To philosophize is to reflect; to examine things, in thought.
Yet in this is the conception of philosophy not sufficiently defined. Man, as thinking, also employs those practical activities concerned in the adaptation of means to an end; the whole body of sciences also, even those which do not in strict sense belong to philosophy, still lie in the realm of thought. In what, then, is philosophy distinguished from these sciences,e. g.from the science of astronomy, of medicine, or of rights? Certainly not in that it has a different material to work upon. Its material is precisely the same as that of the different empirical sciences. The construction and disposition of the universe, the arrangement and functions of the human body, the doctrines of property, of rights and of the state—all these materials belong as truly to philosophy as to their appropriate sciences. That which is given in the world of experience, that which is real, is the content likewise of philosophy. It is not, therefore, in its material but in itsform, in its method, in its mode of knowledge, that philosophy is to be distinguished from the empirical sciences. These latter derive their material directly from experience; they find it at hand and take it up just as they find it. Philosophy, on the other hand, is never satisfied with receiving that which is given simply as it is given, but rather follows it out to its ultimate grounds; it examines every individual thing in reference to a final principle, and considers it as one link in the whole chain of knowledge. In this way philosophy removes from the individual thing given in experience, its immediate, individual, and accidental character; from the sea of empirical individualities, it brings out that which is common to all; from the infinite and orderless mass of contingencies it finds that which is necessary, and throws over all a universal law. In short, philosophy examines thetotalityof experience in the form of anorganic systemin harmony with the laws of thought. From the above it is seen, that philosophy (in the sense we have given it) and the empirical sciences have a reciprocal influence; the latter conditioning the former, while they at the same time are conditioned by it. We shall, therefore, in the history of the world, no more find an absolute and complete philosophy, than a complete empirical science (Empirik). Rather is philosophy found only in the form of the different philosophical systems, which have successively appeared in the course of history, advancing hand in hand with the progress of the empirical sciences and the universal, social, and civil culture, and showing in their advance the different steps in the development and improvement of human science. The history of philosophy has, for its object, to represent the content, the succession, and the inner connection of these philosophical systems.
The relation of these different systems to each other is thus already intimated. The historical and collective life of the race is bound together by the idea of a spiritual and intellectual progress, and manifests a regular order of advancing, though not always continuous, stages of development. In this, the fact harmonizes with what we should expect from antecedent probabilities. Since, therefore, every philosophical system is only the philosophicalexpression of the collective life of its time, it follows that these different systems which have appeared in history will disclose one organic movement and form together one rational and internally connected (gegliedertes) system. In all their developments, we shall find one constant order, grounded in the striving of the spirit ever to raise itself to a higher point of consciousness and knowledge, and to recognize the whole spiritual and natural universe, more and more, as its outward being, as its reality, as the mirror of itself.
Hegelwas the first to utter these thoughts and to consider the history of philosophy as a united process, but this view, which is, in its principle, true, he has applied in a way which would destroy the freedom of human actions, and remove the very conception of contingency,i. e.that any thing should be contrary to reason. Hegel’s view is, that the succession of the systems of philosophy which have appeared in history, corresponds to the succession of logical categories in a system of logic. According to him, if, from the fundamental conceptions of these different philosophical systems, we remove that which pertains to their outward form or particular application, &c., so do we find the different steps of the logical conceptions (e. g.being, becoming, existence, beingper se(fürsichseyn) quantity, &c.). And on the other hand, if we take up the logical process by itself, we find also in it the actual historical process.
This opinion, however, can be sustained neither in its principle nor in its historical application. It is defective in its principle, because in history freedom and necessity interpenetrate, and, therefore, while we find, if we consider it in its general aspects, a rational connection running through the whole, we also see, if we look solely at its individual parts, only a play of numberless contingencies, just as the kingdom of nature, taken as a whole, reveals a rational plan in its successions, but viewed only in its parts, mocks at every attempt to reduce them to a preconceived plan. In history we have to do with free subjectivities, with individuals capable of originating actions, and have, therefore, a factor which does not admit of a previous calculation. For howeveraccurately we may estimate the controlling conditions which may attach to an individual, from the general circumstances in which he may be placed, his age, his associations, his nationality, &c., a free will can never be calculated like a mathematical problem. History is no example for a strict arithmetical calculation. The history of philosophy, therefore, cannot admit of an apriori construction; the actual occurrences should not be joined together as illustrative of a preconceived plan; but the facts, so far as they can be admitted, after a critical sifting, should be received as such, and their rational connection be analytically determined. The speculative idea can only supply the law for the arrangement and scientific connection of that which may be historically furnished.
A more comprehensive view, which contradicts the above-given Hegelian notion, is the following. The actual historical development is, very generally, different from the theoretical. Historicallye. g.the State arose as a means of protection against robbers, while theoretically it is derived from the idea of rights. So also, even in the actual history of philosophy, while the logical (theoretical) process is an ascent from the abstract to the concrete, yet does the historical development of philosophy, quite generally, descend from the concrete to the abstract, from intuition to thought, and separates the abstract from the concrete in those general forms of culture and those religious and social circumstances, in which the philosophizing subject is placed. Asystemof philosophy proceeds synthetically, while thehistoryof philosophy,i. e.the history of the thinking process proceeds analytically. We might, therefore, with great propriety, adopt directly the reverse of the Hegelian position, and say that what in reality is the first, is for us, in fact, the last. This is illustrated in the Ionic philosophy. It began not with being as an abstract conception, but with the most concrete, and most apparent,e. g.with the material conception of water, air, &c. Even if we leave the Ionics and advance to the being of the Eleatics or the becoming of the Heraclitics, we find, that these, instead of being pure thought determinations, are only unpurified conceptions, andmaterially colored intuitions. Still farther, is the attempt impracticable to refer every philosophy that has appeared in history to some logical category as its central principle, because the most of these philosophies have taken, for their object, the idea, not as an abstract conception, but in its realization as nature and mind, and, therefore, for the most part, have to do, not with logical questions, but with those relating to natural philosophy, psychology and ethics. Hegel should not, therefore, limit his comparison of the historical and systematic process of development simply to logic, but should extend it to the whole system of philosophical science. Granted that the Eleatics, the Heraclitics and the Atomists may have made such a category as the centre of their systems, and we may find thus far the Hegelian logic in harmony with the Hegelian history of philosophy. But if we go farther, how is it? How with Anaxagoras, the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle? We cannot, certainly, without violence, press one central principle into the systems of these men, but if we should be able to do it, and could reducee. g.the philosophy of Anaxagoras to the conception of “the end,” that of the Sophists to the conception of “the appearance,” and the Socratic Philosophy to the conception of “the good,”—yet even then we have the new difficulty that the historical does not correspond to the logical succession of these categories. In fact, Hegel himself has not attempted a complete application of his principle, and indeed gave it up at the very threshold of the Grecian philosophy. To the Eleatics, the Heraclitics and the Atomists, the logical categories of “being,” “becoming,” and beingper semay be successively ascribed, and so far, as already remarked, the parallelism extends, but no farther. Not only does Anaxagoras follow with the conception of reason working according to an end, but if we go back before the Eleatics, we find in the very beginning of philosophy a total diversity between the logical and historical order. If Hegel had carried out his principle consistently, he should have thrown away entirely the Ionic philosophy, for matter is no logical category; he should have placed the Pythagoreans after the Eleatics and the Atomists, for in logical order the categories ofquantity follow those of quality; in short, he would have been obliged to set aside all chronology. Unless this be done, we must be satisfied with a theoretical reproduction of the course which the thinking spirit has taken in its history, only so far as we can see in the grand stages of history a rational progress of thought; only so far as the philosophical historian, surveying a period of development, actually finds in it a philosophical acquisition,—the acquisition of a new idea: but we must guard ourselves against applying to the transition and intermediate steps, as well as to the whole detail of history, the postulate of an immanent conformity to law, or an organism in harmony with our own thoughts. History often winds its way like a serpent in lines which appear retrogressive, and philosophy, especially, has not seldom withdrawn herself from a wide and already fruitful field, in order to settle down upon a narrow strip of land, the limits even of which she has sought still more closely to abridge. At one time we find thousands of years expended in fruitless attempts with only a negative result;—at another, a fulness of philosophical ideas are crowded together in the experience of a lifetime. There is here no sway of an immutable and regularly returning law, but history, as the realm of freedom, will first completely manifest itself at the end of time as the work of reason.
A few words will suffice to define our problem and classify its elements. Where and when does philosophy begin? Manifestly, according to the analysis made in § I., where a final philosophical principle, a final ground of being is first sought in a philosophical way,—and hence with the Grecian philosophy. The Oriental—Chinese and Hindoo—so named philosophies,—but which are rather theologies or mythologies,—and the mythic cosmogonies ofGreece, in its earliest periods, are, therefore, excluded from our more definite problem. Like Aristotle, we shall begin the history of philosophy with Thales. For similar reasons we exclude also the philosophy of the Christian middle ages, or Scholasticism. This is not so much a philosophy, as a philosophizing or reflecting within the already prescribed limits of positive religion. It is, therefore, essentially theology, and belongs to the science of the history of Christian doctrines.
The material which remains after this exclusion, may be naturally divided into two periods; viz:—ancient—Grecian and Græco-Romanic—and modern philosophy. Since a preliminary comparison of the characteristics of these two epochs could not here be given without a subsequent repetition, we shall first speak of their inner relations, when we come to treat of the transition from the one to the other.
The first epoch can be still farther divided into three periods; (1.) The pre-Socratic philosophy,i. e.from Thales to the Sophists inclusive; (2.) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; (3.) The post-Aristotelian philosophy, including New Platonism.
1. The universal tendency of the pre-Socratic philosophy is to find some principle for the explanation of nature. Nature, the most immediate, that which first met the eye and was the most palpable, was that which first aroused the inquiring mind. At the basis of its changing forms,—beneath its manifold appearances, thought they, lies a first principle which abides the same through all change. What then, they asked, is this principle? What is the original ground of things? Or, more accurately, what element of nature is the fundamental element? To solve this inquiry was the problem of theIonicnatural philosophers. Oneproposes as a solution, water, another, air, and a third, an original chaotic matter.
2. ThePythagoreansattempted a higher solution of this problem. The proportions and dimensions of matter rather than its sensible concretions, seemed to them to furnish the true explanation of being. They, accordingly, adopted as the principle of their philosophy, that which would express a determination of proportions,i. e.numbers. “Number is the essence of all things,” was their position. Number is the mean between the immediate sensuous intuition and the pure thought. Number and measure have, to be sure, nothing to do with matter only in so far as it possesses extension, and is capable of division in space and time, but yet we should have no numbers or measures if there were no matter, or nothing which could meet the intuitions of our sense. This elevation above matter, which is at the same time a cleaving to matter, constitutes the essence and the character of Pythagoreanism.
3. Next come theEleatics, who step absolutely beyond that which is given in experience, and make a complete abstraction of every thing material. This abstraction, this negation of all division in space and time, they take as their principle, and call it pure being. Instead of the sensuous principle of the Ionics, or the symbolic principle of the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, therefore, adopt an intelligible principle.
4. Herewith closes the analytic, the first course in the development of Grecian philosophy, to make way for the second, or synthetic course. The Eleatics had sacrificed to their principle of pure being, the existence of the world and every finite existence. But the denial of nature and the world could not be maintained. The reality of both forced itself upon the attention, and even the Eleatics had affirmed it, though in guarded and hypothetical terms. But from their abstract being there was no passage back to the sensuous and concrete; their principle ought to have explained the being of events, but it did not. To find a principle for the explanation of these, a principle which would account for the becoming, the event was still the problem.Heraclitussolvedit, by asserting that, inasmuch as being has no more reality than not being, therefore the unity of the two, or in other words the becoming, is the absolute principle. He held that it belonged to the very essence of finite being that it be conceived in a continual flow, in an endless stream. “Every thing flows.” We have here the conception of original energy, instead of the Ionic original matter; the first attempt to explain being and its motion from a principle analytically attained. From the time of Heraclitus, this inquiry after the cause of the becoming, remained the chief interest and the moving spring of philosophical development.
5. Becoming is the unity of being and not-being, and into these two elements is the Heraclitic principle consciously analyzed by theAtomists. Heraclitus had uttered the principle of the becoming, but only as a fact of experience. He had simply expressed it as a law, but had not explained it. The necessity for this universal law yet remained to be proved. WHY is every thing in a perpetual flow—in an eternal movement? From the dynamical combination of matter and the moving force, the next step was to a consciously determined distinction, to a mechanical division of the two. Thus Empedocles combining the doctrines of Heraclitus and Parmenides, considered matter as the abiding being, while force was the ground of the movement. But the Atomists still considered the moving mythic energies as forces; Empedocles regarded them as love and hate; and Democritus as unconscious necessity. The result was, therefore, that the becoming was rather limited as a means for the mechanical explanation of nature, than itself explained.
6. Despairing of any merely materialistic explanation of the becoming,Anaxagorasnext appears, and places a world-forming Intelligence by the side of matter. He recognized mind as the primal causality, to which the existence of the world, together with its determined arrangement and design (zweckmässigkeit) must be referred. In this, philosophy gained a great principle, viz.— an ideal one. But Anaxagoras did not know how to fully carry out his principles. Instead of a theoretical comprehension of the universe—instead of deriving being from the idea, he graspedagain after some mechanical explanation. His “world-forming reason” serves him only as a first impulse, only as a moving power. It is to him aDeus ex machina. Notwithstanding, therefore, his glimpse of something higher than matter, yet was Anaxagoras only a physical philosopher, like his predecessors. Mind had not yet appeared to him as a true force above nature, as an organizing soul of the universe.
7. It is, therefore, a farther progress in thought, to comprehend accurately the distinction between mind and nature, and to recognize mind as something higher and contra-distinguished from all natural being. This problem fell to theSophists. They entangled in contradictions, the thinking which had been confined to the object, to that which was given, and gave to the objective world which had before been exalted above the subject, a subordinate position in the dawning and yet infantile consciousness of the superiority of subjective thinking. The Sophists carried their principle of subjectivity, though at first this was only negative, into the form of the universal religious and political changing condition (Aufklärung).[1]They stood forth as the destroyers of the whole edifice of thought that had been thus far built, untilSocratesappeared, and set up against this principle ofempiricalsubjectivity, that of theabsolutesubjectivity,—that of the spirit in the form of a free moral will, and the thought is positively considered as something higher than existence, as the truth of all reality. With the Sophist closes our first period, for with these the oldest philosophy finds its self-destruction (Selbstauflösung).
1.Thales.—At the head of the Ionic natural philosophers, and therefore at the head of philosophy, the ancients are generally agreed in placing Thales of Miletus, a cotemporary of Crœsus and Solon; although this beginning lies more in the region of tradition than of history. The philosophical principle to which he owes his place in the history of philosophy is, that, “the principle (the primal, the original ground) of all things is water; from water every thing arises and into water every thing returns.” But simply to assume water as the original ground of things was not to advance beyond his myth-making predecessors and their cosmologies. Aristotle, himself, when speaking of Thales, refers to the old “theologians,”—meaning, doubtless, Homer and Hesiod,—who had ascribed to Oceanus and Thetis, the origin of all things. Thales, however, merits his place as the beginner of philosophy, because he made the first attempt to establish his physical principle, without resorting to a mythical representation, and, therefore, brought into philosophy a scientific procedure. He is the first who has placed his foot upon the ground of a logical (verständig) explanation of nature. We cannot now say with certainty, how he came to adopt his principle, though he might have been led to it, by perceiving that dampness belonged to the seed and nourishment of things; that warmth is developed from moisture; and that, generally, moisture might be the plastic, living and life-giving principle. From the condensation and expansion of this first principle, he derives, as it seems, the changes of things, though the way in which this is done, he has not accurately determined.
The philosophical significance of Thales does not appear to extend any farther. He was not a speculative philosopher after a later mode. Philosophical book-making was not at all the orderof his day, and he does not seem to have given any of his opinions a written form. On account of his ethico-political wisdom, he is numbered among the so-named “seven wise men,” and the characteristics which the ancients furnish concerning him only testify to his practical understanding. He is saide. g.to have first calculated an eclipse of the sun, to have superintended the turning of the course of the Halys under Crœsus, &c. When subsequent narrators relate that he had asserted the unity of the world, had set up the idea of a world-soul, and had taught the immortality of the soul and the personality of God, it is doubtless an unhistorical reference of later ideas to a standpoint, which was, as yet, far from being developed.
2.Anaximander.—Anaximander, sometimes represented by the ancients as a scholar and sometimes as a companion of Thales, but who was, at all events, younger than the latter, sought to carry out still farther his principles. The original essence which he assumed, and which he is said to have been the first to have named principle (ἀρχὴ), he defined as the “unlimited, eternal and unconditioned,” as that which embraced all things and ruled all things, and which, since it lay at the basis of all determinateness of the finite and the changeable, is itself infinite and undeterminate. How we are to regard this original essence of Anaximander is a matter of dispute. Evidently it was not one of the four common elements, though we must not, therefore, think it was something incorporeal and immaterial. Anaximander probably conceived it as the original matter before it had separated into determined elements,—as that which was first in the order of time, or what is in our day called the chemical indifference in the opposition of elements. In this respect his original essence is indeed “unlimited” and “undetermined,”i. e.has no determination of quality nor limit of quantity, yet it is not, therefore, in any way, a pure dynamical principle, as perhaps the “friendship” and “enmity” of Empedocles might have been, but it was only a more philosophical expression for the same thought, which the old cosmogonies have attempted to utter in their representation of chaos. Accordingly, Anaximander suffers the original oppositionof cold and warm, of dry and moist (i. e.the basis of the four elements) to be secreted from his original essence, a clear proof that it was only the undeveloped, unanalyzed, potential being of these elemental opposites.
3.Anaximenes.—Anaximenes, who is called by some the scholar, and by others the companion of Anaximander, turned back more closely to the view of Thales, in that he made air as the principle of all things. The perception that air surrounds the whole world, and that breath conditions the activity of life, seems to have led him to his position.
4.Retrospect.—The whole philosophy of the three Ionic sages may be reduced to these three points, viz:—(1.) They sought for the universal essence of concrete being; (2.) They found this essence in a material substance or substratum; (3.) They gave some intimation respecting the derivation of the elements from this original matter.
1.Its Relative Position.—The development of the Ionic philosophy discloses the tendency to abstract matter from all else; though they directed this process solely to the determinedqualityof matter. It is this abstraction carried to a higher step, when we look away from the sensible concretions of matter, and no more regard itsqualitativedeterminateness as water, air, &c., but only direct our attention to itsquantitativedeterminateness,—to its space-filling property. But the determinateness of quantity is number, and this is the principle and standpoint of Pythagoreanism.
2.Historical and Chronological.—The Pythagorean doctrine of numbers is referred to Pythagoras of Samos, who is said to have flourished between 540 and 500 B. C. He dwelt in thelatter part of his life at Crotonia, in Magna Grecia, where he founded a society, or, more properly, an order, for the moral and political regeneration of the lower Italian cities. Through this society, this new direction of philosophy seems to have been introduced,—though more as a mode of life than in the form of a scientific theory. What is related concerning the life of Pythagoras, his journeys, the new order which he founded, his political influence upon the lower Italian cities, &c., is so thoroughly interwoven with traditions, legends, and palpable fabrications, that we can be certain at no point that we stand upon a historical basis. Not only the old Pythagoreans, who have spoken of him, delighted in the mysterious and esoteric, but even his new-Platonistic biographers, Porphyry and Jamblichus, have treated his life as a historico-philosophical romance. We have the same uncertainty in reference to his doctrines,i. e.in reference to his share in the number-theory. Aristotle,e. g.does not ascribe this to Pythagoras himself, but only to the Pythagoreans generally,i. e.to their school. The accounts which are given respecting his school have no certainty till the time of Socrates, a hundred years after Pythagoras. Among the few sources of light which we have upon this subject, are the mention made in Plato’s Phædon of the Pythagorean Philolaus and his doctrines, and the writings of Archytas, a cotemporary of Plato. We possess in fact the Pythagorean doctrine only in the manner in which it was taken up by Philolaus, Eurytas and Archytas, since its earlier adherents left nothing in a written form.
3.The Pythagorean Principle.—The ancients are united in affirming that the principle of the Pythagorean philosophy was number. But in what sense was this their principle—in a material or a formal sense? Did they hold number as the material of things,i. e.did they believe that things had their origin in numbers, or did they regard it as the archetype of things,i. e.did they believe that things were made as the copy or the representation of numbers? From this very point the accounts given by the ancients diverge, and even the expressions of Aristotle seem to contradict each other. At one time he speaks of Pythagoreanismin the former, and at another in the latter sense. From this circumstance modern scholars have concluded that the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers had different forms of development; that some of the Pythagoreans regarded numbers as the substances and others as the archetypes of things. Aristotle, however, gives an intimation how the two statements may be reconciled with each other. Originally, without doubt, the Pythagoreans regarded number as the material, as the inherent essence of things, and therefore Aristotle places them together with the Hylics (the Ionic natural philosophers), and says of them that “they held things for numbers” (Metaph.I., 5, 6). But as the Hylics did not identify their matter,e. g.water, immediately with the sensuous thing, but only gave it out as the fundamental element, as the original form of the individual thing, so, on the other side, numbers also might be regarded as similar fundamental types, and therefore Aristotle might say of the Pythagoreans, that “they held numbers to be the corresponding original forms of being, as water, air, &c.” But if there still remains a degree of uncertainty in the expressions of Aristotle respecting the sense of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers, it can only have its ground in the fact that the Pythagoreans did not make any distinction between a formal and material principle, but contented themselves with the undeveloped view, that, “number is the essence of things, every thing is number.”
4.The carrying-out of this Principle.—From the very nature of the “number-principle,” it follows that its complete application to the province of the real, can only lead to a fruitless and empty symbolism. If we take numbers as even and odd, and still farther as finite and infinite, and apply them as such to astronomy, music, psychology, ethics, &c., there arise combinations like the following, viz.: one is the point, two are the line, three are the superficies, four are the extension of a body, five are the condition (beschaffenheit), &c.—still farther, the soul is a musical harmony, as is also virtue, the soul of the world, &c. Not only the philosophical, but even the historical interest here ceases, since the ancients themselves—as was unavoidable from thearbitrary nature of such combinations—have given the most contradictory account, some affirming that the Pythagoreans reduced righteousness to the number three, others, that they reduced it to the number four, others again to five, and still others to nine. Naturally, from such a vague and arbitrary philosophizing, there would early arise, in this, more than in other schools, a great diversity of views, one ascribing this signification to a certain mathematical form, and another that. In this mysticism of numbers, that which alone has truth and value, is the thought, which lies at the ground of it all, that there prevails in the phenomena of nature a rational order, harmony and conformity to law, and that these laws of nature can be represented in measure and number. But this truth has the Pythagorean school hid under extravagant fancies, as vapid as they are unbridled.
The physics of the Pythagoreans possesses little scientific value, with the exception of the doctrine taught by Philolaus respecting the circular motion of the earth. Their ethics is also defective. What we have remaining of it relates more to the Pythagorean life,i. e.to the practice and discipline of their order than to their philosophy. The whole tendency of Pythagoreanism was in a practical respect ascetic, and directed to a strict culture of the character. As showing this, we need only to cite their doctrines concerning the transmigration of the soul, or, as it has been called, their “immortality doctrine,” their notion in respect of the lower world, their opposition to suicide, and their view of the body as the prison of the soul—all of which ideas are referred to in Plato’s Phædon, and the last two of which are indicated as belonging to Philolaus.
1.Relation of the Eleatic Principle to the Pythagorean.—While the Pythagoreans had made matter, in so far as it is quantity and the manifold, the basis of their philosophizing, and while in this they only abstracted from the determined elemental condition of matter, the Eleatics carry the process to its ultimate limit, and make, as the principle of their philosophy, a total abstraction from every finite determinateness, from every change and vicissitude which belongs to concrete being. While the Pythagoreans had held fast to the form of being as having existence in space and time, the Eleatics reject this, and make as their fundamental thought the negation of all exterior and posterior. Only being is, and there is no not-being, nor becoming. This being is the purely undetermined, changeless ground of all things. It is not beinginbecoming, but it is being as exclusive of all becoming; in other words, it is pure being.
Eleaticism is, therefore, Monism, in so far as it strove to carry back the manifoldness of all being to a single ultimate principle; but on the other hand it becomes Dualism, in so far as it could neither carry out its denial of concrete existence,i. e., the phenomenal world, nor yet derive the latter from its presupposed original ground. The phenomenal world, though it might be explained as only an empty appearance, did yet exist; and, since the sensuous perception would not ignore this, there must be allowed it, hypothetically at least, the right of existence. Its origin must be explained, even though with reservations. This contradiction of an unreconciled Dualism between being and existence, is the point where the Eleatic philosophy is at war with itself—though, in the beginning of the school—withXenophanes, it does not yet appear. The principle itself, with its results, is only fully apparent in the lapse of time. It has three periodsof formation, which successively appear in three successive generations. Its foundation belongs toXenophanes; its systematic formation toParmenides; its completion and partial dissolution toZenoandMelissus—the latter of whom we can pass by.
2.Xenophanes.—Xenophanes is considered as the originator of the Eleatic tendency. He was born at Colophon; emigrated to Elea, a Phocian colony in Lucania, and was a younger cotemporary of Pythagoras. He appears to have first uttered the proposition—“every thing is one,” without, however, giving any more explicit determination respecting this unity, whether it be one simply in conception or in actuality. Turning his attention, says Aristotle, upon the world as a whole, he names the unity which he finds, God. God is the One. The Eleatic “One and All” (ἒν καὶ πᾶν) had, therefore, with Xenophanes, a theological and religious character. The idea of the unity of God, and an opposition to the anthropomorphism of the ordinary views of religion, is his starting point. He declaimed against the delusion that the gods were born, that they had a human voice or form, and railed at the robbery, adultery, and deceit of the gods as sung by Homer and Hesiod. According to him the Godhead is wholly seeing, wholly understanding, wholly hearing, unmoved, undivided, calmly ruling all things by his thought, like men neither in form nor in understanding. In this way, with his thought turned only towards removing from the Godhead all finite determinations and predicates, and holding fast to its unity and unchangeableness, he declared this doctrine of its being to be the highest philosophical principle, without however directing this principle polemically against the doctrine of finite being, or carrying it out in its negative application.
3.Parmenides.—The proper head of the Eleatic school is Parmenides of Elea, a scholar, or at least an adherent of Xenophanes. Though we possess but little reliable information respecting the circumstances of his life, yet we have, in inverse proportion, the harmonious voice of all antiquity in an expression of reverence for the Eleatic sage, and of admiration for the depth of his mind, as well as for the earnestness and elevationof his character. The saying—“a life like Parmenides,” became afterwards a proverb among the Greeks.
Parmenides embodied his philosophy in an epic poem, of which we have still important fragments. It is divided into two parts. In the first he discusses the conception of being. Rising far above the yet unmediated view of Xenophanes, he attains a conception of pure single being, which he sets up as absolutely opposed to every thing manifold and changeable,i. e., to that which has no being, and which consequently cannot be thought. From this conception of being he not only excludes all becoming and departing, but also all relation to space and time, all divisibility and movement. This being he explains as something which has not become and which does not depart, as complete and of its own kind, as unalterable and without limit, as indivisible and present though not in time, and since all these are only negative, he ascribes to it, also, as a positive determination—thought. Being and thought are therefore identical with Parmenides. This pure thought, directed to the pure being, he declares is the only true and undeceptive knowledge, in opposition to the deceptive notions concerning the manifoldness and mutability of the phenomenal. He has no hesitancy in holding that to be only a name which mortals regard as truth, viz., becoming and departing, being and not-being, change of place and vicissitude of circumstance. We must therefore be careful not to hold “the One” of Parmenides, as the collective unity of all concrete being.
So much for the first part of Parmenides’ poem. After the principle that there is only being has been developed according to its negative and positive determinations, we might believe that the system was at an end. But there follows a second part, which is occupied solely with the hypothetical attempt to explain the phenomenal world and give it a physical derivation. Though firmly convinced that, according to reason and conception, there is only “the One,” yet is Parmenides unable to withdraw himself from the recognition of an appearing manifoldness and change. Forced, therefore, by his sensuous perception to enterupon a discussion of the phenomenal world, he prefaces this second part of his poem with the remark, that he had now closed what he had to say respecting the truth, and was hereafter to deal only with the opinion of a mortal. Unfortunately, this second part has been very imperfectly transmitted to us. Enough however remains to show, that he explained the phenomena of nature from the mingling of two unchangeable elements, which Aristotle, though apparently only by way of example, indicates as warm and cold, fire and earth. Concerning these two elements, Aristotle remarks still farther that Parmenides united the warmth with being, and the other element with not-being.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that between the two parts of the Parmenidean philosophy—between the doctrine concerning being and the doctrine concerning appearance—there can exist no inner scientific connection. What Parmenides absolutely denies in the first part, and indeed declares to be unutterable, viz., the not-being, the many and the changeable, he yet in the second part admits to have an existence at least in the representation of men. But it is clear that the not-being cannot once exist in the representation, if it does not exist generally and every where, and that the attempt to explain a not-being of the representation, is in complete contradiction with his exclusive recognition of being. This contradiction, this unmediated juxtaposition of being and not-being, of the one and the many,Zeno, a scholar of Parmenides, sought to remove, by affirming that from the very conception of being, the sensuous representation, and thus the world of the not-being, are dialectically annihilated.
4.Zeno.—The Eleatic Zeno was born about 500 B. C.; was a scholar of Parmenides, and the earliest prose writer among the Grecian philosophers. He is said to have written in the form of dialogues. He perfected, dialectically, the doctrine of his master, and carried out to the completest extent the abstraction of the Eleatic One, in opposition to the manifoldness and determinateness of the finite. He justified the doctrine of a single, simple, and unchangeable being, in a polemical way, by showing up the contradictions into which the ordinary representations of thephenomenal world become involved. While Parmenides affirms that there is only the One, Zeno shows in his well-known proofs (which unfortunately we cannot here more widely unfold), that the many, the changing, that which has relation to space, or that which has relation to time, is not. While Parmenides affirmed the being, Zeno denied the appearance. On account of these proofs, in which Zeno takes up the conceptions of extension, manifoldness and movement, and shows their inner contradictory nature, Aristotle names him the founder of dialectics.
While the philosophizing of Zeno is the completion of the Eleatic principle, so is it at the same time the beginning of its dissolution. Zeno had embraced the opposition of being and existence, of the one and the many, so abstractly, and had carried it so far, that with him the inner contradiction of the Eleatic principle comes forth still more boldly than with Parmenides; for the more logical he is in the denial of the phenomenal world, so much the more striking must be the contradiction, of turning, on the one side, his whole philosophical activity to the refutation of the sensuous representation, while, on the other side, he sets over against it a doctrine which destroys the very possibility of a false representation.
1.Relation of the Heraclitic Principle to the Eleatic.—Being and existence, the one and the many, could not be united by the principle of the Eleatics; the Monism which they had striven for had resulted in an ill-concealed Dualism. Heraclitus reconciled this contradiction by affirming that being and not-being, the one and the many, existed at the same time as the becoming. While the Eleatics could not extricate themselves from the dilemma that the world is either being or not-being,Heraclitus removes the difficulty by answering—it is neither being nor not-being, because it is both.
2.Historical and Chronological.—Heraclitus, surnamed by later writers the mystic, was born at Ephesus, and flourished about 500 B. C. His period was subsequent to that of Xenophanes, though partially cotemporary with that of Parmenides. He laid down his philosophical thoughts in a writing “Concerning Nature,” of which we possess only fragments. Its rapid transitions, its expressions so concise, and full of meaning, the general philosophical peculiarity of Heraclitus, and the antique character of the earliest prose writings, all combine to make this work so difficult to be understood that it has long been a proverb. Socrates said concerning it, that “what he understood of it was excellent, and he had no doubt that what he did not understand was equally good; but the book requires an expert swimmer.” Later Stoics and Academicians have written commentaries upon it.
3.The Principle of the Becoming.—The ancients unite in ascribing to Heraclitus the principle that the totality of things should be conceived in an eternal flow, in an uninterrupted movement and transformation, and that all continuance of things is only appearance. “Into the same stream,” so runs a saying of Heraclitus, “we descend, and at the same time we do not descend; we are, and also we are not. For into the same stream we cannot possibly descend twice, since it is always scattering and collecting itself again, or rather it at the same time flows to us and from us.” There is, therefore, ground for the assertion that Heraclitus had banished all rest and continuance from the totality of things; and it is doubtless in this very respect that he accuses the eye and the ear of deception, because they reveal to men a continuance where there is only an uninterrupted change.
Heraclitus has analyzed the principle of the becoming still more closely, in the propositions which he utters, to account for the origin of things, where he shows that all becoming must be conceived as the product of warring opposites, as the harmonious union of opposite determinations. Hence his two well-knownpropositions: “Strife is the father of things,” and “The One setting itself at variance with itself, harmonizes with itself, like the harmony of the bow and the viol.” “Unite,” so runs another of his sayings, “the whole and the not-whole, the coalescing and the not-coalescing, the harmonious and the discordant, and thus we have the one becoming from the all, and the all from the one.”
4.The Principle of Fire.—In what relation does the principle of fire, which is also ascribed to Heraclitus, stand to the principle of the becoming? Aristotle says that he took fire as his principle, in the same way that Thales took water, and Anaximenes took air. But it is clear we must not interpret this to mean that Heraclitus regarded fire as the original material or fundamental element of things, after the manner of the Ionics. If he ascribed reality only to the becoming, it is impossible that he should have set by the side of this becoming, yet another elemental matter as a fundamental substance. When, therefore, Heraclitus calls the world an ever-living fire, which in certain stages and certain degrees extinguishes and again enkindles itself, when he says that every thing can be exchanged for fire, and fire for every thing, just as we barter things for gold and gold for things, he can only mean thereby that fire represents the abiding power of this eternal transformation and transposition, in other words, the conception of life, in the most obvious and effective way. We might name fire, in the Heraclitic sense, the symbol or the manifestation of the becoming, but that it is also with him the substratum of movement,i. e.the means with which the power of movement, which is antecedent to all matter, serves it self in order to bring out the living process of things. In the same way Heraclitus goes on to explain the manifoldness of things, by affirming that they arise from certain hindrances and a partial extinction of this fire. The product of its extremest hindrance is the earth, and the other things lie intermediately between.
5.Transition To the Atomists.—We have above regarded the Heraclitic principle as the consequent of the Eleatic, but wemight as properly consider the two as antitheses. While Heraclitus destroys all abiding being in an absolutely flowing becoming, so, on the other hand, Parmenides destroys all becoming in an absolutely abiding being; and while the former charges the eye and the ear with deception, in that they transform the flowing becoming into a quiescent being, the latter also accuses these same senses of an untrue representation, in that they draw the abiding being into the movement of the becoming. We can therefore say that the being and the becoming are equally valid antitheses, which demand again a synthesis and reconciliation. But now can we say that Heraclitus actually and satisfactorily solved the problem of Zeno? Zeno had shown every thing actual to be a contradiction, and from this had inferred their not-being, and it is only in this inference that Heraclitus deviates from the Eleatics. He also regarded the phenomenal world as an existing contradiction, but he clung to this contradiction as to an ultimate fact. That which had been the negative result of the Eleatics, he uttered as his positive principle. The dialectics which Zeno had subjectively used against the phenomenal, he directed objectively as a proof for the becoming. But this becoming which the Eleatics had thought themselves obliged to deny entirely, Heraclitus did not explain by simply asserting that it was the only true principle. The question continually returned—why is all being a becoming? Why does the one go out over into the many? To give an answer to this question,i. e.to explain the becoming from the presupposed principle of being, forms the standpoint and problem of theEmpedocleanandAtomisticphilosophy.
1.General View.—Empedocles was born at Agrigentum, and is extolled by the ancients as a natural philosopher, physician and poet, and also as a seer and worker of miracles. He flourished about 440 B. C., and was consequently younger than Parmenides and Heraclitus. He wrote a doctrinal poem concerning nature, which has been preserved to us in tolerably complete fragments. His philosophical system may be characterized in brief, as an attempt to combine the Eleatic being and the Heraclitic becoming. Starting with the Eleatic thought, that neither any thing which had previously been could become, nor any thing which now is could depart, he sets up as unchangeable being, four eternal original materials, which, though divisible, were independent, and underived from each other. In this we have what in our day are called the four elements. With this Eleatic thought he united also the Heraclitic view of nature, and suffered his four elements to become mingled together, and to receive a form by the working of two moving powers, which he names unifying friendship and dividing strife. Originally, these four elements were absolutely alike and unmovable, dwelling together in a divine sphere where friendship united them, until gradually strife pressing from the circumference to the centre of the sphere (i. e.attaining a separating activity), broke this union, and the formation of the world immediately began as the result.
2.The Four Elements.—With his doctrine of the four elements, Empedocles, on the one side, may be joined to the series of the Ionic philosophers, but, on the other, he is excluded from this by his assuming the original elements to be four. He is distinctly said by the ancients to have originated the theory of the four elements. He is more definitely distinguished from the old Ionics, from the fact that he ascribed to his four “root-elements” a changeless being, by virtue of which they neither arose fromeach other nor departed into each other, and were capable of no change of essence but only of a change of state. Every thing which is called arising and departing, every change rests therefore only upon the mingling and withdrawing of these eternal and fundamental materials; the inexhaustible manifoldness of being rests upon the different proportions in which these elements are mingled. Every becoming is conceived as such only as a change of place. In this we have a mechanical in opposition to a dynamic explanation of nature.
3.The Two Powers.—Whence now can arise any becoming, if in matter itself there is found no principle to account for the change? Since Empedocles did not, like the Eleatics, deny that there was change, nor yet, like Heraclitus, introduce it in his matter, as an indwelling principle, so there was no other course left him but to place, by the side of his matter, a moving power. The opposition of the one and the many which had been set up by his predecessors, and which demanded an explanation, led him to ascribe to this moving power, two originally diverse directions, viz.: repulsion and attraction. The separation of the one into the many, and the union again of the many into the one, had indicated an opposition of powers which Heraclitus had already recognized. While now Parmenides starting from the one had made love as his principle, and Heraclitus starting from the many had made strife as his, Empedocles combines the two as the principle of his philosophy. The difficulty is, he has not sufficiently limited in respect to one another, the sphere of operation of these two directions of his power. Although, to friendship belonged peculiarly the attractive, and to strife the repelling function, yet does Empedocles, on the other hand, suffer his strife to have in the formation of the world a unifying, and his friendship a dividing effect. In fact, the complete separation of a dividing and unifying power in the movement of the becoming, is an unmaintainable abstraction.
4.Relation of the Empedoclean to the Eleatic and Heraclitic Philosophy.—Empedocles, by placing, as the principle of the becoming, a moving power by the side of his matter,makes his philosophy a mediation of the Eleatic and Heraclitic principles, or more properly a placing of them side by side. He has interwoven these two principles in equal proportions in his system. With the Eleatics he denied all arising and departing,i. e.the transition of being into not-being and of not-being into being, and with Heraclitus he shared the interest to find an explanation for change. From the former he derived the abiding, unchangeable being of his fundamental matter, and from the latter the principle of the moving power. With the Eleatics, in fine, he considered the true being in an original and indistinguishable unity as a sphere, and with Heraclitus, he regarded the present world as a constant product of striving powers and oppositions. He has, therefore, been properly called an Eclectic, who has united the fundamental thoughts of his two predecessors, though not always in a logical way.
1.Its Propounders.—Empedocles had sought to effect a combination of the Eleatic and Heraclitic principle—the same was attempted, though in a different way, by the Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus. Democritus, the better known of the two, was the son of rich parents, and was born about 460 B. C. in Abdera, an Ionian colony. He travelled extensively, and no Greek before the time of Aristotle possessed such varied attainments. He embodied the wealth of his collected knowledge in a series of writings, of which, however, only a few fragments have come down to us. For rhythm and elegance of language, Cicero compared him with Plato. He died in a good old age.
2.The Atoms.—Empedocles derived all determinateness of the phenomenal from a certain number of qualitatively determined and undistinguishable original materials, while the Atomists derivedthe same from an originally unlimited number of constituent elements, or atoms, which were homogeneous in respect of quality, but diverse in respect of form. These atoms are unchangeable, material particles, possessing indeed extension, but yet indivisible, and can only be determined in respect of magnitude. As being, and without quality, they are entirely incapable of any transformation or qualitative change, and, therefore, all becoming is, as with Empedocles, only a change of place. The manifoldness of the phenomenal world is only to be explained from the different form, disposition, and arrangement of the atoms as they become, in various ways, united.
3.The Fulness and the Void.—The atoms, in order to be atoms,i. e.undivided and impenetrable unities,—must be mutually limited and separated. There must be something set over against them which preserves them as atoms, and which is the original cause of their separateness and impenetrability. This is the void space, or more strictly the intervals which are found between the atoms, and which hinder their mutual contact. The atoms, as being and absolute fulness, and the interval between them, as the void and the not-being, are two determinations which only represent in a real and objective way, what are in thought, as logical conceptions, the two elements in the Heraclitic becoming, viz. being and the not-being. But since the void space is one determination of being, it must possess objective reality no less than the atoms, and Democritus even went so far as to expressly affirm in opposition to the Eleatics, that being is no more than nothing.
4.The Atomistic Necessity.—Democritus, like Empedocles, though far more extensively than he, attempted to answer the question—whence arise these changes and movements which we behold? Wherein lies the ground that the atoms should enter into these manifold combinations, and bring forth such a wealth of inorganic and organic forms? Democritus attempted to solve the problem by affirming that the ground of movement lay in the gravity or original condition of the material particles, and, therefore, in the matter itself, but in this way he only talked about thequestion without answering it. The idea of an infinite series of causalities was thus attained, but not a final ground of all the manifestations of the becoming, and of change. Such a final ground was still to be sought, and as Democritus expressly declared that it could not lie in an ultimate reason νοῦς, where Anaxagoras placed it, there only remained for him to find it in an absolute necessity, or a necessary pre-determinateness ἀνάγκη. This he adopted as his “final ground,” and is said to have named it chance τύχη, in opposition to the inquiry after final causes, or the Anaxagorean teleology. Consequent upon this, we find as the prominent characteristic of the later Atomistic school (Diagoras the Melier), polemics against the gods of the people, and a constantly more publicly affirmed Atheism and Materialism.
5.Relative Position of the Atomistic Philosophy.—Hegel characterizes the relative position of the Atomistic Philosophy as follows, viz.:—“In the Eleatic Philosophy being and not-being stand as antitheses,—being alone is, and not-being is not; in the Heraclitic idea, being and not-being are the same,—both together,i. e.the becoming, are the predicate of concrete being; but being and not-being, as objectively determined, or in other words, as appearing to the sensuous intuition, are precisely the same as the antithesis of the fulness and the void. Parmenides, Heraclitus and the Atomists all sought for the abstract universal; Parmenides found it inbeing, Heraclitus in theprocessof beingper se, and the Atomists in thedeterminationof beingper se.” So much of this as ascribes to the Atomists the characteristic predicate of beingper seis doubtless correct,—but the real thought of the Atomistic system is rather analogous with the Empedoclean, to explain the possibility of the becoming, by presupposing these substances as possessing beingper se, but without quality. To this end the not-being or the void,i. e.the side which is opposed to the Eleatic principle, is elaborated with no less care than the side which harmonizes with it,i. e.that the atoms are without quality and never change in their original elements. The Atomistic Philosophy is therefore a mediation between the Eleatic and the Heraclitic principles. It is Eleatic in affirming the undividedbeingper seof the atoms;—Heraclitic, in declaring their multeity and manifoldness. It is Eleatic in the declaration of an absolute fulness in the atoms, and Heraclitic in the claim of a real not-being,i. e.the void space. It is Eleatic in its denial of the becoming,i. e.of the arising and departing,—and Heraclitic in its affirmation that to the atoms belong movement and a capacity for unlimited combinations. The Atomists carried out their leading thought more logically than Empedocles, and we might even say that their system is the perfection of a purely mechanical explanation of nature, since all subsequent Atomists, even to our own day, have only repeated their fundamental conceptions. But the great defect which cleaves to every Atomistic system, Aristotle has justly recognized, when he shows that it is a contradiction, on the one hand, to set up something corporeal or space-filling as indivisible, and on the other, to derive the extended from that which has no extension, and that the consciousless and inconceivable necessity of Democritus is especially defective, in that it totally banishes from nature all conception of design. This is the point to which Anaxagoras turns his attention, and introduces his principle of an intelligence working with design.
1.His Personal History.—Anaxagoras is said to have been born at Clazamena, about the year 500 B. C.; to have gone to Athens immediately, or soon after the Persian war, to have lived and taught there for a long time, and, finally, accused of irreverence to the gods, to have fled, and died at Lampsacus, at the age of 72. He it was who first planted philosophy at Athens, which from this time on became the centre of intellectual life in Greece. Through his personal relations to Pericles, Euripides, and other important men,—among whom Themistocles and Thucydidesshould be named—he exerted a decisive influence upon the culture of the age. It was on account of this that the charge of defaming the gods was brought against him, doubtless by the political opponents of Pericles. Anaxagoras wrote a work “Concerning Nature” which in the time of Socrates was widely circulated.
2.His Relation to his Predecessors.—The system of Anaxagoras starts from the same point with his predecessors, and is simply another attempt at the solution of the same problem. Like Empedocles and the Atomists so did Anaxagoras most vehemently deny the becoming. “The becoming and departing,”—so runs one of his sayings—“the Greeks hold without foundation, for nothing can ever be said to become or depart; but, since existing things may be compounded together and again divided, we should name the becoming more correctly a combination, and the departing a separation.” From this view, that every thing arose by the mingling of different elements, and departed by the withdrawing of these elements, Anaxagoras, like his predecessors, was obliged to separate matter from the moving power. But though his point of starting was the same, yet was his direction essentially different from that of any previous philosopher. It was clear that neither Empedocles nor Democritus had satisfactorily apprehended the moving power. The mythical energies of love and hate of the one, or the unconscious necessity of the other, explained nothing, and least of all, the design of the becoming in nature. The conception of an activity which could thus work designedly, must, therefore, be brought into the conception of the moving power, and this Anaxagoras accomplished by setting up the idea of a world-forming intelligence (νοῦς), absolutely separated from all matter and working with design.
3.The Principle of theνοῦς.—Anaxagoras described this intelligence as free to dispose, unmingled with any thing, the ground of movement, but itself unmoved, every where active, and the most refined and pure of all things. Although these predicates rest partly upon a physical analogy, and do not exhibit purely the conception of immateriality, yet on the other handdoes the attribute of thought and of a conscious acting with design admit no doubt to remain of the decided idealistic character of the Anaxagorean principle. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras went no farther than to enunciate his fundamental thought without attempting its complete application. The explanation of this is obvious from the reasons which first led him to adopt his principle. It was only the need of an original cause of motion, to which also might be attributed the capacity to work designedly, which had led him to the idea of an immaterial principle. His νοῦς, therefore, is almost nothing but a mover of matter, and in this function nearly all its activity is expended. Hence the universal complaint of the ancients, especially of Plato and Aristotle, respecting the mechanical character of his doctrine. In Plato’s Phædon Socrates relates that, in the hope of being directed beyond a simple occasioning, or mediate cause, he had turned to the book of Anaxagoras, but had found there only a mechanical instead of a truly teleological explanation of being. And as Plato so also does Aristotle find fault with Anaxagoras in that, while he admits mind as the ultimate ground of things, he yet resorts to it only as to aDeus ex machinafor the explanation of phenomena, whose necessity he could not derive from the causality in nature. Anaxagoras, therefore, has rather postulated than proved mind as an energy above nature, and as the truth and actuality of natural being.
The further extension of his system, his doctrine concerning the homoiomeria (constituent elements of things), which according to him existed together originally in a chaotic condition until with their separation and parting the formation of the world began—can here only be mentioned.
4.Anaxagoras as the Close of the pre-Socratic Realism.—With the Anaxagorean principle of the νοῦς,i. e.with the acquisition of an absolutely immaterial principle, closes the realistic period of the old Grecian Philosophy. Anaxagoras combined together the principles of all his predecessors. The infinite matter of the Hylics is represented in his chaotic original mingling of things; the Eleatic pure being appears in the idea of theνοῦς; the Heraclitic power of becoming and the Empedoclean moving energies are both seen in the creating and arranging power of the eternal mind, while the Democritic atoms come to view in the homoiomeria. Anaxagoras is the closing point of an old and the beginning point of a new course of development,—the latter through the setting up of his ideal principle, and the former through the defective and completely physical manner in which this principle was yet again applied.