Rudolf Hermann Lotze

“ A Scepticism that is without motif raises the question whether, at last, all may not be quite different from what we are necessarily compelled to think it. This doubt we pass by. For since it does not arise out of the content of what is necessary to thought, but only demands in a general way some pledge for the truth of our thinking, that lies out side of all our thought, no satisfaction can ever be given it, but it can only be overcome by a conviction of the absurdity of its own content. ”

“ It is natural that many such trains of thought, setting out as they do from different points of view, should not coincide in one whole but leave gaps and contradictions between them.
The same relation maintains itself with the individual sciences. They attach themselves to single domains of actuality, and are satisfied when they discover principles which are constantly valid within such a domain, but which at once become doubtful in their application on being carried over to any other domain. Thus the conception of a cause that acts according to law is undoubtedly valid in physics. ”

“ On the contrary, as finite beings, we do not ourselves stand in the creative centre of the world, but eccentrically in the hurly-burly of its individual sequences. It is not at all probable and is never certain, that we should perfectly divine the one true Principle of the world in any one fundamental thought, however noble and important, to which some sudden intuition might lead us ”

“ The rather is it nothing else than the strenuous effort of the human spirit, by a coherent investigation, to find a solution, that is universally valid and free from contradictions, for those riddles by which our mind is oppressed in life, and about which we are perforce compelled to hold some view or other, in order to be able really to live at all. ”

“ It is the problem of philosophy to deter mine the claims of these different principles and the circuit within which they are valid. Accordingly it admits, for the present, of being defined as the endeavor, by means of an investigation which has for its object that which is the principle of investigation in education and in the particular sciences, to establish a view of the world that is certain, coherent, and of universal validity. ”

“ A second kind of Scepticism, with a motif, endeavors to show that the thoughts which we are compelled to think according to the necessary rules of our cognition are frequently impossible according to rules just as necessary; and, therefore, that what is a necessity to our thought does not lead us to any true knowledge. Such doubts are not to be refuted or confirmed, without investigation. We derive from them simply the rule of circumspection, accurately to test the most general conceptions and principles which appear to us as necessities of thought ”

“ In life and in the particular sciences we are constantly employed with the explanation of phenomena which, in the form in which they are presented to us, are full of riddles through their contradictions, gaps, and lack of coherence,—a fact to which allusion has already been made. In doing this we necessarily start from certain general presuppositions to which nature and the coherency of things must correspond in order to be true. These presuppositions are ordinarily employed only in an uncritical way and without any clear consciousness of their meaning ”

“ Life itself involves, in that which we are wont to call ‘education,’ numerous attempts at such a solution. As well concerning the nature of things and their connection under law, as concerning the grounds of beauty in phenomena, and, finally, concerning the rules obligatory for human conduct, education is accustomed to establish a number of trains of thought that excite a great interest on account of the liveliness and warmth which they possess as witnesses, not for unprejudiced reflection but for life’s immediate experience. ”

“ As related to scepticism and derived from it, Criticism endeavors to establish cognition more securely, since it premises an investigation of the nature of the faculty of cognition, and thereby seeks to determine the limits of the validity of our forms of cognition, previous to their application to their objects. Nevertheless, although a preliminary orientating of ourselves concerning the origin and connection of our knowledge may guard us against many vain undertakings, yet we cannot regard the undertaking of criticism as anything more than a petitio principii. ”

“ Realism pronounces it to be a capital fault to surrender this independence of the moral principles, and to be willing to deduce the supreme rules, according to which our conduct has to be directed, from any theoretical insight whatever into the nature of reality. In ‘Being’ alone no significance with respect to what ought to be is involved. ”

“ That is to say, previous to the application of knowledge to things, we cannot do anything but become conscious of those grounds of judgment which our reason contributes to the consideration of things as necessities of its thought. ”

“ Both are at one so far as this, that the world itself must be a unity; and consequently the perfected cognition of it must be, as it were, a closed system, which can contain no parts that are not united, or that stand toward each other without any ordering whatever.
One view, however, believes that it is both able and obligated to divine at the beginning the One Real Principle, on which the world actually depends, and from it to deduce or construe the entire actuality as the sum of its consequences. Such a beginning for cognition would be the best if we were gods. ”

“ This last problem may be called that of ‘Practical Philosophy’ in special; while the doctrine of the culture of character according to general ethical principles is called ‘Moral Science’ or ‘Ethics’.
Idealism, as a rule, does not reach any special distinction in these two forms of ‘discipline’. To it the ‘Good’ appears, not as that which merely ought to be, but likewise as that which eternally is. As well the individual man as society and the history of society are, in its view, ‘factors in the development of the Absolute’. ”

“ It is in ‘Religion’ that the human mind has either solved all these problems by a lively phantasy, or some revelation has furnished the solution. In the first case, philosophy has to explain, to test, and to correct, the impulses by which the phantasy would be directed. ”

“ The Metaphysic of Realism is more inclined to the pursuit of special investigations which are attached to single groups of problems; and it is only afterward that it endeavors to combine the results it has attained into one whole. The Metaphysic of Idealism, on the contrary, prefers to apprehend as its single main problem the meaning of the world as a whole; and it believes that the solution of this problem includes that of all the special problems, and that thereby a coherent, uninterrupted development can best be obtained. ”

“ Realism takes up those claims, of the conscience that obligates us to a definite form of conduct, which urge themselves upon our interior life, as though they were mere problems of fact,—problems on this account because, in spite of the clearness with which the claims of conscience follow in many individual cases, still in other cases we feel ourselves obligated in a contradictory fashion to irreconcilable modes of conduct. ”

“ Our cognition is accustomed to the investigation of individual events. These have their definite conditions, under which they are produced and maintained. On this account, we can often show step by step in a pictorial manner, how the phenomenon arises from the co-operation of its conditions; that is to say, we know the mechanism of its coming to be, the way in which it is produced. ”

“ Aroused by certain events, which happen to one man in one way and to another in a different way, all these reflections retreat in a lively manner some steps backward, in order to discover the reasons that will explain such experiences. ”

“ From the realistic point of view, we take an interest in investigating the effective conditions upon which all these facts concerning the ordering of nature depend; from the idealistic, in showing that it is an ordering in which, if one knows it once for all, the striving after the fulfillment of those universal problems that are unavoidable in every conceivable rational world may be recognized again and again. ”

“ The second view—of which we fully approve—distinguishes the investigation from the exhibition of truth. The mere search for the truth is by no means under the necessity of taking its point of departure from one principle, but is justified in set ting forth from many points of attachment that lie near each other. ”

“ In the first place, we should in realistic fashion discover from the consideration of this reciprocal action, that the image of the one being A cannot be formed like A within the other being B; be cause, although it always on the one side depends upon the impression from A, it likewise on the other side depends on the nature of B. This, therefore, is the same as saying that, by virtue of this unavoidable ‘subjectivity of all ideation,’ cognition cannot be ‘true’ in the sense that it copies the essence of objects in form similar to the objects themselves ”

“ Over against this so-called ‘mechanical view’ of forces working blindly according to general laws, there stands the idealistic view, which regards only ‘active Ideas’ as truly effective in the world of things. ”

“ In judgment we divide the object of a perception into a subject, from which we as yet exclude a predicate; then into such predicate; and, finally, into the third mental representation, that of the copula by which the predicate is united again with the subject. ”

“ Realism takes its point of departure from the absolute certainty of the law of identity. Accordingly, it sees so-called ‘contradictions’ everywhere that ordinary experience shows us a ‘unity of the one and the many’ (for example, the ‘many properties’ of a ‘Thing’ and their ‘alteration’) . It further tries to find a general solution for the contradiction in the assertion that the unity is here only apparent ”

“ But the consideration of organic life, as well as ethical speculations, frequently oppose to it the conception of a cause that is determined only by its ends and not by laws, or of one that acts with a complete freedom. ”

“ Such investigations may either be founded, in a manner quite like that of natural science, upon experience and experiment, or philosophically upon metaphysical presuppositions. The larger gain with reference to the explanation of the individual comes in the former way; but a more secure apprehension for the whole of a theory is only to be gained in the second way. But the entire realistic investigation is indispensable, because it is only the knowledge of the working forces in the life of the Soul which admits of practical applications,—in Paedagogics, Psychiatry, etc. ”

“ For example; in definition we premise for the individual a general conception, and elaborate this by added modifications up to the point of likeness with the individual in question. Hence the frequent error, as though in reality some ‘primitive animal,’ some ‘primitive matter,’ some ‘primitive substance,’ must precede as a substratum in fact, from which, as something secondary, the individual subordinate species might originate through the influence of modifying conditions. ”

“ The difference in different treatises on Metaphysic admits of being referred to two antithetic principles which are dependent on fundamental pre-suppositions that are together introduced to consideration.
One view, which is realistic, finds the inducement to investigation exclusively in the ‘contradictions’ of experience. If there were none of these, then Realism would take no offence at letting the world pass in the form in which it exists as bare matter of fact ”

“ The formal distinction between the two modes of treatment consists in this, that the realistic proceeds from general laws of conduct, from which the special maxims of conduct that are necessary in consideration of the circumstances can be deduced for each particular case of an occasion for conduct; and from which, besides, since it brings into consideration the empirical nature of man and the ever recurring social relations, science is also able to develop a series of permanent life-aims that hold good both for the individual and for society. ”

“ Realism, on the contrary, in order to comprehend an action and reaction between its many elements, must assume a unity of general laws to which they are all subjected. The explanation of how this sub ordination of the many under this unity is possible, is the counterpart of the before-mentioned problem of Idealism. We may therefore consider as the final problem of Ontology—a problem not yet satisfactorily solved—this inquiry after the connection between the necessary unity and the alike necessary manifoldness of the Existent. ”

“ Investigation, accordingly, proceeds in the first place to the confirming of the matter of fact,—that is to say, to establishing certain fundamental moral principles in which, since they refer to the most simple relations of several personal wills toward one another, a uniformly similar and unchangeable judgment of approbation or disapprobation is expressed concerning a definite mode of the will’s behavior. Whence these judgments of conscience originate within us; in what connection they stand with the laws that govern what happens in reality ”

“ Both views, Idealism and Realism, come from different sides on one and the same difficulty. The former can perchance develop, in a general way, from the one Idea which it presupposes, those problems which reality must solve in order to correspond to this Idea. ”