RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Idealism.
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
io. Schleier- specifically religious of all the great
macher. philosophers. In his own system he made use of the religious consciousness in ah 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 spaceless 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 ii. Herbart. an unknowable reality, and press forward 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 judgments 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. Herbart thus became not only a reformer of psychology, but of pedagogy as well.
The last great representative of German Idealism
in systematic philosophy was Schopenhauer. While
with him the phenomenal world is
12. Schop- ideal, i.e., existing only as a subjective
enhauer. idea, its objective basis is not a " thing in itself," as Kant taught, but a universal will. This Schopenhauer 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 teleological 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 recognizing the aimlessness of the process and resigning oneself to it completely. 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 als Wille und Vorstellung, appeared as early as 1819, his teachings found no popular reception till after the wane of Hegel's influence in Germany.
The effects of this idealistic development are
apparent in the positive sciences not less than in
metaphysics. In accordance with the
13. Ideal- idea of the oneness of the world, the
ism in the natural sciences have been given a Positive subordinate position, or else reduced
Sciences, 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
Idealism Idolatry