, that they could somehow relate to one another, group themselves into meaningful words or the like. - It is really an image that can be used for the kind of thinking that underlies this Wahlian non-philosophy, unphilosophy. For his great discovery consists in saying that people have hitherto believed that they see events; but they interpret events in their context, they read nature, as it were. But how foolish donkeys humans have been! There are only unrelated events, and at most there are unknown factors at play, such as perhaps something unknown that is at play that causes the letters to be grouped so strangely.
So there is a lack of empathy with the impulse to make a decision about the truth value of a judgment that has just been made on the basis of the world. Human knowledge has become powerless with regard to a criterion of truth. In earlier times, it was believed that humans had something within themselves, a kind of ability to arrive at truths from their inner experience of what is in their judgments. This could not be proven. And so people philosophize in this direction. I wanted to use these two examples to illustrate this loss of the criterion of truth, this feeling of no longer being inside the creation of truth.
On a large scale, we see this loss of an old-style criterion of truth in the contemporary school of thought known as pragmatism. And although perhaps not the most significant, the best-known representative of pragmatism is William James. If we want to briefly clarify the principle of pragmatism as it has emerged in recent times, we can characterize it in the following way.People make judgments through which they want to say something about reality. But humans have no way of finding anything within themselves that could enable them to make a true judgment about reality. There is nothing in humans that would decide, decide for itself, decide in itself: this is true, this is false. So we feel powerless to find an original, inherently existing criterion for whether something is true or false. Nevertheless, by living in reality, humans feel compelled to make judgments. And the sciences are full of judgments. If we now look at the entire scope of the sciences with all their judgments—do they say anything about anything that is true or false in a higher sense, in the sense of the old philosophical school opinions? No! In the sense of William James, for example, it is a completely impossible way of thinking to ask whether anything can be true or false in itself. One makes judgments. When one makes certain judgments, one can live with them. They prove to be useful and applicable in life, promoting life. If one were to make other judgments, one would soon be unable to cope with life, one would not be able to progress in life. They would be useless, harmful to life. This can even be applied to the crudest judgments. One cannot even reasonably say that the sun will rise again tomorrow, because there is no criterion of truth. But we have formed the judgment that the sun rises every morning. If someone were to come along and say, “The sun rises only two-thirds of the month and not in the last third,” they would not get ahead in life with this judgment, because they would always encounter obstacles in the last third of the month. The judgment we form is useful. But we cannot speak of true or false in any other sense than that a judgment guides us through the world, that it promotes life, and that another judgment, which is the opposite, damages life. There is no criterion for true and false that exists in itself, but we call that which promotes life true, and that which damages life false. - So everything that is supposed to decide whether we make a judgment or not is driven out into practical life. And all the impulses that people used to believe they possessed are no longer valid.
Such a way of thinking is not the arbitrary product of an individual or a school. Rather, the peculiarity of such schools of thought, as I have described them today, is that they are spread across almost the entire, let us say, intellectual culture of the world, that they appear here and there as if independently of one another, because humanity today is organized in such a way as to arrive at such schools of thought. The following interesting phenomenon can be observed, for example. While Peirce was writing the first book on “pragmatic philosophy” in America in the 1870s, which was then further developed by William James, Schiller in England, and others, while Peirce was publishing his first treatise on pragmatic philosophy in America, which is in line with this school of thought, a thinker in Germany wrote his “Philosophy of As If.” This is therefore a parallel phenomenon. Vaihinger is the name of the person who wrote the “Philosophy of As If” at that time. What is the aim of this “Philosophy of As If”? It starts from the idea that human beings are actually incapable of forming true or false ideas or concepts in the old sense, but nevertheless form ideas and concepts, for example—let us take a familiar concept—that of the atom. The atom is, of course, a completely absurd concept. For in our thinking, the atom is endowed with all kinds of qualities that would have to be perceptible to the senses if they really existed. Nevertheless, however, sensory perceptions are understood as effects of atomic activity. So it is a contradictory concept, a concept for something completely unfindable. As Vaihinger says, the atom is a fiction. We create many such fictions, and basically all higher concepts we form about reality are such fictions. Since there is no criterion for what is true or false, a reasonable person today must be clear that they are dealing with fictions. And one must consciously create fictions. One must be clear that the atom is a mere fiction, that the atom cannot exist. But one regards the phenomena of the world as if the world were governed by the movements or the life of atoms—as if—and thus it is useful to create this fiction. One arrives at a certain connection between phenomena when one establishes such fictions. An ego is a fiction; but one must form this fiction. For if one regards certain phenomena that occur together as if an ego were active in them, which one knows for certain to be only a fiction, they are easier to understand than if one did not regard them under the fiction of the ego. And so we actually live by pure fictions. There is no philosophy of reality, but rather a “philosophy of as if.” The world deceives us into believing that what we have as fictions is real.
On the whole, in its structure and also in its individual applications, the philosophy of pragmatism is very similar to the “philosophy of as if.” I said: At the same time that Peirce wrote his pragmatic philosophy as a treatise, in the 1870s, Vaihinger wrote down the “philosophy of as if.” But the way people were back then, in the 1870s, they still had so many remnants of the old belief that there could still be an objective criterion of truth, and that the sciences could not consist merely of fictions, that it would have been a difficult thing to publish this “philosophy of as if” in the 1870s if one wanted to become a professor. At that time, it was not yet possible. So Vaihinger looked for a way out. He left the “Philosophy of As If” lying in his desk, taught as is necessary today, didn't he, and when the time came for him to retire, he retired and published the “Philosophy of As If,” which has already appeared in several editions. — I am only telling the story; I am not judging, criticizing, or passing judgment, only telling the story.
Thus, we see that there is a certain tendency to dissolve the old criteria of truth and, fundamentally, not to place life in the service of truth, to make life a manifestation of truth, as was believed in the past, but rather to measure truth by life. Fictions—we know that they do not contain what was called truth in the old sense, but these fictions are useful. Hence the peculiar definitions of the “philosophy of as if”: Truth is the most convenient form of error, for there is only error; but there are inconvenient errors and more convenient errors, and the more convenient errors we call truths; but one must be clear about this.
There is thus an evolutionary impulse in modern thinking that really leads to no longer having a grasp of the concept of truth in the old epistemological sense. One wonders: What does this have to do with? Of course, I would have to tell you a lot if I were to describe the whole scope of what this has to do with. From the wealth of facts, let us highlight just one for now, namely that in recent times an infinite wealth of empirical knowledge has been presented to human beings, and that people have become increasingly powerless in their thinking, powerless because they can no longer master or hold together with their thinking the infinitely rich material of empirical perceptions and empirical knowledge.
Another reason is that, over time, people have become far too accustomed to abstract thinking. In earlier times, people did not think so much. They tried to keep their thinking in line with the outside world, with experience. They had the feeling that, in a sense, they could not make progress with completely abstract thinking, that this thinking had to be based on something. But then, through all the thinking that was done, people learned abstract thinking and, in a sense, grew fond of it, became accustomed to it. Added to this were some of the ravages of time, above all the view that anyone who wants to become a private lecturer must think or research something significant, and something quite extraordinary if they want to become a professor! And so, I would say, a certain hypertrophy of thinking arose. People thought things through and arrived at thought constructs that are internally logical as thought constructs. I will present to you one such thought construct that is completely logical internally.
Imagine (see drawing): Here is a mountain; on this mountain (A), a shot is fired, after a certain time, let's say after two minutes, two shots, again after a certain time, after another two minutes—three shots.

Now there is someone standing on the right (B) who is listening. I don't want to say that he will be shot, but he is listening. This is what he will hear: one shot, after a certain amount of time two shots, after a certain amount of time three shots. But now let's assume that it's not the case that someone is simply shooting here, one shot, two shots, three shots, and someone is listening: one shot, two shots, three shots, but rather that a person (C) is moving at a certain speed from this mountain (left) to this mountain (right), flying out there, moving at a certain speed from one mountain to the other, his speed being very great. Now you know from elementary physics that sound takes a certain amount of time to travel from here to here. So if a shot is fired here (A) and (B) is listening here, he hears the sound; after a certain time, the first shot arrives, after the next two minutes two shots, after another two minutes three shots. But let's assume that person (C) is moving faster than the sound. Now he is standing there. He is already moving from here towards the mountain faster than the sound. The first shot is fired, the second two shots are fired, the third three shots are fired, and he arrives at the mountain just after the third three shots have been fired, continues flying at the same speed, flies over the three shots, that is, he flies over the sound while continuing to fly rapidly; he is going faster. The sound of the three shots has reached here (D) after a certain time. He flies after the three shots, hears the three as he flies past; then he arrives after the two shots that were fired earlier, in the sound, and hears the two shots; then he flies on, arrives after the first shot, and hears the first shot. So someone who flies faster than sound hears the opposite: three shots, two shots, one shot. So if you behave in relation to the speed of sound as an ordinary person on ordinary earth behaves under normal conditions of life, you hear one shot here, two shots here, three shots here. If you do not behave like an ordinary person on ordinary earth, but are a being that flies faster than sound, you hear the opposite: three shots, two shots, one shot. All you need to do is practice the small skill of flying after the sound and flying faster than it.
Now, this is undoubtedly as logical as it can possibly be, for there is not the slightest objection to it on logical grounds. Certain developments in modern science have now led to what I have just explained to you about following sound and hearing it in reverse forming the introduction to countless lectures. Time and again, lectures begin with this—well, let's call it an example. The aim is to show that how we perceive things actually depends only on our own position in life. It is only because of our creeping nature in relation to sound that we do not hear in reverse, but hear as we do now. I cannot explain everything that follows from this here, but I wanted to present this train of thought to you because, in a sense, it forms the basis of a widely held and deeply influential theory today, the so-called theory of relativity.
I have only presented you with the crudest version. But you can see that everything presented here is logical, completely logical. Now, there are countless judgments today—philosophical literature is teeming with judgments based on the same premises. Thinking has been torn away from reality, so to speak. People only think about certain individual conditions of reality and form their thinking on that basis.
It is difficult to respond to these things because one naturally expects a logical response. But there can be no logical response. For this reason, in my last book, The Mystery of Man, I introduced the concept, based on earlier considerations, that a truth can only be grasped by forming not only a logical concept, a logical idea, but a concept that corresponds to reality, an idea that corresponds to reality. Now, it would require a very lengthy explanation to show you that the entire theory of relativity is logical, wonderfully logical even, but that it is not true to reality. So one can say: The concept developed here in relation to the one, two, three shots is entirely logical; but those who think in accordance with reality do not form it. It cannot be refuted, but only omitted! But anyone who has acquired the criterion of reality also refrains from such concepts. The empirical phenomena that one tries to grasp through this theory of relativity—Lorentz, Einstein, and so on—must be grasped in a completely different way than through the series of thoughts conceived by Einstein, Lorentz, and so on.
What I have explained to you here is, in turn, only one current in the whole forward-moving stream of modern thinking. Certainly, something from the past always mixes into this modern thinking. But the ultimate consequences, the radical consequences of what underlies almost all modern thinking, are already the things I have explained. Now there is a certain peculiarity. Because we have lost an original criterion, or let us say a feeling for an original criterion of true and false, emancipation in the abstract leads us to develop concepts which are in themselves unassailable because they are logical, and which are even, in a certain sense, true to reality, but which are unsuitable for say anything real about reality, which remain only formal concepts, concepts that float on the surface of reality and do not dive into the actual impulses of reality.
The following is an example of a theory that remains on the surface and does not want to dive into reality. Think about it: In human reality, we distinguish between the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and the human kingdom. Humans live together in a social order, one could say in a sociological order, and one could perhaps find even higher orders. That is not important. When a materialistic concept of reality existed in the middle of the nineteenth century, this superimposition was imagined in a very simple way. Basically, they only accepted the physical mineral kingdom and said to themselves: Well, plants are just things that are arranged in a more complicated way from the same basic components that make up the mineral kingdom; the basic components are arranged in a more complicated way in the animal kingdom; even more complicated in the human kingdom, and so on up the ladder. However, as one went further up, into the social order, it became impossible to find complicated atomic movements, for example. Certain forms of atomic movement correspond to the mineral kingdom – that is how certain people imagined it – and these become more complicated in the plant kingdom, where one can dispense with the atom because one cannot see it; the animal kingdom corresponds to even more complicated forms of movement, and the human kingdom to even more complicated ones. This is how everything is constructed. However, when one enters the social order, the atom does not really work; one cannot find atomic movements there.
A thinker from the last third of the nineteenth century did manage to reduce sociology to biological terms. He treated social structures, families, like cells, which then group together into larger—what do I know—district communities, which are the beginnings of tissues. Then it goes on—states are already whole organs—and so on. Schäffle was the name of the person who conceived these social organisms as ideas. Schäffle then wrote a book: “The Futility of Social Democracy,” and based it on this biological-sociological theory. The Viennese writer Hermann Bahr, who was still a very young badger at the time, but a very talented person, wrote a counter-treatise to Schäffle's book “The Futility of Social Democracy” and called his counter-treatise “The Futility of Mr. Schäffle.” It is an excellently written book, but it has been forgotten.
So, as I said, the old materialistic concept of truth only ever imagined increasingly complicated structures and, of course, introduced certain concepts, such as: in crystals, atoms move in a certain rigid form, in the plant kingdom in a more unstable form, seeking a point of equilibrium, and so on. In short, people came up with all kinds of theories, but they always wanted to derive one thing from another. Once materialism had been around long enough, it became possible to reflect on how unproductive and how unsustainable this materialistic idea of reality actually is when subjected to closer scrutiny. And so the idea arose: surely, the mineral kingdom is there, then the plant kingdom appears. The mineral substance is incorporated into the plant, even the mineral laws; the salts that are inside, the other substances, function according to their physiological and chemical laws. So the mineral kingdom is inside the plant kingdom. But the plant kingdom can never arise from the mineral kingdom. Something creative must be added. So, as one ascends from the mineral kingdom to the plant kingdom, something creative is added, and this—the first creative element—is creative in the mineral kingdom. Then a second creative element comes into the plant kingdom, which appropriates the mineral kingdom. Then a third creative element emerges, from which the animal kingdom arises. The animal kingdom in turn appropriates the lower kingdoms. Then a fourth creative element emerges, which appropriates the lower kingdoms — in the human kingdom. Then, in the sociological order, a new creative element appropriates the other kingdoms again. A hierarchy of creative elements! — Of course, there is nothing to object to in the logic of this idea. The idea is also correct as an idea. However, you will have to think differently about the matter if you remember the spiritual scientific concepts that we do not want to discuss today. But the whole consideration remains stuck in the abstract; it does not enter into concrete imagination. Certainly, details are taught; but if one thinks in this way, one actually has only the abstract concept of the creative. The whole thinking remains stuck in abstractions. But it is an attempt to overcome mere materialism, as it were, through a formalism of clear thinking. One arrives at somewhat higher, but still only abstract concepts.
In Boutroux's philosophy, we have an attempt to overcome mere materialism through formal thinking, which results from an unbiased observation of the hierarchy of the natural kingdoms. This concept of ascending creativity is sought, so to speak, from the hierarchy of the sciences. This leads to interesting conclusions. But everything remains stuck in the abstract. This could be easily proven if we were to go into the details of Boutroux's philosophy. I will only outline the lines of thought for now; the rest may come later. Here we have an attempt to grasp reality through a superficial observation of reality with one-sided abstractions. But it cannot be grasped. The aim is not to establish a mere “philosophy of as if,” not mere pragmatism, not to remain at the level of an insubstantial juxtaposition of events, but it is not possible to achieve a level of concretization that would enable us to truly read the external world, so to speak, in order to recognize what lies behind it. as one recognizes what lies behind the letters of a book from the letters themselves, but one arrives only at a few abstractions that are supposed to indicate that something lives in the hierarchy of the realms of reality. While the other philosophical schools of thought I have mentioned lost the criterion of truth in epistemology, here the power to grasp reality concretely is lost. One no longer has the ability to immerse oneself in the inner impulses of reality. One skims the surface.
This leads us to another fundamental feature of modern life. This way of thinking, I said, has in a certain sense emancipated itself from reality and proceeds emancipated from reality in abstractions. You can see how this has led to a loss of the impulse to immerse oneself in reality in the various schools of thought of recent times. People have become increasingly powerless to grasp the true nature of reality. A classic example of this can be found in the development of thought from Maine de Biran to Bergson. While Biran, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, still had a school of thought that could delve into important psychological concepts, into the reality of human existence itself, Bergson struck out on a peculiar path that is quite characteristic of the particular tendency of modern thinking. On the one hand, Bergson notes that with ordinary abstract thinking and indeed with all scientific thinking as it is practiced and as it is deposited in scientific results, one cannot, in essence, penetrate reality, that one always remains, as it were, on the surface of reality and does not immerse oneself in the immediate life of reality. Therefore, he wants to grasp this reality in a kind of intuition—I can only characterize it in very general terms at this point—in an inner experience as opposed to the external planning of reality. And this leads him to a peculiar view in epistemological and psychological terms. This then culminates—I will now omit the intermediate links—in his statement that, according to the materialistic view, memory and higher structures of the soul life are believed to be bound to complicated forms or movements, structures of the brain. But the brain is not at all there to create such complex structures, but rather that what is spiritual and what cannot be grasped by abstract thinking, but rather through inner experience, through intuition, is what acts, and the relationships it enters into with reality are expressed in human sensations, in feelings, and in the practical organization of life, in the movements we teach our bodies, for example. But everything is exhausted in the brain's formations, in what has an effect on sensation and on the promotion and shaping of life. Memory, for example, does not come about because there are brain formations for it, but because it has an intensity that is independent of the brain.
It is an attempt to overcome the materialistic concept of knowledge, an attempt that is peculiar in that it brings to light the opposite of reality. For it is precisely in order to develop memory that the opposition of the physical body and the physical brain and the entire physical system must exist. Memory could never become established in the soul unless the soul developed to the point of the physical body and created the conditions in the physical body for acquiring the faculty, the capacity for memory. So here a theory is formed which, out of the urge to overcome materialism, arrives at precisely the opposite of what is correct. While it is correct to say that memory must be added to the abilities acquired by the human soul, and that memory must then be attached to the soul with the help of the physical body, Bergson regards the physical body as uninvolved in the development of memory. I am not elaborating on these things in order to say anything specific about Bergson's philosophy from a historical perspective, but only to characterize this peculiar phenomenon, namely that modern thinking leads in a completely logical way to finding the opposite of what is correct.
Thus, we can start from the more epistemologically oriented philosophies, which speak of powerlessness in the face of a criterion of true and false, and then arrive at those philosophies which, although they strive to find the true, arrive precisely at the opposite, at what is false, because they seek it out of powerlessness in the face of the true, so that in the present day there is a certain inner tendency of thought toward the incorrect, toward the false. This is closely related to the fact that we have actually become alienated from reality through the capacity for abstraction, the tendency toward abstraction, to which we have become accustomed. One becomes detached from reality and cannot find one's way back to it. You can read more about this in my book Rätsel der Philosophie (Riddles of Philosophy). Once one has separated oneself from reality through abstraction, one cannot find one's way back to it. But on the other hand, people develop a certain longing to grasp the spiritual. But there is still a powerlessness to attain this spiritual realm. This can often be significant, as can be seen in the present-day search for spiritual truth out of absolute powerlessness. We have just looked at an example where the true is sought and the false is found through the emancipation of thought from reality.
A characteristic example of the search for the spirit without even the slightest ability to grasp a single corner of the spirit can be found in the philosophy of Eucken. Eucken only talks about the spirit, that is, with words, but he never says anything about the spirit. Because his words are completely powerless to approach the real spirit, Eucken always talks about the spirit. He has already written countless books. It is a real torture to read through these books, because they all say the same thing. It always says that one must find this self-comprehension of thinking that is within itself, which, apart from an external reference and external resistance, comprehends itself within itself, sees itself within itself, moves forward within itself, enters into itself with this forward movement, and shapes itself again from within itself. One can listen to a lecture by Eucken or read a book on Greek philosophy and find the development of Greek philosophy presented in such a way that this thinking first attempts to grasp itself, but is not yet able to do so. One can hear about Paracelsus, how the inner being is gradually grasped; one can read a book about the origins of Christianity—everywhere the same thing, everywhere the same thing! And this philosophy is infinitely significant for modern philistinism, which is so happy to hear people talk about the spirit, to theorize about the spirit, when one needs to know nothing about the spirit, when one does not really need to enter into the spirit. That is why many call Eucken's philosophy the revival of idealism, the revival of spiritual life, a cultural ferment capable of refreshing the exhausted and deadening spiritual life of the present, and so on. And those who have a feeling for what pulsates and should pulsate in a philosophy read Eucken, listen to Eucken, and have the vivid feeling of pulling themselves up by their own hair, higher and higher! For that is the consistent logic of Eucken's philosophy. In my “Riddles of Philosophy,” I sought to present things objectively. What I have just said, anyone can say for themselves, because there is no need to criticize right away; first, one must become familiar with the concepts that exist.
Thus we see how certain currents of thought in the present emerge precisely from powerlessness in the face of reality, and how philosophies are formed from this powerlessness in the face of reality. If you don't care about this life, well, then you think it's not really that bad. But it is bad. And sometimes you have to engage with what is alive and vibrant in the thinking of the present, because you may be able to get a feeling for what can overcome what is alive in the present.
I have only presented to you a few of the currents of thought that play an important role in various areas of life where one deals with thoughts, where philosophical worldviews are presented and taught. It is certainly true in the present day that a common structure of thought tendencies has gradually developed in recent years. I have indicated this by showing you how independently of each other pragmatism and the “philosophy of as if” have emerged.
But thinkers have also adopted different things from each other. Thinkers have always been in lively exchange with each other. Vaihinger is completely independent of Peirce; they arrived at these ways of life completely independently of each other, over there in America and here in Germany. But we also find many echoes of the personality of one cultural community in the personality of the other cultural community; and only by really going into the details of these things and considering them can one get a picture of what is really going on in intellectual life. In this respect, too, there is a lot of speculation, an enormous amount of thinking, writing, and reflection in the present, but even the simplest things are not paid attention to. Little attention is paid to certain connections that exist because people have lost their sense of reality in the present. This sense of reality must be cultivated. Let me say this as an addendum to today's reflections: this sense of reality can only be acquired through hard work.
If I may mention something personal: it has always been my aspiration – also in all external scientific matters – to develop a sense of reality, a kind of intuition for reality. This consists not only in being able to judge reality, but also in finding ways to measure the real against the real and to compare it with the real. You may know that Nietzsche teaches the doctrine of eternal rebirth, of the return of the same. This doctrine is as follows: as we sit here together, we have already sat together countless times and will sit together again. It is not a doctrine of reincarnation, but a doctrine of the return of the same. I do not wish to criticize this doctrine of return here; that is not important now. This doctrine of return arises from a very specific idea about the first creation of the world, from impossible ideas that Nietzsche formed about the first creation of the world.
I was once with other scholars in the Nietzsche Archive, and the doctrine of the return of the same was being discussed. People were interested in how Nietzsche might have come up with such an idea. Now think what wonderful opportunities these are! Anyone familiar with the circumstances knows what wonderful opportunities there are to write as many dissertations and books as possible about how Nietzsche arrived at the original ideas of the doctrine of the return of the same. Of course, one can put forward the most daring hypotheses, and one can find many things if one simply searches for them. I said at the time, after the discussion had gone on for a while: Nietzsche very often—I was trying to grasp him realistically in his thinking—came to an idea by grasping the opposite idea to an idea he had found in someone else. To my knowledge, the counter-idea, namely that because of a certain configuration of the beginning of the earth, there can be no return of the same, comes from Dühring, from another philosopher. And to my knowledge, I said, Nietzsche had read Dühring. Now the simplest and most realistic thing to do is to go to Nietzsche's library, which has been preserved, take out these works by Dühring where this counter-idea appears, and take a look. Well, one went to his library, looked it up, opened the passage—I knew it exactly—and there was a thick line in Nietzsche's hand at this point with a few significant words. He wrote in places where he wanted to capture counter-ideas—I don't know exactly what he wrote at this point—something like “donkey,” “nonsense,” “nonsense.” Such a characteristic word was written there on the edge. So he read, made a note, grasped the counter-idea, and the counter-idea of the “doctrine of the return of the same” sprang from his mind! — It is a matter of looking in the right place. For Nietzsche really had a tendency to form counter-ideas to certain ideas.
This is now also a characteristic feature of the disempowerment of the modern criterion of truth—I have shown you the other manifestations of this disempowerment—it is again an expression of disempowerment: because one cannot arrive at a criterion of truth oneself, one forms the counter-truth to truths that already existed, the counter-judgments to judgments that already existed. - But one must not generalize such things. If you wanted to form the abstract judgment that Nietzsche gained his entire philosophy in this way, that would of course be complete nonsense; for at times he was quite positive, that is, he simply developed certain ideas further, entirely in their spirit. For example, the entire doctrine of “Beyond Good and Evil,” as it appears in Nietzsche, can be proven in all its individual parts. One need only go to Nietzsche's library and take the book on morality by Guyax. One reads the passages that Nietzsche has marked in the margins and finds them abstracted in “Beyond Good and Evil”! Beyond Good and Evil is already entirely contained in Guyau's treatises on morality. Such connections must be taken into account in modern times. If they are not taken into account, one arrives at completely false images of what one or another arid thinker was.
I wanted to present to you a few aspects of modern intellectual life today. I have confined myself to the most familiar and superficial aspects. If circumstances permit, we can go into detail in this area in the very near future.