12. Schopenhauer

The last great representative of German Idealism in systematic philosophy was Schopenhauer. While with him the phenomenal world is ideal, i.e., existing only as a subjective idea, its objective basis is not a "thing in itself," as Kant taught, but a univer sal will. This Schopenhaugr interprets as a blind, illogical, aimless impulse, without any original ethical tendency whatsoever. Through the blind impulse of this world-will arises human intelligence and the phenomenal world. History loses all tel eological significance and becomes an irrational and endless progression. Ethics, therefore, as the philosophy of the ultimate purpose of the world, can only proclaim the aimlessness of the cosmical process and seek to put an end to it by stilling the will. This quietizing of the will is effected by r6cog nizing the aimlessness of the process and resigning oneself to incompletely. For these teachings Schopenhauer found a support in Buddhism, which was then just becoming known in the Occident. He was bitter in his hatred of what he thought the selfishness and sensuality of Judaism, in which he found the roots of deceptive theism. The pure Christianity of Christ he regarded as a sort of mystical quietism. Though his metaphysical work, Die Welt ala WiUe and Vorstellung, appeared as early as 1819, his teachings found no popular reception till after the wane of Hegel's influence is Germany.

13. Idealism in the Positive Sciences

The effects of this idealistic development are apparent in the positive sciences not less than in metaphysics. In accordance with the idea of the oneness of the world, the natural sciences have been given a subordinate position, or else reduced to natural philosophy. The new spirit is manifested even more~clearly in the historical sciences, where the genetic method is everywhere employed and individual facts are treated in relation to the whole development. For instance, the historian of literature or art now seeks to bring the facts with which he is dealing into relation with other phases of life and thus grasp the life and ideals of a nation as a whole. Similarly, the philologist is no longer satisfied with the study of one language, but seeks to correlate it with kindred tongues and reconstruct the inner life of the people. Even in the field of jurisprudence the genetic method has been adopted and particular stress laid on the development of common law. The effect of this idealistic movement may also be observed in theology. Here deistic efforts to base Christianity on a general theory of religion have been replaced by a more penetrating psychological analysis, together with a genetic view of religious history; though it should be added that repeated

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and earnest attempts have been made to rescue the core of Christianity from the general flux of history and give to it a fixed character. Since it is in the universities, chiefly, that the sciences are cultivated, naturally the universities have been reorganised in conformity to the changed ideals. It was in the University of Jena that German Idealism got its first foothold. From here the new educational ideal went forth to the newly established universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, Bonn, Breslau, and Munich, and into the secondary schools. The effect of this reform has been to rescue philosophy from its servile position in the faculty of liberal arts and give it the position of that pure and true science which determines the principles of all other science, whether theoretical or practical.

(E. Troeltsch.)