7. Romanticism

The immediate result of the metaphysical systems of Fichte and Schelling was that revival of poetic production and criticism known as Romanticism, which sprang from the school of Goethe and Schiller. The union of poesy with the metaphysical, or religious, view of life became a recognized prin ciple of art; and it was this combination that secured for idealism the final triumph over the narrow naturalism and rationalism of the Enlightenment. Romanticism brought to light the connection of poetry with Christianity. Just as Schiller had taken Kant's epistemology as a basis for the explanation of the relation of esthetics to ethics, so now the Kantian position was utilized to explain the relation of religion to esthetics. Thus, from Kant's idealism came a new analysis of religion; illuminating with a new light the problems of culture. Roman ticism gave breadth and depth to the historical view and dissolved into thin air those time-worn conceptions of a "law of nature," " common sense," and innate norms of the reason, just as formerly the Enlightenment had disposed of the idea of a super natural, ecclesiastical norm, which rested upon these conceptions. The leading spirits in the romantic movement were the two Schlegels, though Fichte, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schelling, Novalis, and many others took a part in it. Out of Roman ticism sprang a new impulse for systematic thinking; and through the political catastrophes of the time and the moral earnestness of the intellectual leaders, idealistic speculation was forced to apply its norms to practical social problems.

The first to feel the pressure of the realistio-historical problems were the founders of metaphysical idealism, Fichte and Schelling. Both

& Later betray the influence of Schleiermacher. Views of Realizing the inadequacy of their phi- Fichte and losophy to meet practical needs, they ScheMng. now sought an ethical and religious ideal which should unify the concrete content of spiritual life and at the same time be a necessary deduction from the metaphysical back ground of existence. Fichte retained his idea of the moral state as the consummation of the historical process, but he no longer considered this state merely as a postulate of progressive freedom, but as a concrete civilized state, in which all members of society share in the blessings of religion, morality, and art. In this remodeled view of Fichte religion is dominant; for he finds that only religious faith makes possible the realization of the moral idea, and thus the reality of the external world. The world is ethical. It is religious faith that gives an ultimate aim to ethical conduct, that makes possible a union of the empirical ego with its metaphysical basis, i.e., God. His ethics is thus deprived of its formal character as an endless progress and given a definite aim. This ethical and religious view necessitates a modification of his metaphysics. The background of empirical consciousness is no longer an endless progression of the Absolute, but a fixed and unchanging divine being. In this being the empirical ego has its, origin, and through ethical conduct it returns to its source. Similarly, in view of moral and esthetic needs, Schelling was forced to change his views.. In applying the principle of identity he had destroyed all the manifold variety of existence, and thus its reality; and in describing the universe as a qualityless neutrum he had only caricatured the Absolute. His philosophy was belied by every phase of experience. Just as Fichte, so Schelling sought in religion the key to the origin and destiny of man. The phenomenal world takes its rise in the absolute, self-determined will of God, and, on account of its origin, it necessarily works, its way up to God again. This movement back to God is a religious progress, through mythology, or natural religion, up to Christianity, at which stage the union of man with God takes place. Thus, Christianity, whose dogmas are interpreted evolutionistically by Schelling, becomes the end and purpose of history; and it is upon Christianity that ethics, politics, and esthetics are to be based.

If Fichte and Schelling had endeavored to find the purpose of existence in some concrete content, say the moral state, or the Christian g. Hegel's religion, deducing this content from

System. the conception of God, Hegel solved the problem by a systematic and logical exploitation of the conception of evolution, which with him was both a constituent and a teleo logical principle. The conception had been variously and obscurely employed by Leibnitz, Lessing, Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, and F. Schlegel. Then, on the basis of Kant's .transcendental deduction, Fichte and Schelling interpreted the process of development in a purely idealistic manner as the unconscious opposition of the Absolute to itself, and the conscious and gradual removal of this opposition by self-absorption, the double process following necessarily from the very nature of mind. Hegel makes the impulse of the absolute mind a gradual and self-determined process, by which the Absolute lifts itself from mere possibility and actuality to conscious, free, and necessary possession. Viewed cub specie aternitatia the whole process is timeless, and only to a finite mind does it appear as an endless procession in time and space. However, it is just in this finite view that the ethical, esthetic, and religious character of Hegel's philosophy man ifests itself. In the finite consciousness there is a separation of the natural, the actual, and the em pirical from the spiritual, the free, and the necessary. In the unity reached by overcoming this divoroement of the finite from the infinite lies religious blessedness, perfect beauty, and moral freedom. Every phase and stage of this inner teleological development is necessary to the life of the Absolute, and all variety in finite experience is preserved in the higher unity. Nothing is lost. Instead of being an undifferentiated substance, or a qualityless neutrum, the Absolute is the living, vital reality that manifests itself in human experience. This

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reality is spiritual, and the guiding principle of its upward movement is the fulfilment of its own divine purpose, which is religious, ethical, esthetic. Religion and ethics are thus a necessary product of the self-explication of the Absolute, or God.

The religious turn that idealistic metaphysics had taken was due directly, or indirectly, to the influence of Schleiermacher, the most

10. Schleiermacher.

specifically religious of all the great philosophers. In his own system be made use of the religious consciousness in an original and striking manner to solve the practical and theoretical problems growing out of Kant's critical philosophy. In the field of ethics he was the most conspicuous exponent of German idealism. What Hegel had deduced from the Absolute by his application of the conception of development, Schleiermacher, following the critical method of Kant, sought to attain by an analysis of empirical consciousness. In its theoretical attitude toward being, consciousness is receptive and seeks to combine the data of sense into the highest possible conceptual unity; in its practical attitude consciousness is active and transfers the aim of reason from the world of sense to the world of conscious freedom. However, in both cases thought and being always remain separate for the finite understanding. On the other hand, that essential unity of reality which makes possible any relation of thought to being, such as volition to being, is present in religious feeling. While Hegel had employed a deductive, dialectical method to show that all being is in God, Schleiermacher reached this unity by an inductive process, which was guided by feeling, instead of by pure reason. Instead of starting with a timeless and apacelcss Absolute, he started with the phenomenal world. His task was to analyze the reason that dominates the actual world of history, to bring to light its various purposes, combine them into a totality representing the absolute divine purpose of the universe, the summum bonum, and to show that the power to realize this ideal lies in religious consciousness. Schleiermacher's practical religious interests now took him into the field of theology. For his religious philosophy see Schleiermacher, Friedrich Ernst Daniel.

Herbart stuck even more closely to the Kantian view-point, but, like other followers of Kant, he sought to eliminate the conception of 11. Herbart. an unknowable reality, and press for- ward to the ultimate nature of things. He adopted Kant's analysis of consciousness, but in a psychological sense, and found that the transcendental reality consists of a plurality of simple substances. These he called "reals." They are psychical in nature and analogous to the monads of Leibnitz. Through their relations to one another and to human consciousness the phenomenal world is brought into existence; and from their teleological cooperation Herbart deduces a divine, creative intelligence, analogous to the Monadmonadum of Leibnitz, thus opposing sharply current poetic naturalism and Spinozism. Herbart's practical and, social philosophy, which is based upon the judments of the soul as to the relations of the "reals" to each other, particularly upon judgments expressing like or dislike, also tends toward rationalism. On account of the method employed here, Herbart calls the result esthetics, to which he subordinates ethics. In his view the ideal society Would be one based upon the insight and activity of the educated, and upon the rational education of youth, and realizing in its organization the natural and fundamental ethical ideas. Herbert thus became not only a reformer of psychology, but of pedagogy as well.