Kitabı oku: «Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)», sayfa 31

"In so far as the me opposes to itself a not-me, it necessarily supposes limits, and supposes itself in these limits. It divides the totality of the being supposed in general between the me and the not-me; so far supposes itself necessarily as finite."⁶²

143. Thus Fichte in a few words destroys the reality of the external world, converting it into a modification or development of the activity of the me. Is it necessary to stop any longer to refute such an absurd doctrine, one, too, founded on no proof? I believe not: especially since I have established on solid principles the demonstration of the existence of an external world, and have explained the origin and character of the facts of consciousness, without having recourse to such extravagant absurdities.⁶³

CHAPTER XIX.
RELATIONS OF FICHTE'S SYSTEM TO THE DOCTRINES OF KANT

144. I have already shown⁶⁴ how Kant's system leads to Fichte's. When a dangerous principle is established, there is never wanting an author bold enough to deduce its consequences, whatever they may be. The author of the Doctrine of Science, led astray by the doctrines of Kant, establishes the most extravagant pantheism that was ever invented. In concluding his work, he says that he leaves the reader at the point where Kant takes him; he ought rather to have said that he takes the reader at the point where Kant leaves him. The author of the Critic of Pure Reason, by converting space into a purely subjective fact, destroys the reality of extension, and opens the door to those who wish to deduce all nature from the me; and by making time a simple form of the internal sense, he causes the succession of phenomena in time to be considered as mere modifications of the me to the form of which they relate.

145. But it is far from being necessary for us to hunt after deductions; the philosopher himself, in the midst of his obscurity and enigmatical language, does not cease to lay down in the most precise manner this monstrous doctrine. Let us hear how he speaks in his transcendental Logic, where he proposes to explain the relation of the understanding to objects in general, and the possibility of knowing them a priori. "The order and regularity in phenomena, that which we call nature, is consequently our own work; we should not find it there if we had not placed it there by the nature of our mind; for this natural unity must be a necessary unity, that is to say, a certain unity a priori of the connection of the phenomena. But how could we produce a synthetic unity a priori, if there were not in the primitive sources of our mind subjective reasons of this unity a priori, and if these subjective conditions were not at the same time objectively valid, since they are the grounds of the possibility of knowing in general an object in experience?"⁶⁵ Who does not see in these words the germ of Fichte's system, which deduces from the me the not-me, that is to say, the world, and gives to nature no other validity than that which it has received from the me?

146. But Kant is still more explicit, where he is explaining the nature and attributes of the understanding. He says: "We have before defined the understanding in different ways; we have called it a spontaneity of knowledge, (in opposition to the receptivity of sensibility,) a faculty of thought, or rather, a faculty of conceptions or judgments; these definitions, rightly explained, are but one. We may now characterize it as a faculty of rules. This character is more fruitful, and comes nearer to the essence of the thing: sensibility gives us forms (of intuition) and the understanding rules. The latter is always applied to the observation of phenomena in order to find in them some rule. The rules, if objective, (if, consequently, necessarily united to the knowledge of the object,) are called laws. Although we know many laws by experience, still these laws are only particular determinations of other higher laws, the highest of which (to which all the others are subjected) proceed a priori from the understanding itself, and are not taken from experience, but, on the contrary, they give to the phenomena their validity, and therefore make experience possible. The understanding, then, is not simply a faculty of making rules for itself, and comparing phenomena; it is also the legislation for nature; that is to say, that without the understanding there would be no nature, or synthetic unity of the multiplicity of phenomena according to certain rules. For the phenomena, as such, cannot exist out of us; on the contrary, they only exist in our sensibility; but this, as the object of the knowledge in an experience, with all that it can contain, is only possible in the unity of the apperception. The unity of the apperception is the transcendental foundation of the necessary legitimacy of all the phenomena in an experience; this unity of the apperception in relation to the multiplicity of the representations (in order to determine the multiplicity by starting from only one) is the rule, and the faculty of these rules is the understanding. All phenomena, then, as possible experiences, are a priori in the understanding, and from it they derive their formal possibility, in the same manner that they are pure intuitions in the sensibility, and are only possible by it in relation to the form."

In the deduction of the pure conceptions of the understanding, Kant not only pretends that the objects of our knowledge are not things in themselves, but that it is impossible that they should be, because we could not then have conceptions a priori. He adds, that the representation of all these phenomena, consequently all objects which we know, are all in the me, and are determinations of my identical me, which expresses the necessity of a universal unity of these determinations in only one and the same apperception.

147. From these passages it clearly follows that Fichte's system, or the ideal pantheism which reduces every thing to modifications of the me, accords with the principles established in the Critic of Pure Reason, and is even expressly laid down, although it does not form its principal object in that work. For the sake of impartiality I cannot do less than refer the reader to the seventeenth chapter of the third book, where I have intimated that the German philosopher attempts to explain his expressions so as to escape idealism, which he professes to refute. But this he seems to me to do only by an inconsequence.

148. However, my opinion of the connection of modern pantheism with the Critik der reinen Vernunft is confirmed even by the Germans. "From these depths," says Rosenkranz, speaking of this work, "the results of the transcendental æsthetics and logic receive a new importance in the great problems of theology, cosmology, morals, and psychology, which was not even suspected by the dull sense of the greater part of its admirers. They know nothing of the chain which unites Fichte's Doctrine of Science, Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism, Hegel's Phenomenology and Logic, and Herbart's Metaphysics, with Kant's Critic…

"I may say that the English and French in particular will understand nothing of the development of German philosophy since Kant, until they have penetrated the Critic of Pure Reason, for we Germans always look to that… Just as we use the houses, the palaces, the churches, but most of all the towers which rise over every thing to guide us in a large city; so also in contemporary philosophy, amid the labyrinth of its quarrels it is impossible to take a single step with security unless we keep our sight fixed on Kant's Critic. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Herbart made this work the great centre of their operations for attack or defence."⁶⁶

149. I do not mean by this that the German philosophers since Kant have added nothing to the Critic of Pure Reason: I have already observed (in the seventh chapter of the first book) that the cause of the greater obscurity which is found in Fichte's words, proceeds from his having gone farther than Kant in his abstraction of all objectiveness both external and internal, placing himself in I know not what pure primitive act, from which he pretends to deduce every thing; in which he differs from the author of the Critic of Pure Reason, whose labors did not so absolutely annihilate the objectiveness of the internal world, and therefore his observations are less incomprehensible, and even present here and there some few luminous points: I only wished to show the baneful importance of Kant's works, to place those incautious persons on their guard, who, judging from what they have heard, are inclined to regard him as the great restorer of spiritualism and sound philosophy, when, in reality, he is the founder of the most pernicious schools which the history of the human mind has known, and would be one of the most dangerous writers that ever existed, were it not that the obscurity of his ideas, increased by the obscurity of their expression, renders him intolerable to the immense majority of readers, even of those versed in philosophical studies.

CHAPTER XX.
CONTRADICTION OF PANTHEISM TO THE PRIMARY FACTS OF THE HUMAN MIND

150. I do not know how any philosopher who has meditated on the human mind can incline to pantheism. The deeper we go into the me from which it is pretended to deduce such an absurd system, the more we discover the contradiction in which pantheism appears in respect to the primary ideas and facts of our mind. My development of this observation will be brief, for it turns on questions largely examined in their respective places.

151. We have seen (Bk. VI., Ch. V.) that the idea of number is found in every understanding, and experience teaches that we employ it explicitly or implicitly in almost all our words. We scarcely speak without using the plural, and this can have no meaning without the supposition of the idea of number. Pantheism reduces all existence to an absolute unity; multiplicity either has no real existence, or is limited to phenomena, which, in the judgment of some followers of this system, contain no reality of any sort, and, in the opinion of all pantheists, can contain no substantial reality. According to them, therefore, the idea of number either has no correspondence in the reality, or it relates only to modes of being, to the various modifications of the same being, and therefore does not extend to the beings themselves, for in this system there is only one being. If this be so, how is it that the idea of number exists in our understanding? how is it that we conceive not only many modes of being, but many beings? In the system of the pantheists not only is there no multiplicity of beings, but it is impossible that there should be; why, then, has our understanding this radical vice which necessarily leads it to conceive the multiplicity of things, if this multiplicity is absurd? why is this ideal defect confirmed by experience which also necessarily leads us to believe that there are many distinct things?

152. In the system of the pantheists our understanding is only a modification, a manifestation of the only substance; but it is impossible to explain this disagreement between the phenomenon and the reality, this necessary error into which the phenomenon of the substance leads us in respect to the substance itself. If we are a mere manifestation of the unity, why do we find the idea of multiplicity as a primitive fact within us? Why this continual contradiction between the being and its appearances? If we are all one same unit, whence do we obtain the idea of number? If the phenomena of experience are only evolutions, so to speak, of this one unit, why do we feel ourselves irresistibly inclined to suppose multiplicity in the phenomena, and to multiply the things in which they succeed?

153. The idea of distinction opposed to that of unity is also fundamental in our mind;⁶⁷ yet pantheism gives it no correspondence in the reality. If there is only being, if all is identical, there is nothing distinct, and the idea of distinction is a pure chimera. In this system distinction not only does not exist, but it is impossible; consequently the idea of distinction is absurd; therefore one of the primary facts of our mind is a contradiction.

154. Negative judgments form a considerable part of the wealth of our understanding;⁶⁸ pantheism destroys them. In this system the proposition: A is not B, can never be true; for, if all is identical, one thing cannot be denied of another, there would be no distinct things, there would be no one or another; all would be one; the negative judgment must be limited to the following: in reality A is the same as B, there is only the appearance of distinction; B is A existing or presented differently.

155. The idea of relation is also absurd in the pantheistic system; there is no relation without a term of reference, and there is no reference without distinction. According to the pantheists the subject referred and the term of the reference are absolutely identical; there are, consequently, no true, but only apparent, relations; thus we find another of the primary facts of our understanding radically absurd, because it is in contradiction with the reality, and even with the possibility.

156. The support of all our knowledge, the principle of contradiction, it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time, is without meaning, and can have no real or possible application, if the doctrine of pantheism be admitted. When we say that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time, we understand that there is the possibility of not-being; in our mind the idea of being excludes that of not-being only with respect to the same thing and at the same time. If there is only one being, and all other being is impossible, it follows that the idea of not-being is absolutely contradictory, and all the propositions in which it is expressed are absurd. There is in this case only one being which is every thing, to this being negation of being can never be applied; this negation, then, is absolutely absurd, and another idea of our mind is absolutely contradictory.

157. The idea of contingency is also contradictory if pantheism be admitted; all that can be is, and all that does not exist is impossible; therefore when we distinguish contingency from necessity we contradict both the reality and the possibility. Hence there is another primary illusion of our mind which presents to us as possible, and even existent, that which in itself is absurd.

158. Neither can the ideas of finite and infinite co-exist in the system. One of them must be contradictory; if the only being is infinite, there is and can be nothing finite; therefore the opposition between the finite and the infinite is a chimera of our mind, to which there is nothing in reality corresponding. There is only one thing; it must be finite or infinite; in either case, one of these terms must disappear, one of these ideas is contradictory, since it is in opposition to an absolute necessity.

159. The system of absolute unity destroys the idea of order. In this idea is contained the arrangement of distinct things, distributed in a convenient manner to conspire to an end. If there is no distinction there is no order, and the distinction is impossible if there is absolute unity. The idea of order is still one of the fundamental ideas of our mind; literary and artistic unity, and in general that of all sensible beauty, is the unity of order: substitute for this absolute unity, and you destroy all beauty of the imagination; art becomes absorbed by chaos.

160. It is useless to add that pantheism destroys liberty of will; this liberty of which we are so clearly and vividly conscious, and which accompanies us through every moment of our existence. In this monstrous system absolute unity is inseparable from absolute necessity; the existent and the possible are confounded; nothing which is can cease to be; nothing which is not can be. The action must spring from the only substance by a spontaneous development; understanding by spontaneity the absence of an external cause; but this action cannot but exist, it will be an irradiation, as it were, of the only substance, just as light radiates from luminous bodies. Without liberty of will merit is absurd; a being that acts by absolute necessity can have no merit or demerit. Then laws are to no purpose, rewards and punishments useless; the history of individuals as of all mankind is only a history of the phases of the only substance, which goes on eternally developing itself in subjection to absolutely necessary conditions which have no other foundation than the substance itself.

161. Pantheism not only destroys freedom of will, but it renders unintelligible all affections which relate to another. If there is only one being, what mean the sentiments of love, respect, gratitude, and in general, all those which suppose a person distinct from the me which experiences them? No matter how distinct we suppose the term of these affections, they can never have any; and although they seem to proceed from different principles, they spring from only one. The man who loves one man and hates another is the me loving and hating itself; appearances denote diversity and opposition, but at bottom there is unity, identity. Who can accept such absurdities?

162. Thus pantheism, after destroying the intellectual man, annihilates the moral man; after declaring the fundamental ideas of our mind contradictory, it attacks the most precious fact of our consciousness, – the freedom of will; it destroys the sentiments of the heart, denying our individuality, it precipitates us all into the deep abyss of the only substance, the absolute being, confounding and identifying us with it, till we lose within it our own existence, as the molecules of a grain of dust are lost in the immensity of space.

CHAPTER XXI.
RAPID GLANCES AT THE PRINCIPAL ARGUMENTS OF PANTHEISTS

163. The principal arguments on which pantheism rests are founded on the unity of science, the universality of the idea of being, the absoluteness and exclusiveness of the idea of substance, and the absoluteness and exclusiveness of the conception of the infinite.

164. Science must be one, say the pantheists, and it cannot be completely so, unless there is unity of being. Science must be certain, and there cannot be absolute certainty, unless there is identity of the being which knows with the thing known.

The solution of these difficulties consists in denying the gratuitous propositions on which they are founded.

It is not true that human science must be one, nor that unity of being is necessary for the unity of science. They must prove both these assertions; to triumph in a discussion it is not enough to assert. Far from either of them being sufficiently proved, they are both contradicted by reason and by experience. It is unnecessary to repeat here, what I have explained at full length when treating of the possibility and existence of transcendental science as well in the absolute intellectual order as in the human. For this I refer the reader to the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of the first book.

The second proposition which exacts the identity of the subject knowing with the object known, has also been sufficiently refuted. I have elsewhere shown that the system of universal identity does not help to explain the problem of representation, and I have proved by incontestible arguments, that besides the representation of identity, there are the representations of causality and ideality.⁶⁹ I have also demonstrated the objective value of ideas, in so far as distinguished from objects, founding my proof on the unity of consciousness.⁷⁰

The doctrines of Kant which convert the external world into a purely subjective fact, and thus give rise to Fichte's transcendental idealism, are refuted in the second book, where I have demonstrated the objectiveness of sensations, – in the third book, where I have proved the reality of extension, and in the seventh book, where I have proved that time is not a pure form of the internal sense.

165. The argument founded on the idea of the universality of being, that is, the impossibility of more than one being, because the idea of being is absolute and embraces every thing, is a sophism in which there is a transition from the ideal order to the real, by which an indeterminate and abstract idea is converted into an absolute being. To form a perfect conception of this idea and its relations to the reality, see what has been said in the fifth book, when treating of the idea of being.

166. Spinosa, Fichte, Cousin, Krause, and all who have taught pantheism under one form or another, start with a wrong definition of substance. It is impossible to overrate the necessity of acquiring clear and distinct ideas of this definition, for there is no doubt but that here is the origin of the error of the pantheists, and the secret to put a stop to their progress. When one examines profoundly the principles of systems which have made so much noise in the philosophical world, one is surprised at contemplating their insubsistency in its nakedness. The doctrines summed up in Chapter XIV. should be kept always in sight.

167. In the importance and transcendency of the definition, the notion of the infinite may compete with that of substance. It is incredible to what extent this word has been abused without any care to explain its different senses, or its origin, or the legitimacy of its applications.

All the arguments which the pantheists pretend to found on the idea of the infinite vanish like smoke when we clearly understand the character, the origin, and the application of this idea.⁷¹

168. I will conclude with one remark. I am profoundly convinced that the most baneful systems in philosophy arise in great part from confusion of ideas, and the superficiality with which the most fundamental points of ontology, ideology, and psychology are examined. My ruling idea in the present work is to prevent this evil; this is why I have so greatly extended the part of fundamental philosophy, abstracting, as far as possible, all secondary questions. These last are easily answered, after we have once acquired a clear and exact knowledge of the fundamental ideas of human science. (4)