THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
the negative pole of being, there is a preponderance of the objective. Hegel is the originator and greatest representative of absolute idealism. According to this metaphysical doctrine, existence is not only spiritual, but it is a single, all-inclusive (therefore absolute), self-conscious being, which manifests itself as nature and spirit. In this view phenomena are neither subjective products, nor copies, nor effects, of a transcendent reality, but are parts of the living reality itself. They are phenomena per se, and exist objectively as the thoughtcontent of the absolute mind, or Absolute Idea, to use Hegel's expression. The phenomenal world, therefore, is the real world, and there is no other world. With Hegel existence is rational throughout; and, indeed, the entire process of history is only the self-unfolding of the one universal divine reason. Absolute idealism has now almost completely vanished from German speculation, though it has gained a strong foothold in English and American thought. Prominent representatives of the doctrine are F. H. Bradley and Josiah Royce.
In its epistemological reference idealism is the opposite of realism. While the realist asserts that we have knowledge of an external reality, the idealist maintains that we can know only phenomena or ideas in the sense of Locke. If the idealist denies the existence of such an external reality, holding that ideas are only modifications of the mind, he becomes a subjective idealist in the epistemological sense. If he be consistent, he will deny the existence of other persons than himself and become a solipsist; for in his view such persons could exist only as ideas in consciousness. Perhaps the nearest approach to such a view was made by Bishop Berkeley, who held, though not consistently, that esse is percipi. If the idealist admits that phenomena are not purely subjective, that they have a certain problematical existence, he becomes a cosmothetic idealist. Descartes, Kant, and most English philosophers have been cosmothetic idealists. Hubert Evans.
II. German Idealism: By German Idealism is
meant that phase of intellectual life that had its
origin in the Enlightenment (q.v.), as
i. The modified by German conditions. Eng-
Move- lish and French representatives of the
ment Char- Enlightenment, giving precedence to
acterized. sensation, had become empiricists and skeptics. They viewed the world as a great mechanism, adopted hedonism as their ethics, and interpreted history from a subjectivecritical point of view. The situation in Germany was just the reverse. There thought was given precedence over sensation; and, instead of empiricism, idealism was dominant. Ethics was based upon norms of universal validity, instead of upon individual whim; history was interpreted genetically as a rational progress; and for the mechanical conception of the world the organic, or dynamic, view was substituted. Nature was seen to be spiritual, as well as spatial, and was interpreted teleologically. In the hands of Jacobi and Kant Hume's skepticism became the weapon that destroyed the influence of empiricism and thus paved the way for idealism. For the Germans, at least, Rousseau's
radicalism brought into question the value of the culture-ideals of the Enlightenment, and impelled them to seek the basis of culture in the creative power of the mind. For the philosopher German idealism usually means the philosophy of Kant and his immediate followers, while for the historian of literature it may mean little more than the personality of Goethe; and it is not unusual to characterize the literary aspect of the movement as neo-Humanism. However, there is a unity in the movement that cannot be ignored; and all its varied manifestations, whether in science, philosophy, literature, art, or social life, are properly treated under the title " German Idealism."
Several factors contributed to give the Enlightenment in Germany its peculiarly independent character; but notable was the in-
2. Leibnitz fluence of Leibnitz, and that of the and the Pietists. Leibnitz was an essentially Pietists, religious personality, and in transplanting the spirit of the Enlightenment into Germany he imparted to it that distinctively ethical and religious flavor which became characteristic of German Idealism. It was he who was chiefly instrumental in substituting the teleological for the mechanical view of nature. He transformed the atoms of the materialists into monads, or psychical entities, and substituted for natural law his theory of preestablished harmony. He asserted the absolute worth of the individual against the destructive monism of Spinoza, and saw in the progress of history a movement of the monads toward some divine end. On the one hand, he made the development of materialism and skepticism impossible in Germany, and, on the other hand, he brought about the teleological explanation of the history of the universe as a whole. The teleological and idealistic tendencies of Leibnitz were strengthened through Pietism (q.v.). Klopstock, Herder, Jacobi, Goethe, and Jean Paul, all betray in their works the Pietistic influence.
The conceptual framework of German Idealism
was provided by Immanuel Kant (q.v.), who was
the first to reconcile the conflicting
3. Kant's empirical and rationalistic elements of Transcen- the prevailing dogmatic philosophy. dentalism. With one stroke he secured for mind
priority over nature, and yet without endangering in the least the validity of the principles of scientific investigation; and, by giving the primacy to the practical reason, he placed religion and ethics on a sure footing and broke the ban of rationalism. In the first instance Kant's work was purely epistemological. He made it particularly his problem to rescue natural science from the (epistemological) skepticism of Hume, and then to rescue religion from rationalism. It was Kant who utterly demolished the rationalistic arguments of Anselm, Descartes, and others, for the existence of God. Science is valid, but it has to do only with phenomena. This phenomenal world, however, is produced a priori by the activity of consciousness, reacting upon that external reality whose nature cannot be known. The very fact that the world as we know it is only the sum total of phenomena accounts for the constancy of experience, anil is