contemporary philosophy suffers from a morbid belief in kant. to help towards our emancipation from this belief is the aim of the present essay. it would indeed be criminal to try and minimise the debt which the development of german philosophy owes to kant’s immortal work. but it is high time to acknowledge that the only way of laying the foundations for a truly satisfying view of the world and of human life is to put ourselves in decisive opposition to the spirit of kant. what is it that kant has achieved? he has shown that the transcendent ground of the world which lies beyond the data of our senses and the categories of our reason, and which his predecessors sought to determine by means of empty concepts, is inaccessible to our knowledge. from this he concluded that all our scientific thinking must keep within the limits of possible experience, and is incapable of attaining to knowledge of the transcendent and ultimate ground of the world, i.e., of the “thing-in-itself.” but [375]what if this “thing-in-itself,” this whole transcendent ground of the world, should be nothing but a fiction? it is easy to see that this is precisely what it is. an instinct inseparable from human nature impels us to search for the innermost essence of things, for their ultimate principles. it is the basis of all scientific enquiry. but, there is not the least reason to look for this ultimate ground outside the world of our senses and of our spirit, unless a thorough and comprehensive examination of this world should reveal within it elements which point unmistakably to an external cause.
the present essay attempts to prove that all the principles which we need in order to explain our world and make it intelligible, are within reach of our thought. thus, the assumption of explanatory principles lying outside our world turns out to be the prejudice of an extinct philosophy which lived on vain dogmatic fancies. this ought to have been kant’s conclusion, too, if he had really enquired into the powers of human thought. instead, he demonstrated in the most complicated way that the constitution of our cognitive faculties does not permit us to reach the ultimate principles which lie beyond our experience. but we have no reason whatever for positing these principles in any such beyond. thus kant has indeed refuted “dogmatic” philosophy, but he has put nothing in its place. hence, all german philosophy which succeeded kant has [376]evolved everywhere in opposition to him. fichte, schelling, hegel simply ignored the limits fixed by kant for our knowledge and sought the ultimate principles, not beyond, but within, the world accessible to human reason. even schopenhauer, though he does declare the conclusions of kant’s critique of pure reason to be eternal and irrefutable truths, cannot avoid seeking knowledge of the ultimate grounds of the world along paths widely divergent from those of his master. but the fatal mistake of all these thinkers was that they sought knowledge of ultimate truths, without having laid the foundation for such an enterprise in a preliminary investigation of the nature of knowledge itself. hence, the proud intellectual edifices erected by fichte, schelling and hegel have no foundation to rest on. the lack of such foundations reacts most unfavourably upon the arguments of these thinkers. ignorant of the importance of the world of pure ideas and of its relation to the realm of sense-perception, they built error upon error, one-sidedness upon one-sidedness. no wonder that their over-bold systems proved unable to withstand the storms of an age which recked nothing of philosophy. no wonder that many good things in these systems were pitilessly swept away along with the errors.
to remedy the defect which has just been indicated is the purpose of the following investigations. they will not imitate kant by explaining what our minds can not know: [377]their aim is to show what our minds can know.
the outcome of these investigations is that truth is not, as the current view has it, an ideal reproduction of a some real object, but a free product of the human spirit, which would not exist anywhere at all unless we ourselves produced it. it is not the task of knowledge to reproduce in conceptual form something already existing independently. its task is to create a wholly new realm which, united with the world of sense-data, ends by yielding us reality in the full sense. in this way, man’s supreme activity, the creative productivity of his spirit, finds its organic place in the universal world-process. without this activity it would be impossible to conceive the world-process as a totality complete in itself. man does not confront the world-process as a passive spectator who merely copies in his mind the events which occur, without his participation, in the cosmos without. he is an active co-creator in the world-process, and his knowledge is the most perfect member of the organism of the universe.
this view carries with it an important consequence for our conduct, for our moral ideals. these, too, must be regarded, not as copies of an external standard, but as rooted within us. similarly, we refuse to look upon our moral laws as the behests of any power outside us. we know no “categorical imperative” which, like a voice from the beyond, prescribes to us what to do or to leave undone. our moral [378]ideals are our own free creations. all we have to do is to carry out what we prescribe to ourselves as the norm of our conduct. thus, the concept of truth as a free act leads to a theory of morals based on the concept of a perfectly free personality.
these theses, of course, are valid only for that part of our conduct the laws of which our thinking penetrates with complete comprehension. so long as the laws of our conduct are merely natural motives or remain obscure to our conceptual thinking, it may be possible from a higher spiritual level to perceive how far they are founded in our individuality, but we ourselves experience them as influencing us from without, as compelling us to action. every time that we succeed in penetrating such a motive with clear understanding, we make a fresh conquest in the realm of freedom.
the relation of these views to the theory of eduard von hartmann, who is the most significant figure in contemporary philosophy, will be made clear to the reader in detail in the course of this essay, especially as regards the problem of knowledge.
a prelude to a philosophy of spiritual activity—this is what the present essay offers. that philosophy itself, completely worked out, will shortly follow.
the ultimate aim of all science is to increase the value of existence for human personality. whoever does not devote himself to science with this aim in view is merely modelling [379]himself in his own work upon some master. if he “researches,” it is merely because that happens to be what he has been taught to do. but not for him is the title of a “free thinker.”
the sciences are seen in their true value only when philosophy explains the human significance of their results. to make a contribution to such an explanation was my aim. but, perhaps, our present-day science scorns all philosophical vindication! if so, two things are certain. one is that this essay of mine is superfluous. the other is that modern thinkers are lost in the wood and do not know what they want.
in concluding this preface, i cannot omit a personal observation. up to now i have expounded all my philosophical views on the basis of goethe’s world-view, into which i was first introduced by my dear and revered teacher, karl julius schr?er, who to me stands in the very forefront of goethe-students, because his gaze is ever focussed beyond the particular upon the universal ideas.
but, with this essay i hope to have shown that the edifice of my thought is a whole which has its foundations in itself and which does not need to be derived from goethe’s world-view. my theories, as they are here set forth and as they will presently be amplified in the philosophy of spiritual activity, have grown up in the course of many years. nothing but a deep sense of gratitude leads me to add that the affectionate sympathy of the specht [380]family in vienna, during the period when i was the tutor of its children, provided me with an environment, than which i could not have wished a better, for the development of my ideas. in the same spirit, i would add, further, that i owe to the stimulating conversations with my very dear friend, miss rosa mayreder, of vienna, the mood which i needed for putting into final form many of the thoughts which i have sketched provisionally as germs of my philosophy of spiritual activity. her own literary efforts, which express the sensitive and high-minded nature of a true artist, are likely before long to be presented to the public.
vienna, december, 1891.
